Can capitalism solve its crises?

Is innovation possible without the public sector?

Why can’t politicians solve basic problems?

And what’s wrong with shareholder value?

Was great to speak to @MazzucatoM about her new book ‘Mission Economy’.

Some great facts and stats from the book:

1) In the UK 10% of all UK bank lending helps non-financial firms, the rest supports real estate and financial assets.

Not good!
2) In 2019 fossil fuel companies in the US received a subsidy of around $20 billion.

In the EU that figure was 55 billion Euros!
3) Of covid recovery funding handed out by G20 governments to energy companies 56% (!) has gone to fossil fuel projects.
4) Between 1980 and 1996 the UK accounted for 40% of all privatised assets across the OECD.

This country was an ideological petri dish - for a now failing ideology!
5) Since 1998 around 700 projects have been financed through PFI in the UK. Their capital value was around £60 billion.

Yet they will have cost a cumulative £310 billion by 2047-8!

This is apparently 'moderate', 'prudent' economics...
6) In 2011 the UK government 'basically gave up' on an NHS IT system after spending £10 billion on it. £10 billion!

Poor procurement, recently described as 'cronyism', has been overseen by both main parties.
7) One study found costs for public administration in the UK had risen by 40% in real terms between 1985 and 2015. Over the same period the civil service was cut by a third and public spending doubled. Outsourced operations saw costs rise FASTEST.
8) When Britain began to leave the EU the 'Big 4' consultancy firms saw profits rise by 20%.

Government spending on these companies rose from £77 million to £464 million between 2018 and 2019.

Brexit was meant to save money! 😂
9) An analysis of 120 NHS trusts between 2010 and 2014 found spending more on management consultants led to a significant RISE in inefficiencies. Meanwhile patient outcomes didn't improve.
10) Great NASA anecdote. A janitor is asked by Kennedy at the space center what he is doing. His reply? "Well, Mr President, I'm putting a man on the moon".

That's a public service ethos - and it's also correct.
11) The average age in the mission control room for first moon landing was 26. NASA as a government agency wasn't a boring place to work - it was the most exciting place to work.

Make being a young adult great again - and let's do the same for tackling climate change!
12) At the Apollo Programme's peak MIT was buying 60 per cent of all chips manufactured in the USA.

That's how major government projects bring down costs through accelerating the 'experience curve' - we now need same with wind turbines, solar panels and a green new deal.
13) Also learned about this lady, Katherine Johnson.

She was an African-American mathematician who specialised in orbital mechanics with NASA. Amid the struggle for civil rights she was a quiet emblem for a different kind of America ✊🏽
14) In today's money the Apollo Programme cost around 10% of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The spillover effects, from photovoltaic cells to computing are still being felt today.

We need more mission-oriented public policy - on climate, inequality and ageing - and less war.
There is a great deal more but I won't tweet all of it. I really encourage people to read Mariana's book. It's pithy & jam-packed with clear evidence of what is wrong with modern public policy - and how we *could* be doing so much better.

Buy it after watching the interview 😀

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More from @AaronBastani

8 Feb
Quote tweets of this from various sinophobes strike me as deranged nonsense.

Richard Horton makes a clear argument for extricating Chinese scientists from the state apparatus.

Few of the responses to it appear to engage with what he’s said.
Full interview here. I found Horton a really informed, accessible guest on the whole topic of Covid.

Horton’s point here a straightforward one. Had Covid 19 emerged in India or much of sub-Saharan Africa the effects would have been much worse. That it happened it China, and East Asia more generally, slowed down spread and allowed a scientifically advanced country to sequence >
Read 4 tweets
7 Feb
Covid-19 has 10 times the fatality rate of influenza, imagine if it was a 100 times?

An age of climate change will also be one of pandemics. That is why helping the poorest countries provide free, universal healthcare is in the interest of the wealthiest. novaramedia.com/2021/02/07/cov…
White-nose syndrome is crashing bat populations around the world, while chytridiomycosis, caused by the chytrid fungus, is doing something similar to a number of amphibian species.

There is nothing unique about Homo sapiens.

novaramedia.com/2021/02/07/cov…
The threat of climate change & future pandemics should not be viewed in isolation from one another: a world of rising temperatures, and further deforestation, also means more pandemics. These threats should be viewed as additive rather than distinct. 

novaramedia.com/2021/02/07/cov…
Read 4 tweets
18 Jan
As a political journalist there are such immensely interesting (& terrifying!) stories out there, from the interface of technology & politics, to climate change, an epochal social upheaval & rise of China.

This is all more important, & interesting, than whining about Twitter.
Does anyone really think it adds value to their audience to constantly whine about people they don’t like? Does anyone think people will want to pay for that?

I don’t agree with them on much but you have to appreciate quality press that doesn’t do this like the Economist & FT.
For me this explains the success of Monocle magazine since 2008. It’s overpriced and the articles often aren’t anything special but you read it and see people doing interesting things all across the world. You put it down feeling refreshed and optimistic.
Read 4 tweets
2 Jan
Labour won't back the NEU and won't offer anything which differs from the Tories.

That's been Starmer's plan since he became leader, & everything is mood music until 2024. This isn't dithering, it's the plan.

Will it work? Who knows. But for now there isn't an opposition.
The model here is the Tories in opposition during the global financial crisis. But the difference is that unlike now Labour actually dealt with that. The equivalent would have been Brown allowing complete economic meltdown and opposition shrugging soldiers.
It's particularly odd seeing Starmer supporters like @paulmasonnews outlining smart, radical and necessary policies in response to the next few months ahead.

Labour won't adopt any of them. Again, Paul, that *is* the project for Starmer until 2024. He's been very open about it.
Read 6 tweets
2 Jan
As Britain looks set to re-open schools after 4 consecutive days of 50,000 positive tests for Covid, let's recall that Vietnam closed schools on Jan 31st 2020 - and kept them shut for more than 3 months - when the country had 5 confirmed cases.

Since then they've had 35 deaths.
Vietnam has done nothing exceptional: it quarantined all visitors and anyone who contacted a Covid case in state centres, it closed schools, and it unrolled a huge test and trade system quickly.

This year they are posting GDP growth while UK GDP sinks 10%. Let's learn from them.
And I know its hard for anglo-exceptionalists to accept but Oxford professor's data tally with the Vietnamese government. They, like others in east asia, nailed it where we brutally failed.
Read 4 tweets
12 Nov 20
In suspending @jeremycorbyn the Labour leadership defied the EHRC’s *key recommendation* within minutes of saying they would implement all of the report.

David Evans & @Keir_Starmer have questions to answer.

My latest for @novaramedia

novaramedia.com/2020/11/12/in-…
Here Starmer says the decision was made by the general secretary, but implicitly includes himself as well.

What is more the fact multiple MPs, including Tom Watson, appear to have encouraged Corbyn to act unlawfully (according to EHRC) has not been mentioned. Why?

As with Starmer & Evans now, political interference appears to be fine for media, as long as right people are doing it. ImageImage
Read 9 tweets

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