I ruffled a few feathers at www.chrismartenson.com (more info here) – so much so that the eponymous Chris eventually asked me to cease and desist! You can view the ‘naughty thread‘ here! He accused me of not addressing his points. I don’t accept that, but I do intend to respond in detail to his last […]
Category: Economics
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The Role of a Central Bank
This is a revised extract from my PhD thesis. Correction and minor edit 10/8/2012. Introduction In a modern state, the government has a monopoly on physical force and so it is natural that the government should provide the final backing to contracts through the legal system. Moreover, the government can use physical force on its […]
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Economics – where to start?
A non-economist started a discussion thread on the Heterodox Economics facebook group asking ‘What Economic System Works Best’. He made the observant comment: Politics in the U.S. these days can be summed up in one sentence, “Pick a side, find sources to reinforce your opinion, attack your critics mercilessly, and defend your position to the […]
It was a pleasant surprise to find that the Financial Times chief economics commentator Martin Wolf has come out in favour of a Land Value Tax (an annual tax on the value of land owned), following a debate on the FT website. I have previously written a proposal for a Community Land Value Tax for […]
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My PhD Thesis on-line!
Should anyone really be interested – my doctoral thesis ‘Money and Production – A Pluralist Analysis’ is now available from the University of Stirling document repository at https://dspace.stir.ac.uk/dspace/handle/1893/1141 It examines various theories of money’s origin and sustainability, both ‘orthodox’ and ‘heterodox’, and analyses the link between money and real economic outcomes. Most of it is […]
I note a considerable amount of interest in some ideas by Chris Martenson – who has a website and offers tutorials entitled ‘The Crash Course’. He suggests that the current way we are living is unsustainable and we’d better start preparing for when it all goes pear-shaped (which will be pretty soon according to him). […]
If the financial sector can be rescued only by cutting back social spending on Social Security, health care and education, bolstered by more privatization sell-offs, is it worth the price? To sacrifice the economy in this way would violate most peoples’ social values of equity and fairness rooted deep in Enlightenment philosophy. Superb, if lengthy […]
The Institute that takes the name of Adam Smith (wholly in vain in my view) has been in the forefront of the expenditure cut propagandists. They have produced, in the guise of impartial analysis, two documents that start with their desired conclusions and proceed by the use of pseudo-logic and misdirection. The great Kirkcaldy moral […]
David Cameron says he wants an apology from Labour for the state of the economy. But his approach to the budget deficit is either one of the most mendacious or one of the most ignorant ever made by a British Prime Minister. By using half-truths and gross over-simplifications Cameron has shifted the blame for the […]
In May 1998 I attended an academic seminar in Downing Street organized to discuss the meaning of Tony Blair’s ‘Third Way’. The event was hosted by David Miliband, then the head of the No 10 Policy Unit. Before the meeting I sent Miliband a document I entitled ‘Two Lanes on the Third Way’ pdf(95.5kB), in […]