Esther McVey's "attitude tests" and Tory backwards thinking

The Tory Minister of State for employment has announced a new scheme to impose "attitude tests" on unemployed people.

These attitude profiling tests would attempt to judge whether unemployed people are "determined", "bewildered" or "despondent" about taking a job. The results of the tests will be used to "segregate" them into different classes of jobseeker, those that are keen to work, and those who are "scum" to be abused and sanctioned until they drop off the unemployment figures.
Before I get to the explanation of how this ludicrous policy demonstrates Tory backward thinking, I'd first like to note that the inspiration for attitude testing is the Australian work of a private company called Ingeus, which was owned by Thérèse Rein (the wife of former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd) before she sold it off earlier this year for around $220 million.

Given the Tory model of outsourcing the functions of the social security system to private companies in order to siphon off an ever increasing proportion of the welfare budget into the profits of private companies, it's almost certain that a company such as Ingeus, or one of the alphabet soup of other parasitical outsourcing companies (A4e, G4S, Atos, Serco, Capita, Seetec, Avanta) will end up with lucrative taxpayer funded contracts to carry out these sham "attitude tests". Just as they've picked up lucrative £multi-million contracts to administer the hopelessly failing and fraud riddled Work Programme and the "Help to Work" forced labour schemes.

The clear problem with the concept of "attitude tests" for the unemployed is the fact that the information obtained will be of so little use.

• What is the point of paying a fortune to a private company to establish the attitude of a kid who has only ever experienced paid work on extremely exploitative and low paid Zero Hours contracts and actually spent most of their working life doing unpaid forced labour schemes? Of course they're going to be "despondent" and "resistant to work". 

• What is the point of paying a fortune to a private company to find out that a person with a long employment history in decent jobs who has briefly fallen on hard times is "determined" to find another decent job?

• What is the point of paying a fortune to a private company to report that a person suffering severe mental disabilities who has been thrown off disability benefits as a result of the unlawful and discriminatory WCA regime for disabled people, and then been forced to look for work they are clearly incapable of doing, is "bewildered"?

In my view a much more useful approach would be to attempt to find out what value these people have, rather than trying to classify what is wrong with them. Instead of a ridiculous privately administered attitude test, I'd like to see the DWP launch an in-house standard aptitude test.

Such an aptitude test would attempt to establish the individual skillset of each Jobseeker. by assessing things like memory, reading, maths, critical thinking skills, manual dexterity, problem solving skills, stamina, reaction times, patience, concentration etc. This would allow suitable people and employers to be directed towards each other. It would also give people a very clear idea of what their skills and abilities are, and where they need to make improvements.
Other than the huge difference in the quality and usefulness of the information obtained, the big difference between these proposed Tory attitude tests, and a comprehensive aptitude test is the motivation behind them.

The kind of Aptitude test I've described works on the assumption that each person has a set of values, and that it beneficial to all of us if the state helps them to identify their skills and find appropriate employment.

Esther McVey's Attitude tests work on a very different assumption: The assumption that the unemployed are mainly "scum with bad attitudes". Her test is about attempting to find out what is wrong with them, and using draconian measures to force them to change, or drive them off the unemployment figures altogether.

That Esther McVey and the Tories have got it so completely backwards illustrates the fact that they are just a bunch of opportunistic right-wing authoritarians who have no conception of what the social security system is actually supposed to be for.

As Minister of State for Employment, Esther McVey's job isn't to belittle and demean the unemployed by herding them into sham attitude assessments carried out by corporate outsourcing profiteers, then to segregate them into different grades of "scum", to be abused and threatened into unpaid forced labour schemes (which are administered by the same bunch of corporate outsourcing profiteers) under the threat of absolute destitution via social security sanctions.

The job of the Minister for Employment is to help people when they fall on hard times by providing a subsistance income, helping them to identify their strengths and weaknesses, offering them training and courses appropriate to their needs, and helping suitable employers and employees come together.
This sordid scheme once again reinforces two things that we should all know about the Tories by now: The first is that they will never ever pass up an opportunity to pump more public money into private companies. The second is that they have absolute contempt towards "the lower orders", so much so that Esther McVey imagines that it is her role to belittle, demean and punish the unemployed, rather than to actually help them in any meaningful way. 

 Another Angry Voice  is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only sources of income for  Another Angry Voice  are small donations from people who see some value in my work. 

If you appreciate my efforts and you could afford to make a donation, 

it would be massively appreciated.

More articles from
ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE    
    
12 things you should know about "Help to Work" forced labour schemes
               
Does the WCA regime for disabled people constitute psychological torture?
           
The "Making Work Pay" fallacy

Why do right-wing people support workfare?
     
