Search Results for: new economics foundation

Well done the New Economics Foundation!

Radicals have long understood the importance of the garden. Now the New Economics Foundation has got the numbers to back up the sentiment. We and the national economy would be better off for a day in the garden. Ideally a communal garden, since volunteering is probably the only other activity that can be as conducive to a feeling of wellbeing. NEF has quantified the impact of a shorter working week (spreading the available work around) and the personal benefits of spending the spare day digging, planting, pruning and potting. Time outdoors is a stress-busting, calorie-consuming, mobility-enhancing, all-round good thing, and time spent growing stuff you can eat is just the proverbial icing on the homegrown strawberries. It makes economic sense too: from Utrecht to Utah, four-day working week experiments (not necessarily involving fewer hours worked) make people more productive, happier, and thinner.

The way to do less work is to insist that everyone work like a peasant for a day.

Well done there, well done indeed.

The ever glorious new economics foundation

The curse of nef strikes again.

That curse being that even when they do manage to get the analysis of the problem correct (a rare enough occurence) they then veer off into entirely insane proposals for the solution.

Here they manage to get correct that the major cost of housing in this country is the piece of paper that says you can build a house on a certain plot of land. Because planning permission is artificially restricted in supply it costs a lot of money.

Excellent, well done.

So, what do they propose? Granting more planning permission? You know, taking the thumb off that supply and demand scale thingie?

No, they propose taxing the granting of planning permission and the restriction to a monopoly of social landlords the ability to gain large scale planning permission.

Loons, just loons.

For the correct response to a supply shortage really isn\’t the creation of a monopoly of supply plus taxation of supply. It\’s umm, a loosening of supply restrictions which will increase supply and thus reduce prices.

Funding the new economics foundation

I receive a comment from Sam Thompson of the new economics foundation:

Amount of money nef receives from the current government = £0

Really?

Sam, might I suggest that you read your own accounts?

Principal funding sources
Our funding sources are diverse and we receive funding from trusts and foundations, local, regional
and national government and through consultancy contracts.

There is of course wibble room here for the nef.

The aim of nef is to work to establish an economy as if people and the planet mattered.
To advance this aim we work in fotlr Centres:
The Centre for Global Interdependence
. The Centre for W ell-being
. The Centre for the Future Economy
The Centre for Thriving Communities

It\’s the four Centres that get the government dosh, not the nef directly. But since they do mix funds, do transfer and do lift up funds from the Centres to the central body:

e) Restricted funds are to be used for specified purposes as laid down by the donor. Expenditure
which meets these criteria is identified to the fund, together with a fair allocation of overheads
and support costs.

Mhm, hmm…..

Support costs are, umm, £567,000 or so.

So, we\’re told that nef gets no money from the government. nef\’s accounts say they get money from local, regional and national government.

From the apparent structure, the government money goes to the four Centres, each of which are charged support costs, those support costs being what pays for the nef.

This is no government money goes to the nef is it?

Still, I suppose it\’s a paragon of clarity and simplicity compared to the normal reports from that quarter. Remember the Green New Deal which suggested we could increase the capital available for investment in green lovely thingies by lowering interest rates and imposing capital controls in a country that has imported capital for decades? Admittedly, I think that section was written by Caroline Lucas but then who would be stupid enough to let her write anything about economics?

At least we know they\’re being misleading rather than the more normal ignorance of the real world.

The Mssrs. of the new economics foundation

The report, Tackling Climate Change, Reducing Poverty, says that the poor are likely to be worst affected by rising temperatures because they tend to live in less energy-efficient housing, have less access to insurance against floods, and have less money to adapt to higher prices of fuel and food. The authors of the study, by Oxfam and the New Economics Foundation, base their findings on work by organisations including Friends of the Earth.

Hmm, that\’s interesting, isn\’t it?

The new economics foundation seems to think that rising temperatures will create a greater demand for the heating of houses.

It\’s amazing how interesting the results from "new economics" as compared to the old can be.

Those New Economics Foundation Boys

Yes, it\’s Andrew Simms holding forth.

