Benjamin Wilson

The Unofficial Lives of Public Money by Will Beaman Recent Money on the Left proposals for endogenous credit campaigns—like Unis or Blue Bonds—often run headlong into an unspoken but deeply rooted distinction between “official” and “u…

✨New Essay!✨

@greenbackbetter.bsky.social argues we should rethink the binary of “official” vs. “unofficial” money. He proposes a more useful lens: democratic & publicly responsible monetary practices versus rogue & publicly irresponsible ones.

Please 👩‍💻 and 🙌!

“…a different horizon: one where new currencies, like Unis or Blue Bonds, work precisely by making their embeddedness in public infrastructure visible and contestable—expanding the field of fiscal coordination rather than evading it.”
HT @greenbackbetter.bsky.social
CC @nathantankus.bsky.social

Assignment Prompt: A Classroom Currency Experiment Adapted from a prompt by Professor Benjamin Wilson (SUNY Cortland, Spring 2025), this assignment encourages students to perceive money and the labor it mobilizes as social forms that we can collect…

Hypothesis: If money is a designed human construct, then we can design experiments that test various design elements to yield alternative outcomes.

Thrilled to see this exchange published alongside some brilliantly generative analysis.

So much of the worldmaking vision of the Black radical tradition dances implicitly around a framework of public credit or endogenous money creation. The challenge, it seems, is to tease that out more explicitly.

A Forgotten Letter to W.E.B. Du Bois: Monetary Populism and the Scapegoating of Black Political Life by Will Beaman In July 1934, W.E.B. Du Bois received a letter from an Atlanta resident named Gus Reich. We are excited to share both Reich’s letter and Du Bois’s short reply below.  A lay theo…

“We need credit infrastructures that are open, democratic, and resilient. Not credit as a judgment, but credit as a commitment. Not a test of worthiness, but a project of shared responsibility.” Yes! Well done Will Beaman!

moneyontheleft.org/2025/07/31/a...

I think reforming public money is the kind of experimentation that is needed. Talk about connecting promises to results and building relationships from given contexts that have the potential to melt coalition tensions

moneyontheleft.org/2025/07/28/i...

This is so funny

Opinion | Democrats, This Is Our Moment to Lead. We Can’t Blow It.

The Democratic establishment confuses triangulation with leadership and treats stability as a virtue in and of itself. There’s a chasm between what we say and what we deliver. We continue asking voters to show up while we refuse to show up for them.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/o...

Delgado for Gov!

“Complementary currencies do not introduce a new kind of value. They enlarge the democratic value systems that already exist—and allow wider scales of recognition and inclusion in the infrastructures we need to live.”

Terrific piece.

Make time for this as soon as you can. We must understand the current iteration of totalitarian creep as mutually dependent with a proposed radical revision to the monetary order. We need alternatives. This is one. One that centers schools & other public goods.

It’s Time for Complementary Currencies By the Money on the Left Editorial Collective Introduction Zohran Mamdani’s landslide win was not just a local upset—it was a turning point. It proved that member-led, volunteer-powered campaigns c…

✨ New essay by the MotL Collective! ✨

The work of left organizing has value. It's time we built systems that recognize & expand this value. Our latest essay explores complementary currencies as tools to build movements that can't be starved out by austerity.

Please read & share! 👩‍💻 🙌

It really is a cool image! The content is even better.

Accounting Identities or Accounting Analogies? by Will Beaman Most people’s first exposure to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) comes with a gentle promise: It is just accounting. The government’s deficit is the non-government sector’s surplus, by s…

New! 👩‍💻

✨Accounting Identities or Accounting Analogies?✨

MMT begins with a simple premise: it's just accounting. Government deficit=non-government surplus. But is this identity or analogy?

@greenbackbetter.bsky.social explores the deeper social entanglements & capacities hiding in our ledgers.

How to New York Times-Proof Mamdani’s Playbook: Turning Coalition Specifics into Fiscal Possibilities by Will Beaman In a recent video recapping his primary victory in Queens, Zohran Mamdani did something almost radical for today’s political landscape: he cut through the usual Beltway euphemisms an…

How to New York Times-Proof Mamdani’s Playbook: Turning Coalition Specifics into Fiscal Possibilities

Decades of mechanistic talk about university degrees as if they were bundles of 'skills' and 'prep' are about to be proved completely wrong (obviously). Want to get a real boost? Do History or English.

