People keep asking why I still make these videos every day at the age of 67. The truth is simple: our economy is still deeply unfair. I've seen inequality, prejudice, and the injustice created by privilege all my life, and I can't stay silent.

This is why I keep going: because another world is possible.

This is the audio version:

This is the transcript:

People keep asking me why am I still making these videos at the age of 67? And why do I wake up, it seems every morning, and very often write 2,000 words , before I get to the breakfast table or even have a cup of coffee on many days? What is it that motivates me to do that?

And my answer is very simple and very straightforward.  I do this because our economy is still deeply unfair. After a lifetime of observation of what is going on outside the window to the left of me, as I sit here right now, I can see that things could be better, and that's what I want to talk about every single day.

My awareness of injustice in this world came very early. I am a twin, not an identical twin, I hasten to add. There's very little, in fact, in common between me and my twin brother, except for the fact that we like each other, talk to each other, and I care deeply about him. You do when you've shared a womb with someone. If you haven't had the experience, you'll just have to trust me when I say that.

But we were very different. I had an academic advantage, apparently. So in 1969 when we sat the 11 plus, I went to a grammar school and the state spent a lot more money on my education than it did on his at a secondary modern school.

And he's gay and I'm not. And in the 1970s, that was a hard truth for him to live with, and I saw that, and I understood that, well before most people did.

And what is more, the other clue as to why I became aware of injustice is in my name.  I'm a Murphy. I come from a family with an Irish background living in England,  and in the 1970s, that was not an advantage. It might be cool to be Irish now, but it most certainly wasn't then. I saw prejudice, fear, and exclusion firsthand as a result of that. And I saw the impact of that on my father in particular, who lived in fear of being accused of being Irish and kept his head down throughout his life as a consequence.

I saw how systems of privilege favoured some and marginalised others. And what I understood, even when quite young, was that prejudice wasn't abstract. It was real in my family, at school, and in daily life. And that experience taught me that fairness is not something that comes naturally. It is something that must be created, and that is what these videos are all about.

Now I was lucky, I admit. I got the breaks, most especially going to that grammar school, and it did help me. But my message here is that we should not be dependent upon the luck of being given privilege when others aren't.

So I got to see a world that was very different. I trained with what then became  KPMG. At the time, I was working in the biggest office, in the biggest firm of accountants in the world, in London. I saw wealth, privilege, and big business up close.

But I also saw something else. I saw how my chosen profession helped the rich avoid their duties to society. I was taught in a rather hush-hush way about how tax havens worked, about how they could be used, about how money could be hidden and how it was fine to avoid tax. This is what apparently was expected of us. And I knew I couldn't belong to that world. So I left and created my own path as an accountant, doing my own thing, with partners after a while, in my own firm.

And that was great. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was an entrepreneur. I created a business, and I helped a lot of other businesses be created as well. And I was a director and chairman and various other roles in some of them, because I think I was quite good at business, to be candid.

By the time I reached the age of 40, I realised that that sort of success was never going to be enough for me. Inequality and the climate crisis demanded attention.

I had known about the climate crisis since I was 17. I'd read a book by a chap called E. J. Mishan, which was called 'The Costs of Economic Growth'. I never looked back. I understood from that moment onwards that we were living in a precarious fashion. And I read other people at that time, E. F. Schumacher, and 'Small Is Beautiful' and all those things. And with Colin Hines from 2002 onwards, I helped create the Green New Deal, fighting that global climate crisis.

And in that same year, I met John Christensen, and that led to the creation of the  Tax Justice Network, and we fought the world's tax havens, and the world's  wealthy corporations and the world's richest people, so that we could secure more money for the world's poor, because that was what tax havens were denying them.

I found that this work gave real meaning to my life. And once I began on that path, I realised that the growing internet and the ability that I had to use it gave me the opportunity to write, and so I began to blog. What was called the Tax Research UK Blog from 2006 onwards, but which is  now called The Funding The Future blog, was being published daily from that time to this day; 24,000 blog posts now.

And I discovered that people listened. It became my daily discipline to write something about how the world needed to change, because unless it did change, I was sure we couldn't prevent the unfairness that was within it, and which had angered me as a child and still defines our society now.

I could now say, though, having reached the age of 67, "I've done my bit. I could give up." I could say, "It's someone else's turn now. You've done your shift," and that's very commonly the case in this world. People do give up at around my age. I've decided not to, and there are three good reasons.

The first one is quite simply,  the job isn't done. Inequality still poisons everything in our society and around the world.  Inequality between societies; inequality within societies. Both are pernicious and both cause real harm to people and their prospects for living well, and I can't live with that.

In addition,  economics has gone backwards. From when I first began to study the subject in the 1970s to now, we've moved from social science to having a belief system, an ideology based upon myths that don't hold true for anyone. A belief in markets that is totally misplaced and a system that condemns government as if it is a curse, when I know it is a source of good things that can deliver a better life for many, without in any way closing down those private markets, which also create value and in which I've worked as well. So, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm choosing one or the other. I'm saying I want both, and I want both to be good, and they could be better than they are if only they worked together.

And my third reason for not giving up? I have children. Tom is sitting on the other side of the camera right now, and I want a better world for him and his brother, James.  But I want a better world for every person of their generation and younger because, unless we work for that, we won't get it. And to me, that is my responsibility.

I am from the generation that has done  more harm to this planet than any other. My way of repaying the debt that I have - and I do have a  debt - is to try to work for something better.

And I still believe that change is possible. After all those years, I have created some change. I created country-by-country reporting, which forced multinational companies to disclose their use of tax havens so that they could no longer avoid as much tax as they did,  and it's worked. Hundreds of millions, if not billions of pounds, of additional tax has been paid around the world as a consequence of what I did in creating that tax system.  I've earned not a penny from it, but it proved to me that change is possible.

In 2009, the UK Treasury told me that we could never get information from tax havens on who held accounts there, even if they actually lived in places like the UK, or France, or Germany, or the USA, or wherever. And I said, "You are wrong, and I'm going to prove you are wrong." And in 2017, not single-handedly, but nonetheless, based in part on work that I did,  we got a system of automatic information exchange from tax havens. And now, if you put your money there, the UK's HM Revenue and Customs will be told about it. The secrecy was shattered, and that's why I believe change is possible.

I do believe we can have a politics which is about care and not cruelty; which is about truth and not silence; and is about hope, even though the world is fragile, because I believe we need hope to keep us human.

So my call is very simple.  Don't give up, just because you're 67, just because you're 77, just because you're 87, you can still learn, speak, question, and challenge. And that's just as true if you're 17, 27, 37, 47, and 57 as well. By the way, I don't want to miss anyone out here, except perhaps seven-year-olds; I don't think they need this responsibility at that time of life.

Economics belongs to all of us and not just the powerful few. We have a duty to embrace it, to understand it, to talk about it, to explain it, and then to deliver an economics of care.

If we don't start telling the truth, who will after all?

So I keep doing this because I think I must, because injustice still hurts, because silence isn't an option, and because another world really is possible if we choose to make it so. That's my belief. I hope you share it. And that's why I make these videos, and I hope you keep watching them.

Comments 

When commenting, please take note of this blog's comment policy, which is available here. Contravening this policy will result in comments being deleted before or after initial publication at the editor's sole discretion and without explanation being required or offered.