Behind the lamentations is a teenage fantasy of blithe, consequence-free, self-pleasuring that denies the needs of millions in poorer parts of the world who lack electricity, potable water or transport. Our grotesque over-consumption spits in the face of real global poverty, and drives potentially irreversible environmental degradation that hits the poorest first and worst.

In an age of global warming, talk of "green shackles" is like talking about "anti-child labour shackles", or the shackles of laws that prevent us burning down each other\’s houses. We need parameters to be set around sufficient levels of consumption to prevent the footprint of our lifestyles outgrowing the shoe of the planet, and trampling others in the process.

Sadly he seems to rather miss the point that it is by our consuming the products of those poor that they will be able to create the wealth which will raise them up out of poverty. If we all stop consuming then they\’re going to have an even harder time of it than they do now.

On the subject of economics from the New Economic Foundation

This was a single instance of a wider phenomenon occurring in the US under Roosevelt’s New Deal, which was on one level a grand political exploitation of new technologies. FDR sought to rebalance the economy and rescue the country from mass unemployment through public works, which were only made possible by rapid technological advances – not just the advent of electricity, but the engineering techniques associated with highway-building, hydroelectric dams and other major infrastructure.

Idiot.

As Keynes himself pointed out the unemployment was caused by advancing technology in the first place.

And as to the underlying idea. We should be progressive by protecting Britain’s professions?

16 new theses about economics

1 Purpose

Economics seeks to explain how individuals, the organisations (informal and otherwise) and the states (with their associated instruments of government) of which they are a part make decisions for themselves and as they impact others, whether they be known or unknown to the decision maker and whether intended to have impact now or in the future.

No, it’s the study of the allocation of scarce resources.

2 Objectivity

There is no such thing as objective economics. Economics always reflects the choices and values and preferences of the decision maker, economist, organisation, society, country or international organisation that promotes it and must be understood within that political and social context.

No. The search is for those things which are true, not dependent upon the views or desires of the person doing the explanation. This is the science part of the social science of course.

3 Society

Economics must always reflect the society and its circumstances for which its use is anticipated. Since these societies and circumstances vary wildly there are no such things as standard or optimal economic solutions.

The Senior Lecturer doesn’t understand the word “optimal.” Which really means “best we can do in the circumstances.” You know, there are costs and benefits to everything, so, what’s the best balance?

4 Constraints

Economics must reflect the world we live in, the constraints it imposes upon us, the obligations we have to generations to come and the resources currently available to us.

Well, yes, I suppose so. Useful if the study of the allocation of scarce resources notes that resources are scarce.

5 Government

A government is the foundation of almost every state

Tautology.

6 Diversity

Individuals fulfil different roles and functions at different times in their lives. Economics must reflect that fact and recognise that a useful life is not necessarily one dedicated to work for economic (usually monetary) exchange, whilst also recognising the importance of this role for many.

Modigliani and Friedman, lifetime income hypothesis and income smoothing perhaps?

7 Work

Work for monetary exchange takes many forms and can be contractually organised in many ways. Economics should recognise that no one mechanism is better than another if all suit some and that the differing methods of working, including self-employment and entrepreneurial activity, are a part of the necessary choices that an economy likely to meet varying need will encourage.

Where economics doesn’t agree with this is difficult to discern.

8 Discrimination

Economics should not be discriminatory either whether within itself or in the prescriptions it offers or alternatively should be explicit about its choice to be so, making clear those that it intends to favour and why when this discriminatory approach is adopted.

This is about birds going on TV, not professors of practice, isn’t it?

9 Inequality

Economics must recognise that people are not homogenous; each having their own preferences and choices to make that cannot always be anticipated. The consequence is that not all bring the same predispositions to economic activity which in turn means that not all will enjoy the same outcomes. That being said, unless explicit and good reason is given the differences in outcome should do no more than reflect the predispositions that each person does naturally possess and even then the human rights of each individual must be respected to ensure all have access to the society in which they live.

Rather covered by the insistence that utility is personal, isn’t it?

