Over at Forbes, Eric Jackson argues quite convincingly that Google and Facebook – powerful though they are now – probably won’t be top dogs on the web for long. “The organizational ecologists talked about the “liability of obsolescence” which is a growing mismatch between an organization’s inherent product strategy and its operating environment over time. [...]
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Could student loans turn America into the next Greece?
You saw Obama slow-jam the news, right? Ha, funny, he’s the President. But what was he talking about? Obama has asked Congress to block a proposed doubling in the rate of interest on US “Stafford” student loans. These subsidised public loans make up a significant proportion of US student debt – over a third in [...]
The Work Programme might actually increase unemployment
Chris Dillow’s lament that productivity growth can lead to an increase in unemployment reminds me of something: The Government’s Work Programme might not just ‘not work’ – it might make unemployment worse. We know what causes unemployment, because we know what causes jobs. Jobs – posts, positions, or more abstractly ‘demand for labour’ – are [...]
You can blame enthusiastic Thatcherites for the petrol crisis
What possessed the Government to provoke the panic buying of petrol? Who in their right mind would tell the public to hoard as much petrol as they could? I suspect there was more than a touch of Margaret Thatcher in there. The Thatcher government is well established as this generation of conservatives’ role model for [...]
Labour’s 10-point poll lead: The lasting damage to the Government
There’s much debate about what’s causing the sustained 10-point Labour lead in the opinion polls. The first thing to make clear is that this isn’t so much a Labour bounce as the first instance of an erosion of the Tories’ previous floor on their vote. Labour are doing as well as they have done this [...]
If you can enforce a ‘Tycoon tax’, just enforce all our taxes
The ‘Tycoon tax’ begs a question – if you can enforce it, why not enforce our existing taxes? Nick Clegg and other Lib Dems have called for a tax rule which will see people on high incomes paying a minimum rate of 30% on their income. This is as opposed to the current situation where [...]
Thankfully, flat taxes are very unpopular
Today’s ComRes poll for the Independent on Sunday has one particularly badly worded question in it. People were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the following hypothetical budget measure: “Introduce a minimum income tax rate of around 30 per cent, that everyone should pay, regardless of tax reliefs and schemes to reduce tax liability” [...]
Five reasons Germany isn’t innocent in the Euro crisis
I actually agree with European Commissioner Olli Rehn when he says there’s no point apportioning blame for the Euro crisis – a lot of people have messed up. It can also be counterproductive. But since you can’t move for tripping over caricatures of lazy Greeks, for the sake of balance here are some reasons why [...]
The Government can’t have its cake and eat it with quantitative easing
MPs were on the radio today defending the Bank of England’s decision to launch another round of quantitative easing. The main accusation being made against the move was that it would cause inflation. Responding to former Monetary Policy Committee member Andrew Sentance, Tory MP Matthew Hancock said that in the past QE hadn’t produced inflation, [...]
The Liberal Democrats and Lansley’s NHS privatisation
Remember how the Lib Dems couldn’t vote against raising tuition fees because they had agreed to abstain in any vote on the subject in the coalition agreement? Here’s something else from the coalition agreement: “The Liberal Democrats have achieved one of their manifesto pledges by getting a commitment to elected members of PCT boards. The [...]
