Tag Archives: news

11th of November 2024 My Lords, there are many things to welcome in this Budget, particularly on the spending side. I am less keen on some of the tax proposals, which seem to be mean-minded and counterproductive, such as the tax on knowledge. The spending commitments are important because they reverse the disastrous policy of austerity, which has brought our public services and infrastructure close to collapse. Even the IMF, originally a champion of austerity, admitted that it had...

The new UN report on deaths in Gaza makes for Grim Reading. According to the admirable work of UN data sleuths, details close to 10.000 of the official 40.000+ deaths have been added. These are only the direct victims; indirect victims (starvation, stress, sickness) are omitted. One of the findings is that, unlike during earlier periods of war in Gaza, killing is indiscriminate. Many of the victims were women and children (graphs). The youngest victim was one day old, and the oldest was...

from Peter Radford Battle is joined … This might annoy some of you — it is my hasty first thought. The Democrats have been thoroughly defeated.  Deservedly so.  They no longer relate to, or reflect, the American working class.  Without building such a relationship they cannot regain power.  Nor should they. Yesterday, early on the morning of election day,  a friend of mine forwarded an article by Robert Reich who argued that, in order to defeat Trump, Harris needed to focus more on the...

from Peter Radford Well done AJR.  A prize deserved.  And remarkably little grumbling.  What’s wrong with that? In other news, my wife is deep into creating an artificial intelligence application.  One of the great challenges of getting AI to be useful is something called ‘prompt engineering’.   What have these two snippets of news have in common? The great thing about our better economists — the triumvirate we know affectionately as AJR being an example — is that they all seem to...

from Steven Klees I am quite sure that this year’s three Nobel Laureates in economics — Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson – are very competent new institutionalist economists.  Lars Syll offers a thoughtful critique of their substantive arguments, but he misses the main point for me.  New institutional economics, by and large, is nonsense.  We used to have many sensible institutional economists who offered a qualitative, sociological-type analysis of the role of economic...

17th of October, 2024 Over the years, “Fortress Europe” has relied on a mix of bribery and force to keep out undocumented migrants fleeing wars, famine, and conditions of extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa. But such measures are no solution to a problem that ultimately stems from much larger global and historical forces. LONDON – In 2023, 150,000 migrants crossed the Central Mediterranean in small boats from North Africa, fleeing war, pestilence, and starvation in their own...

“My Lords, in taking part in this debate, I must declare an interest: recently, I was a victim of the committee chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller. Although this is not the kind of interest a Member is normally obliged to declare, I believe that my personal experience has given me a certain insight into the way the system works, which may be of public interest. I welcome the committee’s aim to shorten and clarify the code and guide wherever possible—they require...

“”My Lords, I was not on the committee and therefore would like to allow myself a few mild criticisms of a very thought-provoking report. I will touch on three aspects of its central problem: “Who watches the watchdogs?” First, a bit of history might be helpful. In its present form, this challenge was created by the Thatcher reforms of the 1980s, which produced a new dividing line between the state and the private sector. Previously,  the Government owned the public utilities and...

Project Syndicate 21st of August, 2024 “Even though recorded performances provide some valuable benefits, most people prefer live events. That is because the audience is part of the production, and the two sides exchange energy and the gamut of human emotions in a way that would be impossible in any other setting.“ SALZBURG – While taking in the immensity of Anton Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony at this year’s Salzburg Festival, one of classical music’s most celebrated events, I kept...

To the death toll of the violence in Gaza, around 15.000 additional deaths of infants and children between 1 and 5 have to be added. This is a rough and, in my opinion, a lower-bound estimate. However, the calculations are based on robust information, and sizeable additional mortality in infants and young children in Gaza is real. Next to the direct victims of war, there are indirect victims who die because of lack of proper medical care or because of harsh circumstances. Here, I´ll...