|
ASI Bulletin: On The Rocks
Dr. Eamonn Butler, our Director and Co-Founder, takes you through the last few (always hectic) weeks at the Adam Smith Institute.
| |||||||||||||||
 |
Donate here, and help us in fighting our cause
If you like this Adam Smith Institute e-Bulletin, tell your friends. If you don’t, tell me.
GAP YEAR INTERNS: It could be the best decision you’ve ever made.
REVIVING NIGHTLIFE: The latest from our Next Generation boffins.
COST OF RENT DAY: It’s later than you think.
But first...
According to some newly elected councillors, the local elections were a referendum on Gaza. (Though I didn’t think that foreign policy was a Town Hall function. Silly me.) The Labour Party did very well, and its view on Gaza is, well, ambivalent. So this referendum has underscored the need for an ambivalent foreign policy, managed by Town Halls. At least I think that’s what we’re being told. Meanwhile the SNP have re-elected the lacklustre leader who made such a mess of it last time that Alex Salmon had to be taken out of mothballs to revive the party’s fortunes. And in Westminster, the government is content that its plans on prices, immigration, waiting lists are working so well that it can now launch an assault on gender-neutral toilets. It’s all very Senate of It, isn’t it?
Though I’m an Irish citizen (as well as a Brit), I’ve no great love for Ireland’s politicians. So it’s been amusing to see them squirming about Rwanda-fearing migrants crossing the border (which they say doesn’t and shouldn’t exist) to claim asylum in the Republic. Even funnier to see them wanting to send them back over the border.
Taxpayers are funding a £475-a-day specialist to ‘decolonise’ Hadrian’s Wall. (Well, you need to pay well because it’s a tough job. It was built by a colonising power, after all.)
Donald Trump might soon be going to jail for contempt of court. And contempt for a lot of other parts of the American establishment, of course. (If he does, he’s a shoo-in—Ed.)
Yet I digress...
AROUND ASI
Gap year internships
Each year, we take two talented students, between school and university, to become part of the ASI team. That’s it, not to slave over the photocopier, but to participate in and plan events, write research pieces, work on producing reports, make the tea, meet important people and do everything that the rest of us do.
One of this year’s gap year interns, Siddhi Badole, says: “Joining ASI was the best decision I ever made. Beyond practical skills, it broadened my worldview. Events, debates and even books in the office gave me a new perspective on ideas I hadn’t considered before and wouldn’t have picked up if I went straight to university.”
Applications for the gap year internship scheme for 2024/25 is now open. To apply, candidates must send a CV and a cover letter of around 500 words to [email protected]. Interviews will take place in the summer, and the interns will start in September. Deadline is 30 June, but don't delay! Full details below.
AI and Defence
Our research bod Maxwell Marlow has published his evidence to the Defence Select Committee about how we can adopt AI into the UK’s defence strategy. It turns out that while 99% of strategic speeches highlight the importance of using AI, fewer than 1% of contract awards actually deliver on this vision! We show how we can help SMEs overcome bureaucratic challenges, streamline approval processes and become generally much more proactive in deploying AI capabilities that are already out there,
Cost of rent day
It’s like our Tax Freedom Day Calculation — Cost of Rent Day highlights just how many months and days each year that people, particularly young people, have to work simply to pay rent. And the answer's shocking — we find that they have to work from 1 January right through to 4 May to do that, meaning that Cost of Rent Day falls on 5 March. And that’s before the tax collectors have drained £££ out of their earnings!
The Next Generation Centre
The latest report from our Next Generation Centre — our initiative to produce policies focused on the needs of younger people — explains why London's nightlife (and that of other cities) is in decline. And then it says what we can do about it. Proposals including reforming licensing laws, cutting taxes on venues, easing regulations (Hey—post-Brexit Britain could do that, if our politicians pulled their finger our—Ed.) and much more.
And we hosted supporters of a good night out, including the Rt Hon Robert Jenrick MP, for a launch event in Mr Fogg’s in the City, which coincidentally had just been named the best pub in the Square Mile!
Plus we’re delighted to announce our first cohort of Next Generation Fellows! We’ll be supporting Matthew, James, Noa, Anna, Duncan, and Alex as they produce research on the issues that matter to young people today.
 |
EVENTS
 |
Join us for an evening of The Adam Smith Institute's new series of events, Enlightenment Evenings, where our Chairman James Lawson interviews brilliant authors, academics and wonks on fascinating topics stirring up the Westminster scene.
On Thursday 16th May 2024, we have Maxwell, our Director of Research, speaking about the ASI's Cost of Rent Day.
6pm doors for a 6:30pm start. Q + A.
This month we hosted Minister of State and friend of the ASI, the Rt Hon Steve Baker MP, for our TNG drinks.
