Like this bulletin? Tell friends. Don’t like it? Tell me — E.

IN THIS E-BULLETIN

• Why Boris’ tax hike is unfair, job-killing and misdirected
• Ayn Rand Lecture and other events
• Research: Living with Covid, UK-NZ cooperation, easy greenery, choosing to be dense

BUT FIRST...

ON MY MIND

Boris’s tax hike for health and social care — bullied through his Party before they’d worked out the full implications — is a disaster on several fronts. First, we are deep in debt and business has been battered. You can’t tax your way to prosperity, you have to grow your way to it. And high taxes are the number one thing that stifles new business growth. But here we are, raising tax by another £12 billion+ a year, on top of the £65 billion increase in the March budget. And in two years’ time, corporate taxes are due to rise, taking us to above the world average rate. Already, the tax burden is the highest since WWII and public spending is 42.2% of the nation’s entire income.

It’s also unfair. These taxes come mostly from younger, renting workers to benefit older, retired homeowners. The new levy doesn’t apply to buy-to-let income or pensions, and though older working people will pay it, they don’t otherwise pay NI at all or earn much labour income. Meanwhile, young graduates face effective income tax rates of almost 50%. They don’t get a lot for it. Health and social care — which the young don’t use much — absorbs 40% of national spending and 47% of local spending. And around 20% of pensioners are millionaires, but the proportion of 25-24 year-olds who own their own home has fallen from 60% in 1990 to 40% today.

And it won’t work. It’s like pouring more fuel into a seized-up engine. The NHS gets first dibs on the new cash. They’ll get used to it, leaving little to none for social care (unless there are yet more tax rises). There is no plan for how the cash will cut waiting lists. Nor plans to reform how this leviathan state monopoly works.

Likewise with social care. The majority of local authority care homes are old, below legal standards and unfit for purpose. Care delivered at home is bought on price, not quality. Care is means-tested, and there’s a 70,000 backlog in assessments, but we’ve more than doubled the numbers eligible, raising the bureaucratic burden further. More people getting subsidised local-authority care means fewer premium-rate customers for care homes, which will go out of business as a result.

We know that Downing Street advisers read and understood our thoughtful report on Fixing Social Care, full of practical ways to do just that. So why didn’t they explore any of them? Instead, they’ve throttled our economic recovery and made social care worse.

But that's politics.

POLICY INITIATIVES

Living with Covid

Olympic medals are one thing — but the UK has fallen behind France in the more serious matter of the vaccine race. We estimate that 10.4m adults are not fully vaccinated. 2.1m vulnerable people have yet to have their first dose with a further 600,000 have yet to have their second dose. That could lead to nearly 150,000 hospital admissions and 40,000 deaths were they to catch Covid.

Our new report, Life With Covid: Boosting vaccinations, injecting resilience and safeguarding freedom, by Senior Fellow James Lawson and Matthew Lesh, says we need to give the vaccination programme a shot in the arm. Let’s accept that Covid cases are going to be a fact of life, but mitigate its effect, and avoid ‘vaccine passports’ and other restrictions, by vaccinating — and giving booster shots — to the most vulnerable. Let’s invest in the emerging new treatments and the next-generation anti-virus technologies — as well as simple things like promoting better ventilation in public (and private) spaces.
 

Surprising poll on UK-NZ trade

Almost two-thirds (63%) of Brits back free trade and freer movement with New Zealand, our polling reveals — with only 8% opposing closer ties. And over two-thirds (69%) support mutual recognition for the qualifications of key workers — doctors, teachers and nurses like Kiwi Jenny McGee, who helped save Boris Johnson’s life. That’s according to a new poll from the ASI and C|T Group RSR.

The UK is currently in talks with New Zealand, talks that must be encouraged that the proportion of Brits wanting free trade has risen since our last poll. And we found that 69% of Brits also believe that New Zealand has high or very high food and animal rights standards — making a breakthrough on agriculture entirely possible. Our conclusion? Let’s get rid of Drawbridge Britain and have freer movement between us and our Kiwi cousins!
 

Yes, it is easy being green

Sometimes you need to keep saying things over and over. I was probably in short trousers when the ASI report The Market in Environment came out, showing that the environmental problem was not too much capitalism but too little use of the market — and suggesting all sorts of ways to use the market to cut emissions and allocate public goods.

