Tim Worstall

Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson was once challenged by the mathematician Stanislaw Ulam to “name me one proposition in all of the social sciences which is both true and non-trivial.” Samuelson’s answer? Comparative advantage. “That it is logically true need not be argued before a mathematician; that it is not trivial is attested by the thousands [...]

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A number of years ago, more than I really care to remember, I was gearing up to try and take the Cambridge University entrance exams (which I failed, dismally and quite naturally) by taking A- Level economics again*. I’d been out of school for a couple of years and thus needed to get back into [...]

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So when the DPP assesses the responses to the consultation, he should be aware that many will come from the relatively small minority who base their views on their faith, and have been encouraged by their religious leaders to write to him. Meanwhile, most of the silent majority who support assisted dying and, it can [...]

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A police officer in southern China has been declared a revolutionary hero after drinking himself to death at an official dinner.

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Pamela Anderson was on stage for barely 15 minutes yesterday but her debut as the Genie in Aladdin Pamerla Anderson? Panto?

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Markus Haering, who designed the geothermal project, rejected allegations that he deliberately damaged properties and said local people knew the risks. The deep drilling underground caused a series of earthquakes in 2006, including one of 3.4 magnitude, rattling residents of the north-western city of Basel. Geopower Basel, the project leader, has already paid around 9 [...]

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Stephen Foster, a supermarket worker from Gateshead, received a shock was mistakenly paid £1.4 million in wages. …..However, Mr Foster decided not to spend the money and instead contacted his employers to arrange repayment. The Co-operative have now rewarded his honesty with a crate of Budweiser beer. Interesting….they seem to have changed the shape of [...]

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Sounds a little odd: Britain’s ability to defend itself from attack has been called into question after deep cutbacks to the Armed Forces were announced to pay for the war in Afghanistan. When unemployment rises we don’t cut unemployment pay in order to keep the budget constant. We wouldn’t insist that a pandemic were paid [...]

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The man’s a marvel: FT.com / Reports – Clean tech sector needs more capital. That’s why we need green bonds That’s why we need a Green New Deal So, the clean sector needs more dosh. Hm, so what is the mechanism that we’ve currently got to provide more dosh for the clean sector? Yes, it’s [...]

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Like many calendars, it lists birthdays on various dates. ……shares June 5 with both Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes. No, I didn’t know that they shared a birthday.

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That’s what we’re told, right? Louisiana is the happiest state in the US, followed by Hawaii and Florida. The unhappiest states are West Virgina, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, Ah, perhaps it isn’t in fact true then? Here’s a list of States with their Gini. Purely by eyeballing it seems that Louisiana and Florida have above [...]

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Said one commentator: “To give credentials to 45,000 people while choosing a building that holds 15,000 is insane, though the United Nations, to be fair, has never been known for competence.” And these people want us to believe they can save the planet?

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Have to be a pretty simple one of course, Janet and John do Econ 101 perhaps. We will lurch from crisis to existential crisis unless we address the underlying cause: perpetual growth cannot be accommodated on a finite planet. Perpetual physical growth cannot be accomodated in a finite physical system. Yes, this is entirely true. [...]

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Of course, mutualism cannot be prescribed by government. By its very nature, it is driven by and relies on the commitment and active participation of the people involved. Communities need to be able to choose mutualism as and when they see fit. What government can do is sponsor and provide a legal framework that makes [...]

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Even assuming large reductions in trading volume due to the tax, the country could still raise more than $100bn a year in revenue or more than $1tn over the US’s 10-year budget horizon. Trading costs have plummeted over the last three decades due to improvements in computer technology. Therefore, modest taxes on financial speculation, such [...]

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Private money is better than public money when it comes to picking viable businesses and helping them succeed. Who would have thought it?

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Under the Hypo deal, majority shareholder Bayern Landesbank has agreed to surrender its 67pc stake for a token €1 and to waive a further €825m in liabilities. The Austrian state will provide up to €450m in fresh capital. The state-owned BayernLB bought Hypo during an expansionist spree at the height of the bubble in 2007. [...]

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Support for a global tax or emissions trading scheme for shipping and aviation is growing at the Copenhagen climate change talks, according to two sources close to European Union negotiators. Lordy. Either a tax or emissions trading system specifically for these industries could provide up to a quarter of this amount. What has happened to [...]

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Paul Samuelson married, in 1938, Marion Crawford, with whom he had six children, including triplets (at one stage they were sending 350 nappies to the laundry each week). Telegraph obituary.

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Let the body cool first, eh? He, more than most mathematised economics. Which means he had to assume people were rational. In the process he broke the link between economics and reality. Then he assumed the existence of stable equilibria in an economy – which is contrary to all known evidence. So once more he remeoved economics from the realms of usefulness. [...]

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