With thanks to André Ulveseter of Norway for his inside information. (And sorry, probably it’s for the best, I don’t know what his hair actually is either.)… Read more
May’s reshuffle: chronically ill and disabled people now have much to fear
A guest blog by Mo Stewart Sometimes, you have to wonder which world the Prime Minister (PM) lives in, as it’s certainly not the real one. She will realise this in time, when there’s a public reaction to her appointment of one of the most reviled women in British politics to a very influential government… Read more
Stereotypes, lying and government duty
Yanis Varoufakis has an article in which he suggests that Germany and France – the principal powers of the EU – are rather dysfunctional neighbours: At the heart of this Franco-German war is the clash between two Rs: the German commitment to rectitude versus the French penchant for redistribution. German officials greet every French government… Read more
BoM January 2018
Our January Book of the month is Democracy in Chains by Nancy McLean. Behind today’s headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance…. Read more
Everything you ever wanted to know about Bitcoin – and just a little bit more
There is a marvelous article in the ‘Washington Post’ (yes, I know it’s owned by Bezos, the man that owns Amazon, so is not my usual read either) but it provides the best summary of Bitcoin that I’ve yet encountered. I’ve quoted the introduction to whet the appetite: Bitcoin changes prices too quickly to be… Read more
The subterfuge of the tax return
In my recent talk on tax I unsurprisingly mentioned the tax return. Whilst it is not essential to our understanding of what tax is we should at least recognise it as the blatant subterfuge it is: This (tax summary) form was created by George Osborne. It is a shameless example of state produced ideological propaganda… Read more
Why Positive Money really needs to understand tax
In my previous piece on ‘abolishing tax’ I tried to show that a money system without tax is not only impractable but also undesirable, yet the campaign group, Positive Money never mentions tax. Indeed there seems to be a basic contradiction in their claim that 97% of the money creation is by Private Banks when… Read more
Let’s try and abolish tax
In early December I gave a talk to the local Positive Money group about tax. Naturally this drew heavily on what I’ve discovered from TaxResearch.uk as well as Richard Murphy’s ‘The Joy of Tax’ and still other details that I have learnt here on Progressive Pulse. It is striking that on the Positive Money website… Read more
What is the economy for? Further thought for 2018
In my earlier piece on ‘What is the economy for?’ I should really have mentioned the economist Steve Keen’s idea of what the economy is for, which is “to provide for all the population”. This very succinct summary certainly conveys clearly the idea that it is not to provide for any one group in particular…. Read more
Rethinking economics? What is the economy for?
As much interest has been provoked by the recent effort to make economics less of a belief system and more of a servant to society I thought it worth revisiting a post from much earlier in the year to help us fathom rethinking this thing called economics. It is said there is no such thing… Read more
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