The Daily Novel

Academic thought takes as long to turn around as a giant tanker. And journalists rushing to get their copy in when responding to the latest crisis take even longer to catch up with what, we in the trade, call the cutting edge of new thinking. Partly because we spend so much of our time talking with people, who are themselves stuck in the basic assumptions of the past. I have been reminded of this in the last few days, reading and listening to the comments on the spectacular crash of the world’s stock markets over the last few days. And these comments are still filling the air waves and pages and pages in the print media. Economics temporily is deemed even more worthy of wall to wall coverage than the old staples of sex and crime.

I was jolted into realising this the night before last, half asleep watching BBC Newsnight. Jeremy Paxman was interviewing a man from the New Economics Forum called Andrew Simmins. It was an undramatic conversation. Paxman is undoubtedly a Rottweiler but he is the thinking man’s Rottweiler. And on this occasion he was probing for what is really important about the very serious recession facing the US and the quite serious recession facing the UK. It did not get any coverage in the newspapers, which it would have done if Paxman had been harrassing a cabinet minister to get at the lies and half truths beneach what he was saying. Even The Guardian the following morning went big on a speech by George Soros, the international financier who was forecasting that the British recessin could be just as bad as that in America.

The essence of the New Economics is that we pay far too much attention to growth whereas the real problem is that we have too much growth. This is not only because growth of the kind we have been used to since the rise of American consumer capitalism at the end of the nineteenth century is creating global warming that is going to blight the lives of our children, and even more our grandchildren. Much of the talk currently is about whether the booming economies of China and India can make up for the slow down in Britain and America and so prevent a recession as that heralded by  the Great Wall Street Crash of 1929. India has just annouced its equivalent of Henry Ford’s Model T Ford, which threatens to escalate global warming as the expected millions buy it and pump more pollution into the air as their engines tick over in India’s traffic jams. What the planet needs is an expensive hybrid, where the engine can switch over to electric power for most of urban driving. China is already making an even bigger contribution to global warming with coal fired power stations similar to those prevailing in my childhood.

But the essential point of the Paxman/Simmins conversation is that growth is also bad for economic development. We are driven by old-fashioned economic ideas which still dominate our thinking. Even though the New Economics is quite old. Many of the ideas of were around in the 1960s when the Club of Rome, bunch of academics from universities all over the world, were challenging the dominant wisdom. Despite their efforts the dominant wisdom is still dominant.

One point emphasised in the Newsnight programme was that decisions are still made as if human beings were driven by economic motives. Despite the increasing volume of research that demonstrates that people in the most highly developed economies are no more happy than they were when they were poorer. And in many cases they are far more unhappy. Despite the crash in the stock marbet, far more spectacular than 1929 in percentage terms, Wall Steet brokers are not throwing themselves off their skyscapers. But there is a real increase in the number of suicides by teenagers in Britain.

We should be concerned about this, because although they are a tiny minority, they are reflecting in the extremity of their despair what many young people are trying to tell us. And what at some deep level we know ourselves.

 Happiness is a vague concept. In writing this I paused, because it is a difficult subject to write about without seeming simplistic. I paused and looked up. The sky in front of me is streaked with a brilliant mixture of pinks, reds and greys. The sea is lapping gently on the shores of Lyme Bay. Two or three birds are flying around. It is entirely silent. At least it was. Just now a jumbo jet passed over reminding me that I am supposed to be writing about global warming.

I’ve still got the light on, because it was just before dawn when I started writing. I left my computer on standby all night. So I am not practicing what I preach. And I am not sure whether I have even now conveyed why I found the Newsnight programme so helpful.  But you can see for yourself what the New Economic Forum is about by following this link.

And if you think that human nature never changes, consider this. Yesterday MPs in the House of Commons voted to accept a measly 1.9 per cent increase in their own pay. Even though the police have been marching the streets in their weekend clothes demanding 2.5 per cent and the teachers are getting ready to strike over their pay claim.

Even politicians sometimes do the right thing.