“Trump is immune to sustained negative press coverage, making it irresponsible to subject him to sustained negative press coverage.” 🤔

The Challenge of Reporting on Trump (Parody) By Gideon Fairchild moneyontheleft.org/2025/12/30/t... @moneyontheleft.bsky.social

It is (or ought to be) patently obvious that the economic logic that got us into the mess we’re in cannot be the logic that gets us out. The truly fantastical part of all this is that the ecosocially disastrous neoliberal consensus has held for so long.

Very cool post from @greenbackbetter.bsky.social at @moneyontheleft.bsky.social about the politics of design.

It has been refreshingly obvious from day one of @zackpolanski.bsky.social’s leadership of @greenparty.org.uk that he rejects the failed economic dogma that has only driven (and can only continue to drive) social and ecological breakdown. The real fantasy is that we can carry on with the status quo.

We honor Graeber’s writings as indispensable for denaturalizing money and obligation and for catalyzing new forms of organizing. However, we also argue that some of Graeber’s basic assumptions about money and public provisioning limit what the left can imagine and accomplish.

“Thinking … about recent design reversals opens onto a broader question: how design itself is made to appear either inevitable or contestable, not just in technology, but in the institutions that organize its production and collective life more broadly.”

"It is hardly surprising that Polanski faces resistance… it has been clear from the start of his leadership that he rejects the narrow terms of the economic debate that have dominated British politics for over four decades." Follow @moneyontheleft.bsky.social for more 🌈🦄😘

Scott Ferguson is joined by independent film scholar Jonathan Haynes to discuss Paul Thomas Anderson’s acclaimed new film, One Battle After Another.

"The loan model makes urgent community investment dependent on the ability to generate a profit and repay, when, in fact, the entire reason these initiatives require public support is the absence of a prospect for private sector profit."

"@mattseybold.bsky.social's provocation that print functions as a kind of rent strike, and Cory Doctorow’s sustained critique of platform enshittification, both frame form as a site of contestation—an object of refusal and redesign rather than a refuge from mediation."

We are joined by David I. Backer, associate professor of education policy at Seton Hall University, to discuss his new book: As Public as Possible: Radical Finance for America’s Schools (The New Press, 2025). moneyontheleft.org/2025/12/01/r...

“The orthodoxy, which we name Neoliberal Public Finance (NPF), treats money as a thing that we either have or don’t have, of which there is a finite ‘supply,’ and which we can run out of if we are not careful.”

“Accounting works not because everything is the same, but because unlike things can be held together without being collapsed.”

Thanks again to Emi Imai and all at Boro Doughnut for playing a vital role on the day and to everyone who joined us @teessideuni.bsky.social to explore how new ideas about money could transform Middlesbrough 🍩 💷 🌈

Our event was a screening of the brilliant #MMT documentary Finding the Money, followed by a panel discussion with Maren Poitras (the film’s director), @videotroph.bsky.social, @philarmstrong58.bsky.social, and Antonia Liguori.

For me, one of the highlights of 2025 was launching @wherecreditsdue.bsky.social with my dear friend @robynollett.bsky.social as part of the #GlobalDonutDays. You can catch a glimpse of our event at 0:52 in this video, which beautifully captures the GDDs’ celebration of #DoughnutEconomics.

“It is worth noting that this withdrawal of legibility is often reinforced by a reflex on the left: treating design itself as synonymous with technocracy, as if naming design were already a concession to managerial rule.” @greenbackbetter.bsky.social moneyontheleft.org/2025/12/29/t...

“Public backlash can lead to reaction as easily as collective experimentation. But once defaults are perceived as designed—once they are heard as choices—argument becomes possible again.” @greenbackbetter.bsky.social @moneyontheleft.bsky.social moneyontheleft.org/2025/12/29/t...

“Thinking this way about recent design reversals opens onto a broader question: how design itself is made to appear either inevitable or contestable, not just in technology, but in the institutions that organize its production and collective life more broadly.”

