Debunking Economics - the podcast

The small number of technologists who increasingly control the planet’s wealth and political and social agenda are, it seems, big supporters of UBI. Elon Musk is at the forefront of this push. And wh…

18th century economist Richard Cantillon theorised that new money added to the economy always reaches the wealthiest people first. If there’s a lot of it, the extra supply will push up prices, but th…

In one of his many walks around his neighbourhood Phil has been listening to a book, The People's Republic of Walmart, by Leigh Phillips & Michal Rozworski. Basically, a contrarian economist and a jo…

There is a huge reliance on data to aid decision making – whether it’s Investors wanting to know where to move money, central banks pretending to understand the economy, governments making policy dec…

In real terms the amount the UK spends on healthcare has risen from £500 in 1970 to £3,000 per person today. That’s a massive increase, but the payback has been that we are living 10 years longer. As…

There’s been a lot of talk lately about de-dollarisation. In other words, global investors are parking less of their money in US dollars (in the form of US treasuries/bonds). What was once considered…

There was an article in The Economist last week, shared widely in press around the globe, about the apparent fixation with manufacturing. Aussie economist Saul Eslake calls it Manufacturing Fetishism…

There’s an irony that the UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves has imposed an inheritance tax on farmers, whilst a trade agreement with the US could see Britain selling-the-farm on a farm grander scale.

Phil a…

Bill Gates has predicted that within 10 years we’ll be working a two-day week, thanks to advances in AI. He says it’ll mean a vast rethinking of the workplace. It’s not too dissimilar to Keynes's pre…

There are challenges that the insurance industry faces, even though it can look like a licence to print money, Since the Big Bang of the nineties, when deregulation allowed the industry to flourish, …

The pandemic killed 200 thousand people in the UK. Are we ready for the next time? Experts reckon will be even less prepared should we see another pandemic in the near future. Prof Tom Koch from the …

Economists seem conditioned to think that we need to suffer before an economy can get back on track. They argue an economy can’t grow if there is a large amount of accrued government debt. That the…

It’s clear to just about everyone that we won’t reach the climate targets set out in the Paris agreement. It was a pipe dream even before President Trump  v2.0 came along. The various COP summits, wh…