Robert Skidelsky
Project Syndicate
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Past articles by Robert:
The Case for Nordic and NATO Realism
Robert Skidelsky warns that Finland and Sweden’s membership of the Alliance risks weakening their security and that of Europe. → Read More
Where Has All the Money Gone? by Robert Skidelsky
Quantitative easing risks generating its own boom-and-bust cycles, and can thus be seen as an example of state-created financial instability. Governments must now abandon the fiction that central banks create money independently from government, and must themselves spend the money created at their behest. → Read More
Fail-Safe Failures by Robert Skidelsky
So much of our lives nowadays are determined by the smooth functioning of technologies of which we know little. Even if the risk of a global breakdown remains remote, we will increasingly find ourselves helpless and panic-stricken in the face of even mild upsets to ‘normal’ life. → Read More
The Gaps in Bidenomics by Robert Skidelsky
Policymakers seeking to stimulate the economy must pay more attention than past Keynesians did to avoiding inflation and ensuring that job creation at home is not offset by a drain of production capacity abroad. If the Biden administration is wise, it will adopt two radical policy proposals that address both issues. → Read More
Sequencing the Post-COVID Recovery by Robert Skidelsky
As countries emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, John Maynard Keynes’s emphasis on the need to implement post-crisis economic policies in the right order is highly relevant. But sustainability considerations mean that the distinction between recovery and reform is less clear cut than it seemed in the 1930s. → Read More
Was Brexit Inevitable? by Robert Skidelsky
On one level, Brexit was simply the unintended outcome of the United Kingdom’s 2016 referendum on its European Union membership. But in retrospect, there was a whiff of inevitability about the UK’s separation – not from Europe, but from a particular institutional expression of it. → Read More
What would Keynes do?
JM Keynes was convinced that if democracies failed to tackle mass unemployment, people would turn to dictatorships. We must urgently remember his warning. → Read More
The coronavirus pandemic shows why the West must transform its economic logic
We must end our dogmatic reliance on global supply chains and adopt “just-in-case” thinking. → Read More
A Post-Election Reckoning for British Politics by Robert Skidelsky
Leaving the European Union on January 31, 2020, will be UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s repayment of the debt he owes to the many Labour supporters who "lent" his Conservatives their votes. But "getting Brexit done" won't be enough for the Tories to hold on to their parliamentary seats. → Read More
The Economic Consequences of Automation by Robert Skidelsky
Economic theory does not provide a clear answer regarding the overall impact of technological progress on jobs. And even if automation has traditionally been beneficial in the long run, policymakers should never ignore its disruptive short-term effects on workers. → Read More
The Fall and Rise of Public Heroism by Robert Skidelsky
The value of heroism is again on the rise, especially in countries where undemocratic regimes can no longer be relied on to deliver economic prosperity. The future may well lie not with politicians and diplomats, but with those men – and women – who are willing to die. → Read More
The Fall of the Economists’ Empire by Robert Skidelsky
The goal of economics is to replace the particular languages that obstruct the discovery of general laws with the universal language of mathematics. This is the apotheosis of a Western conceit that can no longer be sustained by Western power. → Read More
From Versailles to the Euro by Robert Skidelsky
The agreement that ended World War I, signed in June 1919, imposed a ruinous debt burden on Germany. A century later, Germany has assumed the role of the eurozone’s self-righteous creditor, fretting about “moral hazard” and ignoring the destabilizing, contagious effects of making debtor countries poorer. → Read More
Has Austerity Been Vindicated? by Robert Skidelsky
A correlation between fiscal retrenchment and economic growth tells us nothing about the underlying relationship between the two. This should be borne in mind in light of new research suggesting that austerity may well be the right policy in a recession. → Read More
The good life after work
To manage the latest wave of automation, we must have ends that are more compelling than merely wanting more products and services. → Read More
The good life after work
If humanity is not to be trapped in a never-ending race against machines, we need to distinguish between needs and wants, and between means and ends → Read More
The Good Life After Work by Robert Skidelsky
In order to manage the latest wave of automation, we must have ends that are more compelling than merely wanting more products and services. Without an intelligent definition of wellbeing, we will simply create more and more monsters that feed on our humanity. → Read More
No choice and no exit for the UK
In its frustrating effort to find a way out of the EU, the United Kingdom has been painfully discovering the limits of its own sovereignty → Read More
No Choice and No Exit for the UK by Robert Skidelsky
The outcome of the simple binary choice given to UK voters in the June 2016 Brexit referendum has proved almost impossible to implement. The main obstacle is not the complications of negotiating new treaties, but rather the judgment by those in charge of Britain’s political life that the costs of an emphatic withdrawal are too great. → Read More
The AI Road to Serfdom? by Robert Skidelsky
Estimates of job losses in the near future due to automation range from 9% to 47%, and jobs themselves are becoming ever more precarious. Should we trust the conventional economic narrative according to which machines inevitably raise workers' living standards? → Read More