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What a wondrous treat this free trade is — Adam Smith Institute

5 days ago | adamsmith.org | Tim Worstall

Hostages - sausages of course - to fortune can come in varying degrees of convincingness:Urgent talks are under way to avert the closure of Britain’s biggest bioethanal plant, which would be a damaging blow to the government in the week that the business secretary will unveil a ten-year industrial strategy.
The plans of bureaucrats gang aft agley — Adam Smith Institute

6 days ago | adamsmith.org | Tim Worstall

So, the people of Northern Portugal are not too keen on having a lithium mine outside their back door:But his rural idyll has been disturbed by miners drilling boreholes as they push to dig four vast lithium mines right beside the village. The prospecting has sparked resistance from residents who fear the mines will foul the soil, drain the water and fill the air with the rumbling thunder of heavy trucks.
Pensions and Adam Smith’s invisible hand — Adam Smith Institute

1 week ago | adamsmith.org | Tim Worstall

Adam Smith only mentions “invisible hand” the once in Wealth of Nations and it’s not about the joyousness of free markets or even capitalism. Rather, it comes at the end of a long - this is 18th century prose after all - discussion of the profits of the foreign trade as opposed to the domestic. The foreign profits are higher but some to many will just invest domestically all the same, because, and so by “some invisible hand” they benefit their fellows in that domestic economy.
The fantabulous gloriousness of free markets — Adam Smith Institute

1 week ago | adamsmith.org | Tim Worstall

It is true that China has a certain socialist direction from the top in its economic mix. It is also true that at the actual operating level of the economy it’s one of the most aggressively free market economies on the planet. Which is why, of course, it’s been getting richer as or faster than any other place ever has done. You know, that absence of the central socialist direction of everything.
So here’s an idea - let people choose — Adam Smith Institute

1 week ago | adamsmith.org | Tim Worstall

Britons have just 23 hours of ‘genuinely free’ time a week – so much for labour-saving technologyElle HuntWell, yes. And no, to be honest. The actual climb back through the evidence shows that “work” hours have indeed declined, both in the marketplace for The Man and also those things that must be done in the household - cleaning, cooking and so on.
If we learn our history then we can repeat it — Adam Smith Institute

3 weeks ago | adamsmith.org | Tim Worstall

The “Great Depression” in the UK was not in fact a depression nor very great. The economy recovered within 18 months so it was a recession. It’s not even necessary for Labour to lose an election. They’ve a sufficient majority to be able to do this themselves. Slash government spending - and yes this does mean benefits -, close the budget deficit, free the building industry to house the nation and we can then repeat that history of the 1930s.
An FTT and pensions taxation, well, no, not really — Adam Smith Institute

3 weeks ago | adamsmith.org | Tim Worstall

Larry Elliott tels us that as Rachel really needs more tax revenue maybe then and therefore:But there are other options. A tax on financial transactions is one. Limiting pension tax relief to the basic rate of income tax – as suggested by the tax expert Richard Murphy – is another. To describe Richard Murphy as a tax expert is a category error. But beyond mere jeering it’s necessary to grasp his misunderstanding of pensions. He thinks - insists - that money that goes into pensions is just dead money.
The Laffer Curve is a fact, not a theory — Adam Smith Institute

3 weeks ago | adamsmith.org | Madsen Pirie

The Laffer Curve is a concept in economics that illustrates a theoretical relationship between tax rates and tax revenue. The basic idea is that there is a tax rate between 0% and 100% that maximizes government revenue. The case for the Laffer Curve rests on both logical reasoning and empirical observations, though there is, not surprisingly, significant debate about its policy implications. The case for it in theoretical logic rests on two things. Zero tax yields zero revenue.
Another £15.6 billion up against the wall then — Adam Smith Institute

3 weeks ago | adamsmith.org | Tim Worstall

We might have noted this before but there’s really nothing, nothing at all, as conservative as a British progressive. Rachel Reeves is set to announce £15.6 billion for transport projects outside London in an attempt to tackle a surge in support for Reform UK. The money will be spent on tram, train and bus projects in Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and Tyne and Wear. We’re just on the cusp of a technological revolution in transport.
Polly Toynbee stumbles into a good idea - then fluffs it, of course — Adam Smith Institute

3 weeks ago | adamsmith.org | Tim Worstall

So, what are we going to do about the state eating everything? Who in their right mind would want to be Rachel Reeves right now? Her spending review out next week will feel like austerity all over again. Even if, in reality, it’s not a cut but more spending, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies emphasises. After an uplift in everyday spending at the budget, here comes a much-needed capital slab of £113bn. Yet whatever the numbers say, painful cuts to most things will be the story and the feeling.