ASI Bulletin: Birth and Taxes
Dr. Eamonn Butler, our Director and Co-Founder, takes you through the last few (always hectic) weeks at the Adam Smith Institute.
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A whole bunch of stuff in the e-Bulletin this time. We are looking for gap year students (applications close 7 July!), we broke out the anti-depressants for Tax Freedom Day, and our namesake Adam Smith takes the cake… twice.
But first...
This week’s shock news item is that UK citizens are to be prioritised for places on council house waiting lists. (It’s a shock because most of us assumed they were.)
There were also widespread protestations of disgust when the video of a Conservative HQ lockdown party was revealed. (Not so much because they had a lockdown party, but because the dancing capabilities of the twenty-somethings involved looked more like a rabbit warren hit by myxomatosis.)
Rishi Sunak could not attend the House of Commons’ condemnation of Boris’s party-going due to a subsequent engagement. (But then the spectacle of pots assembling to condemn the kettle was hardly edifying.)
And two million people in the UK have been taking antidepressants for five years or more. (Given the state of things, I don’t know whether to recommend ‘keep taking the tablets’ or just ‘don’t listen to the news’.)
But I digress…
We are looking for Gap Year students! Act now!
There are plenty of good reasons to spend your gap year at the Adam Smith Institute. Maybe you want to strengthen your university application with the fact that you’ve worked at one of the world’s leading public policy think-tanks — and have that think-tank rooting for you. Maybe you want to learn the skills of producing publications, working with authors, and organising events. Maybe you just want to sidle up to famous people at our functions. Maybe you know that ASI Gap Years are a full member of our team rather than the slave labour that some organisations expect them to be.
If you will be 18-20 when the role starts in September or October, are taking a gap year between A-Levels and university, are open-minded, inquisitive, friendly, intellectually curious, interested in policy and eager to learn, and you understand the ASI’s perspective and purpose and have a broadly liberal view of the world, you could be one of just two students that we take onto the team this year.
Sure, you will be expected to help keep the place tidy and do odds and ends for the directors. But you will also be carrying out research for our authors, formatting publications, managing the database and website, writing blogs and reports, learning about economics and politics, and meeting a wide range of interesting and important people.
This is a paid role and strictly limited to gap year students (graduates will not be considered). You need to send a CV and cover letter of about 500 words, explaining why you would like to work at ASI to maxwell@adamsmith.org. But you need to act fast. Applications close 7 July.
THINK TANKING
Events
Who’s winning? A full house a couple of weeks back for Prof Mark Skousen and his talk asking who is winning — Smith, Marx or Keynes. The trouble is, it’s all three of them, but Marx and Keynes have the more visible armies.
Negative income tax. Well done to our Maxwell Marlow, who went before the House of Commons Select Committee on Work and Pensions to talk about a negative income tax (hurray!), the universal basic income idea (booo!) and the welfare system more broadly (groan…).
Nannying regulations. A really great meeting of the ASI’s Next Generation group too, in which our Fellow Christopher Snowdon demonstrated that the vast volumes of nannying regulations (think shop and pub hours or restrictions on advertising certain things) do absolutely no good at all and might as well be scrapped. A bottle of ASI Scotch whisky to that man!
Making AI safe but pro-progress. Another great event, this time on AI and at Bloomberg, with the world’s first AI minister, the UAE's Omar Sultan Al Olama, plus Brandon Lewis MP and Nadhim Zahawi MP. They discussed how the UAE is pioneering safe (but optimistic) AI to make our world very much better. And on that subject our upcoming paper Tipping Point on making the UK an AI superpower, by Connor Axiotes and Eddie Bolland, will launch soon.
Tax Freedom Day. In case you don’t read City AM or the Sunday Times or Sunday Express or Motley Fool or any of the other media that carried it, last Sunday (18 June) was Tax Freedom Day. It is the latest ever, and the average person in the UK now spends very nearly six months of the year working for the government. (But what remarkable value we get for it—Ed)
Policy wins
Ok, government spending is about three times what it should be, borrowing’s through the roof, interest rates are strangling investment and high taxes are making businesses relocate abroad, but here and there are little rays of sunshine. The London taxi trade are at last accepting the reality we pointed out last year, and allowing the use of GPS to supplement ’the knowledge’. The nutty BOGOF ban has been ‘delayed’ until 2025 and hopefully the idea will fade away. Our proposal for high-skilled visas is bearing fruit: read Connor Axiotes talking about it here. https://capx.co/britain-needs-more-high-skill-immigration-heres-the-best-way-to-get-it/
And our efforts to reduce barriers to expansion of medium-size businesses is gaining momentum, with its own web page (sign up here). https://adamsmith.org/forgotten-medium–campaign
Developments at ASI
We are pleased to welcome our former intern Imogen (‘Mimi’) Yates back as our Director of Engagement and Operations (’No intern’s ever left The Firm’—Ed.) And our Communications Director, Connor Axiotes, is moving on to better things at an AI lab (which is a good reason why those of you who are behind in your subscriptions should be clicking our ‘donate’ button). His replacement will be announced soon (Presumably if he’s our communications director, his replacement should announce themselves?—Ed.)
My friend, co-founder and colleague Dr Madsen Pirie has been scooping up awards this week. It has just been announced that he has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his lifetime work in advancing the best antidote to armed conflict known to humanity, namely free trade and free markets. Congratulations! (And Madsen, we could certainly use the money—Ed.)
Madsen was also invited to Copenhagen to receive the Adam Smith Prize from Libertas, the Danish free-market, pro-freedom group. The citation said the award was “For a remarkable effort to advance the ideas of personal liberty, the free society and the free market.” The award is usually reserved for Danes, but the cause of freedom in Denmark has been greatly influenced by the work and example of Madsen and the Adam Smith Institute.
And to celebrate his 300th Birthday, we induced Adam Smith to blow out the candle on his cake. (Smart viewers will notice that an Invisible Hand was involved.)
https://twitter.com/ASI/status/1665710826836185088?s=20
Media
Director of Communications (for two more weeks) is Connor Axiotes who joins the CapX podcast on The Big AI Debate. Catch it here.
Our Executive Director Duncan Simpson in the Telegraph on why ’This mortgage crisis could finish the Tories off for good’. (Stop cheering at the back, there—Ed.)
Our Policy Director Maxwell Marlow in iNews on how immigration means that the UK population is overtaking France’s for the first time.
Can the Government BOGOF out of our diets? So asks Maxwell on CapX.
On our superblog
Tim Worstall on why boycotts of businesses are actually a good thing.
Lorenzo Donatelli on why Negative Income Tax is a good idea and Universal Basic Income is a bad one.
And me on Tom Veblen’s explanation of how getting a country out of its economic mismanagement is rather like getting yourself out of a downed seaplane.
And I quote…
With Tax Freedom Day in mind, and the fact that it’s Adam Smith’s 300th birthday this month, I thought I would combine the two:
"Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things."
— Adam Smith, Lecture in 1755, quoted in Dugald Stewart, Account Of The Life And Writings Of Adam Smith LLD, Section IV, 25.
Bye,
e
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