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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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Tyler notes that defence inflation is higher than normal inflation.
Defence prices rise faster than general inflation both because the earnings of personnel rise faster, and because the price of defence equipment rises much faster.
Addressing just the first of this.
Earnings do, generally, rise faster than inflation. That’s what it means that we’re getting richer. [...]

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Some details of Kim Jong-Il’s lifestyle:
Mr Kim said the North Korean leaders had dozens of villas, some of which were built underground, that were stuffed with chandeliers, silk wallpaper and expensive furniture. He said some of the villas were equipped with special ventilation systems in case of a nuclear attack.
He said [...]

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I came away with a downwardly-revised estimate of the probability that western civilization is doomed.
Art Carden

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Maurice the Builder shows us how.

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The attack on climate scientists is now widening to an all-out war on science. Writing recently for the Telegraph, the columnist Gerald Warner dismissed scientists as “white-coated prima donnas and narcissists … pointy-heads in lab coats [who] have reassumed the role of mad cranks … The public is no longer in [...]

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Jesse Jackson backs Robin Hood tax
Jesse Jackson on money is like Robert Mugabe on property rights or the Emperor Bokassa on who we should have for dinner.
His support for a position is sufficient evidence to reject said position.

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MILLIONAIRE philanthropist Matt Stockdale has launched an energy company to slash bills and cut out the middleman.
Not-for-profit At Cost Energy will buy gas and electricity direct from wholesalers and offer savings averaging £320 per year.
Give it a few years, then see what the price difference is.
A non-profit might have lower prices than for profit firms. [...]

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I basically believe people are born good. How can you think anything else when you see the innocence of young children?
Rampant stupidity.
If we were all nicey nicey from the git go then socialism would work.
We’re not all such nicey nicies from the git go which is why capitalism works. Because it channels those distinctly [...]

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We were approaching Rugby and the landscape was scarred by electricity pylons. I couldn’t stop myself from wondering aloud why we couldn’t lay electric cabling underground to replace them. Even though she was staring at them, my companion saw nothing. She didn’t realise that [...]

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Just a little musing on this.
We know that there is such a thing as the resource curse. We also know that such curse is worse the more dysfunctional the State that the resource is adminstered by.
Yes, the resource curse can indeed actually make things worse, not better, for the general population despite the influx of [...]

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This piece appears in most of the newspapers today.
OUT-of-date cosmetics are putting women at risk of infection.
Make-up “time bombs” include discoloured or smelly lipsticks, mascara and eye pencils that can collect dangerous bacteria.
All beauty essentials have a best before date on them – a picture of an open pot with a number indicating the months [...]

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Five of Britain’s biggest energy companies were facing mounting pressure to cut prices last night after figures from Ofgem, the industry regulator, showed the average profits they earned per household leapt 40 per cent this winter to the highest level in five years.
Supplier profits rise in period of rising demand.
Is [...]

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He’s OK today, as far as he goes, is Mr. Hutton:
But as the forecasters say, fortunately our plans to service the debt is within the margins of safety, never rising above 10% of tax revenues even at the peak moment for public debt in 2014/15. It started from a low base and interest rates are [...]

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About some things at least:
What I mean is that Marx argued that technical change was a powerful force behind social change, so technology influenced power relations between people:
“Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in [...]

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NHS patients are being put at risk because profiteering pharmacists are selling prescription drugs to Europe.
The fall in the pound re the euro has made things worse but:
Richard Ascroft, director of corporate affairs at drug maker Lilly UK, said: ‘We are definitely concerned about this. Drug prices in the UK are among the lowest in [...]

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Gavyn Davies talking about the various letter about cut now or cut later:
Inflation or deflation? These are big intellectual differences, with real ­heavyweights of the profession lining up on both sides. It will take a decade or more to settle this one.
Pity we’d rather like to know what to do next year though really, ain’t [...]

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