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The global economic paradigm has long prioritized price stability — particularly inflation control — as the cornerstone of sound policy. However, this paper challenges the assumption that inflation control should take precedence over the provisioning of essential life needs such as food, housing, healthcare, education, and ecological regeneration. In doing so, it brings together three powerful streams of thought: Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), which reframes money as a public utility; Life-Value Onto-Axiology (LVOA), which affirms that the measure of any system must be life coherence; and historical economic analysis, which reveals the ideological distortions underpinning austerity and neoliberal fiscal policy.
We demonstrate that the inflation-first paradigm systematically favors capital and creditor interests at the expense of the poor, working class, and planetary health. While inflation is real and must be managed, its prioritization above provisioning reflects not fiscal necessity but political choices rooted in outdated and unjust models.
This white paper argues for a fundamental reorientation: inflation management should serve — not sabotage — life coherence. Governments that issue their own currencies are not financially constrained in the way households are. Their real limits lie in productive capacity, ecological boundaries, and social cohesion. The true role of fiscal and monetary policy should be to ensure these capacities are cultivated, protected, and equitably distributed.
We propose a life-coherent economic framework based on:
- Prioritizing universal life-needs provisioning through public investment
- Implementing functional finance to calibrate spending to real resource use
- Adopting new metrics that reflect life-value and regenerative capacity
- Reforming institutions to align with the civil commons and public purpose
Ultimately, this is a call to reclaim economics as a servant of life, not a tool of domination. We invite economists, policymakers, citizens, and scholars to co-create an economy where life comes first — and price follows.