John Kay

You can lower the marginal rate of tax on an individual without changing their average rate – and vice versa. Every politician who wants to help the low paid by reducing their income tax rate should write that sentence out 50 times.

Physicists studying sport have established that many fieldsmen are very good at catching balls, but bad at answering the question: “Where in the park will the ball land?” Good players don’t forecast the future, but adapt to it.

Anyone who thinks the quest for scale economies is the primary explanation of the human desire for family life is strangely deficient in observational capacity, as well as common sense.

Manufacturing fetishism – the idea that manufacturing is the central economic activity and everything else is somehow subordinate – is deeply ingrained in human thinking.

What would an independent Scotland actually be like? The only sensible answer is that no one really knows.

The average historic return on the volatile equity market is central to calculations of the cost of capital and provision for future pension liabilities. But the figure has been debated for decades.

The only bread fit to eat is bread baked today: but why should today’s bakers feed the retired bakers of yesteryear?

The only reasonable response to the question “what will interest rates be in 20 years’ time?” is “we simply do not know”.

We deal with that world by constructing simplifying narratives. We do this not because we are stupid, or irrational, or have forgotten probability 101, but because storytelling is the best means of making sense of complexity.

In a world full of information and short of our attention, the events that affect behaviour are those that are salient.