10 Predictability

People are not predictable, and none can know with any certainty what might happen to them in their own future, or that of others. The consequence is that the methods that are used for decision making vary widely, including by the same person when considering different issues. Economics must reflect this reality.

The definition of “rational actor” includes this. Rational meaning consistent or, in the stricter meaning, calculating, *according to what is known* by the actor.

11 Need

Without being prescriptive it is likely that most individuals will have a range of needs that are necessary to meet their material, emotional and intellectual needs, with many also recognising that in combination these activities might provide them with a sense of purpose that they alone can define. Economics is not capable of presuming what those goals might, or should, be.

Utility is personal…..

12 Society

People are social beings. The relationships they have, various communities they live in, organisations they work in, and societies of which they are a part are all shaped by them in their own particular ways, as much as they might be by the other participants in them. Those organisations are as a result complex and unpredictable as well as being open to considerable change over time. Economics must recognise this, and that many of the factors that influence those outcomes can rarely if ever be reduced to issues solely relating to economics exchange.

Utility is personal…..

13 Organisations

Because society can grant some organisations either roles or scale that is disproportionate to that of any individual or community their functioning is of particular significance in economics and worthy of special study to ensure that their influence does not inappropriately impact the relationships between all those individuals on behalf of whose well being it should be presumed that an economy is run unless specific assumptions to the contrary is stated, with reasons given.

We’ve not got anyone studying institutional economics at all……

14 Change

Change is integral to life, and so to economics. Economics must recognise that life is lived in a perpetual state of flux. Because of this continual process of change it is vital that economics is studied within the context of both general history and the history of economic thought because only by doing so can the diversity of possibility be understood.

We did have that Marginalist Revolution around 1870 or so. You know, neoclassical economics which works on this very basis?

15 Surplus, deficits, capital and borrowing

In the process of change that is the perpetual normal state of an economy there will be some who accumulate surpluses, and others deficits, of resources. Some of these surpluses will be represented by tangible property. Other elements will be cash holdings or borrowings. Yet more will be non-cash related financial assets and obligations. Economics must both explain the consequences of these surpluses and deficits arising, including their impact on the well-being of those who have responsibility for them, and explain how they might be managed for the good of all as those involved face changing circumstances over time.

There are entire libraries discussing savings and debts. None of which Spudda is aware of apparently…..you know, maybe Friedman on lifetime income and smoothing?

16 The wider perspective

Important as economics might be to those engaged in its study it is but one of a range of disciplines that seek to explain the human condition and the relationships between those who make up a society. It must be understood, and taught, in that context and not in isolation.

No one does pretend that economics explains gravity….

Snippa teaches economics at a British university….

This is a first from the New Economic Foundation

ECONOMIST
As an Economist in our team you will be a key part of building the case for a new economy and should share our outlook and priorities . You could be working on projects in housing, finance and monetary policy, environment or any other area of our work. You should also be looking to deepen and expand our work and coming up with original ideas as to how to do so.

You will be able to write accessibly for both policy and general public audiences and be comfortable representing NEF in external networks and in the media.

If you are interested in joining us and believe you can help us to shape the economy to enable real change to real people we want to hear from you.

If you would like an informal discussion, please contact David Powell on 0207 820 6362 ([email protected])

Please send a completed application form and equal opportunities form in Word format to [email protected] by 9am, Monday 24 April 2017.

Interviews will take place on Thursday 4 May 2017 at our London office.

Be the first time they’ve had someone on the team able to tell their arse from the economy, won’t it?

Ritchie’s new economics

And there, in a nutshell, John Kay has summarised why we are still in an economic mess. The syllogism that underpins neoclassical economics (and in turn much of neoliberal and neoliberal economics) is firstly that people are always and only self interested (the major premise) and secondly are rational (the minor premise( form which it follows that they maximise their well-being. This is the foundation of the logic of most prevailing economic thought and almost all econometrics.

There are, however, three faults with this a priori thinking. People are a long way from being solely self interested. Secondly they are not rational. And thirdly, as a result, they probably never maximise, although they do undoubtedly compete (which is a very long way from being the same thing, as first noted (I think) be Thorstein Veblen.

