IN THIS BULLETIN:
- TOPPING THE RANKINGS — ASI's superlative value for money
- NEW TEAM MEMBERS — Introducing our communications chief and executive director
- DON'T DASH INTO MINIMUM TAXES — Stark warning from a senior economist
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BUT FIRST...
With various Tory bigwigs under media scrutiny for their private tax affairs, I bet they’re starting to wish they had followed our advice and adopted a simple, flat tax system. No doubt Donald Trump is thinking the same. He’s back on Facebook, but I can’t imagine he’s getting many ‘likes’ — he must feel he’s in an episode of Home Alone. (He could always phone up Prince Harry, who’s home alone in the next house — Ed.)
A US general warned that his country risked war with China within two years. If so, it’ll be a short one, since the Chinese could get all the top-secret info they needed just by looting Joe Biden’s garage. Which brings a whole new dimension to the TV show Storage Wars. A happier military figure is Vlodymyr Zelensky, who last week got just the 45th birthday present he wanted — German tanks and Finland and Sweden signing up to Nato.
And Scottish humourist Nicola Sturgeon's long-running farce about the £200-million- over-budget-and-five-years-late ferries (and her more macabre comedy about trans prisoners) continue to amuse the nation. So at least we can be cheerful as we try to forget that enormous January tax bill.
But I digress…
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IN THE THINK TANK
ASI’s effectiveness
I’ve been looking through our stats for 2022. Around 1.5 million people visited our website, we had 3 million impressions on Twitter, and to date we’ve had over 1 million views on YouTube. Last year we appeared in 3,000 articles in 900 different media outlets and had policy wins on freeports, safe standing in football grounds, reversing tax hikes and much more. To top it all, the annual think-tank ratings by the University of Pennsylvania place us 1st in the world among independent think tanks and 1st in the UK for domestic economic policy and for our use of social media. That’s a performance far ahead of many think-tanks that have many times our staff and budget. Shout out to the ASI team!
Why Global Minimum Corporate Tax Rates suck
Well, that’s not actually the title of our new report by Tyler Goodspeed. As a former White House chief economic adviser, he has to be more restrained. But it captures his point that the UK would be daft to rush into a world-wide 15% minimum company tax — as it seems to be doing. Firstly, as an early adopter, we’ll see business going to cheaper places instead. That in turn skewers investment and economic recovery. And it splatters the levelling up agenda because it makes schemes like investment zones and freeports — aimed at boosting the poorer parts of the UK — very hard to actually do. QED.
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Happy birthday, Adam!
This year, 2023, marks the 300th Anniversary of the birth of Adam Smith. I am speaking about Smith at events from Sacramento to Seoul, but I will update you soon on our own plans to celebrate this milestone.
In the meantime, the University of Glasgow, where Adam Smith taught, is kicking off the celebrations with a Global Reading Group, which will come together to study The Wealth of Nations. The aim is to encourage academics, students, business leaders, policymakers and the general public to read and reflect on the birthday boy’s writings and debate his relevance for today. It’s an opportunity to talk about The Wealth of Nations with Smith experts and enthusiasts over eight online sessions. Register your interest or visit the website for more details.
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WORD OF THE WEEK
Intaxication. It’s that dizzy feeling you get when you’ve just had a self-assessment tax form.
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Donate!
It’s Adam Smith’s 300th birthday year, and to mark it we’re establishing a dedicated Adam Smith Tercentenary fund (That’s Tricentennial to you American readers — Ed.) to expand and upgrade our highly effective educational work with young people. We go out to schools with half-day seminars on ideas they don’t usually get in the classroom, we run annual training sessions for students, and we have an awesome online presence. If you have given up on the present generation of so-called ’national leaders’, help us invest in tomorrow’s. In Adam Smith’s 300th anniversary year, please click the button and support our ongoing work.
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NEW ASI BODS
Lots of change afoot at the ASI as we have new members of staff joining left, right, and centre (well, mostly from the right, of course –– Ed.).
First up is Connor Axiotes who joined as our Director of Communications earlier this month. He’s already making a huge splash on the papers and online. He comes to us by way of the Ready for Rishi campaign and parliament. Keep an eye out for more from him across all your devices.
