A History of the Idea of Ending Poverty

History confirms the intuition that ‘ending poverty’ has little political traction as a near-term goal when mass chronic poverty is seen to be the norm and poor citizens have little political influence...
Read More“As a socialist, I see it as my duty to be optimistic!”

In the United Kingdom, in the shadow of a bleak Brexit, brilliant figures have emerged. One of them is Grace Blakeley, a very young commentator on economic issues...
Read MoreDebt, Cancelled

“I wanted to go to college to avoid being a third-generation janitor.” The man on stage at this California town hall tells a familiar story. He’s now a beloved high school principal, but to finance his education, he took out a loan—$80,000.
Read MoreChasing Cheap Rents

I was back in Oakland for my new job. After nearly a month of looking for a place to live, I got a text from Jenny: “Would you consider a shack?”
Read MoreThey’re Being Evil

It was under extreme pressure from both press and regulators that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg finally turned over 3,000 Russia-linked adverts to Congress. Google and others were only marginally less evasive.
Read MoreErgodicity Economics

The principles of economics form the intellectual atmosphere in which most political discussion takes place. Its prevailing ideas are often invoked to justify the organisation of modern society...
Read MoreBritain after Brexit

"Britain has no leverage, Britain is desperate … it needs an agreement very soon. When you have a desperate partner, that’s when you strike the hardest bargain.” So warned former US treasury secretary Larry Summers...
Read MoreThings essential to life are only getting more expensive…

People keep complaining about “income inequality” and writing books about how grindingly difficult it is for an alarmingly large number of Americans to get by...
Read MoreThe rentier class keep right on reaping…

A rentier economy (Christophers uses the term unapologetically) is driven by profits, which have increased in real terms as the poor have been denied social housing...
Read MoreBlack–Scholes Misfires

‘Performativity’ has, for example, been employed by the French economic sociologist Michel Callon as a way of denoting the capacity of a mathematical model or other aspect of ‘economics’ to be more than a representation of some external reality.
Read More“Economics is among the least interdisciplinary and most hierarchical academic fields”

John Maynard Keynes once remarked that ‘practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.’
Read More‘Portugal’s radical left can claim credit for two main achievements since 2015’

Since the end of 2015, Portugal has been the scene of an unusual political drama. After failing to win a majority in parliament, the country’s long-established centre-left machine rejected the offer of a ‘grand coalition’ with its conservative rival to implement the demands of Brussels and Frankfurt.
Read MoreEconomics has always operated more like a church than a science…

The progress of science is generally linear. As new research confirms or replaces existing theories, one generation builds upon the next. Economics, however...
Read MoreElizabeth Currid-Halkett: Conspicuous Consumption Is Over

In the face of rising social inequality, both the rich and the middle classes own fancy TVs and nice handbags.
Read MoreMarx wondered who would educate the educator…

I am not now nor have I ever been a Marxist, yet Karl Marx was one of my most important teachers.
Read MoreRent Transformation

Club for the retired sons of indulgent fathers, Rea Irvin, 1914 by Guy Standing The 20th century income distribution system has broken down irreparably. Recall the post-1945 consensus under which the shares of income going to capital and to labour were roughly stable, when workers and corporations shared the...
Read MoreThe emergence of hedge funds was an accident of history, a gift to wealthy families…

If hedge funds go up and down alongside the market, and all but the top performers don’t even beat the market, the rationale for investing in them vanishes.
Read MoreTTIP and Corporate Takeover

Attacked and ridiculed, the leak of 243 pages of TTIP negotiations concerning climate, environment and public health prove that civil society organisations were right all along.
Read MoreProust would advise us to refuse the tyranny of algorithms...
Read MoreOur work began with a question: Why do we sacrifice the pleasures of human connection in order to claim our place as “one of the boys” or as a “good” woman?
Read MoreIt is doubtful whether the gift was innate. For my own part, I think it came to him suddenly. Indeed, until he was thirty he was a sceptic, and did not believe in miraculous powers.
Read MoreIt’s as if the natural cold of the night / is dispersed by the fog that fills the park / as you, a friend, and I walk and sit and talk...
Read MoreThe dodo was not always fat. Nobody alive is able to say for sure what a dodo was really like: the last one had died by the end of the 17th Century...
Read MoreWhat's the use of teaching Young ones how to shape love With their mouths? Let the elders Touch their own lips, let them feel How dry they are.
Read MoreProust would advise us to refuse the tyranny of algorithms...
Read MoreOur work began with a question: Why do we sacrifice the pleasures of human connection in order to claim our place as “one of the boys” or as a “good” woman?
Read MoreIt is doubtful whether the gift was innate. For my own part, I think it came to him suddenly. Indeed, until he was thirty he was a sceptic, and did not believe in miraculous powers.
Read MoreIt’s as if the natural cold of the night / is dispersed by the fog that fills the park / as you, a friend, and I walk and sit and talk...
Read MoreThe dodo was not always fat. Nobody alive is able to say for sure what a dodo was really like: the last one had died by the end of the 17th Century...
Read MoreWhat's the use of teaching Young ones how to shape love With their mouths? Let the elders Touch their own lips, let them feel How dry they are.
Read More