COWARDS

Keynes (1942) had the general answer for you because you never ask "where does the money come from?" as it's an inapplicable and illegitimate question (one main reason an understanding via MMT of how our economy works and the nature of money is so important:

For some weeks at this hour you have enjoyed the day-dreams of planning. But what about the nightmare of finance? I am sure there have been many listeners who have been muttering: 'That's all very well, but how is it to be paid for?'

Let me begin by telling you how I tried to answer an eminent architect who pushed on one side all the grandiose plans to rebuild London with the phrase: ' Where's the money to come from?' 'The money?' I said. 'But surely, Sir John, you don't build houses with money? Do you mean that there won't be enough bricks and mortar and steel and cement?'

'Oh no', he replied, 'of course there will be plenty of all that'.

'Do you mean', I went on,' that there won't be enough labour? For what will the builders be doing if they are not building houses?'

'Oh no, that's all right', he agreed.

'Then there is only one conclusion. You must be meaning, Sir John, that there won't be enough architects'. But there I was trespassing on the boundaries of politeness. So I hurried to add: 'Well, if there are bricks and mortar and steel and concrete and labour and architects, why not assemble all this good material into houses?'

But he was, I fear, quite unconvinced. 'What I want to know', he repeated, 'is where the money is coming from'.

To answer that would have got him and me into deeper water than I cared for, so I replied rather shabbily: ' The same place it is coming from now'. He might have countered (but he didn't): 'Of course I know that money is not the slightest use whatever. But, all the same, my dear sir, you will find it a devil of a business not to have any'.

Had I given him a good and convincing answer by saying that we build houses with bricks and mortar, not with money? Or was I only teasing him?

It all depends what he really had in mind. He might have meant that the burden of the national debt, the heavy taxation, the fact that the banks have lent so much money to the Government and all that, would make it impossible to borrow money to pay the wages of the makers of the raw material, the building labour, and even the architects.

Or he might have meant something quite different. He could have pointed out very justly that those who were making houses would have to be supported meanwhile with the means of subsistence. Will the rest of us, after supporting ourselves, have enough margin of output of food and clothing and the like, directly or by foreign trade, to support the builders as well as ourselves whilst they are at work?

In fact was he really talking about money? Or was he talking about resources in general—resources in a wide sense, not merely bricks and cement and architects?

If the former, if it was some technical problem of finance that was troubling him, then my answer was good and sufficient. For one thing, he was making the very usual confusion between the problem of finance for an individual and the problem for the community as a whole. Apart from this, no doubt there is a technical problem, a problem which we have sometimes bungled in the past, but one which today we understand much more thoroughly. It would be out of place to try to explain it in a few minutes on the air, just as it would be to explain the technical details of bridge- building or the internal combustion engine or the surgery of the thyroid gland. As a technician in these matters I can only affirm that the technical problem of where the money for reconstruction is to come from can be solved, and therefore should be solved.

And on Polanksi:

As horrendous as Vladimir Putin is and as despicable as his crimes are, I've never seen him threaten genocide

He clearly slipped up here as it makes people worry he is soft on Putin. But quite clearly he was referring to Trump threaten to "wipe out an entire civilisation tonight" regarding Iran. That is extreme threat of nuclear anihilation.

But you're right and I agree that there's no point comparing some "hierarchy of cartoon villains" in the world. Putin has equally threatened, and acted, to cause immense destruction and suffering and implicitly threatens use of nukes all the time. Although the war in Ukraine has been been classified internationally or academically as genocide I don't believe? But it really doesn't matter.

Bottom line is, Polanksi mis-spoke slightly in an interview but he's always consistently been firmly anti Russian which is the Green position.