Home » Posts tagged "Socialism"

Tag Archives: Socialism

HS2: Update

I have continuously campaigned against a second state-funded high speed rail programme. It is slowly transpiring that the business case is collapsing. The benefit cost ratio (BCR) for phase 1 has fallen from 2.4 in March 2010 to just 1.2 today and 1.4 for the whole of the Y spur extension. A fifth downgrade is expected to be released in the summer incorporating the new, lower GDP figures. How low do the figures need to go until policy makers understand [...]

Tags: , , , , ,

Low rates and the damage they are doing to the economy and society

Via Another “Operation Twist” will cause more damage to the economy » The Cobden Centre, Frank Shostak explains the damage that will be done by further credit market interventions: Last week the US central bank has announced that it will expand its “Operation Twist” program to extend the maturities of assets on its balance sheet and also said it stands ready to take further action to put unemployed Americans back to work. The US central bank will prolong the program [...]

Tags: , , , , ,

The injustice and error of a “Mansion Tax”

Post Image

A so-called “mansion tax” may appear to embody a particular notion of fairness. One would think from the rhetoric that high-value homes all belonged to wicked billionaires, oligarchs and non-doms. One would think that owning such a home were inherently unjust. Far from it. Many valuable homes will have been bought by hard-working individuals and families using mortgages paid over many years. They will have paid tax on their incomes and capital gains. Hitting them again in this way would be [...]

Tags: , , , , , , ,

How to repatriate 130 EU laws

This week Open Europe published a new report that shows how the Government could repatriate 130 EU laws on crime and policing, including the controversial European Arrest Warrant. The Government must decide before June 2014 whether a whole raft of EU police and justice laws, adopted before the Lisbon Treaty took force, will continue to apply in the UK beyond December 2014. Under Lisbon, if the Government opts out of any one of the existing laws, it has to opt [...]

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Poster of the week – 1909, “Socialism Throttling the Country”

Post Image

From the Conservative Poster Archive, poster 1909/10-14, which seems apt with the Government still spending about half of national income:

Tags: , ,

Who will make a speech like this for our time?

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness. We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny. And [...]

Tags: , , , , , ,

Did Andy Duncan steal my reading list?

I just finished Jesús Huerta de Soto’s Socialism, Economic Calculation and Entrepreneurship, only to find that the Cobden Centre’s Andy Duncan has already produced a review. Since his review explains how he went from Marxist to Austrian-school free-marketeer, I shall let him do all the hard work, in his own inimitable style: Although my self-education had kicked socialism back into the envious schoolyard nursery where it belongs, all the books I had read had never clarified one last question, which [...]

Tags: , , ,

Rousseau’s Form of Socialism – Alexander Gray – Mises Daily

A fascinating article on Rousseau’s Form of Socialism, discovered today, which reproduces this quote: The first man who, having enclosed a piece of land, took it into his head to say: “This belongs to me,” and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would have been spared the human race by him who, snatching out the stakes or filling in the ditch, should have cried to his [...]

Tags: , , , ,

Blast from the Past: A Warning about Socialism – Gene Epstein – Mises Daily

Last week, I had occasion to attend a meeting with some proper old-fashioned Marxists. They should be reminded where full-blooded state socialism leads: Pictures of the Socialistic Future tells an engrossing story about a socialist paradise that swiftly degenerates into a societal dungeon. Originally published in an English translation back in 1893 — which adds immeasurably to its resonance — it has been reissued recently in paperback by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a research center on free-market economics. … [...]

Tags:

HS2 meeting with Rt Hon Philip Hammond

I attended an HS2 meeting with Philip Hammond in Amersham tonight. My impression is that the consultation is sincere and that the Secretary of State is willing to engage meaningfully. However, I believe the government is also sincerely committed to the programme. My main point was that rational economic calculation is not possible without the unhampered formation of prices and that prices in transport today are subject to a range of interventions. That is, far from knowing that HS2 would revitalise [...]

Tags: , , , ,

← Older posts

Enjoy freedom responsibly

Steve Baker is MP for Wycombe. He was previously an RAF officer then a business software consultant. Find out more...

Steve holds regular surgeries in High Wycombe. If you would like an appointment, please call 01494 448408.

Twitter

Recommended reading

Tags

1984 Austrian School Authoritarianism Banking Bikes Books Bureaucracy Cobden Centre Conservatives Crime David Cameron debt Democracy Driving economics Education Environment EU Europe Finance Financial Crisis Government Health Hospital Ideas Incompetence Justice Liberty Market Intervention Media Money New Labour Optimism Parliament Quotations Reform Responsibility Rule of Law Skydiving Social Justice Society Sophistry Tax Transport Wycombe

See also

Latest

About this site

This website is paid for by Steven Baker and administered privately. Views expressed are those of the indicated author, except where attributed to the authors of comments.

Steven Baker is not responsible for content on linked sites.

Login/Register