The Institute of Economic Affairs released a paper this week called …And the Pursuit of Happiness. In a nutshell, it argues that the government is wasting its time measuring happiness, because it is economic growth that makes people happy. It adds that we shouldn’t worry about inequality either, and that big government is bad. In [...]
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Why Britain needs usury laws
The payday loan company Wonga.com is advertising aggressively at the moment. With the pressure of Christmas, many people might be tempted to bring forward their December paycheck by a few days to get some last-minute spending in. But you pay a high price for that advance: Wonga’s homepage declares a typical APR of 4214% Now, [...]
Britain’s carbon footprint inequalities
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has conducted a study of the social impacts of climate change in Britain. It includes analysis of where CO2 emissions comes from, and who is most vulnerable to climate change. Among their findings are the contrasting carbon footprints of Britain’s poorest and wealthiest households: Britain’s top earning 10% have double the [...]
Five causes of inequality
Yesterday I listed ten reasons why you should care about inequality, and as I’ve written about before, it’s a growing problem in the UK. We are a highly unequal society, in which the poorest half of the population holds just 9% of the wealth. The richest 10% are 100 times richer than the poorest 10%. [...]
Ten reasons to care about inequality
The New Economics Foundation has released some good work on equality recently, including this briefing on ten reasons to care about inequality (pdf). This is important stuff, as despite the growing evidence that inequality is a factor in almost any social ill you care to mention, there is no political will to reduce it. We [...]
Exploring national biocapacity
The idea of biocapacity is one of the key concepts behind this blog and one of the earliest things I researched in any detail. In a nutshell, biocapacity is the total of all renewable resources and services provided within a given area. Countries and regions have a biocapacity of their own, and so does the [...]
Ten things you didn’t know you owned
This week I’ve been reading All That We Share, an introduction to the idea of the commons by Jay Walljasper. It’s got me thinking about the commons, and I thought I’d post a few things. The commons are the things that are shared between us, owned by nobody but available to all. You might naturally [...]
Fair shares in a world of limits
The basic premise of this website is that since we have already overshot the earth’s biocapacity and much of the world is still poor, it is simply impossible for all seven billion of us to enjoy a consumer lifestyle. Those of us that live in rich countries need to downsize our lifestyles towards a sustainable [...]
Why growth without equality may not help the poor
Today I was browsing the latest issue of IPSOS Mori’s Understanding Society bulletin. It features this graph, showing the economic confidence of Middle Eastern citizens over the years leading up to 2011′s wave of revolts. It’s Egypt’s level of confidence that catches the eye here – a serious decline in confidence in the economy, with [...]
Property prices: crack cocaine for the economy
I had to laugh at the news from the housing market this week. Property sales have been sluggish this spring, and the reason? The weather has been too warm. This is amusing because of course the economy declined to grow at the end of last year because the weather was too cold. Anyway, apparently the [...]
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