Business is the wealth generator of the UK, and small and family businesses are the often neglected heart of the UK economy, with family businesses alone employing nearly four in ten of the UK’s workforce. We propose ways to make the UK an economy all businesses can thrive in.
Land in a Free Society
Land is one of the prime factors in economic production and a basic resource on which all economic activity depends. Policies primarily concerned with economic and social matters can, and invariably do, ultimately affect the ownership and use of land; conversely state policies to control the use and ownership of land cannot but affect the economy and the social ordering of society.
Measuring Money: The Inadequacy of the Present Tools
The belief that the control of the money supply is a necessary if not sufficient condition for the control of inflation has become same thing of an orthodoxy. But a doctrine by itself is unsatisfactory if there is a lack of tools to apply it.
The Challenge of a Radical Reactionary
Although I sit on the cross-benches in the Lords, I am delighted to appear on a platform sponsored by the Centre for Policy studies. As I understand it, the Centre’s purpose is to enliven the pragmatic Conservative tradition by exposing it to intellectual fermentation. If you think some of my strictures rather pointed, don’t take them too personally. Imagine I am addressing some high Tory paladin to whom I might refer from time to time symbolically as, say, Perry.
The Conservative Tradition and the 1980s: three Gifts of Insight Restored
If as we enter the 1980s, Conservatives are everywhere questioning, with increasing insistence, ideas that post-war conservatism took for granted, it is not because we have read a few books – Adam Smith, Hayek, Friedman – and have been converted. It is because the certainties of the past thirty years can no longer be taken for granted. It is because things have not worked out as we were promised they would.
National Enteprise Board: A Case for Euthanasia
To the socialist mind a State holding company is both natural and a necessary concept. Since individual acts of nationalisation need both a Parliamentary majority and parliamentary time, it is the simpler route to control of the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy. Better still, once there is a State company it gathers its own momentum and supporters whichever party rules at Westminster.
Give the Picketing code the sanction of Law
The following proposals are extracted from a Report on Trade Union Reform which is to be issued in October. They are published as a contribution to a debate of considerable public interest and are being submitted to Mr. James Prior, Secretary of State for Employment, in response to his request for views on the contents of his draft code of Practice for Picketing.
Class on the Brain – Cost of a British Obsession
It has become part of contemporary political folklore that a restrictive and divisive class system, almost a caste system, is the bane of this country. The system is supposed to be a major barrier to economic progress in Britain and also a significant source of justified social discontent.
The Job Support Machine
Public discussion and academic analysis of government intervention in industry both tend, inevitably, to focus on its more overt forms, such as nationalisation and price and wage controls.
History, Capitalism and Freedom
‘Much of our population lives without heroes, as it dies without religion’. Professor Thomas;s powerful plea for restored pride in our past based on understanding of its greatness and its unique qualities, is a reminder that a whole generation has brought up to misunderstand and denigrate our national history.
An Arts Policy?
As you’ll see soon enough what we to say carries no special authority. I’ve been selling my work for nearly thirty years and living off it for over fifteen.
Second Thoughts on full employment policy
One of the main reasons I took up the study of economic problems was indignation at the absurdity of unsatisfied wants side by side with idle hands willing to work which I believed existed before the Second World War.
Monetarism
The term “monetarism” has been much used in the last three or four years – sometimes as a clarion call for action to improve economic policy, but often an epithet of abuse.
Conditions for Fuller Employment
I seek common ground today in pursuit of a common objective: a substantial and lasting improvement in the bleak prospects for employment. Members of all parties demand an improvement. But rhetoric and sympathy will not help to create jobs or generate growth.
The Growth Merchants: economic Consequences of Wishful Thinking
This study was written at a time when the economy was making a half-hearted recovery from a deep recession. The Government appeared in 1976 to have abandoned post-war neo-Keynesian economic policies, in that official policy was not directed primarily to resorting full employment in the short term, but rather to regaining internal and external equilibrium and particularly to curbing further the rate of price inflation, which was still running at about 15 per cent.
The economics of John Kenneth Galraith: A study of fantasy
It was said of Hegel that he set out his philosophy with such obscurity that people finished by thinking it profound. A similar accusation could well be levelled at John Kenneth Galbraith
Short Measure From Whitehall: How SCO Statistics understate the British Tax Burden Barry Bracewell-Milnes
Since 1969 the Central Statistical Office’s publication, Economic Trends, has included a series of annual articles entitled ‘International comparisons of taxes and social security contributions’.
