Funding the Future
Richard Murphy and occasional friends talking about everything you need to know to understand the economy, tax, finance and how we fund our future.
Episodes

Sep 16, 2025
Sep 16, 2025
8 min
Donald Trump arrives in the UK today on a state visit – and Keir Starmer has exposed his complete lack of political judgment.
Why did Starmer invite Trump? Why is Trump unfit for such treatment? And what does this say about the state of democracy in both the UK and USA?
In this video I argue that:
Trump promotes genocide, economic warfare and racism.
Starmer has embarrassed Britain by aligning with Trump.
Both leaders are products of failing democracies that no longer reflect the will of their people.
We urgently need electoral reform, a credible foreign policy, and accountability for leaders who normalise the far-right.
This isn’t just about one state visit. It’s about whether democracy can survive when opportunism replaces principle.

Sep 15, 2025
Sep 15, 2025
13 min
CEO pay in the UK is spiralling out of control. The median FTSE 100 boss now takes home £4.5 million a year – while millions struggle to live on the minimum wage. If we can set a minimum wage, why not a maximum pay cap? In this video, I explore why inflated executive pay is unjustified, how it fuels inequality, and how a cap – at around £370,000 – could rebalance our economy. Would a maximum pay cap strengthen fairness, rebuild trust in business, and restore democracy? Watch to find out – and let us know what you think in the poll.

Sep 14, 2025
Sep 14, 2025
6 min
Thinking is not just a private act – it shapes the world we live in. Right now, powerful voices are framing our politics with paranoia:
War paranoia – pundits talk calmly about conflict with China.
Migration paranoia – a tiny minority problem inflamed into a crisis.
Fiscal paranoia – false fears about debt used to justify austerity.
These distortions threaten to distract us from the real crises: poverty, underfunded services, the housing shortage, and climate change.
But as Viktor Frankl once reminded us, we always retain the power to choose how we frame the world. The question is: will we give in to paranoia, or think differently?

Sep 13, 2025
Sep 13, 2025
7 min
Donald Trump promised to Make America Great Again. Instead, he is wrecking the US economy. Job creation has collapsed, farmers can’t sell their crops, foreign investors are leaving, and tariffs are pushing up prices for ordinary Americans.
In this video, I explain why Trump’s economic policies are a disaster — and why the UK should take note as the far-right tries to copy them.

Sep 12, 2025
Sep 12, 2025
22 min
The truth is stark: companies are hiding the real cost of the net-zero transition. Without honest accounting, capital is misallocated, pensions are at risk, and businesses will fail. Sustainable cost accounting is the solution.

Sep 11, 2025
Sep 11, 2025
12 min
Wes Streeting wants to fund 200 new NHS health centres through PFI. But the Public Finance Initiative was a disaster in the past – locking hospitals and schools into decades of expensive contracts. Profits were privatised while risks and debts were socialised. This video explains why PFI 2.0 is a betrayal of the NHS, why it costs more, and why the government should fund health centres directly using its own currency.

Sep 10, 2025
Sep 10, 2025
36 min
In this first podcast style interview between me and Steve Keen, the author of 'Debunking Economics', Steve recounts how early encounters with neoclassical and neoliberal economics, and the realities of firm behaviour, led him to reject economic fairy tales and become a rebel.
His politics shifted too, from Vietnam-era conformity to organising for a political economy curriculum.
Today his priority is climate change. Economists’ models have trivialised existential risk and hobbled action with myths about government finance.
Steve broadly agrees with MMT’s “spend first, tax later,” but challenges Warren Mosler’s theories on trade, all of which mean that in the longer term he plans a wider assault on comparative advantage.
And, at the end of the interview, we may clear that this is the first of what might be a number of conversations with Next up a discussion on double-entry as the missing economic grammar and how and why he created his RAVEL software to model it.

Sep 9, 2025
Sep 9, 2025
9 min
We are told that central banks are neutral and above politics. The truth is, they’re not. Central bank independence was created to remove responsibility from politicians and hand power to unelected bankers. This video explains why the idea is a con trick, how it undermines democracy, and why it’s time to put money back under democratic control.

Sep 8, 2025
Sep 8, 2025
6 min
Fiscal rules are not laws of economics. They are political straitjackets designed to stop change. Every Chancellor since Gordon Brown has used them to limit public spending, block climate action, and enforce permanent austerity. The result? A weaker NHS, failing schools, inadequate housing, stagnant wages, and rising inequality. It’s time to abandon fiscal rules and rebuild democracy with fiscal freedom.

Sep 7, 2025
Sep 7, 2025
11 min
Some claim modern monetary theory (MMT) proves that tax doesn’t matter. They’re wrong. Tax is not about funding government spending—it’s about controlling inflation, creating demand for currency, and sustaining democracy. In this video, I explain why without tax, MMT collapses.







