More of the same from McWilliams

PB April-May 2025

April-May 2025 53

More of the same

from McWilliams

Charlatan

regurgitation

and plagiarism,

in his book and

columns

By Michael Smith

he introduction of memorable, if

somewhat ephemeral, social

archetypes — ranging from

Breakfast Roll Man to Low GI Jane—

by economist and writer, David

McWilliams has long conﬁrmed a keen eye for

trends, but perhaps not always a depth of

original insight or moral clarity. He has been

described as “values free” in these columns

more than once before. Now, however, is the

time to acknowledge his greatness as a writer.

Village is happy to follow a judgement

attributed to modernist poet TS Eliot on this.

McWilliams’ most enduring contribution

to Irish discourse—the term Celtic Tiger—

was not actually his invention, despite

persistent misattributions.

And his doomsaying is over-celebrated. In

2010 he told Village: “I think it’s quite

obvious what I thought during the Celtic

Tiger because I was almost completely on

my own in saying this is a huge bubble”. But

he’d been calling it a bubble for so long that

he was more notable for getting it wrong

than right.

His later contributions to the discourse,

such as his advocacy for the bank guarantee

and the Global Irish Forum, seem to have

generated much sound and fury but yielded

limited tangible results.

That is all historical cavilling but it has

also long appeared that David McWilliams,

while undeniably proliﬁc and engaging as a

social commentator, has a tendency to

recycle his own material across dierent

publications.

An apparent stain on his celebrity is the

self-plagiarism in his work. The repeated

use of near-identical phrasing across

multiple articles spanning dierent years

and publications suggests a reliance on a

core set of ideas rather than fresh analysis.

McWilliams has long maintained a

prominent column in the Irish Times where

he channels his prowess in sports and

socially, his track record in getting

everything right and some kitchen-sink

economics into entertaining and

opinionated views on the state of the world

and Ireland in it.

His regular discourses on the “creative

class”, for example, seem largely unchanged

from one iteration to the next. Similarly, his

views on relocating Dublin Port have been

restated with little variation, implying either

a single unwavering position or a reluctance

to expand his argument beyond its initial

formulation. He has long since exhausted

patience on the need to control NIMBYs

objecting to developments in articles where

he fails to draw attention to over reliance on

the market or even that most delays in

developments derive from developers’ own

appeals.

It’s all a lot shy of subversive, challenging

or even original.

But worse than his self-plagiarisation is

his non-self plagiarisation.

A good bit of this is evinced in his new

book ‘Money’, but it’s also part of his modus

operandi in the Irish Times.

The examples below are amusing in

illustrating the eorts he goes to to disguise

his sources, to dupe his readers. They are

characterised by pointless changing of

wording which often moves him into

inaccuracy.

He goes way beyond fair use and

characteristically never strays beyond the

conﬁnes of the content of the material he is

plagiarising, because he cannot. That would

require further reading.

The stratagem is eased by McWilliams’

facility with colourful, sometimes laddish

prose. He has a good turn of phrase when

he applies himself and the problem seems

to be laziness rather than lack of talent

although he is no longer, if he ever was,

source of original ideas.

Let’s start with his recent book: ‘Money:

The Story of Humanity’ [Simon & Schuster,

2024].

MEDIA

54 April-May 2025

April-May 2025 55

is the Gold Standard”.

Rocko (page 754) says:

“Dorothy and her friends return to the

Emerald City conﬁdent that the Wizard will

grant them their wishes. But they soon

unmask the Wizard and learn that he is

nothing but a humbug who has been fooling

the people”.

McWilliams’ article: ‘Europe has lost its

mojo. Thankfully Ireland is in bed with the

US’ (The Irish Times, 13 December, 2024).

McWilliams borrows from a Financial

Times article entitled ‘Can Europe’s economy

ever hope to rival the US again?’ (13 May,

2024). The article is linked in the online

version on a number of occasions, but the

way the data are used goes beyond normal

and fair use without further

acknowledgement.

As can be seen, McWilliams implies he

has gone straight to e.g, the IMF and the

European Commission, when he actually

took all the data noted below from the FT

article.

McWilliams says: “The contrast between

the EU’ s economic performance and that of

the United States over those three decades

has been spectacular and unambiguous.

Even in the shorter term the US has shown

the EU a clean pair of heels. Since the

pandemic, US GDP has rebounded strongly

and is now 8.7 per cent above pre-pandemic

levels — that is more than double the 3.4 per

cent recorded for the euro zone and ﬁve

times stronger than the 1.7 per cent seen in

the languid UK”.

The Financial Times says: “US gross

domestic product has proved more resilient

to these shocks and rebounded faster from

them, rising 8.7 per cent above pre-

pandemic levels by the ﬁrst quarter of this

year. That is more than double the 3.4 per

cent rise in Eurozone GDP and even further

In Chapter 15: ‘Money On Trial’, his story

about cycling is taken from Hannah Ross’s

‘Revolutions: How Women Changed the

World on Two Wheels’[Plume Press, 2020].

