John Kay

There are only a few basic kinds of deception and self-deception in finance. John illustrates some of the key mechanisms.

We make the poor better off not by holding back technical and economic progress, but by accelerating it.

The measure of the productivity of an activity is the public and private benefit from a good or service that results from that activity.

Warren Buffett’s emergence as the world’s richest man illustrates the power of compound interest. Warren neither pays nor makes management charges. The effect is larger than you would believe possible.

European companies are increasingly imitating US ones in the cult and remuneration of chief executives. Political organisation may evolve similarly as party membership declines and ideology fades.

The balance between present and future will be determined not by moral philosophy or economic models but by the decisions of ordinary savers, investors and voters.

If very rich people are to pay much lower tax rates than the doctors who care for them or the teachers who made their careers possible, there needs to be a compelling demonstration of widespread economic benefits.

Academics and think-tanks need to be reminded that generating publicity is not a legitimate research objective. The study of business is afflicted by confusion between the results of a survey of what people think about the world and a survey of what the world is really like.

The route to knowledge is transparency in disagreement and openness in debate. The route to truth is the pluralist expression of conflicting views in which, often not as quickly as we might like, good ideas drive out bad.

Making decisions that balance human life against costs is unavoidable. We prefer them to be made by public agencies than by private companies. And we deny that we make these judgments ourselves, although we do so every day.