Here is a combined plea and challenge to the community of NZ progressive academics, pundits, and advocates:

If you don't understand MMT, make it a point to do so. Every time you say that govts need to tax or borrow in order to spend, you cede control of our financial destiny.

Markets do not know best. We have ample proof all around us: widening inequality, insufficient quantity and quality of housing, mental health problems, environmental wreckage, an underfunded public health system.

And the mother of all market failures: climate chaos.

So when you talk about the need for public spending, don't feed the narrative that suggests we must tax or borrow first. This is demonstrably untrue. A monetary sovereign can, and should, issue its own currency.

Not borrow it from the private sector.

Suggested reading: Stephanie Kelton. Ellen Brown. Steve Keen. Margrit Kennedy. Thomas Greco. The list goes on - you will find primary sources everywhere you turn.

Please don't be apologists for neoliberalism. Markets got us into all these messes and are not the way to fix them.