Journalist and novelist, Joe Quirk, co-author of Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity from Politicians, is easily the most interesting person at any cocktail party he attends. It isn’t hard to imagine Mr Quirk, in between introductions and hor d’oeuvres, capturing party goers’ curiosity […]
Birds flying high, you know how I feel. Sun in the sky, you know how I feel. Leaves driftin’ on by, you know how I feel. With the serving of Article 50, Brexit becomes a legal fact. When it comes to the media, though, I’m in a distinct minority. Our public discourse on Brexit is […]
It’s not usual for me to be praising David Lammy, but it’s worth doing so on his admission of the blindingly obvious about the gender pay gap. He’s organised a letter from some 50 MPs arguing that said pay gap won’t really ever close unless men take more of the child-raising responsibilities. Yes, hurrah! Finally. […]
The arrival of Comic Relief last week brought a volley of complaints – not least from Ian Birrell on CapX – about how it portrays African poverty. Critics argue that such appeals tend to promote short-term aid fixes of limited value, when the best kind of development work is that which addresses the structural causes of […]
In Japan, around 25 per cent of people are over the age of 65. That is set to rise to 40 per cent by 2060. Meanwhile, the number of babies born there is at its lowest since records began. This isn’t just a problem for Japan. All around the developed world a so-called “demographic time bomb” […]
It is possible to go through an entire education to PhD level in the very best schools and universities in the British system without any of your teachers or professors breathing the words “Friedrich Hayek”. This is a pity. Hayek died 25 years ago today, yet his ideas are very relevant to the 21st century. He […]
The world has a refugee crisis because the issue has long been left in a silo of humanitarian relief. The United Nations system views refugees purely as victims to be relieved by the provision of food and shelter. The organisational form that this has taken is the camp: refugees are supposed to go to camps where food […]
Two weeks ago, I wrote about disturbing developments in South Africa, where the government is contemplating land expropriation without compensation, and I warned of terrible economic consequences that would follow such a policy. Of course, the formulation and evaluation of policies, such as land expropriation, presume the existence of free speech, and the ability of […]
Another collective apology is being demanded of us. This time for making India poor. That’s the message from Shashi Tharoor, whose new book, Inglorious Empire, is calling for reparations. He claims we invaded, added the sub-Continent to the Empire, impoverished the place and the people. There is only one slight problem with this analysis – […]
In his new book The Road to Somewhere, David Goodhart divides Britain’s population into “Anywheres” and “Somewheres”. The former, he argues, build their identity on their accomplishments – the First at Oxford, the pupillage at the leading law firm, the non-executive directorships. The latter build it on a sense of place – the village they […]
Angus Deaton, the Nobel-prize winning economist (who also sits on the advisory board of HumanProgress.org), recently reiterated his belief that on the whole the world is getting better – if not, as he accepted, everywhere or for everyone at once. Perhaps that comes as no surprise to regular CapX readers, but the idea that the world is getting […]
In May last year, David Cameron arranged a summit against corruption, inviting leaders from more than 30 countries. Perhaps the most memorable moment was when the then prime minister was caught on TV telling the Queen and the Archbishop of Canterbury that two of the invited countries, Nigeria and Afghanistan, were “fantastically corrupt”. This generated an […]
At the heart of every Budget is what Philip Hammond referred to today as “the spreadsheet bit”. The Chancellor stands at the Despatch Box and recites a series of numbers, to the whoops or jeers of the parliamentary crowd. Today, for example, we had this on growth: “Reflecting the recent strength in the economy, the […]
Beneath the cartoonish histrionics, Donald Trump’s presidency already matters. Indeed, it is the mirror image of his predecessor’s, the second part of a drama entitled “What does being American mean?” Barack Obama offered one, impeccably liberal, answer to that question; Donald Trump offers another. One that is visceral, not intellectual; nativist, not universal. This is […]
Another gathering of the Great and the Good, calling itself the Inclusive Growth Commission, has decided to treat us to its view on the value of GDP as a measure of the economy. It is, you will be unsurprised to hear, not a positive one. GDP may measure the quantity of growth, they say, but […]
Lefties dominate academia. As far as headlines go, that is “Dog bites man” stuff. Nonetheless, an Adam Smith Institute paper reporting this finding has caused quite a stir. The report’s author, Noah Carl, looked at surveys of academic opinion from the 1960s and 1980s and compared them to a recent Times Higher Education survey which found […]
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