Problem Solving with Iain Duncan Smith
       
Poverty in 21st Century Britain; a Tory comedy

Iain Duncan Smith's bizarre tirade against the Trussell Trust

The Tory ideological mission
           
Margaret Thatcher's toxic neoliberal legacies
           
The Great Neoliberal Lie

             

Scottish independence and the complacency of the Westminster establishment

People of Scotland,

One of the most important things to recognise in the Scottish independence debate is that a Yes vote is not a rejection of England, nor a rejection of an Englishman like me, neither is it a rejection of the folk who live elsewhere in the Union, nor a rejection of your own Britishness. It is a rejection of the misrule of the complacent Westminster establishment.

The Westminster establishment has had an unbroken run of power over the island of Great Britain for Centuries. No matter which political party acts out the role of boss in the House of Commons, the establishment class are the real rulers of Great Britain. The anti-democratic unelected House of Lords (an appalling affront to democracy), and bizarre anachronisms like the City Remembrancer and the ludicrous UK honours system serve as reminders of where the power really resides behind the ridiculous pretence at democracy that is the House of Commons.

Over the last Century the Westminster establishment has had their own way on almost every issue, but now the people of Scotland have this amazing opportunity to "kick them in the balls" by ending Westminster misrule for good.

The last time the Westminster establishment suffered such a large setback was in the aftermath of the Second World War, when the Americans forced them to give up the British Empire, then peppered it with US bases, including nuclear bases on British soil. But this American assertion of power wasn't "a kick in the balls", it was an act of total domination to end the British empire and to formalise US superiority and British subservience.

The last time the Westminster establishment was properly stood up to, was the declaration of Irish independence, but because it came at the cost of so many thousands of lives and such a great deal of social suffering it would be trite and offensive to describe this deadly and destructive struggle as "a kick in the balls".

Now the people of Scotland have the chance to reject the complacent Westminster establishment without any of the horrors endured during the long struggle for Irish independence. It's the first chance in a very long time for people to give these complacent and unaccountable rulers "a kick in the balls" without having to endure enormous social suffering to achieve it.

For the last 35 years the behaviour of the Westminster establishment has been particularly egregious. The establishment class has repeatedly got away with neglecting the public interest in order to put their own interests first, in accordance with the cult-like economic dogma of greed, social neglect, privatisation and financialisation that they have become so obsessed with since Thatcher introduced it in 1979.

The Westminster establishment seized the profits from Scottish oil and siphoned them into the City of London and used them to fund tax breaks for their wealthy backers. Instead of creating a sovereign wealth fund which would surely have rivaled Norway's as one of the biggest in the world, the establishment class squandered it all on the ridiculous fantasy of building a post-industrial economy based around the City of London financial sector. Not only did the the establishment ignore Scotland's best social and economic interests, raid their oil revenues to prop up their extremist right-wing ideological experiments and destroy much of Scotland's industrial sector, they also used Scotland as the testing ground for Maggie Thatcher's vile Poll Tax.

It's not just Scotland that has suffered Westminster misrule over the last 35 years, it's nearly all of us. My home territories of Yorkshire and the North East have been horrendously neglected. In its industrial heyday Yorkshire was one of the wealthiest regions in the world, now it contains three of the ten most deprived areas in Northern Europe. This appalling decline in living standards in Yorkshire and the North East can be traced to underinvestment, mismanagement, chronic neglect of infrastructure, and even ideological assaults against so many of the two region's vital industries (coal, steel, transport, fishing, shipbuilding) leaving whole communities blighted for generations by the unemployment, poverty, crime and poor health that are born of lack of opportunity.

It's thanks to devolution that in recent years Scotland has avoided the some of the worst establishment excesses. A measure of Scottish autonomy has protected Scotland from the widespread and ongoing privatisation of the English NHS, blatant barriers to social mobility like tuition fees and the almost unbelievable giveaway of over 3,000 English schools to unaccountable private sector pseudo-charities, many of which are run by wealthy Tory party donors and unelected Tory peers, who gleefully "topslice" education budget to pay themselves and their cronies huge six figure executive salaries.

If a measure of autonomy from Westminster rule has protected Scotland from these establishment excesses, doesn't that suggest that the more autonomy people can take from Westminster, the better?

Aside from their misrule over most of the United Kingdom in order to favour the interests of London and the wealthy south east, the establishment class has also committed appalling crimes, such as selling off the national silver in one dodgy privatisation scam after another despite widespread public opposition, lying to the public in order to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq (see how that turned out), engaging in all kinds of miscarriages of justice and cover ups (The McCrone Report, the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, Hillsborough, the secret Falklands memos, Ian Duncan Smith's outrageous retroactive legislation, the missing Westminster paedophile dossier ...) and allowing the development of an out of control surveillance state beyond the wildest imagination of the KGB, subject to almost no proper democratic scrutiny at all.

