One way to sell a new tax is to do the hard work of proving that it’s a good idea. ‘There’s some problem that needs to be solved,’ ‘here is the solution’, sort of thing. Say, carbon emissions are bad, we should have a carbon tax. In the absence of any such evidence, it’s necessary […]
We are facing one of those delightful clashes between equity and efficiency. Sadly, it looks like equity might win, which would mean a ‘fairer’ society – by the estimation of some people – but also a decidedly poorer one. I refer to this from Zack Polanski – the unthinking man’s Left populist du jour: ‘And […]
Quite the latest idea is Limitarianism. Laid out in a book of the same name by the Dutch-Belgian philosopher Ingrid Robeyns, the underlying thesis is that, just as there’s a physical limit to how much stuff we can all have, there should be a limit to how much wealth any one person may have. The […]
Joe Stiglitz is always interesting. He may be more of an ideologue than economist these days but he’s far too bright not to be interesting. So it is with his new report for the G20 about inequality, which gets really interesting if we follow the evidence actually presented. The base assertion is that inequality is […]
According to the current left-liberal consensus, it’s privatisation wot’s dun it. The specific detail of the argument varies. Mariana Mazzucato insists that if the state uses outside experts, then that means it loses the ability to do things directly. Others say that the private sector just isn’t very good at the task – the water […]
The London stock market has dropped out of the global top 20 as a place to raise money. Back in 2006, initial public offerings (IPO) raised $52 billion. In the first nine months of this year, it’s $248 million, making 2025 London’s worst year for listings in more than three decades. We’re now behind Mexico […]
Prices matter. Now, I’m a free market, capitalistic type, so of course I’m going to insist that everyone be tied down to mere gilt and pelf in how they live their lives. Yet it is still true that prices really, really matter. Let’s walk through why that’s true, regardless of your political tribe. Any one […]
Isn’t The Guardian just delightful at times? Take this recent piece, seemingly about fishing. Look beneath the surface, and the reporting actually manages to both diss the Left’s new favourite economist Mariana Mazzucato, and also show that central, let alone state, planning isn’t how productivity and economic growth happen. Of course, being The Guardian, they’ve […]
As HL Mencken pointed out, to every complex problem there is a solution that is clear, simple and wrong. But not so for the UK’s current budgetary woes. I have a clear and simple solution that would make Rachel Reeves’ accounts problems disappear into the ether, and I can even lower tax rates as I […]
Locational pricing for electricity is the idea that where there’s lots of electricity and not much demand for it, electricity should be cheaper. Equally, where there’s not much and high demand, it should be more expensive. As this is the basic idea of markets and prices – it sounds like an excellent idea. Let’s do […]
There’s something of a hunt going on for sources of possible growth in the British economy. The usual suspects are insisting that if government just borrowed more, taxed more and spent more, then all would be copacetic. As Jeremy Warner points out, with debt now running at over 100% of GDP, and taxation as high […]
Apparently, if you make up a measure, then you can make the number of that measure dance to your tune. Who knew, eh? Hence why the Social Metrics Commission (SMC) tells us that poverty is rising: The latest estimates, by the non-partisan Social Metrics Commission, show that the number of people in poverty has risen […]
The Government has just fallen victim to a campaign of misinformation – this is not a good sign about how we are going to be governed. I have, myself, played in those dark arts of political number making and this is a classic example to my mind. A classic example of someone starting out – […]
It’s official. Elon Musk, along with biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, has been announced by Donald Trump as the head of DOGE – ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ – a body advising the White House and the Office of Management and Budget from outside government, with a plan to ‘dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful […]
In theory, we should be able to trust government to invest for the future. Government is – in the absence of pikestaffs and burning brands overturning the arrangements – immortal. That makes it the one human institution that can afford to take the long view. As a result, many have concluded that difficult, long-term investment […]
It might be unpopular to say it, but removing the Winter Fuel Allowance from all and making it means-tested is a good idea. An excellent one, in fact. It is, possibly, true that tying it to pension credit will make so many more claim that benefit that the change will end up being a money-loser […]
Here’s an unpopular but correct statement: there never was any austerity. The problem the Labour Party now has to deal with is that their supporters don’t believe it. The result is producing a mood of fury among left-leaning activists – as can be gleaned from reading the expostulations on Twitter/X. It seems that many really […]
All economics is either a series of footnotes to Adam Smith – or wrong. True, given that I’m a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute, you could assume that I’m just biased, but there is more than a modicum of truth to that statement. Unfortunately, our new Chancellor has just unveiled some proposed changes […]
The first thing to know about the Government’s new National Wealth Fund is that it’s not, in fact, a national wealth fund. It’s absolutely nothing at all like the Norwegian store of that country’s oil and gas money, for example. The defining feature of that system is that it doesn’t invest in Norway – indeed […]
Even in an electoral period, it should be possible to track and even praise a specific policy, independent of the party that proffers it. This is my attempt to do so for the Reform UK proposal that the personal allowance for income tax should rise to £20,000 a year. Full disclosure: I am not a […]
