Steven Rose

 When building an economic model, economists describe consumers using a utility function – that is, a function which takes as its input the bundle of goods that are being consumed and outputs a value called the utility, which can be roughly thought of as the subjective benefit the consumer experiences as a result of consuming that bundle of goods. A common utility function used in trade and other macroeconomic models is the CES (constant elasticity of substitution) function. A key feature of this function is that it implies that given fixed prices for all goods, the demand of a consumer is some fixed proportion of their income. That is, if their income doubles, they buy double the amount of every good. While this is mathematically useful for building a model of aggregate demand (the sum of demand of all consumers) and can produce accurate macroeconomic models, it sits badly with microeconomic empirical evidence. Engel’s law – which is more accurately an observation rather than a ...

Introduction. Spending commitments. Addressing climate change. Broadband as modern infrastructure investment. Education for life. Regressive policies. Where is the welfare system? Raising revenue. 95% is a good and untruthful line. Corporate tax. Worker’s shares policy is a second corporate tax. The average citizen and tax. Issues of personal interest. Brexit policy. Council tax. Trust on foreign policy. Paternity leave. Conclusion. Introduction. The 2019 Labour manifesto has been met with the support of 160 economists and the adoration of the party rank and file. It is a bold document designed to attack - and attack hard - in order to make up the current gap in the polls between Labour and the Conservatives. Contrast this with the Conservatives, who have chosen to put out a manifesto sparse on content and detail, presumably hoping to ride their current lead through to December 12th.  While the manifesto is clearly radical in the rate of spending increases...