Geneva in switzerland is someone who has advised a shadow chancellor who has a guy standing cofounder of the basic Income Earth Network guy thanks so much for coming back on so after years of tory austerity the un called it callous policies driven by a political desire for social reengineering how well prepared is the chancellor to offer policies in response to Something Like coronavirus well to be frank i think its almost irresponsible to be having a budget today the chancellor is a young man whos never had a senior government position before and hes been in the job for weeks to prepare a complex budget and an extremely sensitive moment in our modern history when weve not only got the pandemic rushing towards us but the World Economy is at the very very fragile state where bad mistakes at. National and International Level could lead us into a big recession i want to get to those macro level top topics in a 2nd but im not sure in geneva or if youve been following it but obviously Boris Johnson fired his defacto finance minister a few weeks ago and they say its Dominic Cummings who is the real chancellor of the country so we can take maybe something from Dominic Cummings his blog he said he would support a nigga to income tax to boost growth what do you make of that in the if that happens at the budget today well i im around the worried by the way that the government is relying very much on this shadowy figure who has not been elected Dominic Cummings and i think the way that the previous chancellor was pushed out of his position by having is advisors sacked i think thats very ominous when he comes to talk about a negative income tax surprised if he knows really what that means i dont think we need a negative income tax in the sense that it was originally conceived by Milton Friedman many many years ago but i do think we need a major reform of our welfare system because universal credit is one of the most disgraceful social policies certainly in my lifetime we need to have a basic income where every citizen has a right to basic Economic Security and that i think would be tremendously helpful in combat in both the medical crisis that is associated with the pandemic and the social scrying with homelessness rising morbidity rising death rates in certain age groups and so on and and also i think weve got to realize that at this instance e. U. s economy. It is stalling the chinese are closing their factories and we need a multilateral balanced mature approach so i think weve got a whole combination of things and to force someone whos not in an elected position to be throwing out policies on an ad hoc basis when we have a new young chancellor without any practical experience in the high level politics is meant to be delivering a budget today well im sure the Chinese Government would say their opening factories in the trump government would certainly say that the economy is doing fine but in fairness to Boris Johnson obviously universal credit was accepted by the electorate at the election the abolition of it which was proposed by the labor party was rejected at the ballot box if you were advising the shadow chancellor today John Mcdonnell how on earth would you be able to advise coping with coronavirus given the stricture immigration controls of new paid jobs are there affecting the economy we have one of the lowest hospital beds because peter. And in fact weve lost 43 percent of them general and acute bed since 97 how how could you possibly cope with years of brown blair major in government well i think weve had 10 years of austerity which Boris Johnson and his ministers backed faithfully in that period and that those 10 years of austerity have sort of held back our infrastructure denuded Public Social Services of brazil was is and have created a perfect storm of circumstances in which a crises on top of all that leave us very ill prepared to deal with it and i think the chance. Has has a very difficult job today hes going to throw a few bits that will appear to reduce poverty that will appear to be addressing the Infrastructure Program problems but those problems are the result of 10 years of under successive conservative governments supported by Boris Johnson and if i was still advise ing John Mcdonnell and his successors in the labor party i would say that theyve got to hold the government to account one of the 1st things i would do which would help combat the virus and the effect of the virus is i would overhaul the welfare system because millions of our fellow citizens are suffering from the threat of homelessness actually homelessness rising morbidity and a lot of those problems will be intensified by the virus and the effects of the virus will be much worse because people are in such vulnerable social circumstances you see you mentioned the chancellor and just a moment for being so young the the chance let me know and be allowed to have his own advisors obviously we know hes been married to a billionaire or a billionaires daughter he worked at Goldman Sachs doesnt that to help him in making his budget the former bank of England Governor Mark carney i think he leaves his post in a few days time also former Goldman Sachs actually struck a deal to bail out goldman should a 2008 crisis repeat itself do you think we can expect anything about tax havens and tax avoidance in the budget given his past. I dont think you should hold up too many hopes of such a set of moves. Youre right he worked for Goldman Sachs for