The powers of the UK surveillance state has even gone as far as allowing secret police to steal the identities of dead babies, infiltrate environmental protest groups and initiate sexual relationships with activists, get them pregnant and then simply disappear without trace when the assignment is over, leaving the woman without a penny in child support. What makes this so much worse is the attempt to whitewash the whole affair by chucking out the victims' legal cases at practically the first legal hurdle, and holding absolutely nobody accountable for having authorised such grotesque perversions in the first place.

The fact that they have ruled over us all with such contempt and such impunity for so long has made the establishment class dreadfully complacent. The constant stream of outrageous Westminster expenses scandals is the most visible manifestation of this complacency. That so many of them fiddled their expenses was shocking, but that so many of these self-serving scammers still sit in Westminster is more shocking still. Whoever forms the next Westminster government in 2015, the Chancellor of the Exchequer will in all probability be an expenses scammer, either George Osborne (taxpayer funded paddock) or Ed Balls (serial house flipping).

Another, even more blatant sign of establishment complacency and contempt for the public is the revisionist fairy story that underpins their beloved austerity narrative. They think that we're all just going to forget that the economic crisis spread from out the financial sector in the City of London. They imagine that if they harp on about "scroungers" at the bottom of society, immigrants "stealing our jobs" and how there's "no money left" the public will just forget that the economic shock that nearly wiped out the UK economy came from the heart of the establishment in London.

The establishment class is so complacent that politicians like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage feel free to tell ludicrous revisionist stories about how the City of London is such a remarkable economic success story, even though just a few years ago the London based financial sector had to be saved from complete oblivion with the biggest state subsidies in history. They tell these stories even though the ongoing cost of these secretive off balance "financial sector interventions" still amounts to more than the official entire national debt that they endlessly fearmonger about to justify their ideological austerity agenda.

It's bad enough that the establishment class expect us to believe that they could afford to find £1.5 trillion for secretive off balance sheet deals to save the banks from the consequences of their own reckless gambling, then even more to flood the financial sector with an additional £375 billion in newly created Quantitative Easing money, yet "there's not enough cash" to keep open our local libraries/youth clubs/Sure Start projects/A&E units/maternity wards etc. What is even more contemptuous still, is the way they expect us to believe that the City of London is some kind of miraculous success story rather than the cause of all of this economic chaos.

The combination of their blatant misrule (no matter which party happens to be playing leader of the House of Commons at the time) and the visible manifestations of their greed, complacency and outright contempt for the public has desperately eroded public trust in British politics.

In combination with the hopelessly outdated and non-proportional electoral process used by the House of Commons (a system that leaves countless millions of voters ignored and unrepresented because they happen to live in "safe seat" constituencies), this lack of public trust in politics has created dangerous levels of political apathy. In 2010 David Cameron became Prime Minister after just 23.5% of the electorate voted Tory, meanwhile 35% of the electorate didn't even bother to vote. In the 2014 European elections the "Thatcherism on steroids" party won the most seats with the backing of just 9% of the electorate after an incredible 66% of people didn't even bother to vote.

The independence referendum in Scotland has provided a wonderful opportunity for people to shake off their political apathy and actually think about politics afresh. Independence represents the opportunity to participate in much needed constitutional renewal. It is the opportunity for the people of Scotland to develop a modern 21st Century constitution, rather than continuing to use the ridiculous anachronism riddled and almost infinitely malleable hotch-potch of a UK constitution, which has been continually revised for centuries to do little more than maintain establishment power and serve establishment interests.

The single biggest demonstration of how complacent the Westminster establishment has become is the fact that the Westminster government has now openly admitted that they haven't even formed a contingency plan should the people of Scotland see sense and assert their right to self-determination. David Cameron's official spokesperson said that no contingency plans at all had been drawn up because "The government’s entire focus is on making the case for the UK staying together". This absurdly complacent stance is a blatant display of contempt for the people of Scotland because it assumes with certainly that they will vote the way the Westminster establishment wants them to. But this no contingencies gamble is also a display of outright contempt for the citizens of the rest of the UK too, because how on earth are they going to best represent our interests in separation negotiations with an independent Scotland, if they haven't even begun to think about negotiation strategies out of their sheer complacency?

Yet another demonstration of this appalling establishment complacency is the refusal of the Westminster establishment to allow the the compromise option of "Devo Max" which would have allowed the people of Scotland the option of testing the waters of greater autonomy without the necessity for formal separation.

It is clear that the establishment would rather play an all or nothing gamble in an attempt to maintain their rule over Scotland than voluntarily offer up any more of their powers. Deliberate removal of a compromise option in order to fight a "do-or-die" ultimatum with the people of Scotland on the assumption that they are certain to win so strong that they don't even bother to make any contingency plans is an extraordinarily complacent, and many would say catastrophically stupid risk to take.

