Tim Worstall

Writer complains about having paid off all her debts by winning literary prize. Why oh why are such prizes funded by large corporates? And why will Costa Coffee open in Totnes when 75% of those polled said no to Costa Coffee? CiF regulars ask: 1) So you’re handing back your prize money in protest are [...]

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Usual ill informed rant at The Guardian about the recycling of electronics and rare earth metals. My reply in the comments there. Oh dearie me. This is just the standard rant about mining and recycling with “rare earth metal” dropped in every so often. There’s absolutely no understanding at all about what a rare earth [...]

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The Guardian ensures that purported authors at least read and approve of what goes out under their names. Rilly? I myself have ghosted pieces for this very newspaper when working as a press officer. When Mr. Seaton was running CiF in fact. And while I’d have been caught very quickly indeed if I’d said something [...]

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Writing from NYC we get some woman complaining about how low taxes are in the US. My response there. Yes, the federal income tax rate is 35%. Add the NY State income tax of 8% and the NY City rate of 4% and you’re at 47%. This isn’t a low income tax rate by anyone’s [...]

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So what starts out as The G telling us all how appalling private rentals are (using the experience of a post-grad student who in no historical circumstances whatsoever would have got council housing) turns into, in the comments, a “You what?”. Quite fun actually. Mature students struggle to find suitable, affordable accommodation – the choice [...]

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My response there: Blimey. No one is in fact saying that a nightingale’s song is worth £5. What we’re trying to get to is a set of relative values. So, we start with, well, people act as if a nightingale’s song is worth £5 to them. They also seem to act as if their own [...]

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On an article discussing Sakharov’s 90 th birthday, including how the zeks returned from the Gulag, we get this delight: Dekulakisation was a necessary strategy moving forward. If you will not play ball, then consequences must be suffered. Stalin understood that the Dictatorship of the Proletariat was in actual fact not an option, particularly when [...]

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I am typing this in Gill Sans. Does that answer your question?

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At The Guardian: But if these corporations really are part of Britain’s industrial fabric then it is time to press them into “greener” action, too: encourage BP to rebuild its UK carbon capture and storage interests Erm, you do know why BP gave up on those? They were going to take natural gas, strip out [...]

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My response there: Err, this is how markets work. So there’s a whole bunch of experimentation out there as people try different ways of doing things. Some of these are entirely crap and reach three and a half people. Some of them are pretty darn good and snowball into wider popularity. This is as true [...]

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From The Guardian’s comments section, of course: It’s also difficult to show that the females made the companies more profitable. Not so much actually. http://www.theglasshammer.com/news/2010/03/11/is-norway-working-the-case-for-women-on-boards/ Dittmar and Ahern’s study found that when a board had a 10% increase in the number of women, the value of the company dropped. The bigger the change to the [...]

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in which rising demand departs from flattening supply, This is impossible. After that, the gap between demand and supply inexorably widens. So is this. There is no such thing as “demand”. There is no such thing as “supply”. There is only demand at a price and supply at a price. For example, there are all [...]

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Will’s got a new little book out telling us all how “smart government” will save us all. My response at CiF: An alternative approach is needed that understands the role of smart government in promoting growth. Well, yes Will. The question is, how do we get the smart people to go into government? Further, how [...]

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At CiF: “He doesn’t say that moving things about isn’t wealth creation. He says that moving money about isn’t wealth creation.” Which is a blindingly stupid thing to say. Moving the short term deposits in our bank accounts (the little amounts that vary over the month in our current accounts for example) into long term [...]

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“Then there is the small print: the lending “will be subject to its normal commercial objectives … as well as the availability of the required funding”, while that £190bn will only be lent “should sufficient demand materialise”. Nor is there any way of enforcing this target.” How could it be any different? No, seriously, think [...]

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The Liberal Democrat leader need only look as far as Tony Blair to see where a disenchanted left will leave his party In power for 13 years?

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So, Jagdish Bhagwati, an eminent economist, writes a piece on the myths and costs of protectionism. In the comments we get: Professor Bhagwati is an economist, of course, and his views should therefore be taken with a very large pinch of salt. That is, we shouldn’t listen to an economist talking about economics because….he’s an [...]

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On a piece commending Rick Astley for having given up his pop “career” to be a stay at home father, we get this: Personally I think Paul Gadd gave up a lot more for children

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

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It is Mr. E who tells up about the doings of Councillor Terry Kelly isn’t it? Yes, I think so. On one of CiF’s regular columns about how Cuba isn’t really badly off you know, it’s just a different set of priorities, the distinguished Councillor has made a number of comments. All of which have [...]

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