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Economy think pieces
Why the case for a flat-tax is irresistible Print E-mail
Written by Dr Madsen Pirie   
Thursday, 17 February 2005
Flat Tax is spreading because it works. Regardless of any theoretical objection, it achieves the desired results. With the addition this year of Romania and Georgia, there are now 11 countries using the system, with many more studying the idea very closely.

So what is it? In place of the various tax bands, exemptions and allowances that feature in a progressive tax regime, flat tax replaces them with a single rate. Typically, it excludes low earners from paying any income tax at all and sweeps away the tax allowances that made the graduated system so complex.
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A Tartan (Flat) Tax? Print E-mail
Written by Dr Eamonn Butler   
Tuesday, 07 December 2004
Like all of us, Gordon Brown is struggling to make ends meet. Public spending has skyrocketed, but tax receipts - though up 7% - are well below his optimistic ambitions. He needs to spend less (fat chance!), or raise more money.

But New Labour knows tax is unpopular, and has pegged income-tax rates. The media have rumbled his stealth-tax scams. So what can he do?
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The mother of all privatizations Print E-mail
Written by Dr Eamonn Butler   
Sunday, 28 November 2004
Exactly 20 years ago this week, 2.4m Britons scrambled to buy shares in the state-owned telephone company, British Telecom (BT), before it was floated on the stock market. At almost £4bn, it was the biggest stock market sale in history.

It gave the world the concept of mass-market privatization. It bristled with marketing innovations. It sparked a revolution in share ownership. It heartened the government to privatise more. And it provided a model from which many other countries, including ex-communist ones, were happy to borrow.
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Economy

Introduction
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Words of wisdom

"There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people."

The Wealth of Nations, Book V Chapter II Pt II

 

"What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable."

The Wealth of Nations, Book I Chapter VIII

Words of wisdom

"The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition... is so powerful, that it alone, and without any assistance, is not only capable of carrying on the wealth of society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operation."

The Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Ch V

 

"It is in the interests of every man to live as much at his ease as he can; and if his emoluments are to be precisely the same, whether he does, or does not perform some very laborious duty, it is certainly his interest... to neglect it altogether"

The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Ch I, Part III


About the ASI

The Adam Smith Institute is the UK's leading innovator of free-market economic and social policies. Politically independent and non-profit, the Institute promotes its ideas through reports, briefings, events, media appearances, and its website and blog. For further information, click here.

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