Capitalism in Crisis
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 12 October 2017
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is capitalism broken, and if so, what should replace it? David Aaronovitch examines whether the free market is failing, and asks how it could be reformed.
He speaks to a range of experts and leading economists including:
Paul Johnson, Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies
Gillian Tett, US Managing Editor of the Financial Times
Helen Thompson, Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University
Michael Jacobs, co-editor of Rethinking Capitalism.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the briefing room with me, David Oronovich. We're in a room and we get briefed. |
| 0:05.9 | So if you really want to know what's going on in the world, then do listen to this podcast |
| 0:10.2 | and please let us know what you think by writing a review or rating us on iTunes or your |
| 0:15.4 | podcast provider. If you're minded to do so, please recommend us to your friends. |
| 0:21.4 | With the head of the NHS Confederation saying this week that the health service is in a perilous state, |
| 0:26.8 | you might want to recommend an episode from April asking, can the NHS survive? There is a new common sense emerging about how the country should be run. |
| 0:53.3 | And that's what's needed to replace the broken model |
| 0:56.3 | forged by Margaret Thatcher many years ago. Don't try and tell me that free markets are no longer |
| 1:06.2 | fit for purpose. The free market and the values of freedom, equality, rights, responsibilities |
| 1:13.6 | and the rule of law that lie at its heart remains the greatest agent of collective human progress ever created. |
| 1:25.6 | An argument that has appeared settled for a couple of generations seems to have been opened again. |
| 1:32.3 | But in 2017, what concretely is the contention between free market capitalism and socialism about? |
| 1:41.3 | Step into the briefing room to find out. |
| 1:56.0 | First, let's work out what is actually meant by the free market and look at its recent history. So, not since the Phoenicians, but since the war. |
| 2:00.0 | Paul Johnson, director of the Economic Think tank, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, |
| 2:05.0 | visited the briefing room earlier to take us through it. |
| 2:08.2 | The free market doesn't sit there by itself. |
| 2:10.8 | It is something that sits alongside the investments and the institutions that governments put there. |
| 2:16.7 | A lot of the innovation that goes into your iPhone and so on |
| 2:20.0 | comes from government-funded research. |
| 2:23.1 | Much of the transport couldn't happen |
| 2:25.1 | without the roads and the train lines that governments often put together |
... |
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