John McDonnell, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote an article for the Independent last weekend in which he pointed out the folly and failure of George Osborne’s austerity fetish, and told us about the new economic strategy that the Labour Party is currently devising as an alternative to the Tory government’s slash and burn…
Here’s a little film that gets to the bottom of the money problem.
For most of the last 30 years it looked like socialism had been soundly beaten by its old adversary, capitalism. From the mid 1980s when Margaret Thatcher’s second government defeated Britain’s striking coal miners, until around 2009 when the extent of the banking crisis had sunk in, free-market capitalism was the only game in town.…
All of the main political parties in the UK agree that government debt is a bad thing. All of them would like to fund 100% of government spending from taxation alone. There are many respectable economists who will tell you that this phobia of government debt is irrational, and I’m inclined to agree with them,…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11895084/How-Swedens-negative-interest-rates-experiment-has-turned-economics-on-its-head.html Negative interest getting an airing in the economics section of The Telegraph. They haven’t yet realised the potential of the concept, but it’s a step in the right direction: https://malcolmhenry.com/2013/11/18/the-positives-of-negative-an-idea-to-change-the-world/
Jeremy Corbyn’s unexpected leap to the front of the Labour Party leadership race has inadvertently created a modern miracle: it has united every organ of the mainstream media from the Guardian to the Telegraph, and every politician to the right of Dennis Skinner. They all agree that his plans for the economy are bonkers. If…
http://www.scottsantens.com/minimum-wages-vs-universal-basic-income Scott Santens explains how basic income trumps minimum wage.
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/basic-income-tax-subsidies-minimum-wage-by-robert-skidelsky-2015-07 Here’s Robert Skidelsky asking useful questions about the wisdom of promoting a higher minimum wage when we should really be moving towards universal basic income.
Late at night on the 20th of July the Conservative government’s Welfare Reform Bill was endorsed by the House of Commons thanks to the abstention of most of the official opposition’s MPs. The acting Labour leader, Harriet Harman, instructed her party to abstain because she thinks that the Labour Party will be condemned to the…
Last month’s general election for the UK parliament provided a harsh reminder to some political parties that electoral success is all about telling a good story. The narrative has to be one that the electorate wants to believe or, at the very least, one that appeals to their common sense. The Scottish National Party won…
Views From The Boatshed 