Tim Worstall

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Richard Murphy has decided to branch out. He’s going to develop a new economics.
No, really.
Based upon:
And what is the aim? Simply this: to create a new economic model that can be taught as a system, that can replace the dire view of life that is presented in schools and on undergraduate university courses almost everywhere [...]

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Britain is still a low-taxed country in relation to most of Europe.
Sorry, wrong.
The government’s share of the entire economy is now above the European and EU averages.
The reason we still have shitty services is because the services are run and provided in a shitty manner.

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Does the rightwing coup in Honduras represent a return to the days of rule by violence in South America?
No.
Honduras is in Central America.

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One of the disadvantages of council housing compared with other sectors is that tenants are less likely to move to take up new jobs.
So why have council housing at all? Why not simply subsidise private sector rentals for those who need* such subsidy?
*Yes, I know, “need” is highly subjective but still….

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Almost all is sensible except:
His report does raise one good argument, however. At present the trade in class A drugs is concentrated in the rich nations. If it were legalised, we could cope. The use of drugs is likely to rise, but governments could use the extra taxes to help people tackle addiction. But because [...]

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One of the biggest mysteries of the Madoff affair is what happened to all the money.
Eh?
Have I missed something somewhere? Madoff was running a Ponzi sscheme, no? For decades?
He was paying retunrs to early investors, yes?
So that’s where the money has gone, into the pockets of those who invested with him for decades.
What’s the mystery?

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At the moment there are 700,000 dementia sufferers and that figure is expected to double within the next generation.
But the govenrment still spends just 13 per cent of the budget that it does on cancer research. That’s the equivalent of £46 per person with dementia compared with £124 per person with cancer.
Britain is also in [...]

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“This is a no brainer,” said Professor Julie Williams, chief scientific advisor at the Alzheimer’s Research Trust.

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I’ve often wondered just what is the extent of sex swaps.
We hear a great deal about “transgendered” rights as in the T in LGBT but I’ve never really known what is he extent of the occurence.
SEX-change operations on the NHS have TREBLED over the past decade, official figures revealed yesterday.
More than 1,000 people have gone [...]

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OK, this number ain’t a surprise:
The true cost of pensions for all current public sector workers has been estimated at £1.2 trillion — equivalent to 85 per cent of Britain’s GDP and worth £20,000 for every man, woman and child in Britain.
But this is interesting:
Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said yesterday [...]

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Every other modern narrative – communism, socialism, even those that were destructive, such as neoliberalism and fascism –
You mean that communism and socialism were not destructive?
Can we get a little perspective please on the “destructiveness of neo-liberalism”?
Even if we assume that everything that is happening now is purely the result of such, we’re losing a [...]

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Shepherd admitted higher energy costs would be a hard sell to the public, but said it was not unthinkable. Part of the revenue could be generated by a carbon tax that took the place of VAT, so that the cost of an item took into account the energy and carbon footprint of a product.
Why not [...]

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Immigrants and other people who wished to move into an area where they had few links would be moved down the priority list – a policy which will raise concern among Labour backbenchers who have warned the leadership not to get panicked into populist policies by [...]

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Here.

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1- To increase the progressivity of the tax system, in particular for high and very high incomes. This should happen in a coordinated way to avoid excessive movement of highly-skilled workers.
Jesus wept.
Everybody must raise their taxes so that none of the rich decide to run away.

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I have a serious suggestion for the BBC. Let the senior people who control its spending each sit for a day at the back of a magistrates’ court that is dealing with TV licensing cases. Let them see the procession of poor, usually female, usually bedraggled people who trudge through court, having, under the new [...]

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In future passengers on a typical domestic return flight, such as Manchester to London, will pay £12 tax each way.
Passengers flying to the US will pay £60 in tax (a 50 per cent increase), while those flying to the Caribbean will pay £75 (an increase of 87.5 per cent). Travellers to Australia or New Zealand [...]

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SPEED BLAMED FOR FATAL SPEED CRASH
Blimey.

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What’s really oppressing women isn’t the burka, it’s their breasts
Sheesh….

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