From Institute of Economic Affairs <[email protected]>
Subject Balancing the books
Date November 18, 2020 2:09 PM
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Thousands of people read our weekend newsletter. In case you missed it, here’s a recap of our most recent edition – plus news of tonight’s video offering from the IEA...
* ON THE AGENDA
* TALKING POINT, BY DR KRISTIAN NIEMIETZ
* BALANCING THE BOOKS
* JUNK FOOD CRUSADE

ON THE AGENDA

* Live with Littlewood – TONIGHT – 6PM

We're back with another episode of Live with Littlewood tonight at 6pm, live on our YouTube Channel ([link removed]) .

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Join us as we discuss..
* Devolution: a "disaster"?
* Lockdown: over by Christmas?
* The Green Industrial Revolution and the road (pricing) ahead
* The Brexit deadlock

On the panel..

Professor Philip Booth, Senior Academic Fellow, IEA
Dia Chakravarty, Brexit Editor, The Telegraph
Brendan Chilton, Labour Councillor
Rachel Cunliffe, Comment and Features Editor, City AM
Dr Andrew Lilico, Executive Director, Europe Economics
John Rentoul, Chief Political Commentator, The Independent
Karin Svanborg-Sjovall, Former Chief Executive, Timbro

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* Last orders? The Future of UK Hospitality – TOMORROW – 6.30PM

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What could the second lockdown mean for the UK’s 50,000 pubs? How will these new restrictions impact an already beleaguered industry? Have the unintended consequences of these measures been considered?

On Thursday 19th November at 6.30pm, the IEA will host a webinar on the future of our hospitality sector. Join us to discuss these issues and more.

The event will be chaired by the IEA's Head of Lifestyle Economics Christopher Snowdon, who will be joined by JD Wetherspoon Chairman Tim Martin, UK Hospitality CEO Kate Nicholls, Corporate Relations Director at Diageo Dan Mobley and Dehenna Davison, Conservative Member of Parliament for Bishop Auckland. The discussion will be live-streamed on the IEA's YouTube channel here ([link removed]) .

Lockdown or not, the Atlas Network’s Liberty Forum ([link removed]) – an annual conference which brings together liberty-minded people from around the world – had to happen, albeit mostly virtually this time. At least we were not short on topics.

I took part in the panel "Healthcare and the Pandemic Response: What We Have Learned? ([link removed]) ", with Dr Jeffrey Singer from the CATO Institute and Dr Bobbi Herzberg from George Mason University. We talked about the relevant lessons from the first Covid wave, about the challenge of identifying and learning from international best practice, and about the various trade-offs involved in devising a strategic pandemic response.

Needless to say, we talked about the medium- to long-term implications for economic and personal freedom. Our Director General Mark Littlewood also chaired an enjoyable discussion on the global post-pandemic economic recovery.

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Our Danish sister think tank, the Center for Political Studies (CEPOS), also went ahead with their annual Freedom Conference ([link removed]) . I gave a talk entitled "Socialism: The Perennial Threat to Freedom ([link removed]) ", updating and building on my earlier work ([link removed]) on the rise of "Millennial Socialism". I argued that socialism had not just become a fashionable youth movement in its own right, but that it was also coopting and absorbing other fashionable social movements, the latest examples being Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion.

Our schools conference programme has managed the transition into the Zoom Age rather well. I spoke at an IEA 6^th form conference for Loretto School, outlining how different healthcare models work, and explaining the challenges of tackling market failure without simply replacing it with government failure.

Last week marked the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. You could be forgiven for thinking that today, 31 years on, nobody (apart from a few irrelevant sectarian fringe groups) would defend the East German regime. You would be wrong. Jacobin, a hip and trendy socialist magazine which attracts more than 2 million readers each month, used the occasion to do precisely that ([link removed]) . I could not, of course, resist writing a rebuttal ([link removed]) .

