Tim Worstall
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Freelance classical liberal around and about. Substack at substack.com/@timworstall
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Articles by Tim Worstall
Great, innit? - Tim Worstall
How do I know AI will cost jobs? Because Microsoft has said so. How rich AI will make us all is defined – defined, note – by how much human labour AI frees up from current tasks to then work on other things that we might want to have done. That is, job losses are the very point of the technology – as they are with all technologies, of course. Spud’s reaction: worry He’s an anti-economist, isn’t he.
How glorious - Tim Worstall
The €4.3bn “Grundbesitz Europa” fund, the biggest of three DWS open-ended property funds, would cancel 90 per cent of each investor’s redemption requests, DWS said on Monday as it seeks to preserve liquidity. Are the two issues exactly the same? No, of course they are not, but there are sufficient similarities to be worried.
Polly T tries economics again
Vibes matter. We live by how we feel – an idea that orthodox economics gets wrong and Andy Burnham’s first budget looks set to get right. This walking good-vibes maestro is spreading a confetti of small good deeds. These may not shift the dial yet on 40 years of neoliberal economics, but they show the way he’s heading.
So inflation dipped last year, did it?
UK shop price inflation ‘highest since 2024’ as retailers struggle to limit price rises Inflation’s as high as it was two years back? Therefore inflation dipped last year. And, well, that’s about it, isn’t it?
Doesn’t quite get it
Sin or virtue? How envy can actually be helpful We end up with birds doing grievance studies PhDs and the like. Rather than that very useful form, mopnkey see, monkey want, which is one of the great economic driving forces.
Oh how gorgeous - Tim Worstall
Don’t call me ‘mumsy’ – the contempt behind that word makes me livid Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett Bird who has – quite literally, this is not a joke – written columns about having to take the kiddie walker down a step to get outside complains about being called Mumsy.
Always happens, dunnit?
Britain’s biggest broker has launched a low-cost “workaround” to beat Labour’s 40pc cut to the cash Isa allowance. Hargreaves Lansdown’s new money market offering gives savers a way to earn cash-like returns within a stocks and shares Isa rather than a cash Isa, without incurring a new 22pc tax. Markets innovate around bureaucratic rules. Ho Hum. This is at the heart of the explanation for the Laffer Curve, for why straight line forecasts never work out etc.
We can hope, we can hope
Could Europe’s autumn of discontent threaten the survival of the EU? Apparently: The very traits that infuriate Eurosceptics – slow decision-making, endless negotiations and messy compromises – are, counterintuitively, sources of strength for Europe. The dispersion of power between governments, parliaments, courts and EU institutions makes the system hard to capture and compromises tend to stick. Rule by slumbrous bureaucracy works! Sigh.
So this is a step up for Spud
We’re going to have an AI crisis. The bubble will burst and with it will go hedge funds, private equity, private credit, share prices. He’s doing a thing with a convicted criminal now.
How’s that Curajus State working out?
This morning, another such opportunity has arisen. I will be on Sunday Morning Live on BBC One at 10:30 this morning, discussing business ethics in the light of an emerging cost-of-living crisis, and maybe something worse. I hope that will justify the quite early start that this has required, although the clock change has certainly helped the process of getting around train cancellations. The Ely to London line is state run now, yes?
Here’s the next one
The recent proof that the chemist Rosalind Franklin understood the DNA double helix before Francis Crick or James Watson (who were awarded the Nobel prize for their “discovery”) is more enraging than shocking. Stem – science, technology, engineering and maths – has a famous sexism problem. But rather than accept such historical misogyny, is it time we women demanded retribution?
This is fun - Tim Worstall
So the general view these days is that lasndlords are the very devil and we should tax them out of existence: Now, though, the stability provided by that link is being destroyed. The Prince of Wales is selling off the Bradninch estate to raise money for other priorities including tackling homelessness and climate change. Last month, eviction notices – described as possession orders – landed on tenants’ doormats.
Where is the justice?
