Economy

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – A well-meaning but not particularly bright left-leaning US politician – made a stir earlier this week by wearing a figure-hugging dress emblazoned with the slogan “Tax the Rich” to the prestigious 2021 Met Gala.  Since the slogan was clearly political, it wasn’t long before the various political …

Perhaps the most contentious – and least asked – question about industrial civilisation concerns its origins.  Why, of all the potential places in the world, should a small group of islands in the northeast Atlantic have emerged as the cradle of industrialisation?  Many possible reasons have been put forward, including: …

One of the consequences of the response to the pandemic and the disruption from Brexit is that labour shortages are appearing across the low-paid sectors of the economy.  So much so that even the metropolitan liberal Guardian has begun to wonder whether the benefits of higher wages for the low-paid …

Media has little in the way of memory and the rest of us struggle to remember much of what happened more than a week ago.  And so, the narratives we use in an attempt to make sense of the rapidly changing world we are living in, tend to revolve around …

Have you heard that ice cream causes murder or that global warming has led to an increase in piracy? Apparently in Maine, consuming more margarine leads to more divorces, while increased US spending on science, space and technology results in increases in suicides by hanging, strangulation and suffocation.  Actually, these …

Putting a positive gloss on the news is especially important as we attempt to recover from a pandemic.  And if that positive gloss is green in colour, so much the better. And so yesterday we were treated to the news that: “More electric vehicles were registered than diesel cars for …

The increase in oil prices is filtering through to consumers according to the BBC: “Petrol prices have reached an eight-year high after nine straight months of rises… the average price of a litre of petrol is now 135.13p, a level not seen since September 2013, as rising oil prices push …

Unlike the majority of European states, the UK is much more dependent upon occupational and private pensions... which is fine on an infinite planet where a growth rate of five percent or more can continue forever.  Unfortunately, that is not the planet we live on.  And much of the supposed wealth locked up in pension funds was used to keep the global economy from collapsing after the 2008 crash.

A little over a year ago, there was a meme circulating on social media that went something like this: Replace ‘The Economy,’ with ‘rich people’s yacht money:’  How can we respond to Covid without damaging rich people’s yacht money?  How can we respond to climate change without damaging rich people’s …

Inflation is back in the establishment media headlines, as prices are rising across the economy.  But rather like generals fighting the last war, business and economic journalists are dusting off models of inflation last used in the early 1980s.  The idea, for example, that “inflation is always a monetary phenomenon” …