These are the fatality rates for Coronavirus, which suggest the difficulties start at 50 and get dangerous from aged 60 onwards: This table shows that the first economy of the world seems to have a surprisingly small occurrence and it may be that the average American’s preference not to travel abroad helps, but it could… Read more
Category:
Economics
Economics Theory
‘Nature’ and Economics are incompatible
Having attended a very interesting lecture from Tim Lenton, possibly the subsequent discussion was even more informative! Tim suggests that economics is way too influential in the government – and also generally – and that the environment is seemingly of little, or subsidiary, consequence. I’m sure that this will echo the views of many PP… Read more
Treasury rules – or does it?
This is from Ed Conway of Sky concerning the ‘Times’ extract that follows: The Treasury is debating a radical change in its accounting rules, reclassifying billions spent on education and health as “investment”. One upshot: Rishi Sunak could meet his fiscal rules without any tax rises or spending cuts.. So this suggests that Labour’s paroxysms… Read more
A Perfectly Regressive Tax – a guest post by Michael Green
Economists and politicians get worked up about the peril of Public Sector Debt, but seem far less worried about Private Sector Debt. This is surprising, because Private Debt should be at least as dangerous. It seems subject to far less scrutiny, even though it is subject to constant selective pressure towards instability. Here, I will… Read more
Eugenics
I’m afraid this title will make some switch off or ignore, and some bristle with hostility – and that is exactly the problem. I suggest we have to face up to what Eugenics is and what it is not. It is certainly not for example, as is often suggested, Naziism, where officially proscribed life was… Read more
What is this government’s purpose?
An interesting ‘Observer’ editorial laments the decline of Keynes’ post-war ‘consensus’ for the future of civilised society as it seemed to be at the time. Conservatives mobilised an argument that generous welfare spending did not just undermine capitalism, but had inflationary, destabilising consequences and hence was a threat to democratic governance. Our government is similarly… Read more
Message for Lisa
“The lesson from the last election… is that people are smarter than we think.” according to Lisa Nandy. I cannot unfortunately embed the actual snippet from the Newsnight programme – but Lisa Nandy says that Labour made promises in their latest manifesto, that they simply couldn’t keep – which is, I’m afraid.. completely untrue… Still,… Read more
Authoritarian Capitalism
CoronaVirus could possibly, spell the end for some Eurozone banks as by pushing the Eurozone ito recession it could make their lives very difficult. It is certainly true that the German economy particularly, export orientated as it is, has suffered since the Chinese downturn and CoronaVirus cannot be helpful. I would not be surprised if… Read more
Liberty, Equality and Accountability
No, Fraternity, isn’t part of this…. Nonetheless, I suggest this is a very powerful conclusion by Billy Bragg in an interesting podcast with the lawyer Adam Wagner, in which they talk about ‘agency’. I thought it very incisive as they, quite correctly in my view, suggest that neoliberalism gives ‘agency’ to both businessmen and ‘markets’… Read more
HS2 wail – back to the future
Johnson will probably have a problem with the HS2 review. He wants to be popular, thinks he has been ‘lent’ votes in the north, but lots of his Tory MPs think that HS2’s increasing costs are prohibitive, it cuts through their blissful Tory shires – or perhaps it is just a gravy train. I confess… Read more