September 2, 2014
Tea Party Time on both sides of the Atlantic
There is always a complex but close relationship between economic conditions and political options, such that the understanding of one invariably requires an understanding of the other. That is particularly true in periods of sharp economic or political change of the kind we have known since 2008. The decision by the MP, Douglas […] read more »
July 15, 2014
Economics and the Gathering Storm
One lesson that you kind of learn the hard way in American politics is that it is always a mistake to think that, from a progressive point of view, things are so bad that they can’t get any worse. You only have to think it before the ground shifts under your feet again. I know […] read more »
July 8, 2014
Reflections on Economic Under-performance on Both Sides of the Atlantic
One of the most intriguing problems in any form of contemporary analysis – political or economic – is to judge whether contemporary trends are best read as a glass half-full or a glass half-empty. The events themselves rarely dictate which view should prevail: almost always the judgment call (and it is necessarily a matter of […] read more »
March 16, 2014
Paul Ryan as the Prince of Paupers
Given the scale and depth of poverty in the United States, it is not surprising that periodically debates about it should surface in Washington DC. What is more surprising is that the issue of poverty is not permanently center-stage. It did return there briefly last week because of the publication of a report on the […] read more »
January 24, 2014
In Defense of the NHS
There has been a lot of talk and writing lately, by Cal Thomas and others uneasy with Obamacare, about the lessons that we can and should draw from what they characterize as the failure of socialized medicine in the U.K. In doing so, the picture they draw of health care in the U.K. […] read more »
January 11, 2014
America’s War on Poverty, America’s War on the Poor
January 2014 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the State of the Union Address in which Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty.[1] This anniversary is leading to much soul-searching here in the United States.[2] Partly that soul-searching reflects the high levels of poverty that persist in contemporary America. The US does not define the poverty […] read more »
October 3, 2013
Like father, like son? Ralph Miliband’s political legacy
In the wake of the Daily Mail furor, those of us fortunate enough to have known Ralph Miliband as both an intellectual and a political activist recognize well enough that having him as your father is not a negative for any leader of the Labour Party. It is very much a plus. read more »
October 3, 2013
The American Student Debt Crisis: The Next Financial Timebomb?
In an earlier SPERI comment, Joanne Montgomerie wrote persuasively of household debt being the silent dimension of the financial crisis afflicting both the British and the American economies, and treated that debt as the most telling consequence of the broken Anglo-liberal growth model. She is undoubtedly correct in writing in that manner. read more »
July 29, 2013
Swopping Conservatives
(originally published on the Comment page of the UK’s University of Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute) read more »
