Were you to ask its critics to identify a document that encapsulated everything that contemporary capitalism gets wrong, Milton Friedman’s 1970 New York Times Magazine article “The Social Responsibility Of Business Is To Increase Its Profits” would be a popular answer. In this landmark explanation of his shareholder theory, Friedman argued that as employees of […]
Over the past decade, the British people have become more entrepreneurial. Fifteen years ago, Brits were just as likely to be engaged in early-stage entrepreneurial pursuits as Germans and the French. Today, Britain has become a ‘mid-Atlantic’ economy. We may not be as entrepreneurial as Americans, but we’ve broken ahead of Germany and France. One […]
There will come a time when not every political conversation is dominated by Brexit. And if we are not very careful, the receding Brexit tide will reveal our Conservative philosophy (small government, believing in the power of individuals and entrepreneurs, having a welfare safety net, strong economic and national security) have been overtaken by an […]
The dynamics of the UK’s housing crisis are well-documented: millions prevented from getting on the housing ladder, sky-high rents for often woefully inadequate accommodation and, underpinning it all, a planning system seemingly designed to stop development rather than encourage it (most recently detailed on CapX by Sam Watling today). Perhaps less well understood is how difficult […]
In 1998, Amartya Sen was awarded the Prize in Economic Sciences by the Nobel Committee for his work in development economics, but Sen is probably best known for what was essentially a political insight: that the key cause of modern era famines is authoritarian rule rather than a shortage of food. The same logic can […]
This is a seismic year in British politics. But I also think it’s a seismic year for British economics. It’s ten years now since the financial crash; we’re now in a position of paying down the debt as a proportion of GDP. And it’s 40 years since the supply side reform we saw in the […]
On Friday, Uber will aim to raise as much as $9 billion on the New York Stock Exchange in an IPO that could give the ride-hailing company a market valuation of nearly $90 billion. What is expected to be the biggest US IPO of the year so far has also become a flashpoint in the […]
Campaigning in the 1979 general election, then Prime Minister and Labour leader Jim Callaghan warned Britain of the risks of voting Conservative: “The question you will have to consider is whether we risk tearing everything up by the roots.” The Tories, he said, “were too big a gamble for the country to take”. As we […]
The millennial generation are ever so different, apparently. As they grow up, we’re told, an intergenerational shift is underway. Those under the age of 35 not only think differently to the rest of us, claimed Matthew d’Ancona recently, they are deeply concerned about climate change. It’s not just that they value identity over individualism. The […]
Half of England is owned by just 1 per cent of the population. That’s the eye-catching headline in today’s Guardian, based on a new report about who owns land in the UK. The figures have been compiled by Guy Shrubsole, a Friends of the Earth campaigner and author of Who Owns England? The answer, at least […]
The Centre for Social Justice recently released an in-depth survey of people across Britain that found family breakdown was one of the most significant determinants of poor life outcomes. When someone experiences trauma in childhood, linked to an unhappy home life of familial conflict, doubled the probability of someone experiencing homelessness, doubled the probability of […]
Ed Miliband was onto something. Back in the halcyon days of the early 2010s, the then Labour leader made a characteristically clumsy pitch to Britain’s ‘squeezed middle’: households who definitely weren’t poor, but were nonetheless feeling the pinch. The idea may not have been a recipe for electoral success, but the numbers are bearing out […]
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, […]
On March 6, Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube announced his government’s intention to scrap legislation requiring local investors to have a controlling stakes in his country’s gold and platinum mines: “We are removing that indigenisation rule, which is discouraging foreign direct investment … We say Zimbabwe is open for business” Eleven years after Zimbabwe introduced […]
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 […]
The great train debate is not just a minor contretemps between the small-state supporters and scorners. It is one that has implications for millions of people everyday. You may have read other authors on this site extol the virtues of privatisation of long-distance rail and evidence this by demonstrating how it has improved the train […]
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