This has profound consequences. When models are built on the basis of behaviour that does not exist, giving rise to policy recommendations that conflict with the reality of the human condition then stress happens.

And that’s exactly what is going on now.

If you want a better syllogism this is it: firstly, people want to live harmoniously in community whilst, secondly, wanting to achieve for themselves and those they care for and so thirdly they seek to fulfil as much of their potential as is possible within the constraints imposed upon them.

No one at all is stupid enough to think that humans are solely self-interested. It is, even in Smith’s version, enlightened self-interest that counts. We cannot explain, for example, the adoption of unrelated children without assuming some motivation beyond pure self-interest. The second assumption, that humans are rational: well, do we think that it would be better if we based our worldview on the idea that humans are all mad and irrational? But the rationality assumption isn’t even that human beings are entirely rational. For a start there’s vast areas of neoclassical economics exploring where we know that people are not so: hyperbolic discounting anyone? We also don’t assume that people maximise: we do think that people have a pretty good go at getting the best deal they can but we also know very well that most people, most of the time, satisfact. That’s why most of us are shagging the people we are rather than holding out for Scarlett Johannson or George Clooney (to taste).

But even if we leave all of that aside and take Ritchie’s arguments at their face value.

“wanting to achieve for themselves and those they care for and so thirdly they seek to fulfil as much of their potential as is possible within the constraints imposed upon them.”

How the hell is that different from the idea that people maximise rationally?

Polly discussing economics: not going to turn out well, is it?

GDP statistics benchmark \”us\” against other countries

No, they don\’t. We don\’t report GDP as \”UK GDP is 98.5% of French GDP\” or any other such comparison.

What we actually do is add up all of the market economic activity in the UK, adjust for government and foreign trade, then produce a number.

There is no benchmarking, no comparison with other countries. It is an exercise, purely, in measuring economic activity in the UK.

Doesn\’t mean it\’s perfect, even the inventor, Simon Kuznets, agreed that there are all sorts of problems with it: it doesn\’t measure non-market activity, it doesn\’t measure the distribution of the production and so on. But it\’s useful as long as we recall what is actually being measured.

As shorthand: how big is the pie?

So average GDP growth figures disguise how money has trickled upwards from bottom to top over three decades – the years since the Thatcher insurgency.

As above, GDP figures do not show the distribution, Polly\’s right. But there has been no upwards trickle over the last three decades. It simply isn\’t true that the poor are poorer than they were in 1981. Nor are the working poor, the squeezed middle, the middle classes, the mean, median incomes lower or any other measure you care to use about absolute incomes or living standards.

Of the growth that has happened since 1981 more has gone to the rich than the rich\’s share of national income in 1981, yes. Thus the rich\’s share of that national income has risen. This is not the same, not the same at all, as saying that money has moved from the poor to the rich.

Do note as well that this move has happened in all of the advanced, industrialised, countries. The Gini (index or coefficient, whichever you prefer to use) has risen everywhere. This is not something specific to UK politics. It\’s happened in Sweden, Denmark, China, India, just about everywhere: why, we might even think that if it\’s been happening globally it has some global cause.

A well-timed report from the Resolution Foundation this week laid out the raw figures: of every £100 rise in national income since 1977, the half of the population on average or below average incomes received just £12. Meanwhile, the top tenth received a £14 share. For much of the past 30 years the bottom half did see their incomes rise, so they didn\’t notice they were falling behind the rest.

See? Even Polly\’s figures do not show a movement of money from poor to rich. They show an uneven distribution of newly created riches, something which is very different indeed.

While everyone has varying ideas about how much inequality is tolerable – usually according to where they stand on the earnings scale – only extreme eat-what-you-kill social Darwinians think there is no limit. Stretch the social elastic beyond bearing, and it will snap at some point.

I\’m really not sure that I want a woman rich in years to be comparing society to a piece of knicker elastic. Purely a personal foible I know. But yes, accept the point: now, what is that point?