That they would take such a ludicrously risky "all or nothing" gamble by removing Devo Max and then not even prepare a contingency plan in case the gamble fails, just goes to show how hopelessly unfit the Westminster establishment is to rule over people's lives in a responsible manner.

The people of Scotland have an amazing opportunity to get rid of these complacent and contemptuous rulers once and for all, so you mustn't vote against your own interests out of pity for the rest of us who will be left under Westminter misrule.

If you want to help us, you must show us that there is a better alternative. That in places like Wales, Cornwall, Yorkshire or any other part of the United Kingdom that chooses to demand it, we too can stand up to the Westminster establishment and achieve greater autonomy for ourselves. You must show us that it is possible to live in Great Britain without a ruling establishment that creates ever more inequality through their adherence to their destructive and unstable "greed is a virtue" - "privatise everything" economic ideology and their willfully blind indifference to poverty and lack of social mobility.

The majority of the Scottish want, and deserve, a society that is run for the benefit of all, not just the privileged few, and a health service that is not being carved open for privatisation and starved of funding by the Westminster establishment. Of course the rest of the United Kingdom deserves this too, but your job isn't to achieve these things for us all, it is to lead by example and to show us that it is at least possible to achieve them for ourselves. It's your job to show us the value of newfound political autonomy, increased political participation, constitutional renewal and greater political accountability.

I'm not trying to say that that Scotland is to become some kind of utopia. It isn't. Utopias don't exist. I'm saying that the people of Scotland have an opportunity to achieve something better for themselves. It will take a hell of a lot of work to create a Scotland that is more like the one you want it to be. You're going to have to stay engaged with politics, you're going to have to hold your politicians to account, and you're going to have to fight incredibly hard for the changes you want to see achieved. But if you put in the effort, it will be worth it.

Instead of voting to stay and suffer Westminster misrule with the rest of us, you've got to tell the Westminster establishment that they are no longer worthy rulers by rejecting them and their Unionist fearmongering. When you do this, know that you're not just doing it for yourselves, you're doing it as an example to the rest of us that the complacent Westminster establishment isn't invincible. Know that there are people all over the rest of the UK who want to celebrate Scottish independence for what it actually is; an all too rare defeat for our unaccountable rulers in Westminster.

Please vote Yes on September 18th to show the rest of us that even against the full combined will of the Westminster establishment, the attempted brainwashing of a ridiculously biased mainstream media and the ever more desperate Unionist fearmongering campaigns, people can stand up for themselves and take a greater measure of control over their lives. Show us that this can be achieved in a peaceful and democratic manner, and show us that a society can be economically and socially reinvigorated through the process of constitutional renewal.


Kindest regards, and best of luck for the future


Tom (Another Angry Voice)


 Another Angry Voice  is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only sources of income for  Another Angry Voice  are small donations from people who see some value in my work. If you appreciate my efforts and you could afford to make a donation, it would be massively appreciated.

MORE ARTICLES FROM
 ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE 
         
Reasons Scotland should vote Yes - 1: Uncertainty
           
Reasons Scotland should vote Yes - 2: We don't need your pity
                     
A letter to Scottish voters
       
A letter to fans of Workfare
                             
The "unpatriotic left" fallacy 
                                         
Who is to blame for the economic crisis?
                          
"Bedroom Tax" - tax the poor to subsidise the rich
                
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The Tory ideological mission
                                
Margaret Thatcher's toxic neoliberal legacies
  

Recommended reading - Economics

Several people have written to me asking if I could suggest some books for them to read in order to broaden their understanding of economics. Instead of answering personally each time I've decided to combine the time I've been spending on writing short individualised responses into writing this more comprehensive article.

Hopefully it will be of some use to you, whether you specifically asked me for some recommendations or not.

Who this guide is for         
         
This guide is intended to be useful whether you are an aspiring economics student, a current student disillusioned with the way in which your economics department uncritically pushes the failed neoclassical economic orthodoxy, an economics graduate who is keen to continue broadening their horizons, or someone with no background in economics at all who would simply like to learn more about the subject.

Many of the people to have asked me for reading advice are already economics students, economics graduates or people intending to study economics at university. It is a very positive sign that these guys have realised that there is a lot more to economics than the narrow mainstream neoclassical orthodoxy that has infected and overrun the majority of economics departments, and that they're looking for answers elsewhere.

Several of the other people to have asked me for economics reading tips have admitted that they have very little understanding of economics, which is hardly surprising given that economics courses aren't taught in the majority of UK state schools, meaning that the vast majority of the 93% of state educated kids end up leaving school as functional economic illiterates.

This public lack of basic economic literacy is extremely beneficial to the ruling establishment because it allows them to use all kinds of absolutely ludicrous economic fairy stories to justify their harmful economic policies.

