Something vital was missing from the campaigns to alert the world to the way our natural habitats were being wrecked. NGOs like Greenpeace did a marvellous job of alerting us to the way in which icebergs were melting, species were being extinguished, the acidification of the oceans, the rate at which CO2 was being emitted […]
Archive | Rent-seeking Culture
When is the Truth a Big Lie?
George Osborne regards himself as a “builder”. He repeatedly declared his self-appointed status in his recent Autumn Statement to the House of Commons. Is he to be believed? Take the case of the burden of taxation. In telling Britain to “live within its means”, he amended taxes to increase the burden on low income earners. […]
The Moral Hazard of Farming
The protests by farmers about the prices they receive for milk are symptomatic of the unrealistic expectations which are held by farmers in general. They have become dependent on subsidies to such an extent that many of them have ceased to prepare budgets or ensure a profitable market for their produce. The number of dairy […]
How the West Garrotes itself
The politically convenient myth is that western wages are undermined by cheap eastern labour. It’s a notion that governments foster, to avoid the reality: their policies are garrotting their economies. True, Asian goods flooded the markets in Europe and North America over the past 30 years. That helped to maintain the buying power of wages […]
How The Economist screws with our minds
Fantasy economics is driving our world to destruction. Confirmation of why this is so comes from The Economist, the London business magazine that claims to make sense of global markets. Its critique of “crony capitalism” relies on crass stupidities that pass for economic theory. Trouble is, politicians believe this nonsense. The Economist was founded in […]
Ireland: Paradigm of a Weak State
The absence of a property tax helped to create the illusion of a “tiger” in Europe. Ireland was on a roll…until property prices collapsed and took down the nation’s banks. Now, the Government claims Ireland is on the path to recovery – having driven 87,100 people out of the country last year, the young desperately […]
Economic Cleansing
A London borough says it is planning to decant 3,000 people to towns as far as Bradford in the north of England where rents are cheaper than London house prices. Some are calling this economic cleansing – removing families with no jobs who live on welfare benefits. But why the astonishment that this should be […]
Who Are the Predators?
The leader of Britain’s political opposition, Ed Miliband, now talks of the conflict between “predators” and “producers”. At a press conference he was repeatedly challenged to elaborate on the meaning of those words. He failed to give definitions: an example of why government policy-making is in chaos – not just in the UK, but in […]