In this second edited extract from Four Horsemen: The Survival Manual, Mark Braund argues that while Keynes brought a much-needed breath of fresh air to economics in the 1930s, his refusal to acknowledge the importance of land diminishes his legacy.

In this first in a series of edited extracts from Four Horsemen: The Survival Manual co-author Mark Braund takes a step back and asks: What should economics be about?

James Robertson has been described as the ‘grandfather of green economics’; he might equally be called the father of Renegade Economics: over the last three decades nobody has been more eloquent or straightforward in their advocacy of a new economic order.
 

Over the last nine weeks I have looked at the means by which a privileged elite secure for themselves vast quantities of wealth; wealth which, by any reasonable understanding of economics, is unearned and undeserved.

While unearned wealth is both a symptom and a driver of economic injustice, the objective of transformative social change is not to soak the rich, but to create an environment in which economic opportunities are more widely distributed among the population.

If a small minority enjoy the benefits of unearned wealth, then other people must be losing wealth that is rightfully theirs.

If unearned wealth is a consequence of an economic system that confers an unjust and undeserved advantage on some people, then what about inheritance?