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30 Jan 2012This is my latest Perspective column for Fund Strategy. “That’s so unfair”. The familiar shriek of teenagers when exasperated by their parents. Politicians also seem to have taken it up with fervour when discussing contemporary capitalism. Earlier this month the leaders of both Britain’s main political parties were at it. David Cameron, the prime minister, [...]
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27 Jan 2012This piece was originally written as a blog post for www.fundweb.co.uk The first and last paragraphs can be ignored by the general reader as they are aimed at the publication’s readers. The more general point, about how even Republican presidential candidates are anxious about prosperity, is of broader interest. Anyone who advises individuals on wealth [...]
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13 Jan 2012Was inequality one of the main causes of the economic crisis? The contention is supported by influential voices such as Bill Gross of Pimco and Raghuram Rajan, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. The question has to be unpicked carefully. There are two blind alleys to avoid. The first is to focus [...]
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16 Dec 2011Another interesting week in the debate: * Five Books interview with David Acemoglu, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lots of useful references. Sympathetic to Occupy Wall Street. Like many commentators he argues that the banks play a key role in the new inequality. Also that the rich are manipulating political [...]
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13 Dec 2011“The key question hanging over the West now is ‘how do you allocate pain?’”. These were the words of Gillian Tett, the US managing editor of the Financial Times and ubiquitous media presence, in last night’s BBC2 Newsnight programme (six days left to view). As a description of the current mindset of the western elites [...]
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11 Dec 2011I do not have time to go into them in detail but there were some important developments this week in the debate about inequality: * America. Barack Obama gave what was widely regarded as a landmark speech in Kansas. It attacked inequality, demanded fairness and called for the development of a new nationalism. * Britain. [...]
This is my latest book review for spiked. I have a mildly embarrassing confession to make. I love statistics. Whenever I start to examine a social or economic question, I gather all the available data to see what it tells me. Such statistics provide a valuable means to go beyond personal impressions. People I happen [...]
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5 Dec 2011This is my latest Perspective column for Fund Strategy. Do you feel squeezed? If so how painful are you finding it? And is it likely to get better or worse in the foreseeable future? It is not surprising that the compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary recently named “squeezed middle” the word of the year [...]
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1 Dec 2011Rather than make a general comment on yesterday’s public sector strike in Britain I just want to draw attention to one aspect of the debate. It is hard to think of a better example of how the demand for equality, historically associated with the left, can take on a conservative character. When the premise of [...]
Voltaire, a Swedish magazine, has published a translation of my recent spiked review of Charles Kenny’s Getting Better.
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