Thread by @Matt72423

1/15:  A very long thread, but I need to get this off my chest. Please bear with me.  In this country we have a monetary system which, if used correctly, can serve our people and our planet in a way that benefits all of us.

2/15:   Gov't has at its disposal a currency which it can produce by parliamentary decree - a fiat currency - to spend for whatever purpose it chooses, deciding how much it needs based upon what real resources it has at its disposal to carry out its agenda.

3/15:   That agenda is dependant on the democratic choice of the people, not on the availability of 'funds'. It doesn't need to 'get' the funding from anywhere; it produces it by fiat.

4/15:   The problem is that the way the economy is framed and operated is predicated on deception, lies, myths; an 'orthodoxy' or 'received wisdom' that gov't is constrained by having 'no money of its own' and having to go cap in hand to its citizens to fund its agenda.

5/15:   It's an orthodoxy that relies on having a percentage of the people unemployed as a crude and vicious tool to suppress wage demands and thus inflation (Google NAIRU).

6/15:   It's a system to concentrate wealth, in terms of both real resources and money, into the hands of the few at the top, to the exclusion of the rest.

7/15: It's a neoliberal trap to downplay the role of government and frame public purpose spending as a burden on society and make the Tory 'small government' ideology sound like simply 'fiscal responsibility' and common sense.

8/15: Sadly, since the birth of New Labour, the party that should be working for social justice, social equity, fairness, green energy, top class health and social care etc etc, has swallowed the myth and tied itself up in the straitjacket so cleverly invented by Thatcher.

9/15: The gatekeepers of the deception are found everywhere: orthodox economists, politicians of all persuasions, journalists etc to name a few. Many, probably most, don't even realise that they have fallen into the trap because the way it is all framed seems so commonsense.

10/15: The outcome of it all is that, as a country, we are living below our means. Poverty is gov't policy. With unemployment, and underemployment, we are wasting the talent, the enterprise, the hard work, the potential of our people...at huge human, societal and economic cost.

11/15: By failing to spend on capturing renewable energy we face huge energy bill rises, and doing nothing to fight catastrophic climate breakdown. The scrapping of the Swansea Tidal Lagoon is a perfect example of the distorted and dangerous, but pervasive, economic narrative.

12/15: Failure to invest in our sewage system has had the horrific effects that we all know. And there are many more instances. It places the people, society, the environment, into the service of the economy and of the powerful, instead of it being the other way round.

13/15: A perfect illustration of this was the chief economist at the Bank of England lecturing us recently that we need to curb our wage demands in order to help the economy.

14/15:   But it doesn't have to be this way. Modern Monetary Theory challenges the orthodoxy. It tells us what is possible with the fiat currency we already have, and how we can mobilise the resources of the (arguably) 5th richest country in the World.

15/15: Please read the work of the #MMT experts out there. There's loads of it, but highly readable and relatable is The Deficit Myth by Dr @StephanieKelton. #MMT shows, beyond doubt, that things can be so much better if we only understood and acknowledged the potential we have.