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.

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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?

People keep asking me how money is created, and the answer matters because misunderstanding money leads directly to bad economics and bad politics.

In this video, I explain:

1. Why money is always a promise to pay

2. How commercial banks create money when they lend

3. How the Bank of England creates money for government spending

4. Why tax does not fund spending, and instead controls inflation and inequality

If we misunderstand money, we accept false limits on spending on

1. the NHS,
2. social security,
3. housing
4. education,
5. investment, and more.

Once we understand money properly, we can build a politics of care instead of a politics of austerity.

In 2023, the BBC admitted that comparing government finances to a household budget is “dangerous territory” that can mislead audiences. And yet we still hear that myth every day.

Its own impartiality review said household budget analogies are wrong. So why do they keep talking about them?

Why? Because the myth is politically useful. It limits debate, justifies cuts to public services and social security, and presents ideology as arithmetic.

In this video, I unpack what the BBC admitted, why the myth survives, and how we challenge it.

Fiscal policy is about choices, as the BBC knows. It's time the BBC started making better ones when talking about that fact.

Can capitalism still organise society for the common good? That was the question I put to John Christensen. What we discovered is that the answer lies not in abstract theory but in practical experience. Mutuals, co-operatives and democratic institutions already shape our lives. The Nationwide building society, the Co-op, mutual insurers, some energy suppliers, pension funds and some phone providers prove that another way of organising the economy exists.

In this video, we discuss why shareholder capitalism has produced monopolies, failing utilities and democratic erosion, and why cooperation may be the basis of a politics of care.

If capitalism is failing, the question is not whether change will come, but how.

We are being asked whether Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor should be eighth in line to the throne. That is the wrong question.

The real issue is simple: why do we have a monarchy at all in a modern democracy?

No one should be born to rule. No one should inherit political authority. And public services belong to us, and not to a king.

In this video, I explain why monarchy contradicts equality, distorts politics, and blocks constitutional reform, and why a politics of care demands an elected head of state, a written constitution, and real democratic accountability.

This is not about individuals. It is about institutions.

Politicians keep telling us the government must “live within its means” like a household. That idea is wrong. It is also dangerous.

In this video, I explain why a currency-issuing government is fundamentally different from a household, how money is actually created, why deficits create private surpluses, and how the household budget myth has justified austerity, weakened public services, and cut social security in the UK since 2010.

We need honest economics, not myths that limit democratic ambition. Real limits are resources, skills, energy, and environmental capacity, not money.

Understanding this is essential if we want an economy based on care, not the politics of destruction.