New post: October Budget 5. The UK’s Fiscal rules: one good and one bad mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2024/10/octo... The falling debt to GDP rule is not fit for any purpose except keeping economic growth down. It is a rule designed not for economists or the markets but for the political commentariat
On 30th October Rachel Reeves will be setting out her first budget, rather than responding to someone else’s decisions. She will be leadin...
"The modern right has entirely abandoned the caution once preached by the likes of G. K. Chesterton or Edmund Burke." Why are Tory beliefs apparently so unshaken by the Grenfell report?
On the right’s lack of self-reflection. Also this week: I can’t bear to look at the US election, so instead let’s all remember 1824; and London, upside down.
It's fascinating that competition policy has slipped so far from the centre of political debate. Our Dan wrote about this in 2020. "Cosiness, I suspect, may well come back into fashion. After all, everything else has." thelionandunicorn.wordpress.com/2020/05/05/c...
Has competition had its day? asks DAN ATKINSON.
I'm gonna do a regular bit on US presidents we've all forgotten and probably* shouldn't have, as a way of covering the election without covering the election. First up: John Quincy Adams, the original presidential nepo baby who cheated** his way to the White House jonn.substack.com/i/148768825/...
I think young and old sometimes misunderstand what a pension is. It's not a store of food under the bed. It's a claim on the ongoing productivity and functioning of society.
I've done a blog, on why we need more than tax rises to fix public services: stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_an...
Most people agree that we need to raise public spending to repair our damaged public services. Simon Wren-Lewis estimates that it needs to rise by around 4.5% of GDP eventually. Such an increase, as S...
Have you seen Ray Fair's econometric work on the impact of age on sporting performance? He doesn't cover climbing but he shows that for many other events age-related deterioration is quite slow until your 70s. fairmodel.econ.yale.edu/aging/
Yes, mostly they did. But New Labour was maybe more redistributive (eg NMW, tax credits) & didn't insult our intelligence. And its lack of challenge to capitalism was more forgivable as the economy wasn't in the grip of rentierism & stagnation.
A depressing read for someone who thinks libraries and other public goods, help strengthen communities. We'll publish a @whatworksgrowth.bsky.socialwww.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Deprived communities lost more libraries since 2016 than richer areas did, the BBC finds
I've not posted much on here before, because I've thought the site a little too grown-up for me. But anyway, here's something I wrote on why Labour talks so much rubbish about the economy: stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_an...
Many of us are frustrated by Labour's stupid economic talk of "black holes", spending "money we didn't have" and likening the public finances to those of a household; the latest idiocy (as I write) be...