Anyone want to try and give a level for the Gini which is Goldilocks right? The level our parents had in 1976? There are those who claim that that was the best ever for the UK as that was when we had the lowest Gini.

Me, I\’d say that going back to 1976 levels of income would produce a bloody revolution today.

Yet he plainly doesn\’t get it: how extraordinary that he should drop a hint that as a stimulus he might abolish the 50% tax rate, only paid by the top 1%. That could be the awakening moment that lights the blue touchpaper of public opinion.

I doubt it very much indeed. We\’ve had this tax rate for what, two, three years? Reversing it is unlikely to bring the mob out onto the streets really. Although agreed, it\’d be pretty useless as a piece of stimulus for stimulus depends on how much dosh is involved. We\’re not even sure yet whether this tax rate is revenue raising at all and even the most hopeful estimates think it brings in a couple of £ billion. Compared to a £1,400 billion economy, just not stimulus one way or the other.

Gavin Kelly, writing about this research, headlines his comment \”Who ate all the pie?\” Everyone knows the answer, as Jonathan Portes, head of National Institute for Economic and Social Research, echoes: \”The top 1% has taken a hugely disproportionate share of growth while the middle and below stagnated.\”

And as I say, this has been happening everywhere. In every country. Thus a global cause, no? Me, I\’d point to globalisation. There\’s some small segment (and the real income growth has been in the top 0.1%, not the 1%) for whom globalisation has meant being able to earn a few pennies each from billions instead of a few pennies each from only their fellow national tens of millions.

I think of a distant relative who buys oil in the \’Stans, ships it across Asia and collects the profits in West London. Globalisation has opened up such opportunities (and Stephen Spielberg movies now show worldwide, Hollywood finally getting more revenue internationally than domestically, Mittal Steel doesn\’t even have a plant in the UK I don\’t think, etc etc). OK, so that\’s my theory but if every country is seeing the Gini grow then there\’s got to be some theory about why the Gini grows that applies to all countries.

All the reasons why middle earnings kept rising until eight years ago have now evaporated. Incomes grew when many more women went to work – but that has plateaued.

Err, no: ceteris paribus, more women in the workforce is going to lower individual incomes. Might raise household incomes, but that\’s not what we\’re talking about here.

Debt kept too many households afloat until the crash.

Taking out debt isn\’t counted as income so that doesn\’t work either.

Solutions include………. and a strong industrial policy to secure better jobs

Eh? Manufacturing is now a low income occupation. Building more factories isn\’t going to create better paid or more secure jobs: anyone who bashes tin is now competing directly with several hundred million Chinee on $300 a month. The only way not to compete directly with them is to have large amounts of capital behind each worker: be highly automated that is. Which of course doesn\’t in fact create many jobs. Well, except in the German capital goods factories.

No, Polly and economics, didn\’t turn out well.

Wadebridge Renewable Energy Network

So our Geoffrey Lean gets all excited about the Wadebridge Renewable Energy Network.

For today it will launch an attempt to become Britain\’s first solar town.

Backed by the local MP and chamber of commerce, the scheme aims to generate a third of the electricity used by the town\’s 10,000 people from renewable sources – mainly the sun – by 2015, and make up to £450,000 a year for community projects from the Government\’s feed-in tariff.

The Wadebridge Renewable Energy Network, a not-for-profit co-operative, will put solar panels gratis on the roofs of local homes and businesses, allow them to use the free electricity, and collect the tariff for the community fund. Local landowners will be offered attractive deals to install larger arrays and a couple of wind turbines will be added to the mix. Anyone from the town can join the co-operative and decide how the money is spent.

Fascinating. But there\’s something to strike terror into the heart of anyone numerate on that website:

WREN has links with the renewable energy industry, the co-operative movement, the New Economics Foundation NEF,

And yes, you\’re right, nowhere is there any explanation of how this actually works.

The way it\’s all written they seem to have found that elusive invisible money tree. They\’re going to make a profit from the feed in tariffs are they? But the feed in tariffs are calculated to give an 8% return on the capital invested.

