Painting Fakes

In my recent post on Kate Raworth's Doughnut Economics I promised you a review of Mariana Mazzucato's Mission Economy .  I got to the top of the library queue for it this week and I know you're all sitting on the edge of your seats waiting for it, so here it is.... Mariana Mazzucato is a serious economist, and an influential one.  She was born in Italy, raised and educated in the US and now lives in the UK.  She teaches at University College in London and sits on a dizzying array of advisory boards for the English, Scottish and Italian governments and the EU.  In her previous writings  she's talked about how the role of government as a creator of value is greatly underestimated, while we place great store on activities like finance which add little or no value to our economies or our lives. Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism  was published just this year.  In reviewing her previous book I wished she would get more specific about what we should do

Recently Kate Raworth posted a triptych on twitter of herself, Stephanie Kelton and Mariana Mazzucato holding up each others' most recent books, with the comment: 'Doughnut  + Mission + MMT = Let's transform economics. Here's to the synergy of ideas.'  This trio form a neat little group of subversive women economists who challenge mainstream thinking - and don't we need that challenge right now! I've yet to read Mazzucato's latest book (coming up soon) but from what I've read so far, all three women push the envelope of economic thinking in an attempt to move it towards a more just and sustainable discipline.  Of the three, Raworth's Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist is the most comprehensive, and the most radical. Raworth is an English economist who has worked for much of her life in the development field.  Her gigs include doing fieldwork in Zanzibar, working on the UN Human Development Program, and worki

Here's a different kind of stretch of the imagination .  One of the perennial political debates around the world is the question of budget deficits.  In every election we see politicians vying to present themselves as the more financially responsible alternative, meaning that they will balance the budget, that government spending will match government income and extra borrowing will not be required. Although this appears to be a partisan debate, it is based on assumptions which all mainstream politicians share - that government money is limited and that they can't perpetually spend beyond their means, that the money governments borrow needs to be paid back with interest in the future.  The partisan debate then focuses on how to do that.  Progressive politicians will favour increased taxes on the rich to pay for more generous social programs, conservative politicians will favour budget cuts and if possible tax cuts.  In budget terms they have the same aim - to balance the budget

One of the things I've been doing over the past few months is reading some of the books that have been sitting untouched on my shelves for a long time. A while ago, a friend passed on a copy of a book called Wealth and Poverty: Four Christian Views on Economics,  published by the evangelical publishing house Inter-Varsity Press back in 1984.  It had been sitting on her shelf for a long time, and has been sitting on mine for the past year or two.   Back on the 1980s IVP published a number of 'four views' titles, designed to present readers with some alternative Christian views on contentious subjects.  This one is edited by Robert G. Clouse, with contributions by Gary North, William E Deihl, Art Gish and John Gladwin.  Each contributor contributes a lead essay outlining their viewpoint on the topic - these are around 30 pages each - and then provides a brief response to the other three.  North is touted as representing 'Free Market Capitalism' , Deihl's view is l

It would be hard to find someone who was more of a climate policy insider than Ross Garnaut.  After a varied career in government and academia including a stint as economic advisor to Prime Minister Bob Hawke, Garnaut was asked by the Rudd Government to review climate policy soon after the 2007 election.  The result, completed in 2008, was the report which laid the groundwork for Rudd's emissions trading scheme which came within a whisker of being legislated before it was scuppered by Tony Abbott.  He was asked to revise and update this work in 2011 and this update provided the groundwork for the Clean Energy Futures Package which was legislated in 2012 and included a price on carbon. Last year Garnaut released a book,  Super-Power: Australia's low carbon opportunity,  which further updates his analysis and simplifies it a little for readers like me. You might think that after seeing his careful policy work trashed by fossil fuel industry stooges, Garnaut would be angry or disi

Climate change is a toxic process for our (or God's) planet, and is also a toxic subject in Australian politics which has brought down, at last count, three Prime Ministers.  No aspect of climate change policy is more toxic than the idea of a carbon price. Most economists will tell you that if you want to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases in a capitalist economy, the most efficient tool in our policy toolbox is a price mechanism.  While the details of such mechanisms are complex and varied the concept is simple - companies that emit greenhouse gases (CO2, methane etc) need to pay a price for every tonne they emit.  This price will give them an incentive to reduce their emissions, and provide an advantage for no- or low-emissions technologies to be developed and deployed. As with so many things economists see as obvious, there are many reasons why this is not as easy as it sounds.  Chief among them is the fact that companies which emit greenhouse gases don't want to pa