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If [UK Government] spending since 1997 had risen no faster than inflation, we would be spending a third less than we do now, and could abolish income tax, VAT, and council tax entirely. – Eamonn Butler, writing in the Daily Telegraph on what I am relieved to discover the Adam Smith Institute has renamed Cost of Government Day. June 25th, 2009 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
 All the existing [medical care] schemes, including the present American mixed corporatist/socialist model, represent a transfer from the young and healthy to the old and chronically sick (and to the medical cartel, of course). The way it’s used in practice, the phrase “having health insurance” means having the right to place oneself on the receiving end of these transfers. No honest discussion of the situation is possible until the entirely false and misleading concept of “health insurance” is dropped. – Commenter Ivan June 23rd, 2009 | 32 comments - (Comments are closed)
“We live in a broadly capitalistic society…if Briitish Airways gets into trouble and cannot be sustained as a profitable business, then the government should not step in and bail it out.” Richard Branson, talking about the economic woes of British Airways. I have no idea whether sincerely believes in untramelled laissez faire (one has doubts) or is just dissing the competition, but it was refreshing to hear such comments on the BBC Breakfast TV show this morning. Take note, Messrs Obama, Brown, and the rest of them. June 22nd, 2009 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence. – Milton Friedman June 20th, 2009 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. – Voltaire, rationalist & satirist (1694 – 1778) June 18th, 2009 | 62 comments - (Comments are closed)
“It is rare that governments successfully cut costs by first spending more money.” – Tyler Cowen. He was talking about Mr Obama’s plans to socialise US medicine. I am sure that when the NHS was set up here in the UK, the advocates of said argued that it would “save” money in the long run. Meanwhile, here is some useful commentary from Arnold Kling. June 16th, 2009 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. – Winston Churchill June 13th, 2009 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
Drunken sailors generally spend cash that they’ve already earned themselves, rather than running up debt to be paid by others. If our politicians started spending like drunken sailors, it would in fact represent a dramatic improvement. – Instapundit yesterday. The Bishop likes it also. June 10th, 2009 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Doubtless politics has always had its dark side. But the depths to which it has sunk over the last 12 years under New Labour has been unprecedented in this country. Of all the legacies left by this Government the poisoning of political discourse is surely the worst. Gordon Brown, foul-tempered and intolerant, has been at the very centre of this mess. Gordon Brown never was fit for Number 10 and, given the wreckage of the economy, the public finances and the financial regulatory system, was never fit for Number 11 either. – Ruth Lea adds to the admosphere now being created by the WAGS. Have those Blair Babes finally justified their existence? June 8th, 2009 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
The left should be sensitive to inequality, the left should never accept liberty on a playing field that is unequal. – Conor Gearty. Quoted in this account of a debate on liberty at the Hay Festival by Afua Hirsch (do I detect an elegant lefty lawyer’s eyebrow raised in, “There was no competition for this position…”?). Every time I hear Prof Gearty or another human rightist of his water argue for a policy with which I agree (banning torture, say, or permitting freedom of expression), I have to remind myself that they are proceeding from an entirely different foundation. The position is coherent, but coherently alien. —- June 2nd, 2009 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
“In many ways, Cameron faces a task far harder than that which confronted Margaret Thatcher. She was elected three years after the IMF bailout, and so the public finances were being restored to health. She was chosen as leader specifically to bring radical change, and had four years to assemble a team and prepare for the ordeal. Mr Cameron originally assembled a team for the political equivalent of a game of croquet; the same people now find themselves dropped on a rugby pitch.” May 28th, 2009 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
“There is an almost universal assumption that the next government, of whatever stripe, will be imposing new taxes to avoid a junk-bond future. This easy option should not be allowed to run its course without challenge, because it ignores the risk of turning Britain into a junk economy of high taxes and low growth. It is no coincidence that the pressure to bring tax havens to heel has become intense over the past six months. So panicked were the finance ministers of the G20 nations about the risk of capital flight from the grabbing State that a campaign of bullying was launched against a small group of nations that refuse to accept that the State has the power to achieve absolute dominion over private wealth.” Carl Mortished. He is writing about California, and the lessons of that indebted US state for the euro zone and Britain. May 26th, 2009 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
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