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Andrews UK - Alan Peacock

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109 pages

English

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After nearly three and a half -- rather too exciting -- years as a young war-time sailor, Alan Peacock expected to return to a life of quiet contemplation. Instead he became an activist economist frequently engaged in controversies about the conduct of economic policy lasting all his professional life. His earlier experiences at trying to 'do good' will resonate with all those who have attempted to influence political action, but the account is also designed to inform and entertain those who are curious to know whether economists are actually human.The author has lived long enough to have become a Fellow of both the British Academy and Royal Society of Edinburgh and was knighted for public service in 1987.

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Monetary economics

Economics

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Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	23 septembre 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781845404659
Langue	English

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Title Page
ANXIOUS TO DO GOOD
Learning to be an Economist the Hard Way
Alan Peacock

Publisher Information
Anxious to do Good
Published in the UK by
Imprint Academic, PO Box 200, Exeter EX5 5YX, UK
Published in the USA by Imprint Academic,
Philosophy Documentation Center
PO Box 7147, Charlottesville, VA 22906-7147, USA
Digital conversion published in 2013 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright © Alan Peacock, 2010
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form
without permission, except for the quotation of brief passages
in criticism and discussion.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library and US Library of Congress

Dedication
Dedicated to the Memory of
Jo Grimond, Graham Hutton and Frank Paish

Preface
Alongside professional activities as an economist, I have written two ‘quasi-autobiographical’ books about particular periods in my life. This is the third one.
Their description by an adjective containing 21 letters requires explanation. The author of the books is depicted as a commentator on events rather than as the central figure in the events themselves. He is not an interesting enough person to accompany the reader on a journey round his skull, and does not want to embarrass those close to him. Self-analysis can encourage presentation of a litany of boring egocentricities, though personal motivation must be part of the story to be told.
Music lovers may recall that Berlioz wrote one of the first romantic concerti for the viola. In ‘Harold in Italy’ - to the initial disappointment of its sponsor, Paganini - the viola soloist offers a commentary on events in Harold’s wanderings, and does not dominate the development of the thematic material. The analogy will not satisfy some readers, any more than Paganini was by ‘Harold’ - although he changed his mind later. I confess, however, that the analogy is only an approximate guide. Perhaps I should say that the commentary I offer on events has to be accompanied by my reaction to them, if I am to follow my own remit.
That remit has the same pattern as the two previous attempts. Both of them had me accidentally faced with taking part in events which were of public concern. My first attempt shows how my revealed interest in music led me to apply my professional skills in economics to the analysis of the performing arts, to offering commentary on public policy towards the arts, and eventually to membership of the Arts Council of Great Britain and Chair of the Scottish Arts Council [1] . My second concerned a period of my life almost
40 years earlier, but was a totally unexpected occurrence. The now-famous story of the code-cracking activities at Bletchley, known as the Enigma breakthrough, became public knowledge nearly 40 years after WW2, it being claimed that these activities shortened that war by two years. What was not known in detail then, not even to those cracking the code, was how the information provided by the enemy of its own activities was used. That side of the story, as it affected Naval operations, is partly told by one who found himself, then only 20, transformed from being an immature university student into a practised hand at puzzling out the meaning of encoded messages while a sea-going intelligence officer. This had to be carried out as quickly as possible if these were to be of potential benefit to convoys facing the icy and tempestuous seas of the Arctic and faced with U boat attacks [2] . While the passing of the years has tested one’s memory of events, and available records of them were not always easy to come by, time does improve perspective. It helped me to realise how much one had gained from being a member of a revered tribal society such as the Royal Navy, and also able to examine its influence on one’s later attempts to make a living as an analyst of economic behaviour.
