If you want to fight universal credit (and austerity), you need to know why the “taxpayers’ money” framing is factually flawed and dangerous.

Reducing benefits payments cannot ever, ever, ever “save taxpayers money”. It’s *literally* impossible, because the pounds you pay in tax don’t get piled up and subsequently spent anywhere. They get deleted from existence. The central government does not need your taxed pounds to spend. Going along with the fiction that it does is deadly for the most vulnerable people in society.

Reducing the government’s budget deficit, by whatever means, reduces the non-government sector’s budget surplus, as a matter of accounting identity. The non-government surplus is *our* money.

To be compassionate, effective participants in our democracy, we need to be working with macroeconomic fact, or we’re going to get more lethal policies, more right-wing demagoguery and further dismantling of our country’s most hard-won and precious assets.

The “taxpayers’ money” line of attack will never work.

Me and my friend Patricia made this podcast, because we think it’s vital to demystify economics. Hope you get time to have a listen!