My attention has been drawn to some appalling new statistics by the Howard League for Penal Reform: ….The number of people known to be of no fixed abode when they were received into the 51 prisons listed, increased from 18,493 in 2015 to 23,488 in 2018. This includes men and women but excludes children. The… Read more
Category:
Politics
A government in dereliction of its duty
On this Friday’s anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire I thought the paragraph below from Municipal Dreams: The Rise and Fall of Council Housing by John Boughton was very powerful: Council housing then, social housing now, arose from the duty of the state to house its people well even as the market proved unable or… Read more
Outsourcing political decisions can be dangerous for democracy
Something else this ‘mysterious’ Professor of Eighteenth Century Studies from the University of Indiana, Bloomington, said was: “Money, like law, is a POLITICAL creation and (like law) it works most smoothly (if not fairly) when it is not recognized as such. Depoliticised money/law means we have something uniting us.” This may be a form of… Read more
What gives money value
I was intrigued by a Professor of Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of Indiana, Bloomington, whose name is unfortunately lost in an FT article I cannot now access. But… this Professor was asked to write about Italian mini-BOTS and assignats. “Some would say they’re complete opposites: assignats “backed” by land, mini-BOTS by nothing. But… Read more
The David McWilliams Podcast
Introduction Prof David McWilliams is an Irish economist, broadcaster and author and has recently launched a new podcast. McWilliams is ranked as one of the World’s most influential economists according to rise.global. The podcast is not wholly about Ireland and diverse topics are discussed. What is interesting is that McWilliams is very much on the… Read more
Sticking to Neoliberaslism
I see Simon Wren Lewis is puttting his oar in in support of James Meadway – in the sense that he is supporting his Fiscal Credibility Rule (FCR). This same article is also, by the way, published in the New Statesman. Since Simon Wren Lewis (together with Jonathan Portes – both former Treasury Civil Servants)… Read more
Another reason to know where money comes from
In reply to my post on James Meadway’s critical ‘Tribune’ piece, our own Charles Adams considers that “the MMT [Modern Monetary Theory] debates do not get to the nub of the issue, which is really that it is all about the distribution of power. The state has real power but may choose not to use… Read more
Three Years and counting for our English Heritage
The Brexit breaker?
I’ve long considered that the weak point in so called Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is how exports and imports are considered. Of course, in the UK, we must realise that as a deficit (as in trade deficit) nation we need foreign investment. While Chris Williamson MP has a tendency to speak truth unto power and… Read more
Basic Security is a superior public good since its value rises if everyone has it
This title is from an interesting article in ‘Open Democracy’ on Universal Basic Income by Professor Guy Standing. Comparing Universal Basic Income to Universal Basic Services he points out that what has been proposed is, in fact, far from Universal. And thus the proposals are beset by distributional problems. This is much the same view… Read more