Episode 4: Can we afford it?



The standard line is that governments* are always short of money and must balance their budgets. But what if that's not true? It changes everything if government money is not the contraint we're told it is.

In this episode, Stephen Williams describes a way of thinking about economics that should revolutionise our approach.

* Federal governments of monetary sovereign countries.

Stephen Williams and Rod Taylor are editors of Sustainability and the New Economics.

To learn more about MMT, we highly recommend the Modern Money Lab and Stephanie Kelton's film, Finding the Money.

If you'd like to contribute a podcast to this series, please get in touch.

Popular posts from this blog

Episode 8: Growth and the Parasitic Economy

Image
  Today's episode  should  prompt us to ask, how should we measure the success of our society? Is it the growth, consumption, GDP and the size of our armies? Or perhaps it should be about  opportunity, the strength of our communities and how we care for people less well off. Michael Bayliss from Sustainable Population Australia looks at what growth is really doing to social equality. Michael invites you to sign the Position Statement on Population . If you would like to contribute to these podcasts, please get in  touch .
Read more

Episode 1: What is 'sustainability'?

Image
You know the answer these questions:  Is our civilisation sustainable? No. Are we doing what's required to protect our environment? No. Are our efforts on climate change working? No. The question is, why? After all the vast effort from so many committed people, why are we failing? That's an ambitious topic for short podcast, so here instead, we open this series with a fundamental question. What does 'sustainability' really mean? This is the theme of the books  The Path to a Sustainable Civilisation  with Mark Diesendorf and Sustainability and the New Economics with Stephen Williams. If you'd like to contribute a podcast to this series, please get in touch .
Read more

Episode 2: Intelligence and Wisdom

Image
Here we are in 2024, careening towards 2 degrees warming and beyond while it's becoming clear that even 1.5 degrees is not safe. Clearly, destroying your own life support system is not a clever move and yet we're doing it anyway. In this episode, Sue Ferris contemplates the difference between intelligence and wisdom. We have one, but what about the other?   Sue Ferris is the author of  Let’s Not Lose Them If you'd like to contribute to this series, please get in  touch .
Read more