A couple of days ago, I did an interview with Robbie Bennett and Jakob Lount from the People’s Resistance, an organization devoted to challenging the British government’s austerity policies. The interview predominately covered austerity and UK and US economic policy, though there’s also a little bit about me personally and my academic work, if that interests you. They have kindly permitted me to share the interview with you in full below–you can also read it on their WordPress or their Tumblr, and they are also on Facebook and on Twitter. The introduction and the questions are their words, the answers are mine: Continue reading “Exposing the Myth of Austerity: An Interview with Benjamin Studebaker”
Tag: Debt
The 3 Ways Governments Raise Money Part III: Printing
This is the conclusion of my three-part series on how governments finance themselves. The aim is to clear up the popular misconception that the state’s budget is similar to that of a corporation or a household, that government borrowing is always necessarily a bad thing. Previously we talked about taxation and borrowing–today is all about printing. Continue reading “The 3 Ways Governments Raise Money Part III: Printing”
The 3 Ways Governments Raise Money Part II: Borrowing
Today I’m continuing my three-part series on how governments finance themselves. The aim is to clear up the popular misconception that the state’s budget is similar to that of a corporation or a household, that government borrowing is always necessarily a bad thing. Previously we talked about taxation–today is all about borrowing.
Continue reading “The 3 Ways Governments Raise Money Part II: Borrowing”
13 Terrible Tory Counterarguments
A few days ago, I wrote a post called Britain: For the Love of God, Please Stop David Cameron. I didn’t expect much out of it, because my usual audience is predominately American, and many Americans take little interest in the British elections. So I was pleasantly surprised when it went semi-viral in the UK, quickly becoming the most popular post I have written. Naturally, with a larger audience comes more critical (and sometimes just aggressively hostile) comments, and my usual policy of responding to every critical or interesting comment I receive is increasingly no longer practical. So instead, I’ve decided to write this all-purpose response to the most common bad critiques I’ve seen levied at my post. If you’re one of the wonderful people who read my post and deemed it worth sharing, I hope that this post will help you deal with any Tory supporters you may run across who may try to give you grief about it. So let’s get started.
Why You Should Get a Raise
Since the global economic crisis of 2008, many of the world’s advanced economies continue to struggle to recover. In many of these countries, growth since the crisis has been much slower than it was in the years prior. Indeed, when we look closely, we see that the 2004-2007 growth average is higher than the 2010-2013 average in just about all the major advanced economies, and that in some countries this difference is very large:
What’s holding back recovery? To understand this, we need to understand what kind of economic crisis we’re trying to recover from in the first place. Continue reading “Why You Should Get a Raise”
Benjamin Studebaker 