And now our new paper It’s Easy Being Green, in conjunction with the British Conservation Alliance (BCA), and authored by BCA policy director Connor Tomlinson, takes that market environmentalism a step forward. Markets, if you use them, can systematically drive good environmental stewardship, by rewarding environmental innovation and more efficient resource use. State-dominated economies, by contrast, are dismal at doing either.

We say that if we want to get anywhere near net zero, we’re going to need more nuclear energy (and we should be investing in new fusion technologies, for sure), a border-adjusted carbon tax (ensuring that goods produced overseas are also taxed on their emissions) and reverting to standard tax rates on fossil fuels, and creating a genuine market in carbon credits. We also need to be realistic about where the carbon footprints come from — transportation, for example, accounts for only a tiny share, with New Zealand lamb and dairy products having a lower footprint than Welsh ones.

Decide to be dense

It’s amazing that, when you look at our big cities, apart from a small high-rise centre, most of the housing is two stories. Nowhere in the UK do we have the sort of six-story apartment blocks that line the boulevards of Paris or Prague — except for places like Pimlico and South Kensington in London, where tall Victorian town houses have been later turned into apartments, with varying success.

Why not? Well, maybe people just wanted to escape the depressed inner cities so they created suburbia. But we could turn the semis into apartments and use the land much more intensely — to the benefit of young people who can’t afford houses at the moment, who want to live near their work, and have less demand for space.

That’s why we’ve been calling for street votes, where householders get together and agree to turn their semis into mansion blocks — making a handsome profit, but also doing something positive to help the housing crisis. We wrote about it in our 2017 report YIMBY: How to End the Housing Crisis, Boost the Economy and Win More Votes. (Surprisingly not one of Matthew Lesh’s catchy titles! — Ed.) A bill to allow street votes has now been introduced into Parliament by MPs John Penrose and Bob Blackman with a broad coalition of supporters. Watch this space.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

FREEDOM WEEK

In fact, we’ve already kicked off our programme of live events with Freedom Week, our week-long intellectual boot camp for promising young student enthusiasts. 30 of the finest young minds in the world of liberty heard talks on everything from Big Tech and free market environmentalism to the case against paternalism and the economics of the gender pay gap. And after hearing from leading classical liberal academics during the day, they spent the evenings pub quizzing, punting and BBQ-ing. Expect to see them crop up in a few years as the next generation of sound politicos or (god forbid) journos!

DONATE

Don’t you just hate it when politicians do silly things? Things that don’t do what they are meant to do. Things based on no evidence at all. Things that are even counterproductive. Things that reward political interest groups rather than benefiting the public. In fact, most of what politicians do?

Everyone knows the arguments for bigger government. They’re shouted by every vested interest group and puffed up by every broadcaster. But we put forward the lesser-spotted case, the case for smaller government, lower taxes, more economic growth, private ownership, choice, competition, markets, private property, trade and a self-help civil society. And we speak not just to the general public, but to young people too, educating the minds of the next generation of decision-makers.

We need your help in spreading these arguments, and backing them up with practical policy initiatives to get us to a freer and more prosperous world. Our amazing young team will do the work, but they need the resources to work on. Help them, and become part of that team, with a donation to our crucial work. And to the prospect of fewer silly things.

YOU'RE INVITED

Ayn Rand Lecture

This year’s annual Ayn Rand Lecture, named after the ‘radical for capitalism’ author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead is a must-see post-lockdown event. We’ve managed to get as our speaker serial entrepreneur, Sunday Times columnist and author of The Maverick, Luke Johnson, he of Giraffe restaurants and formerly Pizza Express, The Ivy, the Royal Society of Arts and Channel 4.

Johnson epitomises Ayn Rand’s vision of the self-motivated entrepreneur who changes the world and improves people’s lives in the process. What are the secrets of his success, and the values that drive him on? You’ll have to come to find out!

The Ayn Rand Lecture takes place at Drapers’ Hall in the City of London at 6:30pm on Tuesday 23 November. Book your (free) place by emailing [email protected].

Conservative Party Conference

We're doing a full schedule of events at Conservative Party Conference in Manchester. They're all in the secure zone so if you're planning on attending CPC2021 please do come along! 

Barriers to a Green Revolution:
Monday 4th October 13:00 - 14:30

With a target of Net Zero by 2050, the UK has a daunting task ahead. Many groups would see the Government take a heavy-handed approach to a green revolution, including tariffs, subsidies, fines, and more, all to achieve their goals. 

We think otherwise. Markets drive innovation every day, as new companies, entrepreneurs, charities and scientists devise ways of doing more with less.

