Tim Worstall

So Sunny posts this graph about the workers’ wages. He then tells us that: show that right-wing ‘ideas’ on growth only involve attack workers wages So let’s just walk out way through this timeline, shall we? So we see a drop in the workers’ wages under Callaghan (Labour) then the workers’ wages start to rise [...]

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At the ASI. On fiscal drag.

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An interesting little detail here: For example, I think the burden of proof should rest with the taxpayer in all cases when an action is taken under these rules. Yup. If you’re being sued by the taxman it will be up to you to prove your innocence, not for the State to prove your guilt. [...]

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Boring Cruel Romantics, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: There’s a word I keep hearing lately: “technocrat.” … I call foul. I know from technocrats; sometimes I even play one myself. And these people — the people who bullied Europe into adopting a common currency, the people who are bullying both Europe and the United [...]

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So it was with a feeling of groundhog day like despair that I read this morning that the government has decided to ACT on the housing crisis in the UK. Of course there is not a housing crisis in the UK yet, but on current trends there will be a problem soon, unless there is [...]

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Eurozone crisis: European Union prepares for the ‘great leap forward’ I don’t really want a furnace in my backyard and which 46 million Europeans is it they want to starve to death?

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Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, attacked the Government for selling off Northern Rock for “a loss”, saying Mr Osborne would have to explain why now was the best time to sell the bank. “I think there is a question as to whether or not this is the best time,” said Mr Balls. Well, yes Ed. [...]

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A standard part of the Keynesian analysis is that when you want to do a bit of fiscal boosting (which is, recall, just increasing the gap between what the government hands out and what it takes in) then, whether you’re going to do it by handing out benefits or reducing taxes, you want to make [...]

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Green MP Caroline Lucas may instinctively defend the interests of people rich enough to put solar panels on their roofs against those of the lowly consumers who have to pay to subsidise them, but the Treasury is, quite rightly, reducing the feed-in tariff for solar panels.

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The new right wing government is going to audit the books. And it’s going to have a good look at the regional and local government books. And the utilities. And it’s going to find that there are billions and billions more debt lying around than anyone has yet owned up to. This much is in [...]

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The Prime Minister and his deputy, Nick Clegg, will unveil proposals to help first-time buyers of new homes by carrying part of the risk of their mortgages. This has been done before. In the US. The people who did it, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, went gloriously bust in doing it too. And the FHA, [...]

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Those Aussie subs  had a nice one: Last week demands for hundreds of euros from tax authorities in the German state of Brandenburg began to land on the doormats of surviving “dwangarbeiders” or their widows. “It hits me not only financially but emotionally,” Simone De Vos, 84, the widow of a forced labourer told the [...]

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I pondered as to whether there was a connection between high marginal tax rates and the substitution of market for household working hours as a result. It seems that there is a weak connection, but only a weak one. So does anyone who knows how to do this empirical economics stuff want to pitch in [...]

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For Ms. Yvonne Roberts seems to be sending a message. She’s hailing the joys of divorce for the over 60s. “Selfish, moi?” Mother and Father, amicably divorced, might say. Too damn right – and why not after 30 or 40 years toiling at the matrimonial rock face? It’s never too late to put the fun [...]

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Peter Beaumont, their foreign affairs editor, is a very confused man indeed. His argument is that the euro project is neo-liberal, the euro project is causing problems and thus it’s all the neo-liberals fault. But given that the euro project is anything but neo-liberal, it’s actually a social democratic project to exclude neo-liberalism from certain [...]

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I think this makes it the full house of the UK’s newspapers: excepting the Morning Star perhaps. Advocates of a tax on financial transactions say the proceeds could be used to help to stabilise indebted eurozone countries. However, the IEA’s report, compiled by economics expert Tim Worstall, concludes that such a tax would yield revenues [...]

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I can see that we’re about to get hit with some very dodgy statistics by the Resolution Foundation. The British middle class is in danger of suffering prolonged American-style wage stagnation as a result of widening income inequality and a weak jobs market for skilled employment, a top US economist says . On the eve [...]

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At the ASI. How private property solves (some) environmental problems.

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Eurocrats threaten strike as eurozone faces disaster Take your time. Come back in, oooh, say, 2020?

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At the ASI. The real reason we want competition in the NHS.

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