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Why is Andorra rich?
I recently wrote about the fact that Andorra has one of the longest life expectancies in the world (somewhere in the top 4, depending on which source you believe). It’s also the 23rd richest country in...
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Cost + Profit = Price
So Ed Milliband, the leader of the UK’s Labour Party, has some brilliant ideas to make ordinary working people better off. He wants companies to pay workers more. He wants energy companies to cut...
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What is wealth?
Obviously it’s the stuff in the photo. It’s money, or it could be real estate or gold or oil or diamonds. Except, what if it’s not? What if wealth is something else entirely? GDP has increased by...
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Welcome to Britain!
On 1st January, 2014, the borders of the United Kingdom opened to immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria who want to live and work in Britain. The country’s newspapers are filled with hysterical...
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6 lessons from the French Revolution
I’ve been reading about La Revolution Francaise recently and it seems that there are some really useful lessons we can learn from what happened. The revolution happened because huge military spending...
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Ukraine – are we the bad guys?
Am I the only person experiencing a sense of disconnect watching the people in Crimea happily waving their Russian flags and then hearing the White House and European leaders condemn them and imposing...
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Better than democracy? (Part 2 of 2)
One of the questions I keep returning to on this blog is whether there’s a better alternative to democracy. Churchill famously said that democracy is the worst form of government apart from all the...
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Politics and fairness
OK, raise your hand if you believe in fairness. Ha! I tricked you. I haven’t yet defined what fairness means. Everyone has their own definition of fairness. But here’s how Haidt defines it:...
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Politics and loyalty
In this series of articles, I’m exploring the psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s core moral foundations and in particular how they relate to our political beliefs. Loyalty is the third moral foundation, and...
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One law for the rich
I’m a huge fan of the French actor Gerard Depardieu. Jean de Florette is one of my all-time favourite films. But the recent wealth tax introduced in France has led Depardieu to leave the country and...
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Wealth is knowledge – poverty is ignorance
Give unlimited resources to a caveman and he will chop down trees and burn them as firewood. Give unlimited resources to a Victorian and he will burn coal to power a steam engine. Give the same to a...
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Election aftermath
Despite many commentators’ predictions of a hung parliament, the outcome of the UK’s general election was a clear majority for David Cameron’s Conservative Party. It seems that on the whole, the people...
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Scarcity and abundance
We are moving from a world in which resources are scarce towards a world of abundance. Many things that were once scarce are already abundant in developed countries and will soon be abundant...
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Left vs Right, Authoritarianism vs Libertarianism
Anyone interested in politics should take a good look at the Political Compass website. Here you can read about Left vs Right (economics) and Authoritarianism vs Libertarianism (social attitudes) and...
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Is free trade natural?
I’ve been having an interesting chat with my blog friend, Wyrd Smythe about the discovery of fire, and other game-changing advances in human civilization. We both agree that trade is of fundamental...
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Why I have voted to remain in the EU
On June 23, 2016, the people of Britain will vote in a referendum. The question we will be asked is: “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?” I...
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Britain pulls up the drawbridge
So the people of the United Kingdom have voted to leave the European Union. The margin was small (51.9% Leave vs 48.1% Remain) but a win is a win, and so Britain will now begin negotiations to leave –...
View ArticleThe next economic era is here
The world my children inhabit looks superficially like the world I grew up in during the 1970s. The house they live in, the clothes they wear and the food they eat – none of these would be very strange...
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