I am Steve McCarthy and the owner of this website. I trained originally as a physicist at Oxford, but then had a career as an economist working first for the government of Botswana and then for twenty seven years at the European Investment Bank, from which I’ve now retired. The original purpose of this site was to explore the interlinked issues of climate change and environmental destruction, human fulfillment and economic growth, wealth and income inequality and a universal basic income (see page What are we for? )
However the focus then shifted to the folly of Brexit and in particular how the decision for the UK to leave the European Union could be reversed. For this I worked with an old friend from my time in Botswana, John Speed, and most of the posts on this topic should be seen as jointly authored with him. We now know that this effort to stop Brexit was fruitless. Brexit has now happened though at this moment, early 2020, because of the Transition phase the full economic and social consequences of Brexit have yet to be realised. Perhaps there will be more to say about this in the future.
Most recently I have posted in relation to the Covid-19 epidemic. Ironically all these various recent issues have a bearing on the original purpose of this website What are we for?, not least because they call into question the implicit values and assumptions that have underpinned our society for the last generation or two. No doubt I will start trying to untangle these threads in the near future.
Stephen McCarthy – @mccarthy_sjmc