Spending money we don’t have, on things we don’t need, to create impressions that won’t last, on people we don’t care about

I’ve wondered for some time now, why a mainstream political party doesn’t use an alternative measure to GDP as a major plank of its political platform (e.g. Genuine Progress Indicator, or Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare). The use of GDP growth as a barometer of societal well-being is entirely inappropriate, a view supported by none [...]

Interesting economics

Image source: minnpost.com An article was published in The Australian yesterday entitled Dismal science of economics faces dilemma. This will come as no surprise to anyone and the piece might easily have been published 30 odd years ago. Indeed, if economics courses were priced on the free market, you probably couldn’t give them away. That [...]

The poverty of economic history

Image source: recessionhistory.info The biggest problem with governments is that they are run by politicians whose first concern is the electoral cycle. The second biggest problem is that these politicians tend to have advisors with economics degrees from top universities where the economic history courses have limited appeal alongside the finance-oriented courses that are viewed [...]