Angrynomics

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A repeat of the austerity experiment is highly unlikely for a number of reasons. For a start, the experience of the period since the global financial crisis has dented the idea that higher deficits mean higher borrowing costs.

When crude was found in the North Sea, the fields were divided up between Norway and the UK. Norway decided it would be a good idea to set up a sovereign wealth fund that could be used to pay for long-term spending, such as the extra health and social costs required for an ageing population. Britain squandered the windfall on current spending: the peak of North Sea oil revenues came in the 1980s as the bills started to roll in for mass unemployment. The world keeps getting richer and richer,” Blyth said. “Yet we see Americans getting more and more angry.”

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I read Angrynomics by Eric Lonergan and Mark Blyth over the weekend, and note that Larry Elliot commented on it in The Guardian earlier this week. My guess is that it will not receive as much attention as Stephanie Kelton's ‘The Deficit Myth', but because it is written in fairly accessible form is bound to attract some notice. The third big idea is for helicopter drops of money to directly drive consumption. I admit that I have real problems with this as well. Ignore the fact that it is indiscriminate. Ignore to the fact that it may not work. The real point is that I think a job guarantee will work better: it's my belief that this is what people want right now. Los impuestos sobre la renta y el patrimonio se introdujeron no solo para luchar contra la inflación o para aumentar la recaudación, sino también para combatir a la plutocracia. It's a short and snappy book that gets right to the heart of the issue, and doesn't waste time in providing solutions. Personally I quite like the hardware/software analogy they use for explaining the past hundred years of capitalism. Explaining how we're due for another sort of reset, not necessarily an entire overhaul, is really helpful in passing on this message.

But I was also disappointed with their policy prescriptions. First that's because they place too little emphasis on the climate crisis. Of course it's mentioned, but is not made the epicentre of change. In the current environment I find that surprising.Instead the authors propose making tech firms pay a data dividend for using of our data to pay for a universal basic income (UBI), but it’s not made clear why tech firms would acquiesce to such a thing when, as the authors recognise themselves, they go to such lengths to avoid tax? Blyth, who serves as director of the Rhodes Center for International Economics and Finance within Brown’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, discussed the book in a Thursday, June 18, virtual talk with Ed Steinfeld, director of the Watson Institute. In these blinks, you’ll get a passionate primer on how the elite institutions that structure the global economy have mismanaged their responsibilities. You’ll also get a deep dive into the various types of anger and emotional fallout that this failure exacerbates. But don’t lose hope! We’ll end with some policy ideas that could curtail our current crisis. I think this book is a fair critique of the current economic model (Capitalism 3.0) and the one worth investigated by more readers as it also provides some sound ideas of moving forward.

With the world currently being ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic and the lure of a vaccine still quite some time away, the micro and macro stressors that incite public anger and resentment are only bound to increase. The resonance of such an increase would be felt uniformly across the globe. For example, with the concept of social distancing more or less being a permanent facet in the lexicon of employment, the need for automation would only increase exponentially. Similarly, the gig economy would face a future that is uncertain, if downright, perilous. So are there measures that may be instituted to ameliorate the real uncertainties plaguing a majority of the global populace?They reject Thomas Piketty's global wealth tax and the EU's digital sales tax because of insurmountable collective action problems, and the unavoidability of aggressive multinational tax avoidance. Regarding Piketty we agree, but for the EU we're not so sure. Yes, there is opposition to the digital sales tax – Ireland in particular – but Covid19 will bring renewed pressure, so this can't be ruled out. Also, the base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) initiative, country by country reporting and the moves toward corporate taxation based on formulary apportionment, means curbing aggressive tax avoidance is now a real possibility.