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 […]
Capitalism is stable and resilient
The financial crisis did succeed in creating one dynamic new industry. Since the late 2000s, there has been a massive upsurge in op-ed pieces, books and even artistic performances offering a critique of capitalism. A founder member of the Monty Python team, Terry Jones, is the latest to get in on the act with his […]
Open borders or fair wages: the left needs to make up its mind
As published in the Guardian on Tuesday 24th March 2015 as part of their ‘Economics – Immigration Special’ Mass immigration increases inequality. This is the unpalatable fact the liberal left in Britain refuses to accept. Markets are imperfect instruments. But it is not necessary to subscribe to free market economic theory to believe that large […]
Popular culture is the driving force of inequality
The Oscars have come and gone for another year. Winning an Oscar is very often the basis for either making a fortune, or turning an existing one into mega riches. Jack Nicholson has an estimated worth of over $400 million, and stars like Tom Hanks and Robert de Niro are not far behind. Even winners […]
Crocodile tears for the poor
INEQUALITY is now a buzzword in Britain. Scarcely a week goes by without a new publication by an academic or journalist lamenting the levels of poverty facing swathes of the population. They are bolstered by a complicit metropolitan liberal elite, who shed crocodile tears for the poor, while ruminating on the current situation. Unfortunately, much […]
Bring Back Cedric the Pig!
Executive bonuses are back in the news. The Goldman Sachs pot of £8.3 billion has been prominent. German executive pay has overtaken that in the UK for the first time. Top management seems to have no shame. Some bad publicity today, but the fat cheque remains safely in the bank account. How one longs for […]
Public sector pay and pensions are why the deficit stays high
Why can’t the UK government get its deficit down? This question has been exercising commentators recently, in the light of the latest assessment from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) that George Osborn will once again miss his target for the deficit in the 2014/15 financial year. Of course, the size of the deficit has […]
The Happy Band of the Self Employed
How many workers does the typical American firm employ? Actually, it is a trick question. The answer is ‘zero’. More than 50 per cent of all companies in the United States are one person operations – the owner, and no-one else. This fragmentation of size is increasingly reflected in the UK. Here, the main growth […]
Employment is rising because labour is cheap
The latest employment figures confirm the buoyancy of the UK labour market. In the quarter April-June of this year, employment rose by 167,000 on the previous quarter, to an all-time high of 30.60 million. Unemployment also fell, by no less than 132,000. Taking a somewhat longer perspective, the low point for employment was reached in […]
Recessions are good for the nation’s health
Many readers at this time of the year will be looking forward to their summer break, perhaps contemplating with a certain amount of envy their colleagues who have already departed. But is leisure good for you? A bit of a no brainer one might think. Indeed, until recently the consensus amongst applied economists was that […]