In public finance, the seemingly inevitable design to contest is that of Neoliberal Public Finance. Our task is to replace it—first in legitimacy, then in governing power—with Democratic Public Finance, as Will and the other fine folks at @moneyontheleft.bsky.social urge. bsky.app/profile/gree...

Each time Will Beaman writes a new essay, I somehow always find the time to read it because they're just that good. Here's the premise of this one: Design can either attempt to insinuate the inevitability of a choice or openly invite contestation—and one is certainly more democratic than the other.

“When public authorities are required to behave as if they were revenue-constrained … [d]ecisions come to appear as outputs of ‘the budget,’ ‘the bond market,’ or ‘technical constraints,’ rather than as judgments about whose participation will be supported, deferred, or denied.”

😂ABSOLUTELY! My friend Will Beaman @greenbackbetter.bsky.social PDH ABD wrote about this extra-grace-for-Whiteness cultural economy with tremendous insight, my husband read it aloud to me yesterday & I was whooping & hollering! via @moneyontheleft.bsky.social moneyontheleft.org/2025/08/05/j...

No! It’s true! You will love Will’s analysis @greenbackbetter.bsky.social @moneyontheleft.bsky.social moneyontheleft.org/2025/08/05/j...

"Why can’t credit be extended to support essential green infrastructure while ecologically destructive profiteering gets the green light?"

Refusing tradeoffs huh 👀 moneyontheleft.org/2025/10/10/d...

That’s called Democratic Public Finance (DPF)!

"Where digital systems promise to disappear into responsiveness and background automation, analog romance promises to disappear design altogether, recoding it as nature."

Zack Polanski’s Bold Politics Requires an Even Bolder Economic Vision: The Case for Democratic Public Finance moneyontheleft.org/2025/12/20/z...

“A key political effect of all this is not that interfaces disappear, but that the location of discretion becomes harder to locate.”

ZACK POLANSKI’S BOLD POLITICS REQUIRES AN EVEN BOLDER ECONOMIC VISION

I wrote about why car manufacturers getting rid of touchscreens feels like a win for democracy

“Neoliberal institutions follow the same design logic as dominant UX paradigms: they treat political choices as constraints and make the site of discretion difficult to see.”

"[In the current system], design does not eliminate coordination; it obscures it. Responsibility is displaced upward and outward, while publics are trained to adapt."

Please read and share. Design is for democracy 💛

✨ New Essay! ✨ @greenbackbetter.bsky.social argues that the current turn toward the analog isn't simple nostalgia. It's a rejection of design as inevitable. From frictionless UX to balanced budgets, it's time to stop treating the politics of design as natural constraints. Please read & share! 👩‍💻 🙌

"[Donald] Norman was part of a movement to constrain the material and semantic scope of personal computing through psychological principles of use."

"This document elaborates an emerging economic paradigm that is already latent in Zohran Mamdani’s plans and practices. The paradigm, which we call Democratic Public Finance (DPF), reframes money as an inexhaustible and malleable public institution."

We’re joined in this episode by William A. (“Sandy”) Darity to discuss reparations for Black Americans.

Attewell is author of the incredible book, People Must Live by Work: Direct Job Creation in America from FDR to Reagan.

“Money cannot be something we need to hoard to create a livable future. And it certainly cannot be scarce unless we make it so. Money is, instead, the world-making act of crediting those actors who construct the future."

Never stop speculating, planning & experimenting.

We speak with Kester about his multi-decade career, researching and teaching the history of socially engaged art.

We speak with Caroline Levine, Ryan Professor of the Humanities in the Department of Literatures in English at Cornell University, about her important book The Activist Humanist: Form and Method in the Climate Crisis.

Andrew J. Douglas, political theorist and professor of political science at Morehouse College, joins Money on the Left to discuss his latest article, “Modern Money and the Black University Concept.”

Please see pp.411-412 for an explicit discussion of Du Bois and the psychological wage: www.researchgate.net/publication/...

“I wish McGhee's analysis was correct. If it were, there’d be no essential reason 4 anti-black racism 2 persist….we could just enlighten non-elite whites...Lamentably, her analysis is incorrect. Whites gain $ both in relative & absolute terms from the American system...” @sandydarity.bsky.social