{"id":94778,"date":"2026-08-10T07:47:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T06:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=94778"},"modified":"2026-08-10T07:47:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T06:47:08","slug":"what-are-your-priors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/08\/10\/what-are-your-priors\/","title":{"rendered":"What are your priors?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am, as usual, in The National newspaper in Scotland this morning. This is my opening:<\/p>\n

\n

THERE is a question that is often asked in the USA but rarely mentioned in Scotland \u2013 \u201cWhat are your priors?\u201d A person\u2019s \u201cpriors\u201d are the belief system that supports all the judgements they make on any issue.<\/p>\n

That makes this question particularly relevant in politics. It also matters when you write a column for a newspaper, but I will return to that later.<\/div>\n
\n
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I regret the absence of this direct questioning in this country, because its purpose is to ask anyone presenting an apparently unsubstantiated claim just what assumptions they are making that support the beliefs that they are claiming to hold.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We are used to journalists always asking \"How are you going to pay for it?\" My suggestion is that \"What are your priors?\" should become the new standard question by default. That would flush the neoliberals out.<\/p>\n

The whole article is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The National has an annual subscription for \u00a320 offer on right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am, as usual, in The National newspaper in Scotland this morning. This is my opening: THERE is a question that is often asked in
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,16,224,106,223],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-ethics","category-neoliberalism","category-politics","category-politics-of-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94778"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94779,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94778\/revisions\/94779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}