Keynes recognised that the legislation protecting worker’s rights might lead to powerful trades unions, motivated by political ideals rather than the long term interests of their members, being the cause of wages led inflation damaging economic activity. His mistake was to argue that it was a political problem for governments, rather than a problem for [...]
The dilemmas facing the new British government, though not them alone, in dealing with the biggest ever peace-time indebtedness, are how much of public expenditure to cut, what to cut and how to cut it and above all when to start. Do too little too late and “the markets” won’t like it and that would [...]
It was Peter Drucker who invented the 20 to 1 ratio, suggesting top executives wouldn’t be able to manage their firms effectively if they paid themselves more than 20 times their lowest paid employees, because of the ‘hatred’ and ‘contempt’ in which they would be held. Today, top executives in both public and private sectors [...]
George Osborne announced the Conservatives proposal to mutualise and co-op the public sector, describing it as the ‘biggest social revolution since Thatcher sold council houses’. But their proposal just shows how little they understand the essence of those movements. Mutuals and co-ops operate within the for-profit sectors but instead of paying surpluses over to external [...]
Keynes said he could see no reason why a government should become involved in owning a railway. However, the result of privatizing British Rail and trying to open it to competition, suggests Keynes may have been short-sighted. Monopoly might be a bad thing when exploited by some profit maximising economist, but the case against [...]
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