INVENIRE

Although Britain had defeated the Axis Powers in the Second World War, the country was falling from its status as the world’s sole economic power; 1945 was the second consecutive year that GDP per capita had fallen. Influenced by economists like William Beveridge and John Maynard Keynes, British economic policy operated under the guidance of what is referred to as the Post-War Consensus. From the end of the Second World War until the election of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government, British politicians from both major political parties agreed to establish Britain as a social democracy. A key element of the Post-War Consensus was its proposition of nationalisation as a method to increase output and to make utilities more available to the British people. Nationalisation, although well-intentioned, was the leading cause of the decline of the British coal industry, and therefore lead to increased energy dependence on other nations. Between 1945 and 1951, Clement Attlee’s Labour go...

We hear it all the time: our tax system is unfair. It is, supposedly, stacked against the working classes; it's engineered to benefit the rich and hurt the poor. I ardently disagree with this notion and I believe that those who believe that the richest individuals do not contribute enough are either unaware of the facts, or are more dishonest and therefore choose to ignore them. The majority of us agree that equality of outcome is not a good idea. A student who had invested a great deal of time and effort into preparing for an exam would be rightly annoyed if, after the exam, the marks were equally distributed. Similarly, individuals in a family of four would not each eat the same amount of food in the spirit of equality; food would be distributed in accordance to need. We also, almost unanimously, agree that proportion is just. This is evident in the way we respond to tragedies. We express frustration and anger over news that, due to bad weather, farmer's harvest has failed...

The National College Athletic Association's (NCAA) March Madness tournament is big business. That is obvious. According to SBNation, the NCAA's TV deal for the tournament with Turner Broadcasting System, an American media company, is worth US$19.6 billion in total. The first deal was originally signed in 2010 and was originally written so that Turner would pay US$10.8 billion over the course of 14 years for broadcasting rights for the tournament. The deal was extended in 2016, for an additional 8 years. This cost Turner another US$8.8 billion, and it means that the company will have broadcasting rights until 2032. The tournament is by far the largest source of income for the NCAA. The NCAA's official financial statement for the 2017-18 year shows that the Association generated US$ 844, 267, 484 in revenue, from television and marketing rights fees. Over 777 million dollars from this was the result of their evidently lucrative deal with Turner. Considering all of this, ...

Black Friday has come and gone. The day following America's national holiday of Thanksgiving, Black Friday, is traditionally the day of the year on which retailers offer the largest discounts to consumers, with large price cuts on a wide variety of products. The holiday has a long, illustrious tradition, with a variety of stories as to how it began, including the slave trade. The term was first used in September 1869, to describe the financial crisis that occurred after two Wall Street financiers attempted to buy as much of America's gold as possible, in the hope that prices would rise, leaving them with a large profit. The two men, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, failed in this attempt. The earliest use of the term "Black Friday", as we know it, originated in the city of Philadelphia. It was used by police officers to describe the chaos that ensued, as tourists and shoppers travelled to the city for the weekend's Army-Navy American football game. It was only in the 198...

In early October, Amazon announced that they would be raising their minimum wage to USD 15.00 an hour, for all employees in the United States, and to £9.50 for British workers. If examined at face value, this may seem to make no sense, as this would only create more cost for the employer and reduce profits for the company. In this article, I will aim to argue the opposite: this decision by Jeff Bezos is a potentially manipulative move. News organisations like MSNBC and Business Insider tell their audiences of the extent to which Amazon workers suffer, with stories of 80-hour work weeks, missing wages and gruelling shifts. Prominent socialist senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has been a vocal critic of the company. In one speech, he stated that "Thousands of Amazon employees are forced to rely on food stamps, Medicaid [a healthcare programme for low-income Americans] and public housing because their wages are too low..." On the 2nd of October, the company said that it had "...

The knockout stage of the 2018 World Cup is currently underway, and Invenire has been researching the financial and economic impact of the world cup. The FIFA World Cup is both the most expensive and the most lucrative of any football tournament in the world and has occurred every four years since 1930 when it was won by Uruguay. The only exceptions to this are the years 1942 and 1946; the tournament was cancelled as a result of World War II. An estimate by Russian regional governments has placed the cost of renovating, restoring and constructing stadiums at a total sum of GBP2 million to GBP6 million. This includes building stadiums in cities that do not have any professional football teams, like the host city of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, in Sochi.  Further upkeep and operation of World Cup venues are expected to reach costs of over GBP24, 000, 000. For example, the city of Nizhny Novgorod wishes for Moscow to pay for the upkeep of the stadium for at least three y...