Buy nothing day
It may have passed you by, but Saturday was Buy Nothing Day, a movement whipped up by the anti-consumerist organization AdBusters. They claim that “there’s only one way to avoid the collapse of this human experiment of ours on Planet Earth; we have to consume less”. The day “highlights the environmental and ethical consequences of shopping” promising that “for 24 hours you’ll get your life back”. AdBusters has long campaigned on the evils of neoclassical

The Beautiful Tree -
There are plentiful reasons to recommend The Beautiful Tree, a book that challenges and inspires in equal measure. It is the remarkable story of Professor Tooley's discovery of how the poorest of poor are setting about improving the education of their children without the state and the often patronizing efforts of many in the development community. The implications this has for thinking about the history and future of educati

1942: Where it all went wrong?
On this day 67 years ago, Beveridge laid the foundations of the wefare state.

On reducing inequality
Let us imagine that you are concerned about the amount of inequality there is in UK society. You wish to reduce said inequality. I might not (in fact don't) share that concern but even as the interested amateur that I am as an economist (ie, not an economist, simply an interested amateur) I might be able to offer some guidance as to how you might do this. The first observation would be that some countries have indeed lowered inequality (and relative poverty) so to reach your ambition (which, remember, I don't particularly share) we could go and look at what they have done. The poster children here are of course the Nordic countries. And the most important thing we can say about t

British Fusionism
'Fusionism' is the name generally given to the ideological alliance between conservatives and libertarians, particularly within the US Republican Party. It is widely seen as a major feature of the Reagan Administration, though as a political movement it goes back much further than that. Meanwhile, many commentators argue that the decline of ‘fusionism’ during the Bush years (when social conservatives came to dominate the party) is a significant part of the Republicans’ current woes. It is probably fair to say that ‘fusionism’ is less ea