Hannah Ross is not referred to in the text

or in the book. At ﬁrst, a suspicion is

provoked — by similar wording and some

precise reiteration of dates — that there is a

superﬁcial overlap, but later the likeness is

verbatim.

Between pages 248 and 249, McWilliams

outlines the story of women and cycling in

Britain:

McWilliams says: “In Cambridge, on 21

May 1897, when the university Senate was

voting on whether to grant female students

the right to receive a full degree, a group of

angry male students brandishing signs

reading ‘Varsity for males’ tore into an egy

of a woman on a bicycle”.

Ross says: “It is May 21, 1897, and a large,

raucous crowd of male students — some

armed with eggs and ﬁreworks — have

gathered in Cambridge’s medieval market

square. Many held aloft placards that made

their feelings clear: ‘No Gowns for Girtonites’

and ‘Varsity for Men’”.

McWilliams says: “They ripped the

mannequin apart, tore o her head and

posted her remains — with her bicycle —

through the gates of the all-female Newnham

College”.

Ross says: “They tore down the egy in a

frenzy, ripping o her head and tearing her

body into pieces before posting her remains

through the gates of Newnham College”.

McWilliams says: “In 1896, at the age of

thirteen, Christabel Pankhurst, daughter of

the suragette leader Emmeline, petitioned

her father to buy her a bike”.

Ross says: “From the age of thirteen,

Christabel had petitioned her barrister

father for a bicycle”.

McWilliams says: “In 1890, there were 27

factories in the USA making 40,000 bikes a

year. By 1896 there were 250 factories

churning out 12 million [sic] bikes per year.

Pope, the largest bike maker in the States,

was making a bicycle a minute by the middle

of the decade. The UK, the bike producing

centre of the world, had 700 factories.

Ross says: “In 1890 there were 27 bicycle

factories in the USA making around 40,000

bicycles a year; by 1896, upwards of 250

factories were producing over 1,200,000,

with many factories working through the

night to meet demand. Pope, then the

largest U.S. cycle maker, was producing one

bike per minute by the middle of the decade.

The U.K. had meanwhile established itself

as the world capital of cycling with 700

factories”.

Chapter 16:’ Yellow Brick Road’

McWilliams’ iteration of the story of the

Wizard of Oz and the allegory of gold is

largely taken from a paper entitled: ‘The

“Wizard of Oz” as a Monetary Allegory’ [by

Hugh Rocko, Journal of Political Economy,

August, 1990]. This is not referred to in the

book. (McWilliams does refer to Jack

Weatherford’s book, on which this story is

also based).

On page 263, McWilliams says: “Before

Dorothy and her friends, working Americans,

can enter the Emerald City, they are ordered

to wear green-coloured spectacles. The

conservative ﬁnanciers who run the Emerald

City, in other words, force its citizens to look

at the world through money-coloured

lenses”.

Rocko says (pages 749-750): “But before

Dorothy and her friends can enter the city

they must don a pair of green-colored

glasses. Everyone in the city must wear

them and they must be locked on with a gold

buckle by order of the Wizard. The

conservative ﬁnanciers who run the Emerald

City, in other words, force its citizens to look

at the world through money colored

glasses”.

Also on page 263, McWilliams says:

“To satisfy the Wizard, the group must

travel to the West and destroy his enemy,

the Wicked Witch. The West represents the

Midwest of America, the farming heartland

and the source of the Populist movement”.

Rocko says (page 750):

“To satisfy the Wizard, the group must

travel to the West and destroy his enemy the

Wicked Witch of the West”.

McWilliams (also page 263) says: “At his

behest, she kills the Witch and returns with

her friends to the Emerald City conﬁdent

that the Wizard will grant them their wishes.

When they unmask the Wizard, however,

they discover he is nothing but a fraud — as

At ﬁrst, a suspicion is

provoked — by similar

wording and some precise

reiteration of dates —

that there is a superﬁcial

overlap, but later the

likeness is verbatim.

54 April-May 2025

April-May 2025 55

ahead of the 1.7 per cent equivalent increase

in the UK economy in the same period”.

McWilliams says: “Estimates from the IMF

suggest that living standards in Europe

have fallen by about a third relative to the

US since 2000. America has overtaken all

the major advanced economies of the EU

and this gap is expected to grow through to

2030”.

The Financial Times says: “Average per

capita income levels in purchasing-power-

parity terms in Europe have fallen to around

one-third below those in the US, according

to the IMF. What’s more, per capita income

in the US has overtaken all the major

advanced economies of the EU and the fund

forecasts this gap will only widen further

over the rest of this decade”.