some years didnt distinguish himself in any way and then was involved in the hedge fund and investing in a number of American Companies including private Health Companies which might be indicative of which way the trade deals with the United States might go and with the privatization of our n. H. S. So there are a lot of worrying signs there but i think its too early for us to rush to judgment theres nothing wrong with being being young and inexperienced i just worry that he wont have the gravitas and weight to with stand some rather shadowy people behind him you mention privatisation the Doctors Association union here says that not even one percent of doctors in a survey believe the n. H. S. Is well prepared for a coronavirus if you were advising the chancellor today would you say that all outsourced private contracts should be renationalise and brought back into the state sector i think those those structural changes are desperately needed but i think the 1st priority must be to increase preparation for the oncoming effects of the virus i i think were seeing the the results of years of resource to prevail and privatisation by stealth but i think the chancellor must do is set aside significant extra resources for responding to the immediate needs of of people who are going to be very sick and very frightened when we do need the structural changes that preserve the n. H. S. In the in its. Original form or close to it and deep privatized what has already been privatized i think that that is a longer term challenge theres been some controversy the United States over. The bill the trumpet ministrations sponsors because of it its impacts from big pharma in that they may be able to charge what they like for any possible seen or cure for coronavirus despite the fact the taxpayer is funding the research what do you think of those responses in these economies to coronavirus you know it may or may benefit the bottom line of Big Pharmaceutical Companies at the expense of the population well i think thats merely the latest sign of the fact that we are living in an age of rentier capitalism in which the owners of property including intellectual property are making most of the money while most other people are struggling with low wages with fluctuating wages and loss of benefits and lack of entitlement to social services and i think that this pit in my eyes is the fragile nature of the International Economy with Household Debt in the United States and a record high corporate debt and also a record high the disruption to the World Economy by the outcome of the virus could tip all of the the worlds economy into a deep recession that will will be very similar in the intensity to the financial crisis of 2008 and i think just hope that governments and multinational organizations and multilateral organizations such as the world bank and the i. M. F. Have learned their lessons from the calamitous mistakes made in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and those those mistakes included the policy of quantitative easing by which they pumped be hung. Birds of billions of dollars euros and pounds into the Financial Markets to enrich the financiers and the big corporations at the expense of sort of really lowering the Living Standards of millions and millions of people will some of called it the new liberal plague reza guys addict thank you. After the break whos feeling the war coronavirus sense 2 of the worlds oil superpowers russia and saudi arabia into a price but the wild traders watch wrong to see you will blink 1st and while British Special forces in syria and his u. K. Coronavirus money being funneled into big pharma profits we are told the Home Office Minister will then break all the civil coming up about to it going underground. Descriptions sound up the even for the owners so how to choose this pet Food Industry is telling us what to feed our pets really more based on what they want to sell us than was necessarily good for the pet turns out pet food may not be as healthy as people believe and we have animals that have you know diabetes in arthritis they have auto immune disorders allergies we are actually creating these problems its a huge epidemic of toms and i believe can be linked to very simple problem of diet and some dog owners so heartbreaking stories about their pets less treats the larger corporations are not very interested in proving or disproving the value of their food because theyre already making it a 1000000000. 00 on it and theres no reason to do that research. Budget we talk about trouble hes got to demystified this whole political space if you were clear before like these folks are no better than us so you know i you know you can reach out to friends say you know take responsibility maybe run for office at the end of the day you know i dont see how we we were a lot a system where these people. Get away with you know misrepresenting eyes wide eyed step up and do it yourself. To stand up as a nation from which says something to us and investors but at the. Grocery i say is a mug for for youve got for the river trip them food for. Your mind i please god im never to try to predict i was. Upset. Because of global what was going to have to close to this needs of the day you always do odds most of us have played upon us a little bit in this part of the family when youre fighting with the left looking up. From the left just before she was about 4 to 6 months because of the sound. Welcome back his