Tim Worstall

The nef’s case for moving to a more equitable and leisurely sharing of work is not based on an assumption that the amount of work is fixed. There is, I repeat, NO EVIDENCE for the taunt that it is. If Mr. Stanley, Mr. Lockwood (or any one else) can produce conclusive evidence that the assumption [...]

[Read more →]

Here.

[Read more →]

Sorry, but that’s the only way to describe this piece about the Robin Hood Tax: The plan is to tax certain transactions between financial institutions. It would not burden the high street banks or the private currency transactions of holidaymakers, but would target the hundreds of billions that flow between the big players in the [...]

[Read more →]

Concerning this: THE government has signalled that it plans to cut the drink driving limit to less than a pint of beer or a glass of wine. Lord Adonis, the transport secretary, expects an official review of the law to recommend reducing the legal limit from 80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood to 50mg. [...]

[Read more →]

George Irvin tries to sort out the global economy. Is there another answer? John Maynard Keynes proposed a perfectly sensible solution at Bretton Woods in 1944, namely, forcing surplus countries to spend their extra money in deficit countries, thus both their private spending and export capacity. The “Keynes solution” as is has been dubbed by [...]

[Read more →]

This is going to be one of those economics papers which will be waved in our faces: Complex economic formulas developed by two professors of economics, Curtis Eaton and Mukesh Eswaran, and published in the current edition of the Economic Journal, suggest that greater affluence can seriously damage a nation’s health. Based on their mathematical [...]

[Read more →]

No tries please, we’re British

[Read more →]

Hmm. Not that I approve of course. But I’m off to make sure my UKIP membership is up to date…..for any form of PR is near certain to elect some UKIP “senators”.

[Read more →]

About Australia, the convicts and so on. Although I find myself forced to point out that I’m descended from someone who a) went there voluntarily and b) then left. According to gg grandma, Australia was a place to visit, not a place to go to.

[Read more →]

How the income tax system has become markedly more regressive over the years. I’m pretty sure that it has you know. Time was when only the rich paid income tax. Then the middle….now people working part time on minimum wage. For the personal allowance is only ever raised in line with retail inflation (and sometimes [...]

[Read more →]

One of the points that we economically rational people keep trying to make is that at least part of the gender pay gap comes from the fact that men and women (on average of course) seek different things from their jobs. Women might value flexibility over simple pay for example. Women often work in the [...]

[Read more →]

She sang on the regional opera circuit in Germany and was regarded as “quite famous” around Baden-Wuerttemberg.

[Read more →]

Hector Sants, chief executive of the Financial Services Authority, has called time on the era of “light-touch” or “principles-based” regulation and said that a new “outcomes-based” approach was needed in the wake of a financial crisis that many blame on the previous regime. Speaking at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, Mr Sants said the FSA [...]

[Read more →]

see more Epic Fails

[Read more →]

Apparently it’s got a pair of Great Canadian Tits in it.

[Read more →]

So, Lehman’s is spiralling the plug hole and various people are trying to get various politicians to intervene: During the bank’s final hours in September 2008, Fuld tried desperately to strike a rescue deal with Barclays but the FSA would not allow the British bank an exemption from seeking time-consuming shareholder approval. The chancellor, Alistair [...]

[Read more →]

Will you look at this eh? Across the partnership, sales increase by 7.5 per cent… to take pre-tax profit to £155m. This was down on last year’s £282m, So, item one, a fall in profits. staff will share £151m as a bonus Bonuses amount to an eyewatering 97.5% of profits. That’s item two. Item two [...]

[Read more →]

Considered opinion from the New York Times: America would be a wiser country if we had more people who knew how to translate “doorknob.” This is the would be paper of record remember. Still, anything to help: اسْم : أُكْرَةُ البَاب . مِقْبَض

[Read more →]

Brooke Magnanti writes on science for CiF. And, if I’m allowed to be so rude, not very well either.

[Read more →]

And it’s a corker. Three major points. 1) It’s written for the main union representing HMRC staff. And it says that there should be more HMRC staff. Funny that, quite amazing how he gets to that position really. If we didn’t know that Ritchie is entirely incapable of such behaviour we might begin to wonder [...]

[Read more →]