Tim Worstall

Seems to be getting better: they’ve managed to identify that I’m reading from Portugal and thus serve me up a Portuguese ad. But perhaps not quite good enough yet: it’s for a restaurant 200 km away…..

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Five men have been killed and another seriously injured in a huge explosion at a Boston industrial estate amid claims it was sparked by an illegal vodka making operation. Stick the tax up too high and people will homebrew. That people are homebrewing might be an indication that taxes are too high. It’s a general [...]

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In the eight years between 2000 and 2008, the OBR found, the top 5pc of earners increased their share of the wage pool from 23.3pc to 26.4pc – generating an extra £7.2bn in tax. The top 5pc earn above £60,000, while the bottom 50pc are on less than £18,500. “If the recent trend of increasing [...]

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Don’t build the HST. Just stick Wi-Fi in the carriages instead.

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The Foundation for Economic Education’s Sheldon Richman once said that advocating policies when you don’t understand their unintended consequences is “the intellectual equivalent of drunk driving.”   If you’re advocating price controls and don’t understand what the laws of supply and demand have to say about your proposal, you aren’t courageous or compassionate.  You’re dangerous. Art [...]

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Instead, the European authorities should make an unequivocal commitment to all countries in a bailout programme to guarantee all sovereign interest and principal payments, charging a rate at or only marginally above the rate at which the euro area’s credit-worthy governments can borrow. Yes, it’s another suggestion of the CDO to end all CDOs! Let’s [...]

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Even for The Guardian. My warning for the NHS I quit a private health industry built to deny care to millions. This is what Lansley wants here He then goes on to describe the perils of a system of private health insurance. A system which absolutely no one at all is suggesting should be introduced [...]

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So, if we all pile in, as taxpayers, and cough up for the Greek debt. Hmm, so, what can we use as an anaology for this? How about Liverpool under Hatton? One, junior level, of government, borrowing and borrowing, going bust and needing to be bailed out by the taxpayers of the next higher level [...]

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So, Portugal closes down the Ministry of Culture, tells artists to go fend for themselves. Art thrives. So, when do we close the Arts Council?

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The Competition Commission never looks at competition in dynamic terms – inquiring, say, what the market will look like in 2015. Instead, Plod-like, it will observe that in 2011 the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 provide a competitive TV market, so all is well. British institutional shareholders are legendary in world financial markets for their [...]

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Made by Peter Preston in The G. So, Murdoch should sell off all his newspapers, eh? Increase media plurality etc etc etc. OK, so, who is going to buy them? Desmond? Lebedev? Associated? Umm, anyone?

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Rupert Murdoch desperately battled to prop up the tumbling value of News Corporation on Tuesday, announcing plans for a $5bn (£3bn) share buyback. Maybe he just thinks the shares are cheap? And I would assume that none of the family’s shares would be tendered, so it would increase the family control as well, no?

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What Southern Cross tells us about privatising public services.

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Ecoalex. For all your Green housing needs. He’s not a hippy, promise.

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Because I forgot one yesterday. I am naughty.

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The man is irredeemably ignorant. We all know that higher business taxes feed through to a combination of prices, dividends, pensions, profits…and for an open economy like the UK, wages in particular. Higher taxes on profits reduce the return to investment, leading to lower levels of investment. And a lower level of investment undermines productivity [...]

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First: I have just taken part in a surreal discussion with Philip Blond on Radio 2. He argued for the mutualisation of public services. He never once said where the capital was coming from. Then, in the very next post: Cameron’s apologist, Philip Blond, says that the whole Big Society agenda is about the fact that the state and the private [...]

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There is only one solution to this problem as far as I can see: the Eurozone as a whole will have to accept responsibility for the currency that it created and replace the failed Greek debt with new Europe wide debt obligations that would be issued in exchange  for the  discredited  Greek debt at an [...]

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Mr. Chakrabortty doesn’t manage it. To him it’s all about the way in which the Derby train works are just a subsidiary of some Johnny Foreigner company. Toss. The contract was for a build and lease set of trains. Siemens has a higher credit rating than Bombardier. Thus the lease part of the contract is [...]

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Not sure he’s quite got the point of it all: Our primary task is to hold power to account. No it isn’t. It’s to produce something to go in the blank spaces in between the adverts. So what can be done? Because of the peculiar threat they present to democracy there’s a case to be [...]

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