“We can afford whatever we can do”

John Maynard Keynes said, “We can afford whatever we can do.” Few sentences in economics are more radical. In this video, I explain what he really meant — and why it matters more now than ever.

A currency-issuing government cannot run out of its own money. The true constraints on public action are people, skills, energy and materials — not a Treasury balance sheet. That means the key question is not “What can we afford?” but “What should we choose to do?”

This is the heart of democracy. Markets chase profit, not the public good. Only the state can set society’s goals, mobilise idle resources, and tax to free capacity for essential work. Keynes used these tools to direct the British war economies. We can use them now for housing, care, education, climate transition and energy security.

This video explains why politics – not markets – must lead, and why tax and spending are tools of direction, not constraints. Keynes gives us a moral economics. It’s time we used it.