David Henderson, of the Hoover Institution has a history lesson for us. It concerns the Second World War and its aftermath, so appropriately he begins by lining up a target in his sights: "We often hear that big cuts in government spending over a short period of time are a bad idea. The argument against […]
One of the key arguments against the unreformed welfare state is that it creates a culture of dependency – turning adults into children and the state into their parents. But what if actual parents have been creating a parallel culture of dependency among their children? You might think that children are meant to be dependent […]
John Kay was one of the original New Labour gurus. It’s therefore significant to see him incline, however cautiously, towards Iain Duncan Smith’s thinking on poverty. He begins by asking what poverty actually means in today’s world: “People who struggle to find enough food to eat are poor. The World Bank’s poverty line is an income […]
On the Deep End we don’t exactly overlook the contribution of the Eurozone to the great economic crisis of our times. But there is another multinational enterprise that deserves the occasional mention – the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Writing for the American Interest, Gal Luft and Anne Korin remind us of the importance […]
Have you heard of the ‘sheeple’? It’s a made-up word used to express the thought that people are sheep, easily led astray by wicked politicians. But what if it isn’t just the general public who get fleeced? What if it also applies to the markets and in particular the bond markets through which governments finance their […]
Does Germany have a duty to bail-out the Eurozone? Some people say yes, some people say no (or rather nein seeing as most of them are German). Writing for the Washington Post, Robert Samuelson says it doesn’t matter, because the Germans couldn’t bail-out their neighbours even if they wanted to (which they don’t). For instance, […]
Earlier this month, the Deep End featured a report on Poland’s economic renaissance, but that’s not the only good news from Warsaw. According to Bill Hicks on the BBC news website, Poland is also enjoying an educational renaissance. In the run up to the Euro 2012, the British press portrayed the Poles (along with the […]
Back in February, Jonathan Freedland wrote a brilliantly honest article entitled Eugenics: The skeleton that rattles loudest in the left’s closet. It spells out the truth that in pre-war Britain, many of the most prominent eugenicists were – and still are – heroes of the liberal left: men and women like George Bernard Shaw, Marie […]
Here’s a story that will annoy rightwingers and leftwingers alike. It’s a report by Jim Landers of the Dallas Morning News on the humanitarian legacy of George W Bush: "The debate over a president’s legacy lasts many years longer than his term of office. At home, there’s still no consensus about the 2001-09 record of […]
There are three basic responses to the banking crisis. The first is ‘regulate more!’ – encompassing a range of positions from the restoration of sensible safeguards to wholesale nationalisation. The second, and opposing, response is ‘don’t over-regulate!’, with positions ranging from appropriate scepticism over the ability of government to regulate effectively to the abject cynicism […]
The Deep End has already featured the jaw-dropping dodginess of the Chinese economic model several times, for instance here and here. But writing on his Bronte Capital blog, John Hempton has a fresh angle on this deeply troubling issue: "In most developing countries the way that people save is they have multiple children hopefully to […]
Once upon a time there was a group of Trotskyites called the Revolutionary Communist Party. Over the years, they started sounding less revolutionary, not quite so communist and stopped being a party. Instead, they fanned-out across the chattering classes, popping up in all sorts of unexpected places. Some of the best-known names include Frank Furedi […]
One of the great strengths of British conservatism is its fabulous cast of unlikely heroes and heroines. Examples include Margaret Thatcher, the daughter of a Lincolnshire shopkeeper; Winston Churchill, the half-American and sometime-Liberal architect of the early welfare state; and Benjamin Disraeli, a Jewish and dandyish journalist with radical sympathies. But, perhaps, the most unlikely […]
The industrial slaughter of animals for food is not something that we like to think about – and thanks to modern production methods, we don’t have to. From the point of view of most consumers, the whole messy business takes place out of sight and out of mind. But what would we see behind the […]
Last month, Britain’s GPs voted to go on strike. Though industrial action by doctors is rare in this country, the vote was a reminder that professional bodies like the British Medical Association can easily rival the old National Union of Mineworkers for sheer self-interested obstinacy. However, there are signs of a global challenge to the […]