What economists around the world get wrong about the future.
Why the super rich are inevitable
Why some mathematicians argue the economy is designed to create a few super rich people – unless we stop it.
Denizen
What are some of the fundamental flaws of capitalism? How might we instantiate a market-based economy that is growth agnostic?
The end of development economics
Some decades ago, development economists saw their approach as being distinctive compared to mainstream economics in general and better grounded in the reality of actual economies. This column argues that two trends over the last decades – the significant improvement in the average income of what were called developing countries and the homogenisation of economics methodology across the board – mean that the distinction between development economics and economics in general is increasingly untenable and indeed unnecessary.
Against Economics
Mainstream economists nowadays might not be particularly good at predicting financial crashes, facilitating general prosperity, or coming up with models for preventing climate change, but when it comes to establishing themselves in positions of intellectual authority, unaffected by such failings, their success is unparalleled. One would have to look at the history of religions to find anything like it. To this day, economics continues to be taught not as a story of arguments—not, like any other social science, as a welter of often warring theoretical perspectives—but rather as something more like physics, the gradual realization of universal, unimpeachable mathematical truths.
Capitalism and Its Critics: A History
A Financial Times Most Anticipated Book of 2025A sweeping, dramatic history of capitalism as seen through the eyes of its fiercest critics. At a time when artificial intelligence, climate change, and inequality are raising fundamental questions about the economic system, Capitalism and Its Critics provides a kaleidoscopic history of global capitalism, from the East India Company and Industrial Revolution to the di...
Exocapitalism: economies with absolutely no limits
There is a touch of destiny with this one. We have real…
Post-growth
Post-growth is an umbrella term that refers to a broad family of economic, ecological, and political perspectives responding to the limits-to-growth dilemma —the recognition that infinite economic growth is biophysically unsustainable on a finite planet. Central to post-growth thinking is the shift of the focus out of GDP growth as the main goal of the economy. Instead, well-being becomes the main objective. Post-growth puts emphasis on decoupling societal well-being from economic growth, advocating for the possibility of prosperity beyond growth.
Long cycles
I have long been sympathetic to the concept of long cycles in capitalist production and accumulation. This is the idea that capitalist production moves in cycles, not just in booms and slumps every…
Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren- John Maynard Keynes
We are suffering just now from a bad attack of economic pessimism. It is common to hear people say that the epoch of enormous economic progress which characterised the nineteenth century is over; that the rapid improvement in the standard of life is now going to slow down—at any rate in Great Britain; that a decline in prosperity is more likely than an improvement in the decade which lies ahead of us.
Is Inequality Inevitable?
Wealth naturally trickles up in free-market economies, model suggests
Brett Scott (@brettscott)
A lot of economists want to claim that economic growth is, at some deep level, driven by human greed. In this worldview, we always desire more and more, and so collectively seek to endlessly boost production I don’t buy this worldview at all I think economic growth is driven - at a deep level - by fear. It stems from the extreme insecurity of life in a capitalist market system, where you’re always on the verge of being cut out of society, and so need to over-secure your position through any means possible One of the most compelling pieces of evidence for this is the history of colonial beliefs around laziness. In many colonial regions, colonizers would complain about tribal people being lazy - in other words, not seeking to increase production when they could. The reason for this, however, was that such people had access to subsistence farming and secure social structures that did not require endless competition. Secure people are, by definition, ‘lazier’, in the sense that they do not perceive a visceral need to fight for survival The colonial mission then, was the cut them off from older means of survival, make them dependent on insecure market structures, and thereby boost production as they all turn up at the mines to elbow each other out of the way as they compete for jobs. Security, in other words, is the enemy of economic growth
Economics for the future – Beyond the superorganism
Our environment and economy are at a crossroads. This paper attempts a cohesive narrative on how human evolved behavior, money, energy, economy and th…
Capitalism in Crisis Amid Slow Growth and Growing Inequality
Six years after the Lehman disaster, the industrialized world is suffering from Japan Syndrome. Growth is minimal, another crash may be brewing and the gulf between rich and poor continues to widen. Can the global economy reinvent itself?
Global Inequality — Harvard University Press
Winner of the Bruno Kreisky Prize, Karl Renner InstitutA Financial Times Best Economics Book of the Year An Economist Best Book of the Year A Livemint Best Book of the YearOne of the world’s leading economists of inequality, Branko Milanovic presents a bold new account of the dynamics that drive inequality on a global scale. Drawing on vast data sets and cutting-edge research, he explains the benign and malign forces that make inequality rise and fall within and among nations. He also reveals who has been helped the most by globalization, who has been held back, and what policies might tilt the balance toward economic justice.“The data [Milanovic] provides offer a clearer picture of great economic puzzles, and his bold theorizing chips away at tired economic orthodoxies.”—The Economist“Milanovic has written an outstanding book…Informative, wide-ranging, scholarly, imaginative and commendably brief. As you would expect from one of the world’s leading experts on this topic, Milanovic has added significantly to important recent works by Thomas Piketty, Anthony Atkinson and François Bourguignon…Ever-rising inequality looks a highly unlikely combination with any genuine democracy. It is to the credit of Milanovic’s book that it brings out these dangers so clearly, along with the important global successes of the past few decades.—Martin Wolf, Financial Times
A fact-based worldview for all | Gapminder
We live in a globalized world, not only in terms of trade and migration. More people than ever care about global development. But most people have severe misconceptions about contemporary global development. We know, because we have tested people’s knowledge. One of the main reasons for this is that students don’t learn to understand the world based on statistics and facts. Instead, we have a dramatic worldview formed by outdated school books and sensationalist news-stories. People intuitively believe that most things are getting worse. The dramatic worldview leads to irrational decisions by individuals, nonprofits, governments and business. For the first time in human history reliable statistics exist. There’s data for almost every aspect of global development. The data shows a very different picture: a world where most things improve; a world that is not divided; and a world where the fast population growth will soon be over. The world has never been less bad. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect.