I am not sure who it was who said “All models are wrong but some of them are useful”, but they had a point. I just made up the version that says “All models are wrong and some of them are harmful.” I am thinking of austerity. The model has always been wrong because it
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The BBC pay data could just have provided some evidence for tittle-tattle. I am sure many in the BBC might wish it had done just that. That’s because it did so much more. It provided what seems to be pretty damning evidence that there is something wrong at the BBC, which appears to be living
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There was a lot of debate on fractional reserve banking on this blog earlier this week. Some still maintained, despite all the evidence to the contrary now, that banks need deposits before they can lend. They don’t: the loans come first, and that now radically transforms our view of savings, and much else. As I
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Many will know the enormous loss of VAT revenue that it has been suggested might result from fraudulent traders making sales on Amazon and eBay which they claim include VAT which never reaches the coffers of the relevant revenue authority due to receive them. As some readers are also aware, the UK has put in
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I received the following comment on the blog when discussing wealth taxation. I thought it was worth considering it in more depth and so reproduce it in full here: Richard Can you tell me where I have gone wrong. I am 63 and did have a free university education. I then spent 7 years in
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There are days when running a blog intrudes into life. Yesterday was one. A touch of early hyperactivity on my part led to 100 or so, mostly long, comments to moderate. That takes time. So today the heat may be turned down slightly. On this blog that’s easy. I talk about tax. The FT noted
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The Guardian has reported this morning that: The government is “sleepwalking” into a post-Brexit future of insecure, unsafe and increasingly expensive food supplies, and has little idea how it will replace decades of EU regulation on the issue, a report by influential academics has said. One of the academics in question is Tim Lang, professor
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I have noted concerns on growing wealth inequality this morning, here and here. Over the weekend I also published references to the call I made for a peaceful revolution in the way risks and rewards are shared in our society at the Tax Justice Network conference. Calls for reform though are not enough. What we
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As the Guardian notes in an editorial this morning: As research for the Resolution Foundation this weekend shows, the rich are back. While the rest of society have shared in an equality of misery following the crash, the top 1% – households with incomes of £275,000 – have now recovered all the ground they lost during
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