There's an old saying that all of economics is either footnotes to Adam Smith or wrong. Like most old sayings, it's not wholly and exactly correct but there is still a great deal of truth in it. For one of the reasons that old sayings survive is that people note there's a lot of truth in there and so keep repeating it. That we've still got the saying can thus be a proof that there's a useful amount of truth in it.
No, no, it wasn’t
Central bank independence was supposed to create better economic policy. CB independence was to take interest rates out of the hands of politicians.
Because relative matters
Secondly, if it costs £200,000 to create a job, then very clearly other work has been supported in the process. Therefore, the multiplier effect has to be significant, but there is no indication as to what it might be. Multipliers are the same whoever creates the job. The £200k is the cost if govt creates it. We do want to both know and use this number – for we want to compare the £200k to the costs of someone else creating the job.
Polly’s view of politics Original
This man has quit Badenoch’s increasingly hard-right Tory party – others should be brave enough to do the same Polly Toynbee Essentially, Polls wants to argue about who gets the credit for imposing social democracy, good and hard. Therefore the Tories should be just another social democrat party. The th perhasps the peeps don’t quite desire social democracy isn’t allowable. For Polls wants it and as one of the grandees of the society that’s that, eh? Actual democracy doesn’t really come into it.
We name the guilty at Aberfan
It was the result of grotesque indifference on the part of the men who ran the National Coal Board (NCB) and were responsible for the location of every waste tip of every nationalised colliery in the land. Above all, of the man who chaired that board: Alfred Robens. Bureaucrats. The government. The planners. Socialists. Lanyards. Put not your trust in any of them.
Huhn - Tim Worstall
Blaze engulfs Hitler’s ‘Eagle’s Nest’ mountain retreat in Bavaria I thought that had been blown up in 1945. To stop any diehards using it as a gathering plasce, or remembrance. Ho well, that’s me and history clashing once again, eh?
Money where mouth is
I am expecting a massive reset in financial markets soon. So can we expect Spud to be making a massive profit then?
Oooookay - Tim Worstall
Abortions in the principality are allowed only in limited circumstances such as when a woman’s life is at risk or a pregnancy is the result of rape. Seems a reasonable set of allowances. Actually, possibly too far for me or the Pope. The hereditary prince of Liechtenstein has used his veto for the first time in his reign to quash a bill aimed at bringing abortion laws in line with much of Europe. The demand was to be able to kill any babbie when and whenever. Good on the Prince therefore…..
Immigration’s doing well for the indigenes then
White working-class children are the most likely to leave school at 16 without a job or training, new data have shown. More than one in five white boys from disadvantaged backgrounds are not entering further education, employment or apprenticeships after finishing secondary school, according to an analysis of Department for Education (DfE) figures. That is more than double the rate for black working-class boys.
We need more bureaucrats!
In 2019, as I stood in a bar in New York City at the afterparty of a World Surf League (WSL) Longboard Tour contest, I took stock of my surroundings. It was after midnight and the bar was packed with competitors who had just wrapped an event on a windy North Atlantic Ocean earlier that day. From the women’s side of the tour, teenagers gathered; nearby, other competitors and event staff, many well into their 40s, were dotted across the room.
To what extent is this the plan?
The Church of England is “heading for financial disaster” because of net-zero targets and slavery reparations, a report has warned. If you can mock up idiocies to destroy the institutions then you can change society, right?
Linguistic perversions
Is France showing us that neoliberalism is beginning to fail? Government spending 57% of everything is neoliberalism, apparently. Rather robs the word of any meaning…..
Horrors, horrors!
Europe’s far right seizes on protest violence to push authoritarian anti-immigration agenda Nationalist leaders are framing unrest as consequence of failed liberal governance and open borders How dare they! Using riots to explain the modern world is reserved for the left, no? BLM and all that?
Blashford Snell - Tim Worstall
As Col John Blashford-Snell enters his tenth decade, the great British explorer still has adventures to prepare for …. So there we are. There is nobody quite like him. Decades back I knew his daughter – no, not quite in that fashion tho’ I would have if I’d been allowed to. He gave someone or other in the extended group a lift one day. Organised in advance for whatever reason I cannot recall.
