Institute of economic affairs

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• The NHS delivers poor outcomes – even the Commonwealth Fund agrees

  20 avril 2018, par Kristian Niemietz
  Imagine a version of history in which the National Health Service had never been created. What would healthcare in Britain look like today? Would we have luxury healthcare for the rich, and Wild West medicine for the poor? Would people live in fear of being bankrupted by medical bills? Would (...)

• Ricardo’s ideas are as indispensable today as they were 200 years ago

  19 avril 2018, par Kristian Niemietz
  David Ricardo, the classical economist has been dead for nearly 200 years – but his insights and theories remain immeasurably valuable today. Ricardo was, in many ways, an unlikely economist. Born into a large Sephardic Jewish family, he received little formal education, instead joining his (...)

• Lords’ report recommendations would make the UK technology sector less competitive

  18 avril 2018, par Kristian Niemietz
  The United Kingdom’s House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence recently published the report, “AI in the UK: Ready, Willing and Able?” The recommendations on how the UK can become a global leader in Artificial Intelligence are off the mark. While the report contains numerous (...)

• Occupational licensing of estate agents will restrict competition, and protect incumbents

  17 avril 2018, par Kristian Niemietz
  Sajid Javid has recently announced that in future, estate agents will be required to hold a professional qualification, thus adding to the large numbers of people who cannot conduct business without government permission. Around a fifth of the workforce is already in this position. According to (...)

• What have socialism’s proponents really learned since the fall of the Berlin Wall ?

  16 avril 2018, par Kristian Niemietz
  Socialism is extremely in vogue. Opinion pieces which tell us to stop obsessing over socialism’s past failures, and start to get excited about its future potential, have almost become a genre in its own right. For example, Bhaskhar Sunkara, the founder of Jacobin magazine, recently wrote a New (...)

• Free bus passes for the under-25s are terrible economics

  13 avril 2018, par Kristian Niemietz
  Yesterday, the Labour Party announced a plan to introduce free bus passes for people under the age of 25. According to their own estimates, the policy would cost £1.4bn. This was followed by the usual political bickering. The transport minister described the policy as “bribing young people”, and (...)

• #QTWTAIN : Will ‘Big Data’ make socialism possible ?

  12 avril 2018, par Kristian Niemietz
  Among statisticians, economists, and business executives, “Big Data” is all the rage. Large and detailed data sets that, until recently, couldn’t even be stored on a computer are now managed and analysed using innovative statistical techniques. Hopes are high that these advances will improve (...)

• Most arguments against a UK-US free trade deal are based on snobbery and anti-Americanism

  11 avril 2018, par Kristian Niemietz
  From fears that a trade agreement with the US will lead to an American takeover of the NHS, to hand-wringing over the “wrong” products entering our market, public hysteria about a US/UK trade deal has reached epidemic levels. And now, anti-American sentiment, long a hallmark of the chattering (...)

• Donald Trump’s war with Amazon will deepen the swamp

  10 avril 2018, par Kristian Niemietz
  What happens when a US President uses his bully pulpit to threaten individual companies? Forget Donald Trump’s escalation of a trade war with China, his fire at Amazon is arguably more dangerous for the long-term health of the US business environment. A thriving market must be underpinned by the (...)

• What we get wrong about technology

  9 avril 2018, par Kristian Niemietz
  Fans of Blade Runner – and I am one of them – have to admit that the film has a few moments that, to modern eyes, look a little odd. When our hero Deckard falls for “Rachael”, he already knows that Rachael is a highly intelligent organic robot, with memories uploaded from a human. She … Continue (...)

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