We’re also welcoming our new Executive Director who is coming on board to steer the ship in 2023. Duncan Simpson joins ASI HQ after many years at the TaxPayer’s Alliance and a stint in the Treasury (we can’t all be perfect –– Ed.). He’s the brains behind the operation now so send all complaints suggestions his way
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THIS WEEK'S LANGUAGE LESSON
The word politics comes from the Ancient Greek poly, meaning many, and ticks, which are nasty little bloodsuckers.
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SITTING ON THE BLOG
Defending capitalism It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. And in his new book In Defence of Capitalism, author Rainer Zitelmann takes on the critics. As ASI intern Eddie Bolland explains in this review, the mistakes critics make are legion. They compare real-world capitalism with a pure theoretical socialist paradise. They say it promotes poverty when, in just a few recent years, it has raised hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest out of poverty. And much more — all expertly rebutted by the author.
Energy: fixes not fads Six months deep into the Ukraine war there were dire predictions that Russia would make Europe’s energy unaffordable and we’d all be sitting under blankets in the dark. Now the gas price is lower than it was at the start of the war, because the market has kicked in and new sources of supply have opened up. But Russia’s threat, I suggest, shows how dangerous it is for energy policy to be decided by politicians’ fads. We need a wide mix of energy sources so we can survive disruptions to any one of them. And planning policies that support it.
Baby steps to growth Let’s pump up economic growth by revolutionising childcare, writes ASI intern Sofia Risino. Instead of today’s ‘one size fits all’ policy, we should give parents the flexibility to pay for the childcare they want (and where and when they want it). And we should relax staff:child ratios to European levels — making much more extensive childcare economically feasible.
It’s Right to Buy, Jim But not as we know it. Our new communications supremo Connor Axiotes (Sounds like a cross between an Axolotl and a Coyote — Ed.) says that the UK’s housing affordability crisis is making the whole country poorer. The Right to Buy (enabling social tenants to buy their property at a discount) is a good way to spread ownership, but why not allow people to take the discount and buy a house where they really want to be? Better for tenants and taxpayers too, he reckons.
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Our newest report by Dr Tyler Goodspeed featured on the front page of the Yorkshire Post, in CapX, and in Guido with more to come!
I told you to watch out for Connor; in his first week he’s already appeared on TalkTV to chat taxes and made a splash giving comments to all sorts of different outlets. Plus, our comments on the Chancellor’s statement the other day appeared in The Telegraph; Financier Worldwide nodded to our work on zombie companies; and the Express re-upped their coverage of our report on intergenerational inequality and pensions.
On the Adam Smith 300th Anniversary theme, I featured in episodes about him on Freakonomics Radio, here, here and here. And I’ve also done a recent podcast on… er, I can’t tell you what it’s about because it’s all in Greek. But here it is for you Hellenists.
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OUT AND ABOUT
Innovation Celebration. On Sunday 19 March, ASI's Dan Pryor will be speaking at Innovation Celebration, a one-day conference all about the vital relationship between freedom and technological progress. Also speaking at the event will be Johan Norberg, author of Progress and Open (Are his book titles deliberately getting shorter and shorter? — Ed.) plus other speakers on such topics as gene editing and space exploration. Students and under-30s get a special discount and can apply for a scholarship to cover travel and accommodation costs. (Ker-ching!—Ed.) The conference will be held at the brand new Hotel La Tour luxury hotel in the exotic spa of Central Milton Keynes. To find out more and apply, click here.
Yoof talk. Our Daniel has already been busy on the speaking front, delivering lectures to economics students (And raging at the public transport delays — Ed.) at four schools in Caterham and Sherborne this past week. If you’d like an ASI-er to visit your school for a one-off talk or a day of whizz-bang lectures, workshops and careers guidance, drop us an email [email protected]
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KNOW SOMEONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN OUR E-BULLETIN?
SEND THEM THE LINK BELOW!
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And I quote…
Back to the birthday boy:
There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people. — Adam Smith
Well, with taxes higher than they’ve been in 70 years and a national debt approaching 100% of GDP, I’d say the UK government has learnt that art very proficiently.
Bye,
e
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