Why politicians chasing economic growth is a lie | Radical Thinking with Aditya Chakrabortty
By Presented by Aditya Chakrabortty with Karel Williams and Sukhdev Johal, produced by Frankie Tobi and Luke John Smith, the executive producers are Maz Ebtehaj, Kirsty Major and James Tindale. · Via The Guardian Politics · Published by Everything Blog
The podcast episode explores long-standing economic problems facing the United Kingdom by referencing collaborative research supported by Aditya Chakrabortty. Researchers Karel and Sukhdev deliberately bypass traditional academic publishing delays by releasing freely accessible working papers on critical domestic issues like the cost of living. Their agenda also scrutinizes utility infrastructure, addressing systemic utility failures documented in their book on the regional water network.
Key points
Pursuing traditional growth has left many suburbs and towns across the United Kingdom sta…: Pursuing traditional growth has left many suburbs and towns across the United Kingdom stagnant and deeply unequal.
Freely available research from the collective provides urgent insights into the ongoing d…: Freely available research from the collective provides urgent insights into the ongoing domestic cost of living crisis.
The book Murky Water analyzes the broken and unsustainable water network operating across…: The book Murky Water analyzes the broken and unsustainable water network operating across England and Wales.
Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1
You can watch previous episodes of Radical Thinking here
Aditya’s suggested reading list for this episode:
As we say in the podcast, I’ve championed the work of Karel and Sukhdev and their colleagues for many years in the Guardian, and some of my columns are a good introduction to their approach.
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In our conversation we look at what life after growth looks like for towns and suburbs, and what it should look like. This report from south Wales in 2016 examines the present-day reality.
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For a broader analysis of how the UK has become highly unequal and increasingly stagnant, try this.
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As part of the Foundational Economy Collective, Karel and Sukhdev put a lot of their analysis into freely available working papers. That circumvents the leisureliness and expense of academic publishing and gets their arguments in front of a wider public. A good example is this one on the cost of living crisis.
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More recently, they’ve focused on the broken water system of England and Wales in a book called Murky Water: Challenging an Unsustainable System.
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