Tag: Fallacies
Quantitative easing and the curious case of the leaky bucket
In the modern financial economy, the main effect of QE is to boost asset prices, as market gyrations of recent weeks have clearly illustrated. But is the pursuit of higher asset prices an effective or desirable means of promoting economic growth?
Enduring lessons from the legend of Rothschild’s carrier pigeon
Why do we devote more resources to training carrier pigeons and building fibreoptic links than to understanding military and business strategy?
Labour’s new tax policy is an old mistake
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.
Only fools claim to know the future
Good players don’t forecast the future, but adapt to it.
To understand Christmas, go to the pub
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.
Fetish for making things ignores real work
Manufacturing fetishism – the idea that manufacturing is the central economic activity and everything else is somehow subordinate – is deeply ingrained in human thinking.
Scotland’s debate lacks seriousness
What would an independent Scotland actually be like? The only sensible answer is that no one really knows.
How do skirts differ from computers?
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 welfare state’s a worthy Ponzi scheme
The only bread fit to eat is bread baked today: but why should today’s bakers feed the retired bakers of yesteryear?
The other multiplier effect, or Keynes’s view of probability
The only reasonable response to the question “what will interest rates be in 20 years’ time?” is “we simply do not know”.
