A universal job guarantee, provided by the state. Funded by monetary financing, as described by Modern Monetary Theory. To be spent on guaranteeing employment for those that the private sector is not willing or able to employ, regardless of job experience, race, age, or gender. Jobs created in carework and the transition to a sustainable, green economy. The job guarantee scheme would be part of a Green New Deal, and could be alternative to or an extension of the Universal Basic Income. Also a...

Less is More: How Degrowth will Save the World by Jason Hickel (William Heinemann Publishing, 2020) How we shall not reduce CO2 emissions without degrowth of our economic. How material use, emissions, and other forms of environmental detruction have not been decoupled from growth. Growth is the centrepiece of capitalism. Without growth, capitalism cannot exist. It has historically relied on "fixes" such as enclosures, colonialisation, the destruction of nature, neoliberalism and the...

Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century by Mark Blyth  (Cambridge University Press, 2002) How economic ideas were used to restrict markets in the first half of the 20th century, in order to embed them in social institutions and state structures.  The New Deal era in the USA, and the construction of the Social Democratic welfare states in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe.  How markets were then in turn disembedded from social and state...

Keynes: The Return of the Master by Robert Skidelsky (Allen Lane, 2009) Keynesianism dominated economics and economic policy roughly between 1936 and 1973. The neoliberal crusade lead by Milton Friedman made use of the phenomenon of stagflation to demolish Keynesianism. It was swept to the margins of economic theory. It was taken over by ideas such as rational expectations, real business cycle theory, the efficient market hypothesis, and public choice theory. Two schools built on these...

The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy by Daniel A. Bell. (Princeton University Press, 2016) A Canadian born political scientist working in China and Singapore discusses why we should not take it for granted that Western democracy is superior. He argues that South East Asian Confusian meritocracy has far better output legitimacy and better leaders than our democratic states, and especially young democracies the world over.

“Leftism Reinvented – Western Parties from Socialism to Neoliberalism” by Stephanie L. Mudge (Harvard University Press, 2018) How left wing political parties declined in the West in terms of membership and voters, as they progressed from Marxist Socialism through Keynesian Social Democracy all the way to neoliberalism. With special emphasis on Sweden, Germany, the UK and the US.

"The Triumph of injustice - How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay" by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman (WW Norton, 2019) 232 pages The enormous social inequalities of today have not arisen accidentally. Neither have our democracies been captured by oligarchs accidentally. They both came about because politicians bought by these oligarchs have changed the tax system and have enabled offshore tax havens to help the rich grow super rich and capture democracy. We can go back to...

(September 2019, Harvard University Press, 1150pp) Following upon the global success of his previous book, Capital in the 21st Century, in this new book Piketty demolishes the belief that extreme inequality is unavoidable. It is a choice we have made, and can be rolled back if we so wish. “The market and competition, profits and wages, capital and debt, skilled and unskilled workers, natives and aliens, tax havens and competitiveness—none of these things exist as such,” Piketty insists,...

What is value? Who produces it in the economy? Does something only have value if it can be bought and sold on the market? How good is the GDP figure in assessing value created in the economy? Does carework create value? Does the state create value? Why do prostitution, the gray economy and environmental degradation increase the GDP figure? Why should the financial sector be as small as possible, rather than as large as possible? Do patents support value creation?  The Value of Everything –...

A 2020 book that looks at the question of how and why exactly it was Vladimir Putin who became the President of Russia. It takes you from his early life in Dresden, to his deputy mayorship in St Petersburg, and then onto his meteoric rise in the Kremlin to eventually replace the ailing Yeltsin. The claim made by Belton is that throughout these years Putin never gave up his participation in KGB/FSB networks, which included not only Russian operatives, but also a wide network of connections in...

A plain language elaboration of Modern Monetary Theory, a school of economics which suggests that the state does not need taxes to finance its expenditure, since it has the right to print its own currency. (It does need taxes for other purposes though.) This also means that it cannot be forced to go bankrupt in its own currency, and does not need to issue treasury bonds on open markets. All austerity and deficit fetishism is senseless and harmful. And no, printing money does not cause...