And they\’re giving the solar panels away for free. So, erm, where is the capital coming from? And that is something that I can\’t find anywhere. Who is paying?

I suspect that it is of course us who are doing so. We\’re buying them these free solar panels out of our taxes.

The community of Wadebridge and surrounding villages are entitled to benefit from their own natural energy resources and subsequent production, rather than the traditional model of large companies profiting outside of the town, the county of Cornwall, or even outside of the UK.

Doesn\’t really fly, does it? If we\’re putting the capital in then we get the capital returns, no?

Or if you want to think of it another way, some poor sod in Middlesborough is coughing up his taxes so that the people of Wadebridge get to have \”free\” electricity plus £450,000 a year to spend on community projects.

Why?

If anyone can find out where the money is coming from I\’d love to know.

Madsen\’s new book

Rather than simply criticizing this situation, I have taken steps to help rectify it. Coming out soon is my new book \”Understanding Economics.\” Its subtitle is \”Economics for non-economists,\” and its aim is to introduce those who have not studied economics professionally to an understanding of its essentials. I have tried to do this without jargon or equations, yet in what I hope is a fluid and non-patronizing way.

Among the first copies to be sent out, one will go to a foundation which uses the word economics in its title, but nowhere in its thinking, and one will go to a retired accountant who is paid to write about economics yet quite obviously knows nothing at all about it. Others will go to journalists who report their output uncritically.

I think we can guess who those two copies are going to. Now we just await their reviews, yes?

Ritchie\’s found a new dupe

This time his same old report goes out under the banner of the Green Party, with Caroline Lucas headlining.

First up is the Green New Deal: they\’ve still not grasped that by making energy more expensive you destroy more jobs than you create in making energy more expensive. 2:1 according to that Spanish report.

Now the Spanish may or may not be right in their counting: but to, as the Green New Deal does in all its myriad appearances, claim that because a someone now has a job that nett jobs have been created is nonsense. We need to look at the effect upon unemployment of the rise in the cost of energy as well.

We also get a nice little chart about how the debt was brought down after WWII. With no mention of the budget surpluses that were run at the time: nor the inflation which ate into the debt. Tsk, tsk.

You\’ve already guessed that there\’s going to be the argument that pre 2007 spending was just fine and dandy, haven\’t you? It\’s revenue that\’s fallen off a cliff?

Entirely ignoring the point that to be properly Keynesian, back in 2007 and the years before, at the tippy toppy of a vast boom (the longest in our modern history) we should have been running huge budget surpluses. If you\’re a Keynesian that is. So that there was room for both fiscal expansion and also to take on the debt to pay for it.

A proper Keynesian would therefore place the blame with Brown….for not taxing enough or for spending too much (either way) in 2001-2007. A non-Keynesian might look at the same figures and simply blame Brown for pissing away all that money.

This is quite gorgeous:

The second step in this programme is to take
action to close down tax avoidance that exploits
loopholes in our tax system. In 2008 the TUC
estimated that there was £25 billion of tax
avoidance per annum in the UK. The figure has
been disputed – most recently by a coalition
government minister who on one hand claimed this
sum represented legitimate use of loopholes and
was not, therefore, avoidance and who then on the
other hand said the government was determined to
stamp out tax avoidance, leading to serious doubt
if he really understood what he was talking
aboutxvi. It has also been challenged by a Big 4
firm of accountants – but only because they said
that there really was no such thing as tax
avoidance at allxvii. We accept the TUC view that
there is serious tax avoidance in the tax system
– and that this is particularly problematic in
big corporate businesses. That is why many of the
legislative proposals to raise more tax noted
below are aimed at these issues.

That \”TUC reports that\” is in fact Ritchie himself making entirely absurd estimations of the amount of avoidance and evasion. He even says so himself in that very report: \”undoubtedly some of this is the result of legitimate uses of tax allowances\” or some such. And then goes on to insist that there\’s still that £25 billion missing.

And as to \”we accept the TUC view\” well of course you do. It\’s the same damn person writing both reports.

