What if someone told you the truth about the economy? For years, UK governments have tried spending more, spending less, cutting red tape, leaving the EU, levelling up, and they have still failed to increase growth per person. So what’s the lesson from the great British fairytale? On the latest episode, the rebel economists Karel Williams and Sukhdev Johal explain to Aditya Chakrabortty why they believe praying for growth is a fool’s dream – and why it won’t improve your life
Aditya’s suggested reading list for Karel Williams and Sukhdev Johal:
As we say in the podcast, I’ve championed the work of Karel and Sukhdev and their colleagues in the Guardian for many years, and some of my columns are a good introduction to their approach.
In our conversation we look at what life after growth looks like for towns and suburbs, and what it should look like. This report from South Wales in 2016 examines the present-day reality.
For a broader analysis of how the UK has become highly unequal and increasingly stagnant, try this.
As part of the Foundational Economy collective, Karel and Sukhdev put a lot of their analysis into freely available working papers. That circumvents the leisureliness and expense of academic publishing and gets their arguments in front of a wider public. A good example is this one on the cost of living crisis.
More recently, they’ve focused on the broken water system of England and Wales in a book called Murky Water: Challenging an Unsustainable System.
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