Social Policy Bonds blog: Politics without vision

04 January 2007

Politics without vision

Not much is unambiguous in politics, but the European Union’s corrupt, insane Common Agricultural Policy qualifies as an unambiguous disaster. It’s ruinously wasteful, it destroys the environment, it transfers money from the poor to the rich, and right now, not for the first time, it’s threatening to derail the global trading system.

We might expect therefore that the British opposition Conservative Party, not having any power to lose, would come out strongly against the CAP. Previous UK party leaders, did so, at least when they too were in opposition. Their efforts foundered against the intransigence of the France political caste, but at least they tried.

But not the current Conservative leader who takes the absurd CAP as a given. The extent of his vision is to want more subsidies for English farmers. Or it appears to be; I’d be delighted if I’m wrong.

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Social Policy Bonds in the media

13 June 2018: my short article Make Social Impact Bonds Tradeable, appears on the website of Alliance, a magazine for philanthropy and social investment.

25 May 2018: a short article on Social Policy Bonds and their possible application in India, appears on Market Express (India). It is by Dr Ashok V Desai and titled Incentivizing welfare.

9 October 2015: An article by Greg Bearup on the genesis of the Social Policy Bond idea, and application of a version of it in Australia appears in the Weekend Australian Magazine. (The article can also be downloaded as a pdf from here.)

October 2013: Professor Robert Shiller of Yale University, is named as one of the three winners of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economics. His Nobel Prize lecture (pdf) delivered on 8 December, mentions Social Policy Bonds. Professor Shiller has for many years encouraged my work on Social Policy Bonds, beginning in late 1996 when he sent me this letter.

3 May 2012: An audio talk by Nobel Prize winner Professor Robert Shiller at the London School of Economics, in which Social Policy Bonds are briefly mentioned, is available here.

18 April 2012: Robert Shiller, Professor of Economics at Yale University, mentions Social Policy Bonds in his new book Finance and the Good Society. He also mentions the concept in a Huffington Post article. It's the eighth of his Ten Ways Finance Can Be a Force for Good in Society, and is also mentioned in a short profile piece about Professor Shiller.