Article ‘Rembrandt’s dad wanted his son

to get a ‘real job’, The

Irish Times,

6 July

2024

The ﬁrst half of this article borrows

extensively from Philipp Blom’s ‘Nature’s

Mutiny’ [WW Norton, 2019 translation]. This

book is not mentioned within the text, nor

does McWilliams mention Blom’s name in

any of this article. All in all, the ﬁrst half of

this article is almost entirely paraphrased

from Blom’s work, without any attribution

given.

McWilliams says: “Rembrandt was

fascinated by what was landing on the

docks of Amsterdam — exotic ﬂowers,

saplings and spices from Indonesia, oriental

rugs and Chinese porcelain, tea and coee,

sugar and mahogany furniture”.

Blom (page 94) says: “He remained

fascinated by the world of classical

antiquity, which he had ﬁrst encountered at

school, and by the vast stream of exotic

goods, objects, and stories arriving with the

trading ships from across the seas”.

McWilliams says: “Not since

Constantinople in its pomp was a city home

to so many languages, nationalities and

ethnicities.”

Blom (page 94-5) says: “Not since ancient

Rome or even Constantinople had so much

diversity, so many languages, cultures, and

wares rubbed up against one another as in

seventeenth-century Amsterdam”.

McWilliams says: “On the farms,

plummeting temperatures from the Little Ice

Age pushed down cereal yields, making it

less proﬁtable to farm wheat and grains,

pushing local farmers into the cities”.

Blom (page 92) says: “The cheap grain

being unloaded onto the docks of

Amsterdam dictated prices throughout the

land, as the Little Ice Age made itself felt

with even greater severity in the Northern

European countries, where conditions for

agriculture had always been rather marginal.

Many farmers…moved into cities”.

Article: ‘Climate Change is a Threat.

Fanaticism is a Bigger One’ (The

Irish Times,

10 February, 2024).

Early in the article David McWilliams

places the following statement within the

text: “(If you are interested in the economic

history of the period, read ‘Georey Parker’s

Global Crisis: War, Climate Change &

Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century’)”.

In many cases, the text is almost identical.

McWilliams says: “The year 1627 was the

wettest recorded in Europe in 500 years,

while the following year became known as

‘the year without a summer’. Lower

temperatures meant crops failed to ripen”.

Parker (page 3) says: “The summer of

1627 was the wettest recorded in Europe

during the past 500 years, and 1628 saw a

‘year without a summer’, with temperatures

so low that many crops never ripened”.

McWilliams says: “In Ireland, snow in

October 1641 signalled what was the

coldest winter on record leading to a “dearth

of corn as not seen in Ireland in memory”.

Parker (page 5) says: “and in Ireland, frost

and snow in October 1641 began what

contemporaries considered ‘a more bitter

winter than was of some years before or

since seen in Ireland’”.

McWilliams says: “This affected the

economy in three speciﬁc ways. First, most

people spent most of their money on food

so that incomes were immediately slashed.

Second, spending on food reduced spending

on anything else, knocking on negatively to

artisans. Third, food prices don’t rise in a

straight line, they spike upwards. Suppose

a farmer harvested 500 bushels of grain. Of

this he needed 175 to feed his animals and

75 for his family, leaving 250 for the market.

Imagine bad harvest cuts production by 30

per cent to 350 bushels. The farmer still

needs 250 for his own use, leaving only 100

bushels for the market, a fall of 60 per cent”.

Parker (pages 20-21) says: ”Shortage and

hunger’ could arise in three distinct ways.

First, since food accounted for up to half the

total expenditure of most families, an

increase in staple prices caused hardship.

Second, spending more on food left little or

nothing with which to purchase other goods,

leading to a fall in demand...Third, any

shortfall in the harvest reduced the food

supply geometrically and not arithmetically

because the impact of harvest failure on the

price of cereals is non -linear…If bad weather

reduced his crop by 30 per cent, the harvest

would produce only 350 bushels yet the

farmer still needed 250 of them for his

immediate use. The share available for the

market therefore dropped to 100 bushels —

a fall of 60 per cent”.

Note above and below how McWilliams

misrepresents what is clearly his source.

McWilliams says: “In the 60 years to

1680, Poland was only at peace for 27 years,

Holland for only 14, France for just 11 and

Spain for a mere three years. During the

1640s, the years of revolt in Ireland, no

European state avoided war”.

Parker (page 27) says: “In the six decades

between 1618 and 1678, Poland was at

peace for only 27 years, the Dutch Republic

for only 14, France for only 11, and Spain for

only 3. Some states fought wars on several

fronts at once. Virtually no European state

avoided war during the 1640s”.

The Irish Times isn’t a great force for

originality but at least its journalists should

not repeat their own earlier works or the

works of others. As to books let’s be kind.

A quote attributed to poet TS Eliot says

“good writers borrow; great writers steal”.

The ﬁrst half of this article borrows

extensively from Philipp Blom’s ‘Nature’s

Mutiny’. This book is not mentioned within

the text, nor does McWilliams mention

Blom’s name in any of this article