Funding the Future

Light is often treated as something sentimental at Christmas. That is a mistake.
Light is not decoration. It is understanding, care, energy and life itself.
In this final talk in my Christmas series on light, I draw together the ideas explored over the past few days to argue that light is a public good — one that modern economics routinely ignores. When societies withdraw energy, time and care from people and institutions, decay follows. Austerity is not efficiency. It is the systematic removal of light from systems that need constant maintenance to survive.
I explain why ignorance is dangerous, why confusion benefits power, and why economic myths persist when they are left deliberately in the dark. I also explore how modern capitalism steals light in subtler ways: through long hours, artificial rhythms, permanent urgency, and the denial of rest, daylight and recovery, all of which damage health, wellbeing and social cohesion.
This is not a religious argument. It is a reflection rooted in economics, care and the shared insights of many wisdom traditions that recognise vulnerability, dependence and mutual responsibility. Light appears where people care for one another, and choosing care is choosing light.
This talk asks a simple but urgent question: will we design our economy and our society to keep the lights on, or will we continue to accept neglect, exhaustion and decay as normal?

Burnout is not a personal failure. It is the result of an economic system that steals time, daylight and energy from our lives.
In this fifth video in my Christmas series on light, I explore the relationship between light, healing and health — and why modern work patterns deny people access to the very conditions they need to recover and thrive.
Light regulates sleep, hormones, mood and immunity. Yet long hours, commuting, shift work and poor housing mean many people barely see daylight at all. Artificial light cannot replace what we lose.
This is not accidental. It is structural. Productivity is prioritised over health, time over care, and people are blamed when they break.
Light is a public good. Time should not be a privilege.
A society that denies people light cannot be surprised when they struggle to heal.

Everything tends towards decay unless energy is applied. That is not ideology – it is physics.
In this Christmas lecture, I explore light through the lens of entropy and explain why care, maintenance, and public services are not optional extras but survival mechanisms.
Austerity withdraws energy from our systems. Neoliberalism assumes self-maintenance. Both are wrong.
If we want societies to endure, we must invest in care – because entropy never rests.

Every economy runs on light. That is not a metaphor – it is physics.
Without light, there is no life. Without life, there is no labour. Without labour, there is no economy. Yet modern economics behaves as if energy, health, and human limits do not matter.
In this Boxing Day video – part three of my Christmas series on light – I explain why labour is transformed solar energy, why burnout is an energy failure, why infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible, and why fossil fuel capitalism is about power, not necessity.
Light reconnects economics to life itself – and forces us to rethink wealth, growth, and what an economy is actually for.

At Christmas, cultures across the world speak of light returning. This is not theology or astronomy. It is about survival, hope, and responsibility in hard times.
In this video, I explore how wisdom traditions — Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Islamic, and Indigenous — understand light as care, presence, and justice. And why modern capitalism inverts that meaning, treating wealth as light and poverty as darkness.
This is the Christmas story without preaching — and with a question we cannot avoid as 2026 approaches: who do we illuminate, and who do we leave unseen?

This is the first in a six-video Christmas series exploring light not just as a festival symbol but as a political and economic necessity.
Light has always meant understanding, truth, and freedom. Darkness, by contrast, protects power and privilege.
In this video, I explore why learning is never neutral, why ignorance is often designed, and why economics that cannot be explained cannot be trusted. If democracy requires informed consent, then light is not optional; it is essential.
This channel exists to shed light on political economy. At Christmas, that feels like exactly the right place to begin.

As Christmas approaches, many people ask what they want.
But there is a more important question we should be asking: what did we need – and not get?
In this video, I look at the UK’s real economic failures over the last year:
persistent poverty
housing insecurity
untreated illness
a hidden personal debt crisis
rising political hostility
These are not marginal problems. They are systemic failures of economic policy and political courage.
I also set out what we actually need: poverty reduction as a national objective, secure housing, investment in care, fair taxation, and politicians willing to stop fearing bond markets and start acting in the public interest.
This is not about pessimism. It is about honesty – and hope.
Because if Christmas means anything, it must mean that change is still possible.

As Christmas approaches, I reflect on my word of the year: pleonexia — an ancient Greek term describing the insatiable desire to take more than your fair share, even when it harms others.
Once you understand pleonexia, you start to see it everywhere: in big tech, in bond markets, in tax avoidance, and in government policy that treats human suffering as an accounting inconvenience. This video argues that much of what we excuse or defend in modern economics is, in fact, a moral failure hiding in plain sight.
If we want an economy based on care rather than cruelty, contribution rather than entitlement, we first have to name the problem. That is where political economy begins.

The push for wealth taxes has been one of the defining economic debates of 2025. The question now is whether we want policies that work.
In this video, I argue that the fastest, fairest way to tax wealth is through higher taxes on the income, gains and transfers that wealth generates — not through complex and slow-to-deliver wealth taxes.
This approach raises more revenue, strengthens compliance, exposes hidden wealth, and keeps open the option of a wealth tax later if it is still needed.
If we are serious about justice, democracy and effective government, this is the path we should take.

Christmas is economically strange. We stop working. Spending surges. Profit stops mattering. Time off is normalised. Family and care come first.
And we accept all of this without question.
That should make us pause. Because if we can suspend the rules of economics at Christmas, then those rules were never inevitable in the first place.
This video is not about religion or ritual. It is about what the Christmas season reveals about our economic choices. It shows that we can pause economic activity, value rest, prioritise care, and organise work around life rather than the other way around.
Christmas proves that life is more than money — and that a better economy is possible.
The real tragedy is not Christmas excess. It is forgetting the lesson in January.