Ben Vincent, DPhil

Enough with the mental retardation. All this balancing the books nonsense is based on a stupid “government as a household” analogy. It doesn’t work like that - we have a fiat currency which the government is in charge of issuing. We’re not in a gold standard any more.

Nice. Would also be interesting to see by country, given the generation mix. E.g. in the UK we’ve got a decent amount of annual generation from wind and solar which aren’t shown on that infographic.

Well, the MMT’ers would point out that taxes don’t fund spending. The govt issues the currency, so you _could_ reduce energy bills and still fund things as you were before.

Random data viz. Solar generation from our modest array. From May 2023 onwards.

I've finally got around to curating a selection of films about the #climate crisis 🎥

There's lot of mediocre climate films out there, but for me these stand out head & shoulders above the rest 🎞️

They make excellent resources for classrooms, lecture halls, or community cinema's 🎬

Thread:🧵Plz RT

YouTube video by LoM Russell Napier, "Money Creation in Peace and War".

Lost like this is going to be interesting. This guy knows more than me, no doubt, but at 7m 7s he says something which seems totally wrong. That there is no government money, only private bank money 🤨

youtu.be/GKvSMtqhccw?...

I’m not 100% sure, but I think he’s spoken on this before, saying that rejoining doesn’t necessarily require giving up the £

YouTube video by James Rosier Fun With Emojis - Sectoral Balances

Every time the chancellor or the media mention fiscal black holes, I just can’t help think about this video which explains it in a way that a 5 year old would understand.
#sectoralbalances

youtu.be/mtDzC3i9i6A?...

The government issues sterling. It’s not a problem.

YouTube video by DNV - Energy Systems Realizing the Great Transition

Part 2: youtu.be/JxlXAtoaA-E?...

YouTube video by DNV - Energy Systems The Great Transition (2025–2050) - A glimpse into our energy future

Realising the great transition

Part 1: youtu.be/kIWF_XcU40Q?...

Petition: Do not introduce Digital ID cards We demand that the UK Government immediately commits to not introducing a digital ID cards. There are reports that this is being looked at.

Sign & share comrade

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/73...

If I can’t make it live (toddler duties) can I ask, “Sectoral balances seem pretty easy to explain. Would you say that this is a good gateway drug into MMT?”

Do you have anything written on your stance on MMT?

Very informative preprint written by several leading causal inference authors that addresses 12 current issues in the field.
arxiv.org/abs/2508.17099

Impedance scales are rubbish. They indicate no change - very demoralising. Using skinfold callipers reveals the truth - fat loss and lean mass gain 💪🏻🏋🏻‍♂️

Understanding Psychology as a Science How can we objectively define categories of truth in scientific thinking? How can we reliably measure the results of research? In this ground-breaking text, Die…

I recommend Understanding Psychology as a Science: An Introduction to Scientific and Statistical Inference.

www.bloomsbury.com/uk/understan...

The most recent Scottish Government prospectus for independence announced its desire to follow the EU's fiscal rules, the "SGP", once Scotland was independent and BEFORE it joined the EU. No one has ever considered the economic impact of that decision until now. Thread. 1/10

Off topic, but very interesting 👍🏻 Is there a layperson-friendly summary or short book about the corrected story/history?

Getting the tax/spend direction of causality wrong probably feels embarrassing. But that’s is what sets apart scientists and enquiring minds from people with a rigid belief system.

As an ex-academic, I don’t understand why seemingly intelligent people find it so hard to read an actual book on MMT.

I can kind of understand people taking the strategy of not trying to re-educate people, but actively MMT it seems like a way of advertising your ineptitude.

Good data point. But let’s remember that the government is not a household - it issues Sterling. So even if more did leave then it would in no way limit public investments that we wanted to make.

Confidence intervals or credible intervals?

Very open to pointers on which parts are weak and could do with work.

Not 100% there yet, but the CausalPy docs cover that material causalpy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ For example here’s a PR for a half decent (concise) intro to pre/post causalpy--517.org.readthedocs.build/en/517/knowl...
Otherwise, I’d recommend some books here causalpy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/kn...

YouTube video by Garys Economics Why your government is about to raise YOUR taxes

This is quite a painful watch for anyone who understands #MMT. Governments are not households! youtu.be/KHdUAZnGS50?...

I’ve unpaywalled all my #MMT posts on medium. In case anyone has a sudden urge to read 📖

The Government’s Infinite Free Overdraft Why Taxes Don’t Fund Spending

I’ve made the case that It’s best to think of it as an infinite free overdraft. Happy to get any corrections, if I’ve got any details wrong 🙂 drbenvincent.medium.com/the-governme...

The UK's Online Safety Act has caused a massive increases in Google searches for "VPN."

Quick little Bayesian Causal analysis of Google Trends data. See more on the linked in post here: www.linkedin.com/posts/benjam...

Do you know of a package like this but for Quarto files?