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Written by Tim Worstall
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Sunday, 22 July 2007 |
We are indeed so, so, lucky to have those wise people in Brussels taking care of things for us. The latest is an analysis (and then some proposed actions) on the subject of the gender pay gap. From a quick reading, two major points stand out.
The first is the headline announcement that the gender pay gap is 15%
across the Union. While they acknowledge, in notes, that there is a
different incidence of part- and full- time working between the sexes
they don't point out that part-time wages per hour are everywhere lower
than full-time wages per hour. So they are lumping in together two
entirely discreet pay gaps and calling it the gender pay gap: in other
words their headline figure is nonsense. The second is:
The pay gap has a major impact on the status of women in
economic and social life throughout their working lives and beyond. It
constitutes an obstacle to equal economic independence for women and
men. It has an inevitable impact on individual choice, with regard for
example to work patterns, length of working life, career breaks or the
sharing of domestic and family responsibilities.
Quite breathtaking really: a complete confusion between cause and
effect. As research shows, never married women with no children
actually have a 3% in their favour pay gap, lesbians suffer no pay gap:
it isn't that the pay gap causes the changes in time in the workforce,
but changes in time in the workforce cause the pay gap.
So the proposed actions, affecting an entire continent's worth of 450
million people, are based on a simple inability to understand the
evidence in front of them.
Can we leave yet?
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Written by Tim Worstall
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Thursday, 05 July 2007 |
Apologies for my near monomania but I do love to point out that our
politicians and rulers do not always make the very finest decisions
about how to spend the tax money that they so gleefully extract from
us. As reported in The Times
, Franco Frattini, the European Union's Justice Commissioner, thinks
that censoring the internet in order to stop wannabe terrorists from
learning how to make bombs would be a good idea. Leave aside the
freedom of expression and civil liberties implications of this for a
moment (although they are sufficient in themselves to kill the idea)
and think just of the cost effectiveness:
EU officials denied that it would be impossible to track
down websites based in remote places, insisting that the local provider
based in the EU could be held to account. One said: “You always need a
provider here that gives you access to websites. They can decide
technically which websites to allow. Otherwise how would China block
internet sites? There are no technological obstacles, only legal ones.”
Again, leave aside the thought that we are looking to Chinese methods
to regulate public discourse: is there not one further obstacle, the
financial one? I asked Bruce Schneier , the security expert, how much this would cost:
It would cost an infinite amount of money, because it would be impossible to do.
Hmm, I'd say that's a fairly large obstacle, one to add to the technological and legal, wouldn't you?
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Written by Tom Clougherty
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Saturday, 23 June 2007 |
The ASI's regulation supremos, Keith Boyfield and Tim Ambler, have published a new briefing paper as part of our Regulatory Monitor project, entitled Stemming the growth of UK regulatory agencies. It's available as a PDF here , and is well worth a read.
The paper notes the "explosion in the growth of economic regulators"
since 1997, which reflects the government's view that regulation should
deliver social and environmental objectives rather than playing a
purely economic role. Unfortunately this new consumerist agenda has not
been a success – it has proved hard to define in legal language and
little thought has been put into how these social and environmental
objectives are to be funded. This has imposed significant costs on
businesses and consumers.
While the authors stress that "all markets need some degree of
regulation in order to work as markets" they advocate following the
example set by the Financial Standards Agency and adopting a light
touch, principles-based approach to regulation for the economy as a
whole.
The ultimate objective of this approach is to merge all the existing
regulatory agencies into a single Fair Trade Authority, which would be
formally responsible to parliament and which would intervene only to
ensure free, competitive markets. A great deal of the regulation aimed
at protecting the consumer could be left to the courts, while the
greater use of market mechanisms, such as mandatory insurance, would
serve to improve standards like health and safety in the workplace.
The briefing makes it clear that a better regulatory regime is well
within our grasp, so long as the political will is there to pursue it.
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Written by Tim Worstall
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Sunday, 10 June 2007 |
No, we shouldn't wonder why it took them so long, rather, we
should be as the angels in heaven, joyous over the sinner that repenteth :
Research carried out by the Equal Opportunities Commission
(EOC) shows that the proportion of female graduates in such jobs rose
from 5.4% to 13.2% between 1995 and 2005, compared with a rise from
4.3% to 7.1% for male graduates.
The figures confirm that the expansion of university education in the
past 20 years has significantly devalued the worth of a degree in the
job market.
Now that they've discovered that supply and demand are, as the
economists have been trying to point out for the past few centuries,
the things that actually determine pay, can we get the very same EOC to
understand a few more ideas put forward by the pointy-heads?
For example, that as part-time workers cost more to employ than
full-timers, for equivalent hours worked, then the part-timers will be
paid less per hour? That increasing the cost of employing women by
mandating long maternity leaves will reduce the amount those women are
paid? No, I'm not holding my breath for those to sink in.
As to the larger point about the benefits of education: if we are to
take a strictly accounting view of the costs and benefits, we might
find that higher education has expanded too far. As indeed seems to be
the case :
Subject choice is crucial. Other things being equal, the
rates of return to maths and computing, engineering and technological
subjects and medicine (the "hard" subjects) are, unsurprisingly,
robustly positive. Other choices are less remunerative and, in the case
of arts degrees for men and after allowing for the new £3,000 level of
tuition fees, the calculated average rate of return is actually
negative.
Yes, of course, there other than strictly economic benefits to studying
at university but could we at least stop justifying the expansion of
the number going on those non-existent economic grounds?
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Written by Tim Worstall
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Sunday, 14 January 2007 |
The Telegraph
runs an interesting and comprehensive report on the effects the banning
of advertising junk food to children will have. TV company profits
down, very little change in junk food consumption and a reduction in
innovation in the sector. As is said, why design a new product if you
can't tell anyone about it?
Reactions to this will rather depend upon an individual's view of
advertising. Is it all manipulation, persuasion, or is it simply
information? That different ads (even the same ones at different times)
can be either or both is often missed. There's also something quite
delightfully British about the actual bureaucratic decision itself.
Because the measurements of salt, sugar and so on are made using a 100
gramme sample (around 3 oz in real money) such products as raisins,
Marmite, and olive oil are also banned. The Man in Whitehall can't even
do censorship properly.
But the article also asks what the effect of the ban will be on
the food manufacturer's profits. I think it might actually be positive,
as the ban in the US on tobacco advertising was to the cigarette
companies. Much of such advertising is not so much "Try a burger" type,
but of the "try our burger, not our competitor's" type. The more of
this there is (or was) then the more the ban will increase proftis
across the sector rather than diminish them. It rather sets in stone
the current market shares, those shares that the companies currently
spend so much to defend.
I think we really should all thank our lucky stars that we are
governed so that we have just a little censorship here and there,
increasing the food company profits, in the name of protecting the
little children.
Which, by the way, it will do very little of:
One FSA study estimates that advertising has a 2 per cent influence on people's food choices..
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Written by Dr Eamonn Butler
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Friday, 30 September 2005 |
Concentrating the UK's new regulations into two batches each year
was supposed to reduce confusion, but it doesn't seem to have worked.
At least, not for the government, which still seems confused.
On the eve of Red Tape Day, our regulation boffin Tim Ambler –
co-author of the Deregulation paper in our Roadmap to Reform series –
rang the Better Regulation Executive to ask which new regulations were
coming into force, but their spokesman did not even know that Red Tape
Day was looming, much less what regulations might be included.
There are so many regulatory bureaucracies – the Better
Regulation Commission, the Better Regulation Executive, the Better
Regulation Task Force – that the regulators themselves don’t seem to
know what’s going on. How is someone trying to run a small business
expected to keep up with this tide of red tape?. Quis Custodiet Ipsos
Custodes?
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