Tim Worstall

Obnoxio calls him the Prime Mentalist. It seems that some agree in part. Those who have to work with him say that he really seems to think that announcing such initiatives is the same as achieving them. Is he, they sometimes wonder, quite right in the head? To an extent this seems to infuse all [...]

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And as for what to do on April 22 – lest we forget it, budget day – the answer is simple. We do need a fiscal stimulus. Not less than £25 billion. Mebbe, mebbe not. But that’s not the intense joy to be found in his argument. But I accept not all should be paid [...]

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This new pamphlet by all the twits on the left. A few choice lines and arguments. We must reverse the decades-long transfer of wealth and power from labour to capital. Hmm, now this would require that labour’s share of national income must have been falling. (Yes, I know they say wealth not income but income [...]

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We believe that a good society can be created through drawing on our traditions of socialism Hmm, rather starting out with an epic fail there, eh?

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Hannan addresses Brown as if the PM is having to sit through it, though is far from clear if that is so. Actually it is entirely clear that this is so. Firstly by convention, that those who give speeches in the EP listen to those who answer them. Secondly by actually watching the film we [...]

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Will Hutton: The rest of the world could then impose short term tariffs on their goods if they do not correct their policies. Yes, that’s the way to deal with a collapse in international trade. Allow people to impose tariffs. Jeebus.

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The world must accept that every single individual on the globe is entitled to emit the same quantity of greenhouse gases and other pollutants with a global reach. The total amount of each type of pollutant that the world can cope with must be decided on by researchers operating professionally and at arm’s length from [...]

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The demise of the traditional family set-up is continuing despite growing evidence that children suffer when they are not raised by a married mother and father. Data published by the Office for National Statistics show that in 2007, 44.4 per cent of live births were outside marriage. The proportion is the highest on record, up [...]

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From Marginal Revolution: The question was what happens in macroeconomies as consumption approaches satiation.  Here’s Bryan Caplan’s answer: …as consumption approaches satiation, workers reduce their hours of work to prevent themselves from actually reaching satiation.  More technically, as workers approach satiation, their labor supply curves start to "bend backwards."  The result is that rising labor [...]

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The principal findings of experimental economics are that impersonal exchange in markets converges in repeated interaction to the equilibrium state implied by economic theory, under information conditions far weaker than specified in the theory. Vernon Smith. Another way of putting it. Perhaps the real world does not have the characteristics that theory strictly requires. But [...]

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With his Cabinet divided over these proposed cuts, MacDonald offered to resign as Prime Minister – only for George V, in a masterstroke of royal statesmanship, to persuade him to stay on as head of a National Government formed with members of the Tory and Liberal parties.   It was an extremely effective solution and, [...]

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Katharine Ainger on what it´s all about. Which is why the climate camp in the city, with its slogan "Because nature doesn’t do bailouts", is one of the most interesting of all the movements coalescing in London next week. It’s a potent mix of seasoned anti-globalisation activists who are skilled in creative direct action and [...]

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Extraordinary, the Barack Obama effect. I love him as much as the next man, but even I am starting to feel that he is getting too easy a ride. The most powerful man in the world goes on national television and makes a playground joke about the Special Olympics. By any standards this is a [...]

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It all sounds very good but he´s missing something. Instead of propping up the banks we should have just nationalised them. This would have been cheaper. Well, yes, except that if we´d nationalised them then we´d still have had to pay the losses they had incurred. We. the taxpayer, would be on the hook for [...]

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Seven local authorities acted negligently by depositing almost £33m of taxpayers’ money in Icelandic banks a few days before their collapse in October, the local government spending watchdog says today. The Audit Commission found fundamental accountancy mistakes had been made by Kent, the London borough of Havering, Redcar and Cleveland, Bridgnorth, North East Lincolnshire, Restormel [...]

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March 25 (Bloomberg) — The U.K. failed to find enough buyers for 1.75 billion pounds ($2.55 billion) of bonds for the first time in almost seven years as debt investors repudiated Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s plan to stem the worst economic crisis in three decades. Gilts slumped after the London-based Debt Management Office, which manages [...]

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Tonight I’m going to see Mikhail Gorbachev, last dictator of the Soviet Union.

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A graph at Brad Delong´s. Last time around, in the 30s, the sooner you came off the gold standard the better you were doing by 1937. Bit of a pisser for all those that cannot come off the euro standard really but there it is.

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From War on Want´s latest jeremiad against free trade. From the Executive Summary.  Moreover, much economic growth has been ‘jobless growth’. Between 1997 and 2007, while world output increased by 4.2% per year, world employment increased by only 1.6% per year, despite high unemployment levels.4 So while the global economy may have grown overall, the [...]

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Youngsters who most love sugar also have the highest growth rate, according to scientists in the U.S. Stunning, eh? Consumption of calories leads to growth. Who would have thought it?

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