How many times have you heard from politicians and pundits that we can’t afford nice things, like a fully-funded National Health Service, or a Green New Deal, or a world-class education system (not just for some, but for every child and lifelong learner), or even just life* – because our government has run out of money?

What if the whole economic premise that justified austerity and the consequent loss of life was just flat-out incorrect? Would you like to know more?

If you’ve only got five minutes, this is a great, quick read describing how our money system works by a teacher of economics.

If you’ve got less than five minutes, here it is:

Christian and MMT Podcast co-host, Patricia Pino

The UK government issues its own currency, and a government that issues its own currency can never run out of that currency. For a government with a
modern money system**, austerity and the social destruction that goes with it is a political choice.

If you want to know more about why that is, and how we can choose better, here’s Christian and Patricia’s MMT Podcast.

Christian has been working on turning what he’s been learning about economics into a show which should be available online in August 2020. More about that here.

*(In 2017, a report published in the British Medical Journal linked the policies of austerity to 120,000 deaths)

**Also the US, Japan, Canada and Australia, to name a few.