ASI Bulletin: Happy Birthday (sort of...) Adam Smith
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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It’s Adam Smith’s birthday! (Sort of…)
Spend a Gap Year with us
Re-booting Britain: how to boost our near-zero growth
But first...
Nobody was expecting Prime Minister Rishi Sunk to call a snap election, but it makes perfect sense. (There is so little difference between the two main parties that everyone thinks ’Snap!’ when they’re both mentioned.) Perhaps the game will change now Nigel Farage has added himself to the pack.
Rain-sodden Rishi told us we should fear the Labour Party—a sort of ‘Aprės moi le deluge”. (Did you see how wet he got? More like 'Avec moi le deluge!'—Ed.) Opposition Leader Sir Keir Starmer responded by recalling his country-boy roots and how his parents couldn’t pay the phone bill. (Ha! We didn’t have a phone at all until I was 15.) He must be the first member of his family 'in a thousand generations' to get an index linked civil service pension. Starmer says he will dash for growth (which is odd: that's what did for Liz Truss).
Rishi has denied rumours that he plans to move to California if the Labour Party triumphs — though I guess this is what plenty of others will be doing. Indeed, if the troublesome Diane Abbot becomes a Labour MP, Starmer might be on the plane ahead of him. However, there is no truth in the other rumour that Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt has put the economy into his wife’s name.
And Donald Trump has been found guilty of fraud and deception. (That's a terrible indictment of the American ‘justice’ system. Since all US politicians are guilty of fraud and deception, why has it taken so long for them to prosecute one...?)
Yet I digress...
IN THE TANK
The Adam Smith Institute were finalists for the Europe Liberty Award — for our work on housing policy and planning reforms to make housing more affordable for young people. Here’s Chairman James Lawson at the Atlas Network’s Europe Forum in Madrid last week.
Gap year internships
Each year, we take two talented students, between school and university, to become part of the ASI team. That’s it, not to slave over the photocopier, but to participate in and plan events, write research pieces, work on producing reports, make the tea, meet important people and do everything that the rest of us do.
One of this year’s gap year interns, Siddhi Badole, says: “Joining ASI was the best decision I ever made. Beyond practical skills, it broadened my worldview. Events, debates and even books in the office gave me a new perspective on ideas I hadn’t considered before and wouldn’t have picked up if I went straight to university.”
Applications for the gap year internship scheme for 2024/25 is now open. To apply, candidates must send a CV and a cover letter of around 500 words to maxwell@adamsmith.org. Interviews will take place in the summer, and the interns will start in September. Deadline is 30 June, but don't delay! Full details below.
NEW REPORTS
Not entirely good news: The dynamic model that we created shows that the UK state pension will go bust as early as 2035. I’ve always said that the ‘Pay as you go’ system was no more than a Ponzi scheme, and if it were run by businesspeople rather than politicians, they’d all be in the slammer. (Mind you, the way it’s going, quite a number of politicians look like they’ll be ending up in the slammer too—Ed.)
In more bad (but unsurprising) news: Whitehall seems much more interested in making lofty speeches and power points about using AI in defence, rather than actually doing it. Our research bod Maxwell Marlow shows how we can create a much more effective market for AI defence capabilities, propelling technological advancement in the process.
Stubbed Out: The government admits that so-called OTRs — ‘other tobacco products’ such as Shisha and cigarillos don’t pose a public health risk. So why try to ban them along with everything else? With both Labour and Tories saying they will revive the weird rising-age ban on all tobacco, we call for solid evidence justifying the move — if it can be justified at all under ‘equal treatment under law’ principles.
Today we launch a special Election Wishlist series on How to Reboot Britain. According to World Bank data, the UK’s real GDP per capita only rose 1.3% over the 17 years between our 2007 peak and 2024 (in the previous 17 years, it grew 141%! So we need that reboot.
We’ll be covering every issue, from housing through education to energy policy. James Lawson gave a sneak preview for ConservativeHome.
And last month, we released a new paper on Islamic Finance- which apparently is worth $6.7 trillion worldwide. We argue that the UK should seek to establish itself as a key exporter- as we told the audience at the inaugural Saleh Kamel lecture.
EVENTS
Join us on the 19th June for another Enlightenment Evening! This time we are delighted to welcome Tejvan Pettinger, to talk about his new book Cracking Economics.