Wifely duties - Tim Worstall
The final straw was not a furious row, nor had anyone cheated. Instead, our 17-year marriage casually collapsed with a conversation in the kitchen one morning. As I rinsed strawberries in the sink, my husband barely looked up from his laptop when he asked, “Are we ever going to have sex again?” By then, we might go a month or – let’s be honest – two without doing it. But wasn’t that the case for most 40-something couples with kids?
What an excellent idea
The point is, my suggestion would radically transform the availability of funds for investment in the UK economy, particularly if matched by the transformation that I propose with regard to ISAs, where I suggest that all new ISA savings (without exceptions) should, in my opinion, be invested in this way by providing the capital for a new British, green-oriented wealth fund, which would have the objective of creating permanent, secure employment in the UK dedicated to the construction of...
So this is the plan, eh? Even, The Plan
Americans, this is your chance to slap down the tech broligarchs Rebecca Solnit The midterms will be a referendum on the GOP’s alignment with tech overlords over the public they’re meant to serve The restoration of the Democrats is based upon the idea that those who give the peeps what they want – free phone calls, cat pictures on demand, cheaper goods and delivery of all kinds, the entire database of civilisation available for $50 a month – are the enemy to be curbed and we’re just the...
Umm, yes - Tim Worstall
“If we all focus more on menstrual health, it actually unlocks the whole of a woman’s life course,” she points out. “Nothing affects any human more commonly than having 12 periods a year for 40 years of your life – so if they’re all debilitating and they mean you can’t go to school, that’s a massive problem.” Umm, right. Now, agreed, only male and all that. But I’m pretty sure that periods match lunar months therefore 13 a year, not 12.
Nasty, suspicious, little mind that I have
Five days after his defeat in the first round of the Brazilian presidential election, leftwing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva spent almost 24 hours unable to boost his Instagram posts, while his opponent, far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, could.
Isn’t this a lovely description of fascism?
It may, in fact, be the moment when a UK government finally realises it has reached a point where it must ignore market pressures, even if supposedly backed by legal claims, and put the needs of people in this country first.
Could be that it’s just shit
Public support for the NHS’s founding principles – that it is free to use, available to everyone and tax-funded – has fallen over the last five years, research has shown. Backing for all three pillars dropped between 2021 and 2025 across the UK population, except for a small rise in millennials’ support for the NHS being funded from taxation. Experts said the sharp rise in economic hardship and changes in attitudes towards migration during those years could help explain the drop in support.
Obvious explanation is obvious
Now official data has shown that couples in England and Wales are more likely to split after 20 years. According to Office for National Statistics figures, more than a quarter of all divorces between opposite-sex couples happened after 20 years or longer of marriage. Obvious explanation is: Divorce lawyers think the rise of the divorce after 20 years is due to couples staying together for the sake of their children.
The acshul answer Original
Maternity care in England is in a doom loop – how has it come to this? Zoe Williams We allowed the producer interest to dominate. The madwives took over and created a maternity service in their own image, built from their phantasies of natural birth, too posh to push and all the rest. Simples.
Astonishing - Tim Worstall
Austerity was never necessary. It was a political choice, and Britain is still paying the price. In 2010, George Osborne told Britain that the government had run out of money. Public spending had to be cut, he claimed, because there was no alternative. But was any of that true? In this episode of Understanding Economics, I explain why the economic arguments used to justify austerity were fundamentally flawed. There never was any austerity.
57% of everything is not enough
It was about the many more who took to the streets to say neoliberal France was failing them. The reality is that, despite high levels of government spending as a proportion of GDP, France still cannot meet the expectations of its people. How much will we each be allowed when the Curajus State of Care arrives?
Well, not so much
Brian Monteith Capital really is leaving Britain, whatever the Left says We run a trade deficit. Therefore, by definition, more capital is arriving than leaving. Which type of capital and all that, owners of capital and all that, sure, those are interesting issues. But it is definitionally true that capital is arriving as long as we’re running as trade deficit.