And guess what? We also get an echo of the report Ritchie wrote for PCS, the taxman\’s union. Yup, hire more union members!

But really, the very bestest is at the last. Here\’s their list of references:

The following documents are referenced in this report:
A Green New Deal, The Green New Deal group, New
Economics Foundation, London, 2008
http://www.neweconomics.org/sites/neweconomics.org/fil
es/A_Green_New_Deal_1.pdf
The Cuts Won’t Work, The Green New Deal group, New
Economics Foundation, London, 2009
http://www.neweconomics.org/sites/neweconomics.org/fil
es/The_Cuts_Wont_Work.pdf
A Socially Just Path to Economic Recovery: TUC
Submission to 2009 Pre Budget Report, Trade Union
Congress, London, 2009
http://www.tuc.org.uk/extras/pbrsubmission2009.pdf
A Code of Conduct for Taxation Richard Murphy,
Association for Accountancy and Business Affairs and
Tax Justice Network, London, 2007
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Documents/TaxCodeofCondu
ctFinal.pdf
Country-by-Country Reporting: Holding Multinational
Corporations to Account Wherever They Are, Richard
Murphy, Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic
Development, Washington, 2009
http://www.financialtaskforce.org/wpcontent/
uploads/2009/06/Final_CbyC_Report_Published.pd
f
In Place of Cuts, George Irvin, Dave Byrne, Richard
Murphy, Howard Reed and Sally Ruane, Compass, London,
2009
http://clients.squareeye.com/uploads/compass/documents
/Compass%20in%20place%20of%20cuts%20WEB.pdf

Information Exchange: what would help developing
countries now? Richard Murphy, Tax Research LLP,
London, 2009
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Documents/InfoEx0609.pdf
Small Company Taxation in the UK: A review in the
aftermath of the ‘Arctic Systems’ Ruling, Richard
Murphy, Tax Research LLP, London, 2007
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Documents/TRLLPSmallBusi
nessTax8-08.pdf
Stemming the Flood, Richard Murphy, Trade Union
Congress, London, 2009
http://www.tuc.org.uk/extras/stemmingtheflood.pdf
Taxing Banks: A joint submission to the International
Monetary Fund, Richard Murphy, The Tax Justice
Network and others, London and Washington, 2010
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Documents/IMFTaxingBanks
.pdf
Tax Justice and Jobs: The business case for investing
in staff at HM Revenue & Customs
Richard Murphy , Tax Research LLP for PCS, London,
2010
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Documents/PCSTaxGap.pdf
The direct tax cost of tax havens to the UK Richard
Murphy , Tax Research LLP, London, 2009
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Documents/TaxHavenCostTR
LLP.pdf
The Missing Billions, Richard Murphy, Trade Union
Congress, London, 2008
http://www.tuc.org.uk/touchstone/Missingbillions/1miss
ingbillions.pdf
The Robin Hood Tax, London, 2010
http://robinhoodtax.org.uk/how-it-works/the-big-idea/

As far as I can tell, every single one of those reports was written by Richard Murphy. We\’ve not actually got any outside references at all: everything is built upon the Tower of Babble that the Great Man himself has been pumping out through various front groups over the past few years.

Every time one part of such a report is critiqued, critiqued to the point of being shown to be untrue, (as examples, the £25 billion lost to tax avoidance being an artefact of his refusing to recognise people doing what Parliament expressly wants them to do by using tax allowances, or his tax debts unpaid figure which includes all those people and companies which go bust and thus have no money to pay taxes, his highly entertaining idea that raising tax rates on the highly paid will lead to greater market labour being offered (no, really, he thinks, contrary to what all of the research shows, that raising tax rates on high earners will mean their wives go out to work), his even more entertaining idea that a rise in CGT will produce more revenue….when our historical experience is that revenue fell when Lawson raised it and only rose again when the rate was cut….well, you get the picture, eh?), this same falsity is then laid out as fact in the next report.

A fact which relies upon no one bothering with the errors in the first report for its veracity.

With that list of reports you can see the stilts upon which this nonsense is balanced.

