Liberalism: where did it come from and are its days numbered?

SHORT FILM

Open Future, The Economist, 17 April 2018

Liberalism has been the dominant political philosophy in the West for more than 200 years. Populists say liberals are too elite and are out of touch with ordinary people. Here’s what you need to know about liberalism and its place in modern society.


For more from The Economist and their Open Future project, click here.

The New Urban Crisis

PODCAST

Andrew Tuck, Monocle, 4 May 2017

Special interview: Richard Florida

Our cities have become small little areas of concentrated wealth and advantage for the global super rich, for knowledge workers, for the members of my own creative class. It’s not just the 1%, it’s about a third of us who can make a go, but then the other two thirds, falling further and further behind and surrounding these areas of concentrated advantage much larger spans of concentrated disadvantage, and those are not only in the city, what’s so interesting about The New Urban Crisis, that’s spread out to what we used to think of as the great affluent suburbs, so it really is a new geographic divide in our society, and that divide is not only causing inequality it’s causing this terrible backlash.


To visit Richard Florida’s website click here, for an article from The Guardian about his previous thesis on The Creative Class and it’s relationship to The New Urban Crisis click here, and for a longer discussion of The New Urban Crisis with the LSE Cities Ricky Burdett click here.

Outsider Economics

SHORT FILM

David McWilliams, Punk Economics, ft.com

And, of course, outsiderdom is politically located where the nationalist old and disenfranchised you intersect. Outsiders are not defined by traditional labels, but they do form strange coalitions. So the small shopkeeper could well have conservative instincts, while the twenty-something tattooed barista could be liberal to her core. Yet both of them see themselves as outsiders, and neither has a voice, but what they do have is a vote and every once in a while, if pushed, they say – enough!


For more from David McWilliams and his work on contemporary economics, click here.