I approve - Tim Worstall
Only about 10 of the 2,000 types of apples growing in Austria can be found in supermarkets among the polished, pristine fruit usually on display – a sad ratio according to fans of historic varieties being primed for a comeback. One of the country’s biggest retail chains has embarked on a pilot rollout of unusual and long-forgotten apples enjoyed in previous centuries, riding an international trend of reviving heirloom fruit and vegetables. Experiments are good. This is how we find out what works.
How that working out then?
It wasn’t meant to be this way. When Labour brought SWR into public ownership in May 2025 – the first operator to be taken in-house by the Labour Government – Heidi Alexander, the Secretary of State for Transport, promised a “cultural reset” for the railway, a “new dawn moving away from 30 years of inefficiency, delayed services and failing passengers, and moving confidently into a new era – the era of Great British Railways”. As you may not be surprised to find out, it isn’t.
Is this so? - Tim Worstall
Britain cannot deal effectively with geopolitical crises such as Russian aggression and political turmoil in the US without rejoining the EU, according to an influential thinktank. I guess this must be true for that’s what we are being told. Having 1/28th of the votes is more power than 100%.
Obviously, clearly
Andy Burnham’s pledge to take public control of water companies risks unleashing a fresh debt crisis for struggling suppliers. Moody’s, the ratings agency, has warned that the Prime Minister’s plans for state ownership threaten to trigger a new cash crunch in an industry already under acute financial strain.
Oh Aye? - Tim Worstall
In a week when the football regulator’s first report found that the majority of clubs live on the brink of financial disaster, an even more damning one on working conditions in the women’s game has shown that 49% of female footballers are considering leaving the game early for reasons that include financial challenges and psychological stress.
The independence of the state broadcaster
The BBC has been accused of breaching impartiality rules after civil servants embedded in the broadcaster were tasked with writing articles and fact-checking contentious issues, The Telegraph can reveal. Civil Service fast-stream graduates and managers are being seconded to the BBC newsroom to produce news and analysis on “high-impact, sensitive topics” such as small boat crossings and coverage of the Covid pandemic.
Why columns matter
One of my newspaper columns changed how the British government works. OK, changed in a pretty small way, but change it it did. Which is a useful answer to the question posed by HM Nazmul Alam in this newspaper. Why do we write opinion columns, why do we bother? As we say in Britain, today's newspapers are, after all, tomorrow's wrappers for the fish and chips. We might provide some passing amusement to readers but are we actually important? Do we change the world at all?
He’s reviving this idea for Scotland
A tax on bank account financial flows could replace National Insurance. Which is fun as the economist who got the Nobel for looking at optimal taxation systems, Jimmy Mirrlees, was a Scot. And SNP supporter even. And a major lesson from the study of optimal taxation systems is do not tax transactions. So well read is our Potato, just so well read.
Seems a weak case here
A “well-known individual” is trying to secure a permanent injunction against the Guardian and ITN to prevent them from publishing details of serious allegations made against him. At a high court hearing on Friday, the claimant’s legal team said there was a serious risk that he could harm himself should the allegations be made public.
These people are absurd
“In volatile market conditions, it’s important that suppliers can continue to secure the energy their customers need without taking unsustainable risks.” Under the mechanism, the MSC would be triggered if wholesale prices fall more than 10%. At that point, suppliers who win customers by being able to then offer cheap deals would have to compensate rivals 85% of the drop in wholesale rates.
Well, OK, but…… - Tim Worstall
His methods varied, she argued, and women were just a means to an end for him. “Sometimes he might tell women what they wanted to hear, be nice, be kind. Sometimes he might have appeared interested in their cause, sometimes he might even have made sexual advances within minutes of meeting them, identified someone young and impressionable where he was performing – but every time he had identified his target, he was intent on trying to fulfil his sexual desire,” Karmy-Jones said.
What glorious fun this is
So, The Guardian runs a highly political articlew. Yes, of course the Britsh govt must pay masses in gibs for slavery. On 20 July 1937, Churchill addressed the West India committee dinner at London’s Dorchester Hotel. The proof? A speech Churchill made when he was already thinking about WWII and was thus going to soft soap his audience about the joys of Empire. Big proof for the gibs, obvs. But this is not really from The Guardian. They just publish it. Rather, this is from theguardian.org.
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