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RAYMOND MAKEWELL

Raymond Makewell has lived and worked in Australia, Europe, the United States and the Middle East. The majority of his professional life has been spent in banking and the computer industry. He had senior roles in the design of new technologies for banks by multinational companies and in the application of these technologies by banks. He discovered the economic teaching of Leon MacLaren in the late 1970s and has run public courses teaching these ideas for many years.

In 2007 he undertook a Bachelor of Economics degree and found that what was taught in universities about how people and business behaved was completely unlike what he had observed during 40 years of international business experience, and that economics was being considered devoid of history, politics and ethics. Although there was material in print which challenged many ideas of the neo-classical economists, there was very little available that presented a comprehensive, cogent, alternative view of the economic system. This book has been written to address that gap.

Endorsements:

“The editor of The Science of Economics, Raymond Makewell, has done a wonderful job of making MacLaren’s thinking relevant to our times … MacLaren has important ideas on economic justice that we also need to reflect on in the wake of banking scandals and growing economic inequality.

“Although MacLaren made his thought independent of its original inspiration in the work of Henry George, there is no doubt that George’s influence runs right through this book … MacLaren, like George, insists that land is the basis of economic activity … George’s vision … is certainly the inspiration for the many groups today arguing for the LVT [land value tax], and, in MacLaren’s reworking of it, deeply thought-provoking.

“Whether one agrees that MacLaren’s economics is more scientific than any other, or agrees with the arguments for the LVT, is not the point here. What matters is to engage with any thinker who is serious about economic justice. It matters because, although it may seem like a deeply refractory problem, not thinking about it is collectively the most likely cause of the economic mess we are in today. This book will be of great interest to anyone concerned with this problem.”
Mike King, The Network Review, the Journal of the Scientific and Medical Network