Innovation and competition are being stifled. But there are signs of optimism
When the history of our times gets written, historians will shake their heads, wondering why so few remarked on what was going on before their eyes. Rather than allow foreigners and immigrants and the EU to be blamed for the ills of great swathes of our working populations who became prey to the fantasies of a Boris Johnson or a Donald Trump, why did the political classes not identify and correct the real source of the just grievances that drove support for such warped politicians?
The US and Britain in particular have created an economic system of organised plunder, resulting in widespread precarious livelihoods. Over the last generation we have witnessed the rise of rentier capitalism, supercharged by new technologies, to establish economic structures in which having and owning has been vastly privileged over doing, creating and risk-taking. The share of profits in national income has risen, the share of wages fallen while work has become organised around short-term contracts. The decline in the incentive to make and innovate has been accompanied by a weakening in the rate of productivity growth.
Continue reading…Innovation and competition are being stifled. But there are signs of optimismWhen the history of our times gets written, historians will shake their heads, wondering why so few remarked on what was going on before their eyes. Rather than allow foreigners and immigrants and the EU to be blamed for the ills of great swathes of our working populations who became prey to the fantasies of a Boris Johnson or a Donald Trump, why did the political classes not identify and correct the real source of the just grievances that drove support for such warped politicians?The US and Britain in particular have created an economic system of organised plunder, resulting in widespread precarious livelihoods. Over the last generation we have witnessed the rise of rentier capitalism, supercharged by new technologies, to establish economic structures in which having and owning has been vastly privileged over doing, creating and risk-taking. The share of profits in national income has risen, the share of wages fallen while work has become organised around short-term contracts. The decline in the incentive to make and innovate has been accompanied by a weakening in the rate of productivity growth. Continue reading…