Tim Worstall

If a bureaucrat stops working in Brussels, will he make a sound?

[Read more →]

see more Political Pictures You mean it isn’t?

[Read more →]

A pair for today: The New Economics Foundation challenges one of the most fundamental tenets of conventional economics today – that the price of something can be equated to its worth. And if we are not to price things by the worth that people put on them, what then? Plus: I think neo-liberal economics is [...]

[Read more →]

Myth 5: Workers in highly paid jobs work harder It has been claimed that workers at the top end of the income scale work long hours and therefore ‘deserve’ higher earnings. There are several factors, however, that are not usually taken into consideration when calculating hours worked. One of these factors is the fact that [...]

[Read more →]

What Marx correctly predicted was that real wages, or returns to workers, would be eroded over time. Right, they’re talking complete and total bollocks then. Real wages have not been declining. Marx was not correct. Thus everything else they say on the subject is entirely bollocks then, isn’t it?

[Read more →]

Prevailing wisdom would say yes: pay is a reward that reflects merit. Sigh. Pay reflects scarcity. To do job x the skills a,b,c and d are necessary. If we’ve more people with skills a, b, c and d available than we have jobs x which need them then pay will be low. If we have [...]

[Read more →]

Build social and environmental value into prices. Until goods and services reflect the real costs and benefits of their production, incentives will be misaligned with the kinds of positive behaviours society wishes to promote. Getting the prices right would affect relative profitability and so would align what wages could be paid with the value that [...]

[Read more →]

This is indeed true: Conclusions This report is not about targeting any individuals in the highly paid jobs it scrutinises. Neither is it simply suggesting that people in low paid jobs should be paid more. The point we are making is a more complex one – that there should be a relationship between what we [...]

[Read more →]

If high pay is partly intended to compensate for risk, stress and long hours then we would expect dangerous jobs to be well rewarded. Fishing is the most dangerous job in Britain, with roofers and scaffolders also high up on the danger list, and waste recycling collectors are at number 18. Yet in none of these [...]

[Read more →]

This is simply glorious: The impact of globalisation has made matters worse, contributing to an increasing specialisation of the workforce…. Yup, they’re agin’ the division and specialisation of labour, the very thing which makes Smithian economic growth happen. Is there no beginning to their understanding of the subject of economics?

[Read more →]

Mr Cameron said he wanted to put the tax status of parliamentarians “beyond doubt”. “I think it is time to pass a law that says that if you want to be in the Houses of Parliament, if you want to be a legislator, you need to be or be treated as a full UK taxpayer,” [...]

[Read more →]

At the ASI. On the latest outburst of Froggery.

[Read more →]

Never has it been so hard to argue that there is such a thing as progress and that it is represented by liberal capitalism…. Sigh. Liberal capitalism and its offshoot globalisation (essentially, the extension of liberal capitalism places that were formerly neither liberal nor capitalist) has led to decreasing global inequality and the largest reduction [...]

[Read more →]

Eighteen new MEPs whose seats have been created by the Lisbon Treaty are to receive full pay, perks and an allowance worth an annual £300,000 each despite being unable to start work for up to four years. The rebuttal to the outrage this will cause is already known. But this has happened before, it’s entirely [...]

[Read more →]

One of the greats: Paul Samuelson, whose work helped form the basis of modern economics, has died at his home in Massachusetts after a brief illness. He was 94.

[Read more →]

This is probably trivial for someone who knows how to do this. For me it’s impossible (given the help you don’t get from google itself). Over at the other blog I’ve a problem with getting Google Adsense to run. This blog, a number of blogspot ones and a couple of Typepad ones all run off [...]

[Read more →]

Someone really needs to sit Tom Friedman down for a little chat about economics. His piece today is about how amazingly productivity is rising as a result of new gadetry. But it’s not producing any jobs: The bad news is that credit markets and bank lending are still constricted, so many companies can’t fully exploit [...]

[Read more →]

At the ASI. Maybe bankers are worth their wages?

[Read more →]

On the subject of a Tobin Tax: It isn’t even true that the City pays its way in other taxes. Revenue from the financial sector in the last five years of the boom amounted to around £200bn. The cost of the bailout is currently estimated at £850bn. Bollocks. Tax revenue was as stated. The cost [...]

[Read more →]

“People do not quite realise the scale of the issue,” added Bevan. “This is one of the most serious problems that science has ever faced.” In Britain the lives of hundreds of thousands of people will be threatened by food shortages. Across the globe, tens of millions – if not hundreds of millions – will [...]

[Read more →]