I feel proud that people from many different walks of life have seen me as a reliable person to turn to for advice, and it makes me glad that there are still people out there who want to understand economic issues from different perspectives to the ones prescribed by the neoclassical orthodoxy.

Ha Joon Chang

A very good starting point for economics novices is the book "23 things they don't tell you about capitalism" by Ha Joon Chang. This is a brilliantly written book that rigorously deconstructs some of the many myths and outright fallacies that underpin conventional economics. In my opinion the best thing about the book is the way that Ha Joon Chang uses every day language to explain often quite complex economic ideas. Even if you feel that you're well aware of the flaws in orthodox neoclassical economics already, 23 Things is still worth a read because in my view it's a masterclass in discussing economic ideas in accessible language, which is an incredibly important skill.

I am looking forward to obtaining a copy of his latest book

Inside Job

Another good starting point is the 2011 film "Inside Job" directed by Charles Ferguson which provides an explanation of how the 2007/08 global financial sector insolvency crisis actually came about (spoiler alert - the UK Labour party was not entirely to blame for the global banking crisis as the Tory press would have you believe).

The truth is that the global financial sector insolvency crisis was caused by a toxic blend of greed, corruption, conflicts of interest, poor regulation, moral hazard, ideologically driven deregulations and an alphabet soup complex financial products.

The film gives a great overview of the economic meltdown that would have completely wiped out Wall Street and the City of London without the biggest state subsidies in history to bail out the insolvent financial sector institutions. The book of the same name provides a wealth of more detailed analysis.

Steve Keen

"Debunking Economics" by the Australian economist Steve Keen is an exceptionally good critique of the absolute nonsense that underpins the neoclassical economic orthodoxy. It's harder going than the work of Ha Joon Chang or Charles Ferguson, but it's really worth the effort. A must read for anyone who is intent on looking at economics from outside the narrow spectrum of the neoclassical orthodoxy.

Heterodox economics

Steve Keen talks a lot about heterodox economics in Debunking Economics. If you're intent on learning more about economics it's very important indeed to understand that there is no single unified subject called "economics". There is mainstream economics which is based on the flawed and assumption riddled neoclassical orthodoxy (more like a religious faith system than a social science), and then there are countless other fields of economics which are often classed together under the umbrella "heterodox economics".

There is actually very little in common between the various fields that are lumped together as "heterodox" other than that they have been pushed to the margins by the now completely invalidated, but still widely accepted, neoclassical orthodoxy.

This PDF provides a good overview of the myriad fields that make up "heterodox economics".

Behavoural Economics

Of the many promising heterodox economic fields, I'm particularly interested in behavioural economics, which stands in opposition to the neoclassical position that accurate economic models can be built upon the assumption that human beings act in their own rational self-interest. There is a huge amount of evidence to prove that in reality human beings actually make most of our decisions on an intuitive, non-rational level. Behavioural economics is about trying to work actual human behaviour, and human cognitive processes into our economic models.

If mainstream economics is ever going to make the progression from a pseudo-scientific quasi-religious ideology riddled with ludicrous assumptions and unquestionable core beliefs to become a legitimate social science, I'm certain that developments in behavioural economics are going to play an important part.

Economic inequality

Inequality has always been a theme in economics, but with the rise of the neoclassical orthodoxy it fell out of favour. In recent years inequality has made quite a comeback, so much so that two of the bestselling economics books in recent years directly addressed the theme. "The Spirit Level" by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson popularised the theory that too much inequality is extremely bad for the economy, and the French economist Thomas Piketty further developed the theme that growing inequality is a major threat to economic stability in his book "Capital in the 21st Century".

The 2013 documentary "Inequality for All" featuring Robert Reich is certainly worth some 90 minutes of your time too.

You've got to learn some Marx

Even if you are strongly inclined to disagree with Marxist and socialist ideas, you've got to accept that Marx was a genius of his age and at least look at some of his work.  Many of Marx's criticisms of capitalism hold as true today as they did when he wrote them in the 19th Century.

Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto are both freely available on the Internet, so you've got no excuse for not at least taking a look. My personal view is that Marx's critiques of capitalism were immeasurably superior to his predictions about how capitalism might be overthrown. However I urge you to look for yourself and make up your own mind about Marx's ideas rather than blithely accepting other people's parsed, paraphrased, misrepresented or just completely made up interpretations of his work.

If you're interested in finding out a bit more about who Karl Marx actually was, Francis Wheen wrote a decent biography.

But, you should probably read some Rand too

In order to gain a more complete understanding of an issue, it is often necessary to read things with which we strongly disagree. Thus you should probably read some of Ayn Rand's demented frothing. Rand had a powerful influence over the reactionary right-wing in the US, in fact her book "Atlas Shrugged" is still regularly appears on bestseller lists in the US.

