Economics

New Oxfam research has revealed runaway inequality has created a world where 62 people own as much as the poorest half of the world's population. The report, published ahead of the annual gathering of the world's financial and political elites in Davos, found the wealth of the poorest half of the world's population - that's 3.6 billion people - has fallen by a trillion dollars since 2010.  This drop has occurred despite the global population increasing by around 400 million people during...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor As of yesterday afternoon (Tuesday 6th Jan 2016) business executives have made more money than the majority of people will make during the whole of this year according to the High Pay Centre. The research has discovered that fat cats have already passed the average UK salary of £27,645 a mere two working days into the New Year. The High Pay Centre, an independent think tank, reported that FTSE 100 chief executives receive an average...

“There’s no such thing as society”, Margaret Thatcher famously told Woman’s Own in 1987. Today Chancellor George Osborne was showing off how he is still trying his very best to make that happen, outlining his latest austerity measures to dismantle and sell off the state in the Autumn Spending Review statement. And again The London Economic turned to someone who can offer her own exclusive insight into the Conservative party leadership candidate formerly known as Gideon, his former party companion...

By Darragh Roche Sitting in a packed Starbucks across from the Brandenburg Gate a few years ago, a Berlin-based friend pointed out the former Soviet embassy across the street, once the largest in the world. Sipping a frothy cappuccino in a café where the staff spoke English, I didn’t realise we were in the former East Berlin. The old heart of the repressive communist state is now crowded with pricey shops, American coffee chains and oblivious tourists. Starbucks, the shibboleth of...

By James Clark The Thatcherite legacy has remained ingrained in the centre right consensus of mainstream political politics for decades. The Winter of Discontent hammered the final nail of stigma into the British Trade Union movement. Whilst a crisis of supply side inflationary pressure eat away at pay packets, strikes were the only reasonable means of maintaining a decent standard of living for the average public sector worker. Thatcher’s response in countering these external supply shocks was to obliterate workers pay,...

By Harold Stone Austerity comes from the Ancient Greek austērós meaning harshness, sourness or bitterness. It roughly translates as “to singe the tongue”. From this idea of discomfort, an austere person came to mean a stern person, someone who treats others harshly. One of the slaves in the Bible for example, says to his master “I feared thee, because thou art an austere man”. Around the time Christians started to denounce the world (“do not love the world nor the...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor A City University report has revealed that the Chancellor could be forced to borrow billions of pounds more than predicted by 2020 if he continues with his huge spending cuts. The Chancellor's autumn statement will be announced this week and the University study claims the Treasury has drastically underestimated the impact of departmental and welfare cuts on the wider economy. The report singled out the cuts to public sector investment as a major factor in...

By Ryan Carter @rwscarter There is a beautiful bottom-up revolution underway in the energy market, but like all revolutions there is hurdles the question is can the state facilitate the green revolution, I think it should. This requires putting into reverse how the state has been seen in market interventions as a monolithic agent ‘crowding-out’ competition. I believe that the state can and should act smart and counter to popular opinion 'crowd-in' the market, breaking the hegemonic cartel of the...

By Oliver Ward    Over the last three months, for the first time in history, Britain's renewable energy production surpassed its coal production. A monumental moment, the palpable demonstration of how far renewable energy has come in the UK and the changing attitudes towards our role as inhabitants on this planet. A view clearly not shared by the Conservative party who have announced that subsidies for renewable energy companies will be ended on the 1st of April next year. Leaving over...