Why is there a cost of living crisis in one of the richest nations on Earth?
Because of extreme inequality.
Regardless of a few feeble sops, the Tories are making it worse.
Last night, they gave bankers a tax cut worth £1bn a year.
While raising NIC for ordinary workers.
We urgently need a radical redistribution of wealth in the UK. By means of:
Higher top rates of income tax.
A lifetime gift tax.
A progressive property tax.
Windfall taxes on energy firms.
Meaningful carbon taxes.
Major taxes on second homes and holiday lets.
These taxes have two functions:
1. To break the spiral of patrimonial wealth accumulation, which is as deadly to democracy as it is to equality.
2. To raise revenue that can be spent on a Green New Deal, the NHS, much better schools and other essential measures.
Some people will say we don't need to raise revenue this way, because MMT.
I would ask: are you absolutely sure?
Because if you aren't 100% sure that it'll work long-term in the UK, by promoting it you might inadvertently help to sustain inequality.
I'm MMT-curious, but unsure.
Some people are interpreting my hesitation as a result of lack of exposure to the upsides of MMT. It's not that. I've read quite a lot of material in favour. What I've not explored sufficiently are the potential downsides. I'm not confident that I have the whole picture.

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More from @GeorgeMonbiot

Feb 4
Rishi Sunak has presided over some of this government's cruellest decisions. Don't let them persuade you that he's the saviour who will rescue us from this mess.
It reminds me of how Gordon Brown, having financed the Iraq War and ripped public services apart through his Private Finance Initiative, was presented as the saintly alternative to Tony Blair.
And still is ....
Alongside all the other horrors, never forget how Sunak shovelled money into the pockets of second home owners, rewarding rich people for extreme selfishness, while exacerbating the housing crisis.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Read 6 tweets
Feb 2
Boris Johnson has promised us “Freedom!” But it’s not us he’s liberating. It’s the asset strippers, money launderers, property developers and oligarchs who fund and defend him.
Their freedom is our misery.
My column.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
As the final stage of the Grenfell Tower inquiry has begun this week, I'd like to remind you of what was happening in another part of London on the day of the disaster, to show what the Conservatives mean by "freedom". I hope you're sitting down.
Thread/
On 14 June 2017, as the Tower burnt, the government’s Red Tape Initiative team met to discuss building regulations. It was due to consider whether rules governing the fire resistance of cladding materials should be scrapped, for the sake of construction industry profits.
Read 14 tweets
Feb 2
It's worth noting that the only pathologies both-sided by the curriculum are those that favour the powerful.

Biology students aren't taught that there are both positives and negatives to diphtheria ...
It's like the BBC's teaching materials, that provided an equal list of the positives and negatives of climate breakdown. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
It's as if young people's sense of justice, concern for others and for the living planet has to be pushed back into its box. It's as if growing up must involve abandoning your conscience and accepting the lies that power tells.
Read 4 tweets
Jan 31
A Parliament that expels MPs for explaining that a pathological liar has lied becomes party to the lies.
It's our political system in microcosm: the liar survives, the whistleblower is ejected.
I looked up "whistleblower" on Thesaurus.com, and this is what it gave me. Perhaps it's a sign of how little we value those who tell the truth.
Read 4 tweets
Jan 28
For years I’ve been struggling with a paradox that seems fundamental to our age. We live under a system that celebrates freedom and choice. Yet almost everyone in a position of power or influence subscribes to the same set of preposterous beliefs.
Thread/
Here are a few of them.
- That economic growth can continue indefinitely on a finite planet.
- That the economic system should be granted primacy over the Earth systems that sustain it.
- That you should pledge allegiance to capitalism, even if you don’t know what it is.
- That natural wealth can be turned into private property, and the right of a person to own it corresponds to the numbers in their bank account.
- That the “invisible hand of the market” can one day solve our problems, though it has failed to do so to date.
Read 13 tweets
Jan 26
Last week I wrote about the dumping of used gillnets by French and Spanish boats* in Scottish waters. My contact has sent me more photos of dumped nets landed by local trawlers. I'll spare you the very distressing shots of seals and porpoises caught in them, but brace yourselves:
This ghost net has trapped hundreds of large fish, which would have died slowly as they were rolled over the seafloor. Gillnetting is extremely light and fine, so this probably amounts to several miles of net.
This one has picked up some large brown crabs, which are crucial to thriving ecosystems.
Read 7 tweets

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