Anyone who’s encouraged by George Osborne’s claims of having steered the UK through the stormy waters of recession into a period of growth that’s “the largest in the G7” needs to read this piece: Comparative Recovery from Flip Chart Fairy Tales. Personally I don’t think GDP is a very useful measure of economic performance but…

Even in the USA the debate about universal basic income is coming out into the mainstream. Here’s a substantial piece on PBS News Hour in which people from right and left talk of the advantages of UBI. Not much discussion about how to fund it but that will come, I’m sure.

Welcome to Collaborative Scotland. I’ve just become a signatory to Collaborative Scotland’s commitment to engage in the independence debate with respect and courtesy, and continue in the same spirit after the referendum regardless of the result. There are many other debates in life where a similar commitment from both sides would save a lot of…

Here’s another video from Positive Money for those of you who have yet to catch on to the fact that our financial systems are dysfunctional by design. I know lots of people find this stuff dull but if we don’t change the ways that we use money then the financial crises will keep coming, one…

Splendid stuff from Jim Sillars on the currency options in an independent Scotland. He’s scathing about the SNP’s choice of a currency union with the remainder of the UK and argues his case with commendable clarity. It’s encouraging to see a well-known politician getting to grips with the substance of an issue and expressing his…

Here’s a nice clear article by Iain Macwhirter about currency options for an independent Scotland. He looks at the experience of Slovakia which entered a brief currency union with the Czech Republic before being forced to go its own way, eventually joining the euro in 2009. He’s careful not to make direct comparisons with Scotland’s…

Money, Morality, And The Value Of A Clean Pan

I’m not sure how we got here, but we live in a world where money has become the unit that we use to measure value. When we ask how much something is worth, we’re asking how much money someone would be prepared to pay for it. But how much we pay for something – how much…

Here’s an excellent article by Frances Coppola on a late 18th century version of basic income in the parish of Speen in Berkshire, and more general history of poor relief in English parishes at the time. Sadly the perverted “morality” of the wealthy demanding work-for-welfare from the poor is still alive and well today. Consider…