CEO compensation and Jamaican demands for reparations: two sides of the same coin
David Cameron’s visit to Jamaica last week led to vociferous demands for the UK to pay the Caribbean island billions of pounds in reparations for slavery. Most people here reacted with predictable eye-rolls and sighs. Slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire in 1833, nearly two centuries ago. Jamaica has been independent since 1962, over […]
Um Bongo: a spotlight on modern social and economic behaviour
Readers who either had young children or were children themselves in the 1980s will recall the Um Bongo jingle. The advert assured us it was drunk in the Congo. A survey published last week to mark the 60th anniversary of British television advertising showed that no fewer than 32 per cent of the total sample […]
How do you deal with someone who thinks the Earth is flat?
Imagine you are relaxing at a bar enjoying a drink after a hard day’s work. The person next to you strikes up a conversation. Initially he seems reasonable. But soon he begins to go on at length about how the Earth is flat and how a misguided cabal of scientists hides this truth from us. […]
The national accounts are the new JK Rowling
A potential candidate for the world’s most boring book is the Office for National Statistics’ National Accounts: Sources and Methods. This book, all 502 pages of it, is currently available in hardback on Amazon for just 1p. It does exactly what it says in the title. It gives a detailed description of how the data […]
Whatever it is, Corbynomics is not mainstream
A group of economists hit the headlines last week with their claim that Jeremy Corbyn’s policies are supported by mainstream economics. Perhaps the best known of them is David Blanchflower, a Monetary Policy Committee member when Gordon Brown was Chancellor. He predicted before the 2010 General Election that under the Conservatives, unemployment would rise from […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Markets are good, but we need clear signals
Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of the general election result is the abuse which is now being heaped on the metropolitan liberal elite from many quarters. Theirs is truly a difficult mind set to comprehend, based as it is on an unshakeable belief in their own omniscience. Yet this is confounded on an almost daily […]
