Most people think tax pays for government spending. It doesn’t. In a modern monetary economy, governments that issue their own currency spend first and tax later.

In this video, I explain the six real purposes of tax:

• ratifying the currency
• controlling inflation
• redistributing income and wealth
• repricing harmful activity
• strengthening democracy
• organising the economy for public purpose

Understanding this changes everything about austerity, social security, inequality and public services.

If we want a politics of care instead of a politics of fear, we need an honest debate about tax.

People often ask me why the work we do on this channel and on the Funding the Future blog is so hard to follow. It is not because the economics is complicated. It is because what we say is counterintuitive.

We have all been taught a story about money. We are told governments must behave like households, must balance their books, must cut spending on public services and social security because “there is no money left”. That story feels familiar. It feels safe. And it is wrong.

In this video, I explain why good economics often feels uncomfortable. We are challenging ideas that politicians, journalists and economists have repeated for decades. When we explain that government is different because it issues money, that private saving requires government deficits, and that austerity is a political choice, people understandably hesitate. The problem is psychological, not technical.

That is why we repeat ourselves. New viewers arrive every day. Myths repeated for forty years do not disappear after one video. And if we want a politics of care and an economics of hope, based on proper accounting and honest debate about public services and social security, we have to keep telling the truth about money.

Bad economics has consequences. It leads to austerity, a failing NHS, broken local government and rising inequality. It pushes people towards the far right because they think nothing works. That is why this work matters, and why persistence matters.

If you value clear explanations of government finance, tax and the real economy, please subscribe to the channel, share this video and help spread the word. Change only happens when people challenge the myths they have been taught.

Read Funding the Future: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk

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People ask whether modern monetary theory is “just theory”. I think that’s the wrong question. The real test is practical: does the UK actually operate as a modern money economy?

In this video, I walk through the plumbing: Parliament authorises spending, the Treasury instructs the Bank of England, payments are settled through reserves, and only later do taxes and gilts come into play. That sequence matters because it tells us something uncomfortable but vital: austerity is a political choice, not an economic necessity.

I also set out the real constraints: not “running out of money”, but real resources:

- labour,

- energy,

- materials,

- skills, and

- technology

and that inflation and climate limits should guide policy.

If we get the ordering right, we can finally have the debate we should have had all along: what do we need, do we have the capacity, and how do we manage inflation fairly?