For more detailed rebuttals of each of most of the points he makes in these varied reports (and thus a snatching away of those stilts he supports this latest nonsense upon) just have a search through the archives here for \”Ritchie\”, \”Richard Murphy\”, \”our favourite retired accountant \” and even the \”Ragging on Ritchie\” category.

Have fun.

The know no economics foundations latest dribble

This is simply glorious:

The impact of globalisation has made matters worse, contributing to an increasing specialisation of the workforce….

Yup, they\’re agin\’ the division and specialisation of labour, the very thing which makes Smithian economic growth happen.

Is there no beginning to their understanding of the subject of economics?

The Green New Deal Report

You just know that no good is going to come out of a report by this lot:

The Green New Deal Group, July 2008
Foreword
Larry Elliott, Economics Editor of The Guardian
Colin Hines, Co-Director of Finance for the Future, former
head of Greenpeace International’s Economics Unit
Tony Juniper, former Director of Friends of the Earth
Jeremy Leggett, founder and Chairman of Solarcentury
and SolarAid
Caroline Lucas, Green Party MEP
Richard Murphy, Co-Director of Finance for the Future and
Director, Tax Research LLP
Ann Pettifor, former head of the Jubilee 2000 debt relief
campaign, Campaign Director of Operation Noah
Charles Secrett, Advisor on Sustainable Development,
former Director of Friends of the Earth
Andrew Simms, Policy Director, nef (the new economics
foundation)

I\’ll have a piece up in a day or two. But seriously, it doesn\’t look good so far.

Update. It really is a piece of work. Capital controls, credit controls, low interest rates so that green investments become profitable (!) and at one point they seem to think that LIBOR is set by the Association of British Bankers. Instead of reported by them.

Keep an eye on The Register.

 

 

 

 

So how do we test if a proposal is bollocks?

Letter to The Times

Miatta Fahnbulleh
Chief Executive of the New Economics Foundation

OK, we think it could very well be.

Prem Sikka
Emeritus Professor of Accounting, University of Essex

It probably is you know

Fran Boait
Executive Director, Positive Money

Oh yes, now we’re cooking!

Neil Lawson
Director of Compass

Asymptotically approaching 99% certainty here.

France Coppola
Economist and author

Eh? You what?

Richard Murphy
Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City, University of London

100% now. To be fair here we don’t need all the rest, the last tells us anyway.

How damn stupid do you have to be to work for NEF?

Miatta Fahnbulleh, a former academic turned policy wonk who has worked for three prime ministers and the Labour party, is not your typical thinktank chief.

Fahnbulleh arrived in the UK from Liberia in 1986 and her family successfully claimed asylum in the UK, settling in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. “My childhood in Liberia had a massive impact,” says the 38-year-old. “You see abject poverty and extreme wealth, you see how the family you were born into affects your life and you understand why inequality is wrong. It’s not just that it perpetuates itself, it’s that it’s fundamentally wrong and it needs to be changed. And that’s my core, that pursuit of economic justice.

“Coming from two of the poorest countries in the world [Fahnbulleh also witnessed the deprivation in her mother’s home country, Sierra Leone] and seeing kids forced to fight in the civil war and being robbed of their childhood can’t help but colour your values,” she says. But while the economic and social injustices in Liberia are extreme, the UK is far from an egalitarian oasis, she says.

You’ve seen true, real, absolute poverty, the less than $1.90 a day kind. Actually experienced it around you.

Then you’re going to spend your professional life wibbling about inequality in the only economic system, ever, which has abolished that absolute poverty?

How damn stupid do you have to be to work for the new economics foundation then?

Timmy elsewhere

At CapX. Being allowed to make fun of NEF is fun again:

It was Giles Wilkes, now of the Financial Times, who said that the New Economics Foundation should stand for “Not Economics, Frankly”. And reading today’s Guardian, I could see what he meant.

The paper carries an op-ed by Anna Coote, a senior fellow at the think-tank. She’s making the remarkable claim that as productivity rises, we will all have to work harder and harder to keep our jobs and incomes.