This third attempt is more like the second than the first. Chronologically, it is nearer the second but it is less an essay in how one is compelled to face situations that have a profound effect on one’s current activities and is more a positive attempt to mould one’s own passage through life. This explains the title. Like many whose temporary occupation was on active war service, I was much influenced by a desire to celebrate survival by entering some occupation where I might do some good. One was not quite sure how this was to be done, but in my case, I had embarked on a degree in economics and history before joining the Navy. When demobbed in order to complete my studies, I had already read some of the work of Keynes and Hayek and studied the famous Beveridge Report.
Although unsure of what qualifications would suit the aim of doing good, I was clear on one matter. It would require some form of political action and attachment to a political party. Dundee, where I was brought up, was then represented by a Liberal MP, Dingle Foot, and my parents were staunch Liberals. I seemed to be destined to look for some sort of link with the Liberal Party, and the matter was settled in my mind by the decision of both Keynes and Beveridge to sit as Liberals in the House of Lords.
It is one thing to have aspirations, another to fulfil them, as the first two chapters in this book explain. One must have the training, experience and personality to offer services as an adviser, and there is no guarantee that having the necessary qualities will produce the welcome mat when one taps on the doors of a political party. Half a century ago, even the major political parties had few paid staff, mostly employed in lowly occupations, and they relied on their ‘gurus’ to give their advice free. A tyro from a small country and 500 miles from London was not going to single-handedly buck the trend, particularly one wishing an attachment to the small residue of Liberal MPs close to the brink of political oblivion. The most one could expect would be to have paid employment which displayed some complementarities with a knowledge of national policy issues. In economics parlance, the opportunity cost of becoming an unpaid adviser was high indeed, given the competition between the time alone devoted to holding down a job, getting relevant experience in advice-giving that would appeal to political clients, not to speak of the loss of hours better spent with a very young family.
I was lucky, for as a junior lecturer in economics, first at my Alma Mater , St Andrews, and then at the LSE, I had chosen to specialise on the economics of public policy, particularly social policy, and discovered a ready market for an appraisal of the rationale and the effects of the profound changes that post-war policies produced on our economic and social life. By my second year at the LSE, I found myself invited to be the number-cruncher and statistician of the Liberal Party Committee on the proposed amalgamation of Income Tax and Social Security. This launched me on a parallel career to my academic one as a writer, broadcaster, and lecturer on the welfare state. I ‘graduated’ from committee member to informal adviser to Liberal members of Parliament, notably Jo Grimond and membership of the nearest thing to a Liberal Think Tank, the Unservile State Group. The pinnacle of my career within this small, if now slowly growing, coterie of academic economists, economic journalists and politicians, was to address the Liberal Summer School in 1960, having by then achieved some academic respectability as Professor of Economic Science at the University of Edinburgh, and about to emigrate south once again to become the Foundation Professor of Economics at the new University of York in 1962. I hope that the succeeding chapters (3-8) provide more entertainment than this bald summary suggests. ‘Progress’ was rapid but not along the straight line suggested by an entry in Who’s Who, being punctuated with several gaffes and accompanying embarrassments.
My ‘downfall’ is attributable to my attempt, first adumbrated in the lecture to the Liberal Summer School, to translate liberalist ideas into the design of social policy [3] . This went far beyond the confines of a liberal approach to the distribution of income and capital, as generally understood, to cover the distribution of ‘human capital’ whose contribution to welfare depended on the quality of education, training and research. The issue here went further than the traditional questions of how far improvement in welfare required government intervention to the question of the degree and the form of intervention. There is a vast literature on the philosophy of liberalism covering the relationship between the individual and the state, much of it devoid of consideration of the institutional framework that liberalism proposed. The practical point at issue in the 1960s was that of whether the state should have a major role not simply in correcting inequalities in the distribution of individual wealth, but in exercising close control over the way that individuals used their income and capital. In very general terms, one had to consider the balance between state provision of services with a redistributory impact, eg free state education, and state financing of such services that the individual or family could provide for themselves.
So the concentration in the later chapters (8-11) on the then burning issue of educational opportunity during the
1960s is designed to cover the more fundamental question of the ultimate aim of a Liberal policy for the welfare state as well as the provision of educational services in particular.
I severed any formal connection with the Liberal party because their senior politicians of the time, regrettably lead by Nancy Seear - an old f