Keynesians are wrong: Cutting public spending can boost economic growth
The key aim of George Osborne’s economic policy has been to eliminate the financial deficit of the public sector. The main way of trying to achieve has been to squeeze public spending. The orthodox economic textbooks maintain that this withdraws demand from the economy, and so leads to the growth rate being slower than it […]
Response to Cecil the Lion’s death is a sad lesson in the irrationality of public opinion
Alas poor Cecil! Close personal friend of mine, sadly dead now. The catchphrases of the Scottish comedian Bob Doolally capture the outpourings of grief among the Twitterati at the death of the now famous lion. The mourning is mixed with incoherent rage, as long-standing opponents of torture and capital punishment demand that the American dentist […]
Technology is replacing school ties in companies’ battle to keep their employees honest
The activities of the House of Lords are very much in the news at the moment. But the members do carry out serious work, not least on the economic affairs committee. Last week, Lord Green, former chairman and chief executive of HSBC, appeared before them. Yes, the noble Lord admitted, the bank had not got […]
Why cricket is like spam
The holiday season gets into full swing, but a shadow has been cast by the abysmal failure of our boys to get anywhere near the enormous target of 509 which Australia set them to win in the second Test match. It may seem preposterous even to have thought they would. But a revolution seems to […]
Scandinavia provides the evidence for Osborne’s war on welfare
George Osborne’s budget has been met with predictable outrage from the poverty lobby. The cuts to the welfare budget will allegedly create shocking levels of deprivation. Young people in particular, it is stated, have been singled out for punitive measures. On the face of it, the arguments do seem plausible. Many people on benefits will […]
Guaranteed bank deposits and the market for lemons
One aspect of the Greek crisis which will affect many readers is the reduction in the amount of cash in a bank deposit which is protected. The Bank of England announced that the current guaranteed amount of £85,000 will be cut to £75,000 on 1 January. This has led to predictable outrage, with Andrew Tyrie […]
Child poverty is thankfully not rising – but the archaic definition needs to go
David Cameron is feeling the heat. This is not just a consequence of the sudden dramatic rise in London temperatures. The need to extract something meaningful from our EU partners and the increased threat of terrorist attacks are sleep-depriving problems. But the Prime Minister did have one good result during the past week. Despite widespread […]
Who plays better poker? Cameron, Sturgeon or Varoufakis?
The gracious Palladian architecture of Edinburgh has often led the city to be described as the Athens of the North. If the referendum result had gone the other way, much closer parallels would have rapidly emerged. A high spending left-wing government, faced by a collapse in revenues with the fall in the oil price, would […]
Supply side success is a cure for the drug of deficit finance
George Osborne’s plan to run financial surpluses and use them to pay off government debt has been met with the usual set of whinges and whines, mainly from academic economists funded by the taxpayer. Of course, their arguments are based purely on what they believe to be the intellectual merits of their case. One of […]
Banks, cancer and Stephen Hawking
Massive fines for banks, gross misbehaviour, huge bonuses for failure, bailouts at vast expense to the taxpayer: it’s little wonder that politicians and pundits can almost invariably win cheap applause by describing the financial system as being a cancer on society. But in a deep way, cancer and the financial system do have much in […]
