Let us spell a message to the Davos World Economic Forum before it gathers next week: Jobs are families. As unemployment rates reach record levels there can be no doubt that the current monetarist-market-oriented economic model contains vectors which create endemic instability, engender extreme instability in the labour market and send families lurching from one crisis to the next in a boom-and-bust climate. Perhaps the economists at Davos can do what they are paid for: produce an alternative that works.

The controlled economies of the COMECON block were derided in the west as being unviable. Yet they created continuous growth rates, development rates, financed excellent universal free education, excellent and free universal healthcare, free utilities, free public transports, free and guaranteed housing, communications, zero unemployment, leisure time activities, social mobility and indexed pensions. And policed the streets and provided security.