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In Our Time: Economic Rights

Economic Rights

27/01/2000

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Economic Rights

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the relationship between democracy and capitalism.

Melvyn Bragg discusses the relationship between democracy and capitalism and examines whether it is possible for a country to get rich and stay rich without a liberal constitution.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss economic rights. Is democracy the truest conduit of capitalism, or do the forces that make us rich run counter to the democratic institutions that safeguard our rights?  The economist Milton Friedman once said, “If freedom weren’t so economically efficient it wouldn’t stand a chance”.  If that was ever true, is it still the case as we enter the era of the globalised economy? What is the relationship between democracy and capitalism? Is it possible for a country to get rich and stay rich without a liberal constitution and what is the prospect of the ever looming spectre of ‘globalised capital’ infringing human rights?With Professor Amartya Sen, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge and winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Science; Will Hutton, former Editor of The Observer, Director of The Industrial Society and author of The State We’re In.

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