22 June

This is Simon Kuznets, who won a Nobel Prize in 1971 for pioneering the measurement of economic growth. He more or less invented the idea of GDP. What did he say about the economy? “The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income.” Kuznets also pointed out that what we call economic growth is just a measurement of goods and services flowing through a community at a point in time, and ignores wealth and its distribution. Why have economies crashed with Covid-19? Because the stuff that usually flows has been hoarded by a minority, as wealth. The amount of money hasn’t changed, or goods and services. But most of it is in the hands of a tiny few in the community. So it’s not flowing, the government had to inject tens of billions in extra cash to get things flowing. What would fix the economy overnight? Giving money back to the vast majority, who don’t have any. Tax the hoarders, who got rich through the work of everybody else, and redistribute our common-wealth again.