The question of how best to tax wealth has long been posed. In a recent pamphlet the French economist Gabriel Zucman both analyses the extent and depth of wealth inequality in France (and elsewhere) using the best data as yet available, and details what he regards as the optimum way of tackling this issue. His… Read More »
Another quick blog addressed to sociologists. It raises a couple of issues, hypotheses of sorts. The first suggests that for all many of us are committed to the view that society is an ‘open system’ – that is, a system within which beneath-the-surface structures and causal mechanisms generate on-the-surface events without necessarily leading to neat… Read More »
This is my third blog on Branko Milanovic’s ‘The Global Transformation’, which suggests I’m both enjoying reading it and finding doing so challenging and rewarding. My first comments have to do with his claim that we have entered what he calls a new era of national market liberalism. In four areas, he contends, there is… Read More »
It was a great pleasure today to attend and speak at a meeting in Senate House in London to celebrate the career and writings of Mike Bury. Not least of the day’s pleasures was reacquainting with numerous old friends and colleagues. Many of the old London medical school group: David Armstrong, Judy Green, Charlotte Humphrey,… Read More »
My last blog addressed Branko Milanovic’s evidence-based statement that the ruling class in countries like the USA has taken on a new look – a fusion of the professional-managerial class and the top capitalists (see his ‘The Great Global Transformation’). In this second effort to draw on Milanovic’s thesis, I sketch his analysis of the… Read More »
This blog draws on Branko Milanovic’s new book entitled ‘The Great Global Transformation’, an impressive volume that offers an evidence-based assessment of the present state of geopolitics. My immediate focus in on his concept of ‘homoploutia’. This is his way of articulating the emergence of a new ruling class in ‘the new capitalism’. He notes… Read More »
Social media is replete with left debate, at least on my timeline. Some of it is deeply philosophical or theoretical, and some more explicitly activist-oriented; and typically these comprise entirely distinct discourses. This brief blog raises three issues that I regard as critical to any left action, whether philosophically/theoretically anchored or not. I used to… Read More »
I have commented before about the entry of metric regimes into academia, invariably negatively. They are inimical to creative thinking and publishing and a tailor-made instrument of managerial control. I have also put my own stats where my mouth is and suggested that I have been notably less ‘productive’ than many members of my own… Read More »
At the conclusion of his introductory account of AI Toby Walsh (‘The Shortest History of AI’) poses a number of contemporary challenges facing us. These make immediate sense to me, carry the potential of a real threat to our social wellbeing, and warrant reproducing here. So, thanks to Toby for what follows. He lists the… Read More »
I’ve long been fascinated by those ‘I believe’ collections of pieces from often-famous thinkers and writers. Sometimes I was informed, even pleased, by precis that captured my own predilections. Perhaps more often I was disappointed to find people I admired for one reason or another, had views irreconcilably different from my own. Finding myself with… Read More »