I trust MotL!

Important discussion. Important paper.

Especially now, as state violence cascades into open legitimacy crises and dollar hegemony lurches toward its death throes. Time to rethink our money myths—especially the notion that behind money creation necessarily stands the man with the gun.

(Un)conditional Openness: Towards a Neochartalist Theory of Money and Trust In this special episode, Rob Hawkes joins Scott Ferguson and Will Beaman to discuss his new article “(Un)conditional Openness: Towards a Neochartalist Theory of Money and Trust,” which was recently…

This conversation traces the development of Rob’s long-standing interest in theories of trust from his doctoral research in literary studies towards an increasing fascination with the topic of money which eventually led him to MMT, neochartalism and the Money on the Left project.

How to New York Times-Proof Mamdani’s Playbook: Turning Coalition Specifics into Fiscal Possibilities by Will Beaman In a recent video recapping his primary victory in Queens, Zohran Mamdani did something almost radical for today’s political landscape: he cut through the usual Beltway euphemisms an…

@zohrankmamdani.bsky.social’s post-victory video mapped a real voter coalition. What if we talked about city budgets with the same radical specificity?

@greenbackbetter.bsky.social's new essay explores how to cut the "fiscally responsible" red tape and show what our cities can actually do.

How to New York Times-Proof Mamdani’s Playbook: Turning Coalition Specifics into Fiscal Possibilities by Will Beaman In a recent video recapping his primary victory in Queens, Zohran Mamdani did something almost radical for today’s political landscape: he cut through the usual Beltway euphemisms an…

"‪@zohrankmamdani.bsky.social‬’s style of vivid coalition storytelling hints at something urgent. Imagine if his next video did for the city’s fiscal fabric what he just did for his voter base: named it, mapped it, showed how easily it could be recombined into new forms of shared work and care."

Episode 335 - Bonding Against Austerity: Can States Offset Federal Cuts? with Ben Wilson & Scott Ferguson With federal budgets promising austerity, could states help themselves? Ben Wilson and Scott Ferguson are proposing 'Blue Bonds.’

Tremendous thanks to Steve Grumbine for having @wilbenjamin.bsky.social and I on the Macro N Cheese podcast to discuss *Blue Bonds.*

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And stop working on vacation! Cheers

Blue Bonds Can Stop Trump’s Fiscal Authoritarianism By the Money on the Left Editorial Collective Less than a year into his second term, Donald Trump has launched an illegal and (as now) unfeasible mass deportation campaign—one that is tearing apart…

moneyontheleft.org/2025/06/11/b...

Why do people even believe such nonsense? It’s such a weird story with so little evidence.

MotL 81 is live! 🗣️

✨ Legal & Political Foundations of Capitalism with Jamee K. Moudud ✨

moneyontheleft.org/2025/07/01/l...

Please listen & share! 🎧 🙌

*Transcript forthcoming

The phrase “institutions matter” is a common refrain among economists. For Jamee K. Moudud, however, this proposition doesn’t go far enough, leaving a host of problematic assumptions unquestioned. Explore Moudud's critical solution in our new episode.

moneyontheleft.org/2025/07/01/l...

I suppose it would require cooperation with the state (and possibly Hochul’s resignation) but this kind of fiscal strategy may be a Mamdani administration’s best shot at heading off the “TRUMP TO CITY: DROP DEAD” headlines – which corporate newspapers already seem to be salivating over.

I love the design of the credos! Just one of the myriad elements of money creation that all of the academy could be experimenting with to bring forth a visions and models of higher Ed and public investment capable of challenging oligarchy and austerity.

The Black University and Community Currencies, Pt. 2 In this episode, we share Part 2 of our coverage of The Black University & Community Currencies workshop (Click here for Part 1). Held April 25, 2025 on the campus of Morehouse College, the wor…

Held April 25, 2025 on the campus of Morehouse College, the workshop fostered dialogue between students, faculty, and activists about the radical possibilities of public money for higher education, broadly, and for communities at and around Morehouse, specifically.