The Pin Factory Blog

Using Adam Smith to explain why a £6 tax per phone line to extend broadband is a bad idea. Although, to be honest, you could probably use Marx, Edward Lear or Barney the Dinosaur to explain why a £6 tax per phone line to extend broadband is a bad idea.

More Smith, this time about the difference between selfishness and rational self interest.

There's something not quite right about this idea of having a criminal trial without a jury.

What would you prefer to have? No Smokers or a Navy?

Worth remembering who helped get rid of the draft: that would have been enough for fame and glory, forget the Nobel and all the rest.

Yes, these plates in the road to use the cars to power the lights: it's perpetual motion flimflammery again.

And finally, crazed bailout economics.

And really finally, Netsmith bows out having reached the M mark. Been fun etc.

Toodle Pip!

Yet more evidence of Laffer Effects. The income of small business owners (who have more opportunities for changing behaviour of course) is twice as responsive to tax rate changes than the incomes of employees.

Not quite zero tolerance, but if you crack down on silliness when it's still silly then you'll not get the larger problems.

Could someone please create a similar guide to right wing zealous artcle writing? Then we'd all know what to avoid.

Argument Against Democracy No. CCVII.....there are at least 18 people who should not have the vote.

Argument Against Democracy No. CCVIII....look at the naivety of those who actually get elected.

Explaining Dani Rodrik's Capitalism 3.0.

And finally, another face/palm moment.

On the Iranian election: the secret to cheating is not to do it too well.

Why we need our own Pirate Party in the UK: it's not just for Sweden you know.

The side effects of regulation: the banning of naked short selling simply leads to larger profits for hedge funds.

Once again, evidence that accepting government "help" is more expensive than not having such government help.

Contrary to what we are told, plastic bags do not take 100 years to decompose.

Sometimes, economists would prefer that people did not take their advice.

And finally, why bother with satire when the real world offers such gems?

Another wonderful green scheme appears to be no more than a perpetual motion machine: or, of course, theft.

How fascinating. A judge upholds the law and so we're all going to see whether the Obama proposals for the car companies are in fact better than simple bankruptcy.

The banning of repugnant transactions leads to even more repugnant outcomes. This is as true of organ donations as it is of drugs or prostitution.

Just because the BNP wins a couple of seats doesn't mean we should tighten up on immigration.

A detailed look at just how many parts of Magna Carta the current government is breaking.

Technology changes the calculus of political repression (just as it changes the calculus of pretty much everything else).

And finally, technology changes what we tell the kids about divorce.

A very simple solution to the gender pay gap (which isn't actually a gender pay gap, it's a mothers' pay gap).

Ooooh, how tangled it can get when politicians call for people to do things for moral reaons rather than legal ones.

As Paul Krugman has pointed out, having the pound rather than the euro has been pretty handy.

Another 17,314 things we could probably do without.

This is a constitutional reform Netsmith could get behind. Truly separate the legislature and the executive.

Something wrong here, surely? A bankruptcy judge who understands bankruptcy law? What will the UAW think of that?

And finally, which blogger is even less in touch with the real world than the Autorantic Virtual Moonbat?

Now here's a finding you wouldn't expect. Big box stores, and especially the warehouse stores, actually reduce obesity, not increase it.

It doesn't look as if GM understands what went wrong yet. That something did, yes, but not what.

Here's at least one clue to what did go wrong. The managers never actually tried their own products.

Not just the funding of fake charities, but the funding of them so that they stagger on after the Government changes. To continue to propagandise for the fallen government's policies we must assume.

There's no new regulation, only old regulation that has been tried and found wanting already.

Some newspaper articles are so egregiously ill informed that you do rather have to suspect enemy action: surely no one working for a national newspaper is actually that stupid?

And finally, advice for the girls: "If you ever need a date, I highly recommend wearing a meat dress."

There's a reason economists make fun of French labour laws....and it's not just because it's so easy.

Interesting that the education establishment is to demand from home educators what they do not demand from schools that they themselves control.

Technical and nerdy, but there's still more to go on this climate change thing than some think.

How and why has public sector productivity been falling even as ever more billions are pumped in?

Is this really why Hazel recanted?

When you set out to make fun of a particular piece of economic research you'd better make sure that you're not making fun of something which is entirely sensible.

And finally, yes, some economics is indeed wrong, but wrong in a different way than expected.

Might this actually be a first? A professional group supporting a policy and action that reduces the opportunities for that professional group?

This isn't odd at all: the educational establishment uniting to undermine those who educate their children without using the educational establishment. More here.

Doesn't it comfort you to know that the politician reorganising the regulation of the financial markets collects lots of political donations from the financial markets?

How bailouts really work.

A quite wonderful reminder that the little guy can win....or perhaps a reminder that "caveat emptor" is a very useful phrase.

Another reminder, that Britain really does build things still: and that it's the design which is important.

And finally, the Iggy Pop soundtrack to how we are governed.

Yet another lesson, as if one were needed, in why these political attempts to subsidise one or another industry so often fail expensively.

Not that this is a new problem of course.

How and why such programmes are initiated.

This very expensive government programme is one that we don't want to succeed in any manner at all.

Required reading for all those who would like to know why and how economic growth occurs.

An intruiging point. Can the BNP now be sued for racial discrimination, absurd as that might be?

And finally, conspiracy theorising at its best.

Just how much money is it that we owe given Gordon's financial inventiveness?

Quite why there was all that excitement over Gordon's possible resignation is difficult to understand. There's almost no way of forcing him to.

It just isn't true that train travel is necessarily less carbon emittive than car travel.

Are there limits to the amount of wealth that we can create?

Hey, maybe it's all over! Paul Krugman seems to think so.

A very weird idea of how to make the political system work better. Weird, but perhaps sufficiently so to actually work.

And finally, what we've escaped with the sexual revolution.