The big questions are about an EU deal and Covid recovery. But one of the other places to look is how we turn our savings into investments.
No amount of further devolution is going to satisfy the SNP’s new supporters if they still end up with austerity
GDP is a convenient, but wildly inaccurate, measure of our true material wealth
We sometimes assume that the big state is a modern phenomenon. But according to John Kay this is not the case: "Like most visitors to northern India, I visited the Taj Mahal. Unlike most visitors, I asked economic questions. Reports of his tax policies suggest that Shah Jahan may have appropriated as much as 40 […]
When we look back at the Victorian era, one thing that puzzles us is how, with an economy a fraction the size of ours, they managed to build so much infrastructure. Well puzzle no more, because John Kay has an answer (and it’s a remarkably simple one): they paid a lot less for it: “The […]
Those who compare the financial sector to the gambling industry show little understanding of either. Whereas casinos, bookies and the like carefully manage their level of exposure to potential loss, the banks have opened themselves right up to the most extreme of downside risks – the so-called ‘black swan’ events popularised by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. […]
John Kay was one of the original New Labour gurus. It’s therefore significant to see him incline, however cautiously, towards Iain Duncan Smith’s thinking on poverty. He begins by asking what poverty actually means in today’s world: “People who struggle to find enough food to eat are poor. The World Bank’s poverty line is an income […]
British observers of the French presidential contest don’t seem overly impressed by the choice on offer. John Kay is no exception, but expresses his disillusion with more elegance than most: “Mr Sarkozy supports retirement at 62: Mr Hollande thinks 60 appropriate. Mr Sarkozy was elected on a programme of reform, and retirement at 62 proved […]