nater nations arguably fall into a state of panic amid coronavirus fears which threaten to rock the Global Economy what actually makes nations fail joining me now via skype from chicago is the british economist and author of why nations fail Professor James robinson thanks so much and for coming on how resilient are the economies where the 20018 canonic a day genetically began to a real contagion literal contagion like coronavirus well i want you mean china i think id from our perspective. Theres a lot of there are lots of problems about how resilient china is you know child china has what we call extract of Political Institutions and theyre good at doing some things but theyre very bad at doing other things and. Getting people to cooperate with them and trust them which is essential for fighting Something Like this is not well or things that the Chinese Government is good at but chinas already reporting fewer increases in numbers of cases than where youre talking to me from the United States my trainer is closing down some of the pop up hospital they built well it may be reporting that but i dont think we trust the information and i think one of the problems in china has been you know the lack of proper information about how many cases there are. And you know china distorts its National Income accounts it distorts its growth statistics we know that so so that will should be fairly skeptical about so given the fact that the w. H. O. Is relying on data from china and the whole world in terms of the medical fraternity and sorority is talking about reliant on data from china you think its not worth the paper its written on well i dont know that but i think you have to prepare for eventualities which dont rely on china trying to truthfully revealing the information. Because of course some people have been commenting that since the austerity that the u. N. Has said took took over this country after the 28 crash in fact presided over by David Cameron who says one of his favorite books is your book since then the numbers of beds the numbers of acute hospital beds and so on theyve continued to decline and our Health Infrastructure has suffered so wed be in a much poorer position to respond to a threat like coronavirus id be id be quick to add that you know that we in no way into d all stock David Camerons policy and he certainly didnt derive it from our book certain you know i mean we emphasize a lot how Critical Public Services are an investment in Public Services and i think this this virus is a kind of wake up call you know this we had it below but the polar started in sierra leone you know work week which you can easily lock down but you cant so easily lock down will happen and and so so i think you know we should rethink this will lead us to rethink lots of decisions that weve made perhaps about health and investment in services that were too short sighted but everyone seems to agree that china has been swiftest and being able to respond to coronavirus and thats why its effectively in terms of a crisis over as it will soon be in south korea what implications does this have for the kind of things youve been writing about when it comes to liberty should we be taking lessons from the communist party of china. I dont think so i mean you know to the extent that draconian measures banning movement and you know closing things are attractive from an epidemiological point of view then the Chinese Government is good at that you know the Chinese Government is very good at locking up hundreds of thousands of people and forcing people to live in certain areas you know in france has italy of course have banned all the movement as well do you think that. Think that a response like one made on c n b c b by a presenter saying instead of having stocks losing value week to week and the crisis being eaten on gated better to give coronavirus to everyone have it all sorted out and the death toll in terms of morbidity will be the same as it would be over months rather than days or do you think that is a some kind of a free market. For a lot of the gone mad when it comes to corona virus yeah i think the best evidence we have for example with respect to the spanish flu after the 1st will war was you know within the United States at least the more rapid Public Health interventions were in Public Health measures the lower the mortality rate was so i you know i think the idea that the mortality rate is kind of independent of these Public Health interventions is just factually incorrect so i mean obviously people are talking about super tuesday coronavirus do you think the long term implications of say the oil war as its been termed between saudi arabia and russia will be considered a bigger deal than coronavirus in the medium term that you know theres a strategic calculation being made by russia about you know the not the us is now the Worlds Biggest Oil producer which is probably the 1st time its been like that maybe it was like that in the late 19th century back in the days of rockefeller but but you know i think that but that the fracking and many of these techniques for producing oil in the United States are only vial. Well that relatively high prices so i think one of those strategies behind keeping prices low is to make the u. S. A loop production and profitable so its a kind of long run geopolitical an Economic Strategy that the russians are playing i dont know quite how disastrous that it was the price of oil tends to be if when t