A Golden Opportunity: Embracing Tobacco Harm Reduction:
Monday 4th October 15:30 - 17:00

2021 is a pivotal year; with the UK no longer part of the EU, the UK has the opportunity to become a world leader in Tobacco Harm Reduction. We are now better placed than ever before to improve our world-leading tobacco harm reduction approach—both on the domestic and international level.

Online Safety & Free Speech:
Tuesday 5th October 13:00 - 14:30

The Government has now published a long-awaited draft of the ‘Online Safety Bill’. The Bill will create a “duty of care” on social media sites and search engines to safeguard users from both unlawful and “legal but still harmful” content as well as safeguard freedom of expression and democratically important content.

The Government claims this will make the UK the safest place in the world to surf the internet. But in reality it represents an unprecedented threat to free speech - one which the ASI and the Legal to Say, Legal to Type coalition intends to challenge vigorously.
 

Back Better Builds:
Tuesday 5th October 15:30 - 17:00

For far too long, the housing crisis has been a topic of conversation without enough supporting action. It seems to be a political landmine –– necessary to avoid at all costs.

Now, armed with original polling done in collaboration with C|T Group, we’ll investigate public attitudes towards building, housing development and the solutions to the housing crisis we can all get behind.

KEEPING COMMUNISM AT BAY

We work hard to educate the public on the merits of a free and open society and economy. Unfortunately, at the same time, the left is extolling the virtues of communism. Yes, the same communism that killed 100 million people in just 100 years. But to the youth of today, it’s a trendy utopian ideal.

That’s why we’re creating a documentary about the true reality of communism. One that brings together academics, journalists, and survivors of communist regimes to tell their stories, to tell of the horrors they experienced and the inevitable result of the communist experiment.

If you’d like to know more, don’t hesitate to reach out by replying to this email. You can also back the project by donating here.

It’s been a while since we last spoke, so I won’t be able to give you all the media we’ve been doing or I’d go over my allocated attention allowance. 

Instead, here are some highlights:

The National Insurance hike to ‘pay for social care’ and the suspension of the pension triple lock kept us very busy. Our scathing comments about the NI hike and calls for the triple lock to be scrapped entirely featured in the Independent, The Telegraph, Daily Mail, Metro, Express,  Wired, GuidoFawkes, Newsfeed, BBC News, GB News, BBC Radio 4, TalkRadio, and we even elicited positive coverage in the Guardian, multiple times as they found themselves agreeing with ASI reaction. If you want to read more of our thoughts, our research intern Rebecca Wray appeared in CapX, Matthew Lesh in The Telegraph, and Morgan Schondelmeier in The Spectator while I wrote for CityAM.

Our most recent paper on living with Covid was splashed in The Telegraph and Wired Gov. Report co-author James Lawson appeared on GB News, and other co-author Matthew Lesh wrote for The Telegraph, CapX, and also appeared on GB News. If that’s not enough, you can read more about the vaccine roll out by Lesh in The Telegraph, again The Telegraph, and John Macdonald in the Express.

In other Covid news, our comments on the Pingdemic continued to appear in the media (you can read more about that in our last e-Bulletin) and we also touched on furlough for The Daily Mail and work from home for Scottish Daily Mail and (you guessed it –– Ed.) The Telegraph.

Our environmental paper was covered in CapX and CityAM, while author Connor Tomlinson wrote in ConservativeHome and appeared across the media including Times Radio, TalkRADIO, and GB News. Matthew Lesh wrote in The Telegraph (I promise these are all different links –– Ed.). Also on the case of the environmentalists, Morgan Schondelmeier’s comments on the expense of mandatory green boilers appeared in the Express, Utility Week, and Brinkwire and Matthew Lesh wrote about meat taxes in CapX.

And in miscellaneous news, we discussed the impending Australia-UK trade deal on Sky News and the New Zealand-UK trade deal in Politico; Matthew Lesh called for the UK to accept Afghan refugees in CapX; our comments on foreign direct investment and national security featured in The Telegraph; our push back against the High Pay Centre and their obsession with CEO pay was covered by the BBC and The Telegraph; and in a joint letter with other think tanks, we supported John Penrose MP’s calls for more transparency in business to avoid cronyism.

(Phew –– Ed.)

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AND I QUOTE...

I don’t think I even have to explain why this quote from US columnist Franklin P Adams (1881-1960) came to mind…
 

Count that day won, when turning on its axis,

This earth imposes no additional taxes.
 

Bye,

e