Funding the Future

Shouldn’t ministers know what they’re talking about?

Labour ministers have been talking about ‘black holes’ in the government’s finances ever since they got into office, but technically such a thing is an impossibility. Isn’t the most basic thing we should expect of them is that they be competent? So, why aren’t they?

Will Rachel Reeves' NI hike crush UK economic growth?

Rachel Reeves wants growth, and it’s thought she’s going to seriously increase employers’ national insurance contributions, which is most likely to stop that happening. Why is she adopting such an absurd approach to the economy?

Keir Starmer's Big Mistake: Confusing Money with Capital?

Keir Starmer is desperate for foreign money to fund British investment,but that makes no sense at all.

Big and small businesses are nothing like each other

To pretend that there is almost any similarity between how small and big businesses is absurd. Small businesses have to serve us, or they fail. Big business tries to entrap us in debt to ensure that they keep growing ever bigger. We need to rethink what we think about the private sector – and what parts of it we want to promote.

There’s no electricity or water for Starmer’s planned investments

Starmer wants high-tech investment in the UK that will demand massive new electricity supply and water supplies we simply have not got, and all for not many new jobs. Why doesn’t he grow UK small business instead?

A bonfire of red tape transfers risk from risk creators to consumers

Keir Starmer has said he wants a bonfire of red tape. That is the same goal that ended at Grenfell when David Cameron promoted it. What it actually means is that consumers take the risk in society and those who create the risks don’t and there’s not an iota of sense in that.

What is of value?

Having to clear my late father’s home recently it became very apparent how the material focus of economics is wrong. What he had mattered for little in the end. The memories he left did. So why does economics get this so terribly wrong?

Inheritance tax is all about fairness

My interview on BBC Radio 5 Live on 18 October

MMT is not a policy option: it’s a description of the economy

Some people seem to think that modern monetary theory (MMT) is a set of policy options a country might adopt. It isn’t. It’s a description of how the economy of the country we live in really works. What’s powerful about it is that it describes actually happens – and so leads to better decision making.

Why aren’t young people working?

Thirty-eight per cent of young people who could work are not doing so. They’re not lazy, or indifferent. Nor have they dropped out. They just can’t fit into the machinery of conformism that modern employers demand of them. As a result, vast numbers of talented young people aren’t delivering of their best for this country.