Jam Tomorrow? Why Time Really Matters in Economics, reviewed

We look at this book by Charles Crowson. See more about Jam Tomorrow? Why Time Really Matters in Economics here.

Is it better to have Jam Tomorrow? The value of time in economics, reviewed

We loved the title. The premise is interesting, logical and definitely invites further investigation. Numerous chapters open up interesting lines of inquiry and good questions to be discussed and explored. We were onboard for this book, but, through many of the chapters we felt that while this is an interesting topic, we were struggling to come away with definitive takeaways from the prose in this book.

It is readable, the question asked is relevant, but we just struggled to nail specific takeaways or insights to discuss in this review. We are loath to trash a book unless it is deserved. Maybe we just didn’t get it, but, beyond the good title and subtitle, it felt a bit like trying to nail smoke to a wall on this one. Maybe you will fare better than us on this one?

More about the book

With over twenty years’ experience as financial-markets professional, Charles’ career started at JP Morgan in 2000 and since then has seen him running the London office of a large, US event-driven hedge fund. Jam Tomorrow? is inspired by his practical experience in the investment industry, and his reflections on its shortcomings, observed over the course of a career which spanned the dotcom crash, the global financial crisis and the subsequent Eurozone crisis, as well as the more recent 2020 Covid crash and subsequent stock-market bubble.

 From the marshmallow test to the climate crisis, from house prices to the digital revolution, Jam Tomorrow? shows that economics can essentially be reduced to the choice of consuming today or saving for tomorrow – and demonstrates that instead of being irrelevant to one another, time and economics are in fact inextricably linked.

We all know time is precious. Despite this, economics generally regards time as a unit of measurement rather than as something inherently valuable. What makes this strange is that economics as a discipline has always been something of an academic cuckoo in the nest, borrowing ideas from elsewhere. While it is over a hundred years since Einstein’s theories of relativity revolutionised our concept of time, economics still labours under the old Newtonian conception of it as a sort of fixed, intergalactic tape measure – until now.

In Jam Tomorrow?, Charles Crowson presents a new theory of value at the heart of which lies our ever-changing perception of time. Humans are unique in their degree of self-awareness; particularly the awareness of their existence in time. As the basic economic choice is one of consuming in the present or saving for the future, all such choices are ultimately decisions about time. This means that we alone are the animal that chooses to save, since we alone understand that our actions in the present can affect the future.

Jam Tomorrow? recasts economics as a question of the balance between our needs and desires in the present and those of the future. This makes our changing perception of time a kind of invisible ink that links the micro to the macro, the past to the future, and that offers a new and challenging way of understanding the relationship between value, price, money and credit.

Author Charles Crowson is a finance professional with over twenty years’ experience in the investment industry. Having spent a decade running the London office of a large, US event-driven hedge fund, he has more recently been involved in asset management, working as a global macro portfolio manager. Charles’ career has spanned the dotcom crash, the global financial crisis and the subsequent Eurozone crisis, as well as the more recent 2020 Covid crash and subsequent stock-market bubble.

Charles publishes a bi-weekly blog (Market Depth) aimed at explaining the complexities and nuances of developments in global economics and markets for readers from a non-expert background.

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