A key example is The Economic Journal, Volume 114, no 494, March 2004. There is the presidential address by professor Stephen Nickell of the Bank of England and the London School of Economics, and there is a special session on the UK minimum wage, with five papers by renowned authors. All these authors have my highest respect and their work is crucial for understanding the economic situation. But solution to unemployment isn’t there yet, while it is available for discussion.
I fully agree with professor Nickell and I thank him for his observation:
“Relative poverty in the UK has risen massively since 1979 mainly because of increasing worklessnes, rising earnings dispersion and benefits indexed to prices, not wages. So poverty is now at a very high level.”
Professor Nickell suggests “reducing the long tail in the skill distribution”, but in my analysis we should also consider the tax void and the dynamic marginal tax rates, so that more low-skilled people can start working (also because of ‘learning by doing’).
Since all these other ways have had little effect, I can usefully advise to boycott Holland to speed up matters.
The line of reasoning thus is that if you want to resolve mass unemployment then you need the theory that is blocked from internal discussion by the directorate of the Dutch CPB. Since other ways fail, a boycott of Holland can be a good way to resolve the issue.
This is an advice and not an appeal. I am not an activist, but a scientist. It is only sound advice for the citizen who wants mass unemployment resolved. This advice derives from the integrity of economic science. This advice is also stock and barrel of economics itself and can be included in every economic textbook.
If you don’t know where to start boycottting: it is not just tulips and Gouda cheese and the Van Gogh museum, but also think of Shell, Ahold, Baan, Unilever, KLM (Air France), ING, ABN AMRO, Numico, Philips, AKZO-Nobel, DSM, etcetera. Instead of Amsterdam, visit Antwerp. Many international companies also have a local branch in Holland or even have an official seat in the Netherlands for tax reasons, and I would advise their inclusion. Be creative: locate the Dutch element, and boycott it. (They are everywhere, so look carefully.) (And I suppose it already had been wise for David Beckham not to get involved with Rebecca Loos.)
Of course, the Dutch need to eat, and I as well. I already have cut back on my Heineken at lunch, but that is tough since the cafetaria doesn’t sell alternatives yet. Hence the advice of the boycott is for the rest of the world, and my advice to the Dutch is to start thinking about that parliamentary enquiry. Also, don’t boycott publishers or the internet, since these are vital for the flow of information.
The following discusses a number of angles of which the relevance will become clear in the discussion.
The realism of my advice
Some people wonder whether I have gone nuts in advising to boycott Holland, the country where I live myself. Well, the logic above is clear, and it is only an advice, so I presume that the concern about my nutsiness actually is about the realism of my advice. I don’t know much about that. Events often start with ideas and it can be useful to air an idea to see whether it develops.
International contacts are a problem. Paul Krugman (2003), “The great unraveling”, rightly criticizes ‘anti-globalism’, see Krugman’s chapter “Global Schmobal” and the injustice done to James Tobin and his Tobin tax.