Money for people and planet: State spending as a source of Public Finance.
Season 1, Episode 1, Mar 13, 2019, 10:53 AM
In this episode of the State of Power podcast, Professor Mary Mellor makes the case for governments to pay for public projects through their budgeting process.
This episode is one of a series of three, drawn from discussions around an upcoming publication, on who we can build “Public finance for the future we want” curated and edited by Satoko Kishimoto and Lavinia Steinfort. The other two installments are on Cooperative Finance, and on the role of Public Banks.
Guest: Emeritus professor Mary Mellor (Northumbria University, UK)
The financial crisis of 2008 revealed the limitations of our current neoliberal financial order. As banks and other financial institutions lost their grip on financial markets across the world, it was the world’s governments that stepped in and saved the system on the backs of their taxpayers.
If they have the capacity to create public money to save the banks, why don’t democratically elected governments use that same power to create money and involve people in order to solve problems of such as debt, poverty and the climate crisis?
Photo credit: Carsten Ussat [CC BY-SA 4.0]
Photo credit: Carsten Ussat [CC BY-SA 4.0]