Post Crisis Economics: Recent Episodes
Post Crisis Economics
Will Thomas and Dr Tim Jackson of The University of Liverpool sit down to talk and develop a better understanding of economics, what it is, how it shapes our everyday lives, and with any luck how we can participate in directing it towards a common good.
In our season finale we discuss the thorny issue of inequality. If capitalism is a race to succeed then surely somebody must lose. We discuss how incentives are used to drive innovation, and how these advantages can be used to create monopolies and further broaden the wealth divide. We talk about possible strategies to combat inequality and how those in power are already trying to resist them.
With rise of easy to use trading platforms, more and more people are starting to invest in stocks and shares. This week we look at how businesses can use the stock market to generate finance, how people can abuse the stock market, and even how bubbles are formed.
This week Will asks the deceptively simple question, what exactly is money? It turns out the answer is very complex and even more surprising. Tim also makes his feelings about Bitcoin abundantly clear.
Ever wondered if you could open a bank account with The Bank of England? This week we discover what The Bank of England really does, why it's independent from the government, and how it can use interest rates to control the economy.
Inflation in the west has seldom been so stable for so long, so is it a problem of the past? This week we try and understand how inflation happens, what happens when it does, and why economists are debating if we're likely to see it again sooner than later.
So often politicians talk about how important the economy is, this issue is so huge it often eclipses other issues that emerge in society. Even when things like coronavirus happen, everyone asks “how do we pay for this?”. It always seems like Money is the biggest concern. Money and wealth has become the default measure for success, it’s the one thing nobody wants to spoil. How did wealth become our measure of success?
We've previously discussed how climate change is an example of a market failure, where the free market doesn't deliver the best outcomes. This week we learn how governments use regulation to intervene in these situations to try and improve things.
Doesn’t the growing climate emergency show that capitalism doesn’t work for the benefit of mankind? Yes and no..! In this episode we show that climate change is brought about by capitalism being too good at its job, and also utterly failing to be sustainable. It is the ultimate market failure – the kind of problem that capitalism, and democracy, is just not good at tackling.
In 2012 Starbucks launched an open letter ad campaign in Uk newspapers apologising for not paying enough tax. As a society we can regulate the market and in effect ask corporations to pay their share, but it’s all too easy for these corporations to break the rules. Star bucks had been able to pay just £8.6m in corporation tax over 14 years. only after the pressure of public opinion did they volunteer to pay what they believed to be their fair share, 10 million a year for two years.
The father of macro economics John Maynard Keynes once stated
“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.”
It appears we must be constantly vigilant to hold corporations that often control capital in excess of small nations accountable to the societies in which they operate. We have been told that free markets invariably trend towards the best outcome but it’s undeniable that corporations are only working for themselves.
We all seem to implicitly understand that a strong economy is vital for us to live well and leverage our abilities as a society, but we feel powerless to influence it and direct its potential towards a common good. It’s not surprising then that many of us shy away from economics, its tectonic forces seems unstoppable, obtuse, and cruel.
Will Thomas and Dr Tim Jackson of The University of Liverpool sit down to talk and develop a better understanding of economics, what it is, how it shapes our everyday lives, and with any luck how we can participate in directing it towards a common good.