America
Emile Woolf
Business
All other things being equal
A paradox is an apparent absurdity or contradiction that, on close investigation, is found to be true. What’s happening in government right now is hardly paradoxical – it certainly appears to be both absurd and [more…]
Economics
“Waste not, want not”
This proverb spells out the link between waste and impoverishment. Economic Perspectives 112 highlighted the inevitability of massive waste of public money when government expenditure is not susceptible to economic calculation. ”Would I sanction this [more…]
Economics
The science of economics has lost its way
In 1798 Thomas Malthus postulated his gloomy theory that the growth in population must always outstrip the means of subsistence needed to support it: “Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only [more…]
Economics
Reality begins to dawn
Shortly before the Chancellor’s Spring Statement, BBC2’s “Newsnight” featured Kirsty Wark interviewing two economic experts, one Conservative, one Labour. She asked each of them to describe the measures they would recommend to the Chancellor, Rishi [more…]
America
Fault-Lines in Thinking Exposed
Last month I wrote about the massive waste implicit in government-sponsored bureaucracy – at local and central levels. The craving for a sense of importance leads small-minded apparatchiks to seize power over others by controlling [more…]
Business
Economic Idiocy Repeated, Part 2
In Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking-Glass” Humpty Dumpty tells Alice: “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” Humpty’s subjective approach to verbal meanings is of [more…]
Business
Economic Idiocy Repeated, Part 1
Any catalogue of economic legends would of course include the 2008 visit of Queen Elizabeth to the London School of Economics, when the country was experiencing an unprecedented housing market bubble based on the irrational [more…]
Economics
Why governments practise currency debasement – and how to cure them
I have written on the subject of currency debasement many times, but it is now reaching crunch-time – even for the pound, dollar, yen and euro. Most respected economists persist in defining inflation as a [more…]