The central idea of MMT is that countries that issue their own currency are not financially constrained. This is because a government in control of its currency can simply ‘print’ new money to finance its spending. In today’s world, printing money does not mean opening up the printing presses, but rather is about creating money electronically at the click of a mouse. In its purest form, the central bank simply credits or increases the bank account of the government, which is then free to spend.

It does not work to replace ‘paying your debts’ with ‘repairing the harm’, then. Drawing on the work of penal theorist Antony Duff, we suggest the metaphor of “fulfilling a civic obligation” as an alternative tool to guide our responses to crime. Duff argues that, done very differently, “criminal punishment could and should be inclusionary, as something we can do, not to a ‘them’ who are implicitly excluded from the (law-abiding) community of citizens, but to ourselves as full, if imperfect, members of that community.”[15]

Theology turns out to have something significant to say to our young student and to society more widely. It can help us discover that there are ways to get at the injustice of an indebted society that predate Marx and his many descendants.

The Bramble Cay melomys (Melomys rubicola), is also known as the Bramble Cay mosaic-tailed rat. On Earth, there are over 2,200 rodent species comprising about 40 per cent of all mammal species. What’s one rat?

Debt creates an interdependent relationship between the creditor and the debtor, until the alienation of the latter from the former. Like an addiction, it can lead to alienation from one’s own body.

It is not only when debt is contracted that the ethical dimension is involved, it is throughout the repayment process. The debtor and the lender are not equal. It is not, as we say in economics, a zero sum game. The creditor expects his money to be profitable and to earn interest.

“I tried to raise the point of who was Edward Colston, and why are these people saying the statue needs to come down? I was just floored, basically told to shut up, and that these people protesting were just ignorant and stupid. So, I just sat there crying silently and just feeling ostracised and disappointed because the other students were also not educated. So that’s where some of this began.”

Debt is where dreams go to die. We put aside ‘unnecessary’ things like our hopes of becoming an artist or musician. There are monthly repayments to be made, and so we need to work, and work, until (if we are fortunate) we can retire and enjoy a few years of glorious unproductivity before death.

Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice · Do We Really Feel Fine? Towards An Irish Green New Deal The Problem: The Centre Cannot Hold The world as we know it is falling apart, but in a thousand different ways. A pandemic rages, but contrary to what the dystopian movies taught us, society is intact. Climate… Read more »

  Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice · Any Light in Darkness? A Theological Reflection on Covid-19 How much longer will you forget me, Yahweh? For ever? How much longer will you hide your face from me? (Psalm 13:1 Jerusalem Bible) Our Predicament: The Individual Seeking Meaning At the dawn of Western literature, in the… Read more »

Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice · “Family Hubs” Lives On Hold Introduction Many policy changes in Ireland in recent years have been launched and branded in terms of “hubs”. The language and proximate adjectives are attractive to policymakers. Hubs are innovative, dynamic, and quick to change and adapt to new opportunities and potential. Yet,… Read more »

Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice · Confines, Wards And Dungeons “Denmark’s a prison”, says Hamlet in Shakespeare’s play. “Then is the world one”, Rosencrantz responds. To which Hamlet replies: “A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons.” The analogy between a given society – or even the world – and… Read more »

Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice · Editorial, By Keith Adams A Transformed Context In March, our world crawled to a halt in ways which were previously unimaginable. The slow emergence and then rapid proliferation of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 cast doubt on many strongly held certainties and loosened societal touchstones. Much is still uncertain as… Read more »

  Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice · Letter From Director This is the first letter of introduction I have written for Working Notes, because it goes to press just a few weeks after I have been made Director of the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice. I received this baton from the out-going Director,… Read more »

“…sustainability is not an individual property but a property of an entire web of relationships: it involves a whole community” – Fritjof Capra Introduction Climate change and biodiversity loss are crises that not only put ecosystems, but also human societies at risk. Our present mainstream sustainability thinking discusses the compromises between the three pillars of… Read more »

  Introduction If asked to name the most scenic places in Ireland, where would you mention? Connemara, the Burren, the Wicklow Mountains, the Leitrim Hills, the Shannon Callows, or somewhere else along the west coast? The list is endless. While visually stunning to locals and tourists alike, these areas bear another similarity as they are… Read more »

  When the Covid-19 pandemic caused oil stocks to plummet, the US President was accused of facilitating “corporate socialism” by proposing to bailout the fossil fuel industry at a cost of $20 billion. However, this was not an isolated incident, brought about in exceptional times. The ailing fossil fuel industry has long relied on public… Read more »

Introduction Over the past decade, climate breakdown has come to be recognised as the greatest threat to human rights. Climate change threatens the right to life, health, food, water, property, education, work, culture, adequate standard of living, means of subsistence, adequate/secure housing, self-determination and a healthy environment. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and… Read more »

  Introduction In May 2015 Pope Francis published Laudato Si’, Encyclical Letter on Care for Our Common Home. This work of two-hundred pages addresses many aspects of the complex challenge presented by the ecological crisis. Francis proposes that we adopt a personal and cultural attitude of “integral ecology” recognising that “everything is interconnected.” The issues… Read more »

  In May 2015 Pope Francis published Laudato Si’, his Encyclical Letter on Caring for our Common Home. Five years on, his appeal to every person on this planet remains as relevant. “The urgent challenge to protect our common home includes a concern to bring the whole human family together to seek a sustainable and… Read more »

  As we go to press with this issue of Working Notes, we at the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice are keenly aware of how the theme of “Integral Ecology” might appear distant from the pressing concerns of the pandemic. But appearances can deceive. While Pope Francis does not mention the risk of novel… Read more »

As the community and voluntary sector is increasingly shaped by the need to constantly generate evidence of outcomes, practitioners can become attuned to the expectation of the “knowledge” which should be produced.

Jubilee Caribbean (JCaribbean) is a newly formed non-governmental organisation, born out of the bigger Jubilee Campaigns from the turn of the millennium – Drop the Debt, Jubilee 2000 and Jubilee Debt Campaign – based in Grenada, but hoping to reach out to the wider English-speaking Caribbean islands. Due to our debt situation here, in the… Read more »

In the early 1990s, Professor Anthony Clare addressed a Dublin conference audience of some 300 people. It was an inspiring address and among the words that resonated were the following: “‘The elderly’ are not ‘them, out there’; ‘the elderly’ are us, writ large writ later.” Pithy and fundamentally true, it is a good starting point… Read more »

People are notoriously bad at assessing risk – we instinctively overestimate the likelihood of very scary events and underestimate the likelihood of familiar hazards. When this is combined with the power of gradual change, we end up collectively accepting situations that we would never rationally choose. The motorcar is the classic example: if we could… Read more »