From Keynesian models to how inflation affects interest rates, Cracking Economics makes the seemingly complex world of global finance easily understood.
6pm doors for a 6:30pm start. This will be followed by a Q + A.
ASI alumni garden party!
We’re hoping for good weather on Saturday 6 July because we are inviting all of our many hundreds of past employees, gap years and interns to join as at a garden party get-together in Central London. I’m not sure who’s garden we’ll be in, but no doubt that will become clear. If you have worked at ASI (Let’s say ‘been employed at ASI’. I don’t think we got a lot of actual work out of some of them—Ed.) please send us a note and we will send you the invitation.
Recent events
Our Next Generation Group heard yesterday from Julia Gary Willemyns, founding co-director of the UK Day One Project, which crowdsources promising ideas to promote science and tech ideas our biggest problems, from healthcare through environment to the cost of living. And back at the start of May, the Group welcomed Steve Baker MP, one of our soundest politicians, on Making Liberty Attractive.
Party Poopers. Politicians love to talk about promoting the ’24-hour economy’. But with bars closing early due to puritanical licensing laws, with business rates and regulation pushing beer up to £7 a pint, and with a sketchy public transport system that young people, especially women, don’t feel safe on, there’s not much sign of it. But there were lots of ideas on how to cure that from our panel last week, with the authors of our On the Rocks: London’s Nightlife in Crisis, Sam Bidwell and Mimi Yates, Night Time Industries Association CEO Mike Kill, and serial hospitality entrepreneur Luke Johnson. That will be available to watch later today on our YouTube channel.
It’s Adam Smith’s birthday! Sort of…. We don’t know exactly when he was born, though the Kirkcaldy church records saw him being baptised on 5 June in 1723. So he was probably born around 3 June, nobody’s quite sure. But then in 1752 the calendar was updated and 11 days were skipped, so in today’s terms, those dates would be 16 and 14 June. (Fantastic! So we can have four parties, not just one!—Ed.)
To mark the occasion, we arranged a talk by Erik Matson, Deputy Director of the Adam Smith Program at George Mason University, on Why you should read Adam Smith in 2024. (He’s wrong, of course. Instead you should read my Condensed Wealth of Nations, which is free on the ASI website!)
We’re streaming! (And not just because of hay fever.)
For those who can’t make it to Westminster for our events (That must be about 8 billion people, round the planet—Ed.), take note that our events are now streamed live on Twitter/X.
MEDIA
From the Next Generation Centre…
Director of the NGC Sam Bidwell wrote for the Spectator on the proposed National Service idea, and for CityAm on why politicians should stop pandering to pensioners at the expense of the young. Plus, his comments on National Service were quoted in the Independent, as were his comments on the ‘triple lock plus’ in Politico and the Metro.
And new Next Generation Centre fellow Matthew Brooker was in ConservativeHome on the triple lock and in CapX on political appointees in the Civil Service.
Elsewhere…
Our paper on VAT on independent school fees continues to be cited across our national media. In fact, it’s now had over 50 major media hits- recently including a mention in a Times front page story, and an interview with Maxwell Marlow in today’s The I.
Our Senior Fellow Charles White-Thomson was in the Telegraph on why the OBR should be disbanded or overhauled.
Our dynamic model on the affordability of the State Pension was a major story in the Telegraph’s Money section, and was covered in the Express, The I, GB News and TalkTV.
Our Cost of Rent Day initiative was in the Express and the Sun, and we wrote about it in CapX and CityAm.
ENLIGHTENMENT ESSAY COMPETITION
Don’t forget to enter our Enlightenment Essay Competition, with prizes of £8,000 (first place), £4,000 (second) and £2,000 (third).
We’ll be looking further afield in our search for excellent essays. We are asking students, from undergraduate to post-doctoral, to answer the question: “How can the ideas of the Enlightenment become embedded in the Arab World?”
The deadline is 30th August. To apply, you have to be an undergraduate, postgraduate or doctoral and post-doctoral student. We are asking for up to 5,000 words including any footnotes, Chicago citation, British English. Submissions to maxwell@adamsmith.org.
More information here. Good luck!
And I quote…
Benjamin Franklin talked about the certainty of death and taxes, but at least death doesn’t get worse after every election. But I do agree with the wisdom of American humorist H.L. Mencken:
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
Bye,
e
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