“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 […]
Posts Tagged ‘Austerity’
World finance ministers complacent at threat of a synchronised downturn
Mar 11th, 2016 by Ann Pettifor.The growth of movements for real change have been a long time coming
Mar 7th, 2016 by Steve Turner.Last week Tony Blair professed bafflement at the rise – on both sides of the Atlantic – of popular movements by people who in Blair’s view choose to “rattle the cage”. I think this is a mischaracterisation. Those who have been energised into supporting Sanders, Corbyn and movements such as Podemos and Syriza want to […]
No hiding place for Osborne
Jan 30th, 2016 by Matt Willgress.As George Osborne gets his excuses in early for the troubles to come, now is the time to expose the failures of ideologically driven austerity, writes Matt Willgress of the Labour Assembly Against Austerity The British mainstream media is now so clearly biased in favour of the ruling party it can sometimes seem as if […]
Bring a new politics into local democracy
Dec 21st, 2015 by Newsdesk.The following statement has been issued by the Labour Representation Committee On the basis of a hasty and highly selective reading of the letter sent to Labour councils by Jeremy Corbyn, together with John McDonnell and Jon Trickett, some right-wingers are claiming that the leadership has endorsed their existing strategy towards implementing the cuts. Likewise some […]
Alternative Autumn statements: continued Tory failure versus Corbynomics
Nov 25th, 2015 by Michael Burke.Having spectacularly failed in his stated goal of eliminating the deficit in the last parliament, George Osborne is repeating his experiment in this one. Both the June 2010 and 2015 Budgets proposed ‘fiscal tightening’ of £37 billion. In the first of these Budgets the main method was cuts in public spending. In the second it […]
We should stand up to anti-migrant rhetoric by fighting for homes, jobs and services
Nov 5th, 2015 by Diane Abbott.David Cameron’s net migration target has been exposed as an unworkable policy. In reality, it is classic scapegoating tactics, being used to distract people from the effects of government spending cuts, such as the crisis in the NHS and the increasing unaffordability of housing. All the Tories have to offer is yet more destructive cuts. […]
Labour must start to claw back the national narrative on austerity
Oct 21st, 2015 by Amy Dunne.This week has marked the beginning of the slow process of exposing the Conservatives as they are, and it’s certainly not as the party of the working people they so ardently claim to be. During Question Time, a small business owner named Michelle almost burst into tears as she made a heartfelt plea to Conservative Minister Amber Rudd not to […]
“Butskellism” versus Keynes and Marx
Oct 12th, 2015 by Michael Burke.The debate is continuing on the purpose of government borrowing and the role of ‘balanced budgets’ – which was started by John McDonnell’s position of balancing the budget on current expenditure but borrowing for investment. This is not surprising given that economic policy has to be the core of the programme for a Labour government. […]
Austerity – It’s Not Working and it’s Not Popular!
Oct 12th, 2015 by Matt Willgress.Jeremy Corbyn’s landslide victory in the Labour leadership election was the clearest sign yet that not only is austerity not working, it’s increasingly not popular. Before Jeremy’s entrance into the leadership race, on a clear anti-austerity platform that argued for a progressive alternative based on investment rather than cuts, the leadership campaign had begun with […]
Putting the Political back into Political Economy
Oct 7th, 2015 by Ewan Gibbs and Nathaniel Blondel.The reaction to John McDonnell’s announcement that he would aim for a balanced current account, whilst maintaining borrowing for capital investment, revealed a recurrent fault line within left-wing economic thought. At its most banal McDonnell was accused of signing up to George Osborne’s ‘austerity charter’, whilst more sophisticated critics argued such policies would weaken demand […]