In Britain, London’s buried under eight inches of snow, the trains don’t work, the economy’s collapsing, and a Labour government’s put the nation deeper in debt that it has been in thirty years. The Adam Smith Institute, preferring to laugh instead of cry, jokes that it looks like the 1970s all over again. And the strikes are back too. In late January, workers walked off the job at the Lindsey oil refinery. Sympathy strikes – technically illegal – followed at power stations and refineries around Britain. The cause of the …
We like to think of Britain, the U.S. and the rest of the Anglosphere as nations that reject the statist European economic model. But from 1997 to 2008, the government’s share of the British economy increased from 38.4 percent to 41.9 percent. This expenditure was funded by debt that the government, as the Financial Times put it, “concealed . . . with off-balance-sheet finance that would have made Wall Street blush.” These off-balance-sheet liabilities, taken together, raise Britain’s official public debt by almost one-third, to 62.8 percent of GDP. And …
In its latest issue, the Economist reports on the state of Britain’s armed forces. It answers the question posed in the title of the piece, “Losing Their Way?,” with a resounding “Yes,” blaming underfunding, recruiting shortfalls, and a loss of institutional confidence. The joke among Americans in Afghanistan, it reports, is that ISAF – the International Security Assistance Force –stands for “I Saw Americans Fight.” As the Economist points out, given the casualties Britain is taking in Afghanistan, this is wounding and unfair. But like most military jokes, it captures …
The amount of money the U.S. is spending in its vain effort to stimulate the economy is hard to grasp. As we’ve pointed out, $819 billion is equivalent to borrowing $10,520 from every family in America. That’s $819 billion that individual Americans will no longer be able to spend freely, as they see fit, and used instead to expand the power of the state. If that number still boggles the mind, here’s one to contemplate from our friends in Britain. We like to think of Britain as being true to …
Few economists have a good word for the Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930, which provoked a worldwide round of competitive protectionism that reduced trade, deepened and prolonged the Great Depression, and aided the rise of the Nazi Party. Out of that disaster came a bipartisan consensus: the U.S., for decades a protectionist country, needed to stand for free trade. Against considerable opposition at home and abroad, the U.S. led the charge for global openness after 1945. At first, the struggle centered on tariffs and quotas. But the U.S. soon came to …