For our next TNG on the Tuesday 4th June, the Adam Smith Institute will welcome Julia Garayo Willemyns, Founding Co-Director of UK Day One Project.
 |
For our next TNG on the Tuesday 4th June, the Adam Smith Institute will welcome Julia Garayo Willemyns, Founding Co-Director of UK Day One Project.
Housekeeping:
Date: Tuesday 4th June 2024
Time: 6:00-8:00pm (don't come before 6pm - we won't let you in! Even if it's raining...our house, our rules)
Where: 23 Great Smith Street, London, SW1P 3DJ
Refreshments provided 🍷
Please note this event is for under-35s.
Free Market Road Show
The Free Market Road Show, the brainchild of Barbara Kolm of the Hayek Institute in Vienna, began 17 years ago, taking prominent speakers to just four European Capitals, and now it produces 50 events in 35 countries across two continents. This year, the Road Show rolls into London Town on Tuesday 21 May — the day after it has rolled through (and, given the state of things, hopefully over—Ed) the University of Cambridge. We are helping the Legatum Institute, who will be hosting it at their amazing Mayfair HQ, on the programme. Speakers will include star performers Daniel Hannan, Brandon Lewis and our own Maxwell Marlow and Sam Bidwell. Details coming soon here.
I’ll be speaking at the Cambridge event (if you can find your way through the tented demo village—Ed.) along with the Hayek Institute’s Barbara Kolm, Prometheus Institute’s Ely Lassman, Brussels Report editor Peter Cleppe and noted tax economist Richard Teather. Details here.
ENLIGHTENMENT ESSAY COMPETITION
Don’t forget to enter our Enlightenment Essay Competition, with prizes of £8,000 (first place), £4,000 (second) and £2,000 (third).
We’ll be looking further afield in our search for excellent essays. We are asking students, from undergraduate to post-doctoral, to answer the question: “How can the ideas of the Enlightenment become embedded in the Arab World?”
The deadline is 30th August. To apply, you have to be an undergraduate, postgraduate or doctoral and post-doctoral student. We are asking for up to 5,000 words including any footnotes, Chicago citation, British English. Submissions to [email protected].
More information here. Good luck!
ON THE SUPERBLOG
On the blog
I celebrate the birthday of the great 20th Century economic and social thinker F. A. Hayek.
Tim Worstall reminds us that no, there has been no austerity.
And Tim again echoes Kristian Nimitz’s findings (and Adam Smith’s reasoning) that slavery did not give Britain a huge economic boost. That came from liberal values, free commerce and specialisation.
Are we relying too much on interest rates to drive growth?
This article by ASI Fellow Charles White-Thomson suggest we are — that we have become addicted to cheap credit. But rock bottom rates haven’t exactly taken us soaring into the growth stratosphere, have they? We have ended up with stagflation instead (Just like the 1970s—Ed.). We need to look instead at policies to kick-start new enterprises and help them on their way. Which means government getting out of the way, mostly.
ON THE BOOKSHELF
Richer and More Equal: A New History of Wealth in the West By Daniel Waldenström (Polity Press 2024)
The fact that Swedish academic Daniel Waldenström has previously collaborated with Thomas Piketty makes this detailed history of wealth all the more significant. The world, he finds, is many times richer than a century ago — but also, more equally so. Wealth has been ‘democratised’—no longer the preserve of rich landowners, but enjoyed by ordinary people with their higher earnings, property and savings. Indeed,there has been a ‘Great Wealth Equalisation’, particularly the last half century. All this undermines the standard ‘inequality’ narrative, and indicates that rather than taxing wealth, property and savings, we should be helping people to acquire them. Sayonara, Piketty.
The War on Prices: How Popular Misconceptions about Inflation, Prices and Value Create Bad Policy Edited by Ryan Bourne (Cato Institute 2024)
I am pleased to have contributed a chapter — on the long history of Wage and Price Controls — to this very detailed new book from the Cato Institute. Forget all the guff about corporate greed, the gender pay gap and capitalism being like the Wild West. This book answers all these questions and explains that while prices are under siege from controlling governments (and campaigners), they are what really drives economic activity and co-ordinates our production and progress. You should buy it!
Elite Networks: The Political Economy of Inequality By Vuk Vuković (Oxford University Press, 2024)
And ASI Senior Fellow Vuk Vuković has released his new work on how power has been alway been misused to benefit a narrow elite- from the kings and nobles of the past, to our elected politicians today.
And I quote…
F. A. Hayek (as I say, his birthday fell this week) isn’t long on quotable quotes. But as I sit here in the garden, marooned by train strikes, this one seems right for the times:
“Once politics becomes a tug-of-war for shares in the income pie, decent government is impossible.”
Bye,
e
OUR SOCIALS
Thanks for reading the ASI’s e-Bulletin! Subscribe for free to receive new content, information about events, and other soundness.
ASI Bulletin is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell ASI Bulletin that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments.
| ||||||||||
