Tuesday 17th November

How the wage squeeze fuelled the crash and threatens recovery

As part of his TUC touchstone report "Unfair to Middling: How Middle Income Britain's Shrinking Wages Fuelled the Crash and Threaten Recovery", Stewart Lansley argues that a long term wage sqeeze on lower and middle income groups has had a serious effect on the global financial crisis, and may threaten any 'green shoots' of recovery in the future
Thursday 12th November

Here comes the citizen co-producer

The austere public budgets that will come out of the financial crisis offer, as a silver lining, a renaissance in cooperative citizen engagement in the supply of welfare services
Wednesday 11th November

Is the next crash just around the corner?

Professor Nouriel Roubini believes we are already pumping up the next financial markets bubble, whose collapse will dwarf that of 2008. If he’s right, we face an unthinkable political and economic disaster. Why does he think this, and can we do anything to forestall it?

The future of markets

1989 marked the victory of markets over vested interests: 2009 has witnessed the reverse. Market power needs to be tackled in ways economists have ignored. We thank John Kay and the Wincott Foundation for permission to reprint in full the 2009 Wincott Lecture given on October 20.
Saturday 7th November

Dealing with the post-crisis: the US's pain options

The banking crisis creates a quantum of pain that we will all feel. But there are choices in the way that pain is distributed. John Mauldin considers the choices for the US economy: Argentine, Eastern European, Austrian, Japanese or a difficult glide into safety?
Thursday 5th November

Plan B on climate: national deals

Copenhagen will not deliver the right global deal. It is time for nations to save us from climate catastrophe.
Monday 2nd November

Common sense Nobel

This month's most surprising Nobel Prize winner was not Barack Obama but Elinor Ostrom, a political scientist from the University of Indiana who picked up the coveted Nobel Memorial Prize for Economic Science.
Friday 30th October

A postman puts his case

'Pat Stamp' on the postal workers' strike
Tuesday 27th October

Responses to Johnson on Bentham’s defense of usury

Earlier this month, Peter Johnson gave an account of Karl-Heinz Brodbeck's critique of the famous utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Benhtam's defence of usury, the charging of high rates of interest on money. Below, Tony Curzon Price and then Thomas Ash respond.
Thursday 22nd October

Breaking the banks

The separation of the banking industry into utility and other services is moving up the agenda. Could it help prevent the next crisis, and is the political will there to take on the banks?
Monday 19th October

Freak storm

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Friday 9th October

Brodbeck on Bentham

Does the institution of money transform us through becoming the metaphor for all social relations, or is money universal because all is exchange?
Wednesday 7th October

Interview with James Galbraith

James Galbraith talks about Paul Krugman's NYT article, "How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?",  the academic discipline after the crash, the forgotten traditions in economics, the economics and law of fraud and much else over breakfast at the Goodenough Club
Tuesday 6th October

Central Asia's water problem

A regional crisis created mainly by disastrous Soviet policies will only be exacerbated by the challenges of climate change
Friday 25th September

Science funding: what would Patocka say?

An argument over Czech science funding would have worried philosopher and national dissident hero Jan Patocka

Joined-up piping

A Qatar-Turkey-EU gas pipeline could form an important part of Europe’s and the Gulf’s energy infrastructure. The interdependence created by networks like these should be celebrated
Thursday 24th September

Why the crisis of business is only beginning

The economic crisis will change the attitude of the middle classes towards government and business long-term. The corporate world needs to rediscover good behaviour for its own good
Tuesday 22nd September

Republicans at work

If management rhetoric is anything to go by, the post-industrial workplace should be a pristine model of participative democracy. Strict, Taylorist routine has been out of favour, both economically and culturally, for well over thirty years now. It has been replaced by an emphasis on ‘teamwork', ‘the psychological contract', ‘dialogue' and ‘participation'.

William Davies is a Demos Associate and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Science, Innovation & Society, Said Business School. He blogs at potlatch.org.uk

Earlier this year, the UK's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills commissioned David MacLeod, a management guru, to carry out a review of ‘employee engagement' as a necessary factor in Britain's future prosperity. Again, the case for flatter, more interactive relationships was made.

But what does any of this have to do with democracy or dispersal of power? The republican agenda, advanced by theorists such as Stuart White, Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit, stresses the need to tackle forms of domination and restraint on positive freedoms, in all facets of society. The workplace can not be exempt from this sort of political critique. And yet a common assumption about the status of firms in society suggests that they sit in a political vacuum, allowing their decisions and structures to be only evaluated in terms of economic efficiency.

The problem with the managerial ‘participation' rhetoric is that it only values human autonomy to the extent that it contributes to productivity and business performance. Hence a growing feeling of irony pervades our workplaces, as described eloquently in the sociology of Richard Sennett, and conveyed brilliantly in the BBC sit-com, The Office.

We no longer mean the words we speak to each other at work. The rhetoric of equality and power appears to exert no friction on the dominant, Anglo-Saxon capitalist model, in which management power is unchallenged, so long as value is constantly returned to external shareholders. Some recent studies have shown a gradual decline in the number of employees who feel they have considerable control over their work.

Monday 21st September

Cash flow in the Gaza Strip

The military offensive against Gaza was the latest stage in a calculated assault on the feasibility of a Palestinian state, and in particular a viable Palestinian economy
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