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Economics Healthcare Politics

The ‘Baumol Effect’ and How The Government Cheats Us

The UK’s Public Service Crisis There is a crisis in public services in the UK. This is longstanding but has been cruelly exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This crisis is affecting education, legal services, social support and social care, but it is most obvious and most disturbing in the provision of healthcare. Emergency services are […]

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Economics Equality Labour Party Politics

The Economics of Starmerism

What do we know about Labour’s economic approach under Keir Starmer? In his Fabian Society pamphlet ‘The Road Ahead’, and in his Labour Conference speech we are beginning to get some clues to the Economics of Starmerism. So can he rise above the prevailing ‘mediamacro’ economic fallacies so dear to the mainstream media and the […]

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Labour Party Politics

John Gray on ‘Progressivism’ and Why Labour Lost

I admire John Gray and his somewhat cynical writing on political philosophy. Having heard him speak and briefly spoken to him he is evidently a man of erudition and humanity. But when he writes on ‘Progressivism’ and Labour’s election defeat in his January New Statesman essay ‘Why the left keeps losing’ something seems to have […]

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Economics Inequality Money and Banking

IS-LM and Making Sense of MMT

IS-LM and MMT The core issue at the heart of debates between the heterodox Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) approach and more mainstream macroeconomics is how the financial economy and the real economy interact. As a consequence we see Keynesians of various hues attempting to illustrate their response to MMT with the standard orthodox Keynesian IS-LM […]

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Equality Philosophy Politics

Harry Frankfurt Gets It Wrong On Inequality

The eminent philosopher Harry Frankfurt has issued a small book comprising parts of two essays written some decades ago (On Equality, 2015, Princeton University Press). The stimulus to this publication is the recent work of Thomas Piketty on economic inequality in the developed countries, and Frankfurt’s view that It is, I believe, of some considerable […]

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Business and Society Economics Philosophy

Socialism, Free Markets, Capitalism and Christopher Snowdon

Why do I consider myself to be of the ‘left’ rather than the ‘right’, despite the tendency for each term to be converted to a straw-man for all the pet hates of those attaching to the opposing label? For me, to be of the left designates a prioritisation of co-operation over competition. It is to […]

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Economics Money and Banking News

The Fragility of Bitcoin

Launched in 2009, and of wider interest since 2013, the ‘cryptocurrency’ Bitcoin has seen both a rise in its value in relation to existing national and supranational currencies, and in the discussion of its forming a partial or even complete replacement to those currencies. This article outlines the nature of Bitcoin and of traditional currencies […]

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Economics Inequality

The Role of Capital in Inequality

Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the 21st Century”, published in 2014, played an important role in directing attention to the issue of inequality in the developed economies of the 21st century. The book was both praised and criticised from many parts of the political and economic spectrum. Least controversial was his laying out of the evidence […]

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Economics Money and Banking Politics

Bad Targets for Policy 1: Government Debt

This is the first blog in a two-part series on ‘Bad Targets for Policy’. The second in the series will be on immigration. We’ve seen a lot of focus on the ‘costing’ of policies in the parties’ manifestos for the forthcoming UK election. But we must remember that money is only a means of keeping […]

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Economics Healthcare News Politics

Explaining the NHS Crisis: Lies, Damn Lies and Health Spending

Introduction Just how much cash does the NHS and social care need to prevent the distressing stories of patients languishing on trolleys for hours in A&E departments? Can we possibly afford what it needs, or is it really a ‘bottomless pit’ as often claimed? Do we need to lower our expectations of what can be […]