A book published this month says the internet, once seen as the vehicle for individual empowerment, is now a machine for making a handful very rich and allowing bosses and bureaucrats to keep tabs on the rest. Andrew Keen’s The…
Intangible capital is the reason for corporate tax avoidance, not tax havens
UK Labour Party leader Ed Miliband said yesterday that he had written to the leaders of 10 British overseas territories and crown dependencies to say that a Labour government would press for them to be put on an OECD tax haven blacklist…
Price versus value debate persists despite failure of the market in services
A post yesterday on the admirable Mises Institute website showed that economists, and many others, continue to be baffled by the difference between value and price. Peter St Onge, an assistant professor at Taiwan’s Fengjia University College of Business, wrote…
Atkinson calls for minimum inheritance to cut inequality
Sir Tony Atkinson, Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics and a Fellow of Nuffield College Oxford, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning that the government should consider introducing a minimum inheritance system as the best way of tackling…
In economies dominated by services, GDP measures don’t work
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNXoaIRL8CI GDP, the most popular way economists attempt to quantify economic activity, is a recent invention and one that won’t stand the challenge presented by measuring output when services are dominant as they are in the UK. The first attempt…
Why banks should be stripped of their control of the electronic payments system
In economies where services are dominant — and service industries in the UK (including banking) account for more than 80 per cent of employment — the role of banks requires radical redefinition. Basic economic theory says that money serves three purposes: it’s…