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From paying people to queue for you to selling permits to allow factories to pollute, Michael Sandel (Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University) is uncomfortable with the creeping marketisation of our society. Is attaching a price to something a morally…
Saturday, 01 December 2018 17:01

The Deadweight Loss of Christmas

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Christmas is coming (queue a chorus of voices decrying Christmas displays in shops from August and the commercialisation of the Christmas season). But as you…
Wednesday, 11 April 2018 09:37

Trump and Trade Wars

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Trump and Trade Wars
Donald Trump is on a self-proclaimed quest to “make America great again”. He has pledged to tear up trade agreements that do not benefit the…
Writing a Personal Statement for UCAS
Matt Pringle has had several years’ experience teaching Economics, Business Studies and Critical Thinking. Dr. Rob McMahon was Tutor in Politics at St John's College, Oxford from 2003 - 2005 and ran PPE admissions at the College in 2004. He…
League Tables
By now any year year 13s should be thinking hard about whether to go to university and if so, which course. The latest Guardian league table for Economics held a few surprises for my students who were not all that…
How Will You Vote
In a 2005 Gallup poll, 71% of teenagers said their political views were ‘about the same´ as their parents. 21% said more liberal while only 7% considered themselves more conservative. It would seem that many people vote the way of…
45p Tax - Economic Sense or a Tax Cut for the Rich
Last year the Chancellor reduced the top rate of income tax trim 50 pence in the pound to 45p pence. He was immediately accused by his detractors of giving a tax cut to the wealthy. Recent figures from theHMRC (Her…
Twice a year a group of students write for an in house magazine we publish. The latest edition looks at the differences in wealth between countries, Chinese investment into Africa, the truth behind Keynesian fiscal stimulus and much more. It…
Fool's Gold?
Eating Gold is a time honoured tradition. The Greeks thought that Gold was a high density mixture of water and sunlight, the Romans that it was flakes of skin from the gods that would give them strength. Chinese and Indian…
ObamaCare Revisited
Let us consider some of the claims made about the single most important piece of domestic legislation passed since President Obama took office in January 2009: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the ACA but more commonly called ObamaCare).…
Renewable Energy - the two words I hate most in the English language
I had James Delingpole, the right-wing journalist and blogger in one of my classes today. He described himself as an Austrian School, free market libertarian and soon lived up to his billing. Debate ranged from HS2 and NHS, to cutting…
More Politics
Linking your knowledge to current events is an important part of the Politics course. Dr Matt Walker runs an excellent site (http://politicsforalevel.wordpress.com) to help you with contemporary examples. Nothing has been added to it for a while but he has…
The Great Energy Rip Off?
So the price of domestic gas and electricity are rising faster than wholesale prices. It must be a rip-off. Well, to quote Ben Goldacre, I think you'll find it is a bit more complicated than that. The wholesale price is…
Not So Fair Trade
So Fair Trade is not aid in the strict sense that I have been considering in the last few posts but it is a major movement in the effort to improve the standard of living of producers in developing countries.…
Aid - Why do we Give Aid?
 It is an important question. Godfery Bloom, the former UKIP MEP tried to raise debate on this issue rather in-eloquently but sadly his use of the generic description of unworthy aid recipients as 'Bongo Bongo Land' rather distracted from discussion…
Britain's Aid Mapped
Overseas Development Aid (ODA) is centered on Africa but, depending on what you consider to be aid, it is spent all over the world including some quite surprising places. If you include military assistance for example (most measured of aid…
Aid - How Much?
The UN target for overseas development aid (ODA) is for countries to give 0.7% of GNI so how well are we doing? Since these figures were released by the OECD last year the UK has increased aid spending to meet…
Aid - What is Going Wrong?
Since about 1970, more than $2 trillion of aid have been given world wide, much of it from western countries to Africa and yet the proportion of African's living in poverty has risen six fold. Something isn't working. The question…

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