Andy Haldene (former chief BoE Economist) is right:
'the broken growth machine is not a problem of defective central levers' but rather a failure of the model where such levers are the policy mechanisms of choice.
To regain economic dynamism across the country we need bottom up growth, not centrally directed economic initiatives.
Economics needs to be locally driven & if we are to manage a different sort of 'growth', that Green Transition will be best locally led!
#GreenTransition
h/y FT
I agree on the #GreenTransition but disagree on the larger point.
The model is broken, not because it is top-down, rather because it is an exploitative/extractive model designed to consolidate wealth in the hands of untaxed oligarchs.
The post-war world shows the tremendous potential of top down economics, when focused on growing the middle class and raising those in poverty.
We should focus on rebuilding that, rather than delegate decisions to even weaker "local" bodies.
Hmm... well there I think we differ; locally organised economies but with links to other local networks do a better job of managing economics for the common good than a centralised system can, at this point (early on in he history of a country's development things might be different, I would accept)
I'm certainly not arguing for fully centralised economic planning (eg Soviet style).
Instead, I think the central gov needs to perform a key role in enabling, direction setting and protecting against monopoly/oligarchy power. That will allow local economies to flourish.
But I resist the libertarian model (not that you proposed it) of a weak centre, which leaves weak localities at the mercy of destructive corporate and overseas powers.
We should probably not imagine that centralised power will relinquish power voluntarily. It never has. It has occasionally under duress conceded some scopes of power in order to hold onto power a bit longer.
What is more likely to happen is that things stop working because they cannot stand up anymore and so the entire dynamic of where power can be relocates. And it will then consolidate there
Organising helps mitigate the steepness of descent (a good thing) and helps propagate the ideas “laying around” https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/111855572551050242
