Among the maelstrom of election news stories that broke yesterday was one that will be music to the ears of many free-marketeers. Responding to a question from a member of the public, Boris Johnson said that the BBC licence fee should be “looked at” and questioned how “justified” the current funding model from “a general tax” could be in the long term. […]
Nato’s birthday celebrations were marred by a row between two of the guests, Presidents Macron and Trump, over both the health of the military alliance and France’s decision to hit US firms with a new digital tax. This row has at least drawn attention to the potential conflict between tech taxes and international rules that […]
Scotland’s ‘other national drink,’ Irn Bru, was stockpiled in January by fans who disapproved of the impending reformulation to halve the amount of sugar in favour of sweetener. The ‘Hands off our Irn Bru’ campaign, which had over 53,000 supporters, declared that they “would far rather pay more for a bottle than have an altered […]
Entrepreneurship policy might not grab the headlines when each party sets out its stall in an election, but if you get it right, it’s a heck of a lot easier to do everything else. Entrepreneurial endeavours have taken humanity from subsistence to relative affluence and it is entrepreneurs who will raise the living standards of […]
https://media.acast.com/capx/freeexchange-timkaneonthedeclineofgreatpowers/media.mp3 Our guest this week is entrepreneur, economist, air force veteran and latterly candidate for the US Congress, Tim Kane. Tim is also the co-author with Glenn Hubbard of the acclaimed book Balance: The Economics of Great Powers from Ancient Rome to Modern America – I started by asking him about the thesis behind the […]
What is the future of capitalism? This week’s Free Exchange exchange, recorded live at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, debates just that. Our Editor John Ashmore chaired an expert panel including the RSA’s Alan Lockey, digital policy expert Casey Calista and fellow of the Adam Smith Institute and self-declared inventor of neoliberalism, Sam Bowman, […]
Labour’s announcement today on offshore wind is a fascinating case study in how the party isn’t even pretending to care about prudent economics any more. Last January, the Centre for Policy Studies totted up independent estimates of Labour’s renationalisation plans. Suffice to say they turned out to be expensive. Very expensive. We came up with […]
The basic problem with today’s world isn’t the fires, it’s the lack of firemen. The problems faced by the West —dealing with a rising China, containing a dangerous but declining Russia, thwarting Iran’s over-grand Mideast ambitions, safeguarding global prosperity—are not historically that out of the ordinary. Instead, the increase in today’s political risk is the […]
It is just over two years since I joined CapX, and 18 months since I took over as Editor. It has been a turbulent and, in many ways, disheartening time in British politics. Brexit has gone from an opportunity for national renewal to a political and constitutional crisis in which the country has been bogged […]
Europe’s relentless assault on American technology continues. The French government is rushing to effect a domestic “digital services tax” after months of unsuccessfully advocating its EU-wide adoption. The new three per cent revenue tax on earnings since January 1 2019 will only apply to around 30 online firms, hence it becoming known as a “GAFA” […]
With everything going on in Westminster at the moment, it’s easy to forget that Brexit was meant to be about taking back control. Some people dismiss that idea as mere campaign rhetoric, of course. Others see it as little more than jingoism. But in truth, the words “take back control” encapsulated an important principle: that […]
The European Parliament’s approval of the Copyright Directive today is the end of the internet as we know it. This new regulation creates substantial new controls on what we can share online which threaten freedom of expression, undermine creativity, and cement the dominance of technology giants. The Copyright Directive will create two internets. The first, […]
Speaking to an enthusiastic crowd at the South by Southwest conference in Texas on March 9, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) stated that “Capitalism is an ideology of capital – the most important thing is the concentration of capital and to seek and maximise profit … we’re reckoning with the consequences of putting profit above everything […]
Today is Venice’s birthday. According to legend, the city was founded exactly 1,598 years ago today. A small, independent trading state beyond the reach of any overbearing European power, it flourished for many centuries. Young Venice not only fended off periodic threats from marauding Huns or Franks. The rulers of the fledgling republic explicitly repudiated […]
Who has been the greatest force for economic liberalisation over the past 40 or 50 years? Was it Margaret Thatcher in Britain, who led the way with a programme of privatisation? What about Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who did so much to open up an economy of over a billion people? In terms of […]
‘BritBox and chill’ doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, but it may very well be an option for British viewers by the end of the year. The BBC and ITV are in the final stages of talks about launching the subscription service in the UK by the end of 2019. At first glance, […]
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