In order to defeat Osbornomics it is necessary to understand it. A central tenet is that the private sector is the key to prosperity and that therefore everything possible should be done to promote and encourage it. The state should shrink in order to release the inherent dynamism of the private sector. The argument runs […]
Posts under ‘Economy’
Is George Osborne finished?
Mar 23rd, 2016 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.They seek him here, they seek him there. Those lobby hacks seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven or is he in hell? That damned elusive … Chancellor of the Exchequer. Okay, so my reworked rhyme lifted from the Scarlet Pimpernel doesn’t work. But neither do Osborne’s sums, so all is balanced in the world. […]
Share:
Good riddance IDS: long may this internal warfare continue
Mar 19th, 2016 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.When you’re the head of a department that has meted out cruel and inhumane treatment to disabled people, when you’ve sat in the Commons and nodded through cut after sanction regime after tightened eligibility criteria, at what point do you say enough and call time over your complicity in these proceedings? Does one draw a […]
Share:
Mr Osborne’s untruth: the chart that shames the Treasury
Mar 19th, 2016 by Jeremy Smith.There was much to disagree with in George Osborne’s Budget announced on Wednesday, in particular the increasingly foolish and damaging target to achieve an overall budget surplus of over £10 billion in 2019/20 and 2020/21 via further spending cuts. But one specific claim made by the Chancellor in his speech to the House of Commons […]
Share:
The boom, not the slump, is the time for austerity
Mar 15th, 2016 by Ann Pettifor.The following is a letter by Professor John Weeks and Ann Pettifor, published today, 15th March 2016 in The Guardian. Andrew Harrop’s article on John McDonnell’s public borrowing for investment points out its improvement on the chancellor’s deficit obsession (John McDonnell’s new fiscal rule is strong, but it’s no election winner, The Guardian, 11 March). […]
Share:
John McDonnell’s very political economics
Mar 15th, 2016 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.What have they been putting in John McDonnell’s coffee? According to some, John’s embrace of fiscal responsibility, tight spending, and deficit reduction is a surrender to “the capitalist parasites“. And proving you cannot please some people no matter what you say, there have been criticisms from the right of the party arguing that his economics […]
Share:
Labour right-wing still in the austerity dead end
Mar 15th, 2016 by Michael Burke.Rachel Reeves, a former Labour shadow secretary for work and pensions, has produced a short note for Progress which has been hailed in the right wing media, and by the Labour right, as ‘an alternative Budget’. The New Statesman was perhaps the most excitable, describing Reeves as the shadow chancellor in waiting. All of this […]
Share:
Labour, John McDonnell and the New Economics
Mar 13th, 2016 by David Pavett.Once the surprise and the shock of Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader had sunk in, many (including me) became impatient for policy initiatives and membership involvement in policy formation to come to the fore. Clearly cutting through media hostility is a major task but I find it difficult to see that more could not […]
Share:
World finance ministers complacent at threat of a synchronised downturn
Mar 11th, 2016 by Ann Pettifor.“For the proposition that supply creates its own demand, I shall substitute the proposition that expenditure creates its own income” (JM Keynes Collected Writings, Volume XXIX, p81) G20 Finance Ministers met in Huangzhou, China recently and refused appeals from both the IMF and the OECD for “urgent collective policy action” that focussed “fiscal policies on investment-led […]
Share:
The crisis remains an investment crisis
Mar 8th, 2016 by Michael Burke.Prior to the recent G20 meeting leading international economic bodies such as the IMF and the OECD made tentative calls for increased investment, although this was often confused with increased spending. This is a belated or partial recognition of the real source of the crisis in the advanced industrialised countries. In terms of actual changes […]
