12 January 2021, Starts: 19:30

Tuesday 12 January          7.30        online

In our second look at some of the key economic questions which activists need to understand better, Richard Murphy, an acknowledged expert on taxation, will talk about government funding, concentrating on how to fund state activity using modern monetary theory as a base.

Richard is a chartered accountant and a political economist. Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University, London and Director of Tax Research UK, Richard was a co-founder of the Tax Justice Network and Green New Deal, as well as the Fair Tax Mark. He is the founder-director of the Corporate Accountability Network. You can read more about him, and by him at taxresearch.org.uk .

Register  (free)

Background: ECONOMICS FOR ACTIVISTS

There’s an urgent need to support economic literacy across Scotland, particularly amongst environmental and social activists, so that we are all better placed to challenge the status quo and actively participate in developing alternatives. While increasing numbers of people are convinced of the need for system change, most of us have very limited understanding of how current economic and financial systems work and maintain business as usual. This makes it very difficult to challenge economic orthodoxy.

As a start, we are offering this short interactive online programme of webinars to generate discussion and which enables participants to gain confidence for critical engagement and action.

The sessions will consist of a 30-40 minute talk followed by a Q&A and breakouts in which participants discuss what they have heard. We are inviting speakers who have a ‘big picture’ grasp of economics from a radical perspective and who have proposals for how to leverage transformation to respond to the following questions:

• How does economics work and why isn’t it getting us the results we want?
• What other ways can we organise our economies that would work better?
• What practical initiatives or experiments are showing how this could work?

LOOKING AHEAD

The programme is primarily intended for activists wanting to radically transform the system, so if you are involved in environmental, labour, social justice, human rights or peace campaigning we hope that you will join us.