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For Westerners such as myself, socialism-vs-capitalism debates are an interesting academic exercise, but so far, they are is just that: it does not (yet) affect us directly. In a new video ([link removed]) , my colleague Emma Revell and I were joined by two of our current interns for whom socialism is, or was once, part of their daily life: Jesús Armas, a Venezuelan politician and activist, and Roberto White, a British-Venezuelan student. Interestingly, even though we approached the topic from different angles, we ultimately ended up in the same place.

Dr Kristian Niemietz
Head of Political Economy, Institute of Economic Affairs
BALANCING THE BOOKS

With a vaccine on the horizon, there is a sense of cautious optimism that, just maybe, a return to normality is in sight. However, after months of lockdown, the pandemic has taken a devastating toll on the nation’s finances. Last week, the IEA turned its attention to how we might begin to rebalance the books.

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IEA Director General Mark Littlewood chaired a panel discussion on the Resolution Foundation’s proposed £40bn tax hike, which you can watch here ([link removed]) . Mark argued that "spending restrictions will have to be the way forward," while Tom Clougherty, Head of Tax at the Centre for Policy Studies, said we should focus on "shifting the composition of the tax burden" to boost economic growth, as there is very little political will to lower taxes. Duncan Simpson of the TaxPayers' Alliance and Matthew Lesh of the Adam Smith Institute also joined the discussion.

Responding to proposals by the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) to align Capital Gains Tax (CGT) rates with income tax, Senior Academic Fellow Professor Philip Booth argued ([link removed]) that raising rates would be "a serious mistake" and create more economic damage down the line. His comments were quoted in The Times ([link removed]) .

Meanwhile, IEA Economics Fellow Julian Jessop welcomed the news ([link removed]) that GDP grew by a record 15.5 per cent in the last quarter, but warned against hiking taxes to "pay for Covid". Instead, he argued, we should focus on "growth-supporting measures, including tax simplification, cuts, and further deregulation".

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Mark also joined a discussion on how best to go for growth post-Covid with economist and author John Mills, hosted by Jim McConalogue of the Civitas think tank. You can catch up here ([link removed]) .

Elsewhere, a new paper from TIMBRO, our Swedish sister think tank, has found that economically free societies experience fewer and not as deep and long-lasting crises as more regulated societies. You can read the report, authored by new IEA trustee Christian Bjørnskov, Professor of Economics at Aarhus University, here ([link removed]) .

Christian also took part in last week's episode of Live with Littlewood, joining another stellar panel of guests including SNP Member of Parliament Angus MacNeil, author and journalist Lionel Shriver, Science Editor at The Times Tom Whipple, Political Commentator Alex Deane, Spiked's Deputy Editor Tom Slater, The Sun's Olivia Utley and our Head of Lifestyle Economics Christopher Snowdon. Catch up on the show here ([link removed]) .
JUNK FOOD CRUSADE

Given Public Health England’s (PHE) performance this year, one might expect a renewed focus on the core objective of "protecting the public from infectious diseases". Alas, as IEA Director of Communications Annabel Denham pointed out in an article for Spiked, Covid-19 has triggered "fervour among nanny-state obsessives". Read her article on how the pandemic has emboldened the puritans here (http:// [link removed]) .

The latest government proposals include an online "junk food" advertising ban on food considered high in fat, sugar and salt (HFSS) and included in PHE's food reformulation programmes. This, as the IEA's Head of Lifestyle Economics Christopher Snowdon told the Daily Mail ([link removed]) , would cover such everyday items as jam, yoghurt, Cornish pasties and mustard, and will include all forms of online advertising – at any time, day or night. You can read his full comment here ([link removed]) .

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Christopher also spoke to Times Radio and talkRadio ([link removed]) about the proposals, which are up for further public consultation. He argued that this "ill-considered" policy would "permanently exclude businesses large and small from the primary marketing medium of our time," while having "no impact on obesity".
If you’re interested in what food and drink might be affected by such a ban, read Christopher's IEA briefing ‘What is Junk Food?’ here ([link removed]) .

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