In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Callum Price is joined by Director General Lord Hannan and Editorial Director Kristian Niemietz to discuss three of the week’s biggest economic stories. The conversation opens on the Piketty and Stiglitz-backed “roadmap for eradicating poverty beyond growth,” examining whether degrowth is a serious economic proposal or a fashionable pose that falls apart under scrutiny. The episode then turns to Commerce Secretary Peter Kyle’s announcement of a fast-track concierge service for high-growth British firms, and closes with Zack Polanski’s claim that cheap vegetables are a sign of exploitation and supermarket profiteering.
Kristian Niemietz sets out why degrowth cannot happen voluntarily and what kind of state would actually be required to impose it. Lord Hannan draws on history — from the post-financial crisis recession to FDR’s destruction of food during the Great Depression — to show that the intuitions driving both degrowth and price controls are as old as they are wrong. On industrial policy, both argue that the government’s concierge scheme is simply a guide around obstacles the government itself created, and that cutting taxes and regulation would do more for growth than any managed scheme.
The episode ends with a discussion of prices as signals, why supermarket profit margins tell a very different story to Polanski’s claims, and a striking account of how the Prophet Muhammad — himself a merchant — understood the consequences of price caps over a thousand years before Adam Smith put it into words.
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