Hello, my name is David Ronserman and this is Talking Politics.

I'm delighted to say that we're joined this week by Harjun Chang, who is one of the most

widely read economists in the world. He's the author of a number of internationally best-selling

books, 23 things they don't tell you about capitalism, most recently economics, the

user's guide. He's someone who's known for challenging the conventional wisdom, not

just in economics, but also the way that economics is presented by journalists, by politicians.

Harjun, if we can start with something that you wrote, I think it was just before the

election in the Guardian, where you were looking at some of the myths that get floated a lot

of the time, but particularly at election time, about money and economics. One of the things

you talked about there was tax, and it was very striking because I hadn't seen anyone

put it quite as explicitly as this, which is that we're used to a particular phrase,

which is the tax burden. Basically that tax is a burden, and you pointed out that it's

not just, in a way it's obvious, that the Conservative Party, you're going to talk like this, because

that's how they see it, but the Labour and even Labour under Jeremy Corbyn have kind of

accepted this rhetoric, because Corbyn says, those who have the broader shoulders must carry

the biggest burden. You think we should talk about tax differently, so if we're not going

to call it a burden, what is it? Well, you should see there's a price that you pay to have

bundle of public services. This is the government offers a huge range of services from national

defense to old age care, from nurseries to high-tech research and development. So with

our tax payment, we are buying these bond drop services, and of course I mean, I can see

why some people are not happy with it, because it's a bundle, and therefore they can

let the exactly opt out of one bit and buy only the things they like, and in the modern

...