One of Rand's inner circle of sycophantic acolytes Alan Greenspan went on to become Chairman of the US Federal Reserve between 1987 and 2005, where he unleashed wave after wave of ideologically motivated deregulations that culminated in the 2007-08 global financial sector insolvency crisis. Reading some of Rand's raving pseudo-philosophy helps us understand the ideological roots of the cult of the individual, greed-is-a-virtue, privatise everything, neoclassical mentality that has now infested the majority of economics departments, central banks, multinational organisations and political parties on the planet.

Orthodox economics

As a sceptic of the mainstream economic orthodoxy and free market dogma I'd caution people to use their critical judgement when reading the work of economists like Freidrich Hayek, Ludvig von Mises or Milton Friedman, but then you should strive to keep your critical judgement in play whatever you read, whether you're inclined to agree with it or not.

I'd also suggest reading some Adam Smith (perhaps Wealth of Nations) and considering how different many of his economic ideas are to those of the modern economic right who have so often championed him.

John Maynard Keynes

It's bit difficult to know what to suggest with Keynes, he was an incredibly influential economist, but his writing style can be somewhat impenetrable. There have been so many interpretations of his work that several distinct schools of Keynesian economics have developed (Neo-Keynesians, Post-Keynesians and New Keynesians).

If you are formally studying economics, make sure you have established some knowledge of Keynes for yourself before you learn someone else's interpretation of his work. Here's a link to Keynes' General Theory of Economics, and here's a fairly comprehensive list of books that have been written about him.
  
The capitalist "doves"

There are many economics commentators who seem to accept most of the core unquestionable faith positions that underpin conventional economics, but who don't fully subscribe to the extreme end of the capitalist spectrum (deregulate and privatise everything, massive tax cuts for corporations and harsh austerity for the masses). These guys are by and large supporters of the neoclassical capitalist orthodoxy, but they want to tinker with some of the ancillary beliefs to make capitalism a bit fairer and a bit less ruthless.

There are two positions to take on these guys. One is summed up with the Chomsky quote "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." One might say that economists like Paul Krugman, Jeffrey Sachs and Nouriel Roubini are just providing the lively debate within the limited spectrum that is bounded by "capitalism rules OK". 

My personal view is that it is often worth reading what they have to say, despite the fact a lot of their core assumptions are extremely dubious.

Nouriel Roubini was one of the tiny minority of economists to accurately predict the 2007-08 financial sector insolvency crisis, so his book "Crisis Economics" is worth a read if you want to check out what one of these "capitalist doves" have to say.

Lesser known economists
                     
In my view some of the most interesting economists are people who have been largely forgotten, and rarely ever make appearances in standard economics courses.

Some of most interesting economists I've come across include Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (French socialist and founder of mutualism)  Henry George (American left-libertarian, advocate of Land Value Tax and Basic Income),  Antonio Gramsci (Italian Marxist, defined the term "hegemony") Silvio Gesell (German anarchist and egalitarian, founder of Freiwirtschaft) Kenneth Boulding (Anglo-American economist, philosopher and Quaker, pioneer in systems theory and evolutionary economics) and Hyman Minsky (American Post-Keynesian, developer of the financial instability hypothesis).

I obviously don't agree with everything these guys came up with, but as is often the case, many of the most interesting and challenging voices have ended up being pushed to the sidelines in favour of those who know how to tell the rich and powerful exactly what they want to hear. In the case of economics it's clear that the ruling establishment love to hear that greed, selfishness, lack of empathy, hunger for power and pure self-interest are not vices, but virtues.

Economics doesn't exist in a vacuum

Economics overlaps with countless other fields of human endeavour. In fact many of the great economists throughout the ages have been recognised as profound thinkers in other important subjects aside from economics. These leading economic thinkers were more than just professional "money men", they were renowned philosophers, scientists, inventors, statesmen, political theorists, activists, mathematicians, social commentators and businessmen as well.

In my view it is of fundamental importance to try to synthesise what we learn about economics with what we already know of the world. In my case I've devoted much of my time to the study of philosophy and politics, which is convenient because these subjects are two of the most natural bedfellows of economics (in fact the three are often formally combined in PPE university courses).
   
A better understanding of philosophy can provide the cognitive abilities to identify and criticise structurally incoherent economic ideas. A better understanding of political history and familiarity with common political structures and processes helps to clarify how abstract economic theories have been applied in the real world of politics.

The advice to read up on philosophy and politics is a bit vague, so I'll provide details of a few (hopefully) interesting things that broadened my perspective on how economic theories can interact with the subjects of philosophy and politics. Perhaps they may be of some use to you.

• Bertrand Russell - "Proposed roads to Freedom": If you want to make yourself smarter, read some Bertrand Russell. This is as good a place to start as any.

• Naomi Klein - "The Shock Doctrine": This book is a meticulously written history and critique of neoliberal politics and economics.

