Will the Adam Smith Institute sack a Senior Fellow for promoting the benefits of tax evasion?

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I rarely bother with the vitriol right-wing blogger Tim Worstall. But every now and again it's worth noting just how mad the right-wing commentariat that still makes it to the UK airwaves really is. Take this from Worstall on Forbes:

It's worth looking to the Founding Father of economics, Adam Smith. It has been said, and not purely in jest, that all of economics is either footnotes to Smith or wrong—and as I'm a Senior Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute I'm rather likely to agree with that line.

Let's ignore the fact that Worstall has clearly not read Smith properly, second has not understood him and third is just making excuses for the fact that his reading ends in 1776. Let's instead note what he then concludes based on this premise:

I routinely make fun of tax justice campaigners for example—insisting that people cheating on their taxes is a good idea. Tax avoidance, and yes even tax evasion, serves the public purpose by placing a limit on how much government can try to squeeze out of the rest of us.

It's not just that Smith said nothing like that, in fact arguing for something that can reasonably be called the exact opposite; what's really shocking is that here we have a Senior Fellow of the Adam Smith Institute promoting law breaking and I am sure that there will be no hint of him being sacked as a result.

Which tells you all we need to know about the UK's right wing.

But only on tax, of course.


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