Lockdown or not, the Atlas Network’s Liberty Forum – 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?", 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.
Our Danish sister think tank, the Center for Political Studies (CEPOS), also went ahead with their annual Freedom Conference. I gave a talk entitled "Socialism: The Perennial Threat to Freedom", updating and building on my earlier work 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 6th 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. I could not, of course, resist writing a rebuttal.
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, 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
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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.
IEA Director General Mark Littlewood chaired a panel discussion on the Resolution Foundation’s proposed £40bn tax hike, which you can watch here. 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 that raising rates would be "a serious mistake" and create more economic damage down the line. His comments were quoted in The Times.
Meanwhile, IEA Economics Fellow Julian Jessop welcomed the news 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".
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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, 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.
Christopher also spoke to Times Radio and talkRadio 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.
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