Donald Trump is pushing ahead with his protectionist agenda, and possibly with good reason. There were over 17 million manufacturing jobs in the US in 2000, in the 10 years that followed, China joined the WTO and the US lost about a third of those jobs. In this edition of the Debunking Economics podcast Phil Dobbie asks Steve Keen whether protectionism is valid in this day and age. What of the conventional philosophy that trying to do everything locally avoids economies of scale and pushes prices up for everyone? Steve’s argument, you need a complex economy to produce efficiency and innovation. It’s the lack of protectionism that has stymied growth in many economies. But there are exceptions, especially for an Elon Musk fan boy like Steve!
EU politics
Yanis Varoufakis – “BREXIT: What must be avoided and what must be done, now!”
No venue is better suited for a detoxifying discussion on Brexit than The Royal Society, whose motto (Nullius In Verba – On No One’s Word) ought to be the foundation of all rational debate. I was, thus, […]
Economics
Renegade Inc: Public Private Partnership: PFI – A Fraud on the People
Successive British governments have used the Private Finance Initiative since the early 90’s to fund infrastructure and public spending – but the scheme has always been controversial. The public/private partnership was supposed to create efficiency […]
Austerity
Steve Keen – Economic Stagnation in Italy under the Euro
This is the recorded talk I gave to Positive Money Italy (http://monetapositiva.blogspot.com/) on November 23rd 2018. I explain that excessive private credit caused the relative boom in Italy before the crisis, and the collapse in […]
Paradox is proponents of free trade still hang onto the notion that their respective countries should have positive trade balances with everyone else – impossible. Throughout Britain’s domination of world trade in 19th century it had a negative trade balance.