• Noam Chomsky - Understanding Power: Chomsky is one of the great living intellectuals. It doesn't matter at all whether one agrees with Chomsky's politics, only a fool would claim that the man isn't a genius.

These suggestions are possibly of little use to people of markedly different experiences and mindsets to my own, so if you're more inclined to take a scientific, literary or perhaps business oriented perspective in life, try to consider the crossovers between particular economic ideas and aspects of your other fields of expertise.

Economics needs more thinkers with diverse "real life" experience and new perspectives to offer. What it certainly doesn't need is any more of the kind who have devoted the majority of their study hours to the uncritical rote learning of neoclassical economic dogma and little else.
             
The Keiser Report
                           
Max Keiser is a controversial figure, but in my view he's probably done more to popularise economics reporting than any man since the dawn of the television age. Max and his now wife Stacey Herbert present the first half of the thrice weekly Keiser Report show, and in the second half of the show Max interviews a guest, often someone with economics expertise, but occasionally others too. Some of his more offbeat guests have included Frankie Boyle, George Galloway, Kerry-Ann Mendoza (AKA Scriptonite Daily), Russell Brand and Mark McGowan (AKA The Artist Taxi Driver).

I don't see eye to eye with Max Keiser on everything, he's too much of a "gold bug", he is too keen on the Austrian school of economics and he doesn't interview nearly enough left-libertarians for my liking. But one thing is for sure, The Keiser Report is guaranteed to give you food for thought, especially if the guest is an interesting one.

If you watch nothing else of the Keiser Report, at least try a couple of episodes featuring the aforementioned economist Steve Keen (episode 4, episode 77, episode 226, episode 418, episode 500).
                  
Tax-Dodging and Capital flight

Tax-dodging and capital flight are two important subjects in contemporary economics. I've written short introductory articles on both of these interrelated subjects. If you would like to learn more about the alarming scale of tax-dodging, and why it is such a major economic problem you could read "Treasure Islands: Tax havens and the men who stole the world" by Nicolas Shaxon, or you could take a look at Richard Murphy's Tax Research UK blog or the Tax Justice Network website.  
                   
Rethinking economics
             
Rethinking Economics is a global movement to promote pluralism and critical thinking in economics courses. The movement arose out of a protest by Manchester University students against the uncritical teaching of the neoclassical economic orthodoxy in their economics department, despite the fact that huge swathes of neoclassical economic theory have clearly been completely refuted by the global financial sector insolvency crisis and the massive state bailouts. 
The Manchester students are called The Post Crash Economics Society, and in 2014 they won  university society of the year at the 2014 NUS Awards.

Positive Money

Positive Money is a movement which attempts to educate the public about the nature of money, how most of it is created out of nothing by private banks and rented out to the public as interest bearing loans, why this is a problem (inflationary bubbles and ever increasing levels of debt), and what they propose to do about it (giving monopoly power to create money to a kind of central bank-politburo).

My view on Positive Money is surprisingly similar to my view on Karl Marx. They have correctly identified flaws in the economic system and have attempted to inform the public of the problems - which is highly commendable, but their proposed solutions leave quite a lot to be desired.

Whatever your views on the nature of currency, Positive Money are definitely worth keeping an eye on.
     
My own work
 
I have written several articles on economic subjects, I suppose this is one of the main reasons that people have asked me for advice on economic matters. So my economics articles are probably the main reason that this article even exists.

I have written about many subjects ranging from the absolute basics (the difference between a debt and a deficit) through economic ideas that lots of people tend to grasp intuitively without realising there are specific economic explanations (Marginal Propensity to Consume, Hidden Inflation, Fiscal Multiplication) to much more complicated things (Information Asymmetry, Credit Default Swaps, Quantitative Easing).

I have also written a number of articles on Universal Basic Income and I intend to write a lot more about alternative currencies at some point in the future ...

Social media

I have set up a Twitter list of interesting economics related accounts. Feel free to do a spot of cherry picking of interesting accounts to follow, or to suggest other accounts you believe should be added to the list.
              
Finally

I hope this short guide to learning more about economics has been of use to you. 

If you would like to offer more economics recommendations in the comments section, please go ahead. 

 Another Angry Voice  is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only sources of income for  Another Angry Voice  are small donations from people who see some value in my work. If you appreciate my efforts and you could afford to make a donation, 

it would be massively appreciated.

More articles from
ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE    
    
The "What is ... ?" series
           
Margaret Thatcher's toxic neoliberal legacies
            
Who is to blame for the 2008 financial sector insolvency crisis?
              
What is wage repression?
           
The JP Morgan vision for Europe
           
Workfare, neoclassical economics and tabloid mindsets
           

What is ... Universal Basic Income?

Common Sense and neoclassical pseudo-economic nonsense

                 

Universal Basic Income from a left-libertarian perspective  

                
Tony Benn and the neoclassical orthodoxy

             

"Your page is going to be taken down" - threats from the lunatic fascist fringe

I don't normally choose to share the threatening personal messages that I receive, however in this case I'm going to make an exception due to the extraordinary audacity of the right-wing fanatics who are threatening to get my Another Angry Voice Facebook page shut down.

The threatening message was sent to me by a guy using the made-up name "Jonathan Valkyrie" who claims to represent the fascist Facebook page National British Resistance, which is a feeble impersonation of the Britain First page.

Here's the text of the message:

Your page is going to be taken down because clearly you've been using it to put out a Left-Wing bias when you had a duty to inform the British public about the truth.
 
You've abused this trust and your position as a responsible page owner and now you may very well lose the Page.
 
We'll claim responsibility if it happens and wallow in your misery by contacting you on twitter. If it doesn't happen then we'll keep trying. Either way, the clock is ticking.

Before I get to the piece of information that shows exactly how ludicrous these extremist idiots are, I'll just run through a few objections to the actual content of the message.

The first thing to note is that these right-wing extremists have an absolute hatred of free speech. They cannot abide alternative viewpoints to their own. The reason they wish to censor my page is fear. These cowards are afraid that their own ideology is so weak and unjustifiable that that the only means of protecting it is to censor and silence all dissenting voices.

According to these fascists I have "a duty to inform the British public about the truth", which is what I believe I have been doing for the last four years. I always endeavour to back up my assertions with rational analysis and numerous links to supporting evidence, which is more than I've ever seen  any of these fascist groups do.

Of course I'm, "biased" because the only absolute form of neutrality is complete and utter apathy (which means that anyone who claims to be unbiased should be distrusted immediately). I'm biased towards concepts like social justice and participatory democracy, and I'm biased against the Westminster establishment and obnoxious neo-fascist groups who go around threatening to censor the free speech of anyone they disagree with.

Ridiculously the representatives of this National British Resistance page seem incapable of realising that they themselves are riddled with bias, and a much more dangerous and irrational form of bias than my own. Accusations of bias from a pack of people whose number one objective on their 22 point plan is the forced deportation of all non-whites are hilarious. At least I'm not "biased" against people due to nothing more than the colour of their skin!

Some of the other policies in the NBR 22 point plan include the expulsion of all Jews to Israel and the confiscation of Jewish assets, the formation of a one party dictatorship, reintroduction of the death penalty, reintroduction of national service, the use of forced labour schemes, the abolition of all trade unions, the abolition of feminism and the "unnatural agenda that preaches women are allowed to do the duties of men" and a plan to abandon all multinational treaties and unions apart from the Commonwealth, which is supposedly to be turned into an international dictatorship controlled by National British Resistance.

It's hard to see how a page with such a lunatic agenda has amassed some 57,000 followers, but given that their posts rarely receive more than a few dozen interactions, it seems pretty clear that the vast majority of their followers are actually the result of click farms (teams of low-paid workers in countries like Bangladesh that add fake Facebook likes for as little as $15 per 1,000). If you click on the "likes" button on the page, Facebook helpfully explains that the number one demographic is Istanbul in Turkey, which seems more than a little odd for the Facebook page of a British fascist group with a visceral hatred of Muslims.

A blatantly ripped off version of one of my own
images, here's a link to the original.

Now to the salient point that exposes these fascists as the ludicrous opportunists they are: Shortly before sending me a message to announce that they are actively working to censor my free speech, they stole one of my Another Angry Voice infographics, replaced my logo with their own and then posted it on their wall.

The absolute cheek of blatantly ripping off my work and then threatening to get my page shut down is laughable. I don't normally resort to insults in my work, but these people are absolute scum. Not only do they promote their revolting hate fuelled dictatorship, they are intent on using censorship to protect their closed ideology, but not before blatantly stealing the arguments of those they are intent on silencing.

In conclusion I suppose that I must be doing something right if vile extreme-right nutters like this have decided that I'm an enemy who needs to be silenced.

I'll leave it up to you whether you want to visit their Facebook page to counter their repulsive views, report the numerous posts that seem to contravene Facebook terms and conditions, or just have a good old laugh at the contemptible gibberish that passes for debate and analysis on the far right fringe.


UPDATE: In the week following these threats, the admin at the NBR Facebook page has repeatedly plagiarised my work. I've also been informed that the guy behind the page is a former Tory party member called Joshua Bonehill, who has been in and out of court since he was a teenager, and earlier in 2014 he was found guilty of malicious communications after making up fake news stories in order to incite hatred against Muslims.
2nd UPDATE: Joshua Bonehill has been arrested for sending death threats and anti-Semitic abuse to the Labour MP Luciana Berger.
 

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