Executive Director of the ASI, Sam Bowman, has had his comments on sterlingisation feature on STV News:
Mervyn King is quite right that some form of sterlingisation would have been an independent Scotland’s best bet, had it voted for independence. Though what he describes is a formal currency union, where the Bank of England operates with Scottish macroeconomic stability as one of its goals, I proposed that Scotland go it alone with an informal currency union.
Executive Director of the ASI, Sam Bowman, was on BBC Radio Scotland discussing the benefits of free trade:
I think free trade really does help almost everyone because while of course it does mean that some jobs go overseas it mean that the products that people can buy are much cheaper.
Listen to the full interview here. (starts 01:11:15)
Executive Director of the ASI, Sam Bowman, wrote for the IBTimes on the junior doctors strikes. He argues the dispute is all about salaries, and that doctors are in the wrong here.
If the issue is pay, why should the other side of the dispute – taxpayers – be expected to pay more? The main justification for paying doctors more would be charity – they deserve more than they're getting, or it's unfair to cut some doctors' pay.But the NHS isn't a charity that operates for the benefit of its staff, and it has limited resources. More money for doctors means less money that can be spent on NHS patients, or indeed on other NHS workers.
Sam Bowman, Executive Director of the ASI, was on Share Radio discussing what he hopes the 2016 Budget will hold. Policies discussed include pension tax relief and scrapping stamp duty on shares. Listen to the full interview here.
The ASI's wish list for the 2016 Budget has featured in City AM, focusing particularly on our calls to scrap stamp duty on shares, and replace business rates with a land value tax.
The verdict is unequivocal: scrap [stamp duty on shares]. The Adam Smith Institute (ASI) says this is one of the most harmful taxes and raises relatively little.The ASI wants business rates to be stopped from taxing capital. Its reasoning is as follows: business rates tax property values, so they effectively tax both the land a property is built on, and what sits on top of the land (bricks, mortar, machinery).
Executive Director of the ASI, Sam Bowman, was on BBC 5 Live discussing CEO pay and why they are worth their wages:
One way of checking if salaries are over the top is looking at firm value when they take on a new CEO thats perceived to be good, and if the new CEO comes on and they're paid £5m a year, but the firm value goes up by £50m, then I think thats a sign that the firm has done a really good job, and the new CEO is actually being paid less than they're worth.
Listen to the full interview here (Starts 01:52:35)
Executive Director of the Adam Smith Institute, Sam Bowman, was on the BBC's Sunday Politics discussing the junior doctor contract dispute. He argues that the sticking point ultimately is not to do with patient safety, and is largely just about doctors pay:
If we're talking about how to get the best value for money for people who use the NHS, patients, and taxpayers, then I think the key is to restrict the amount of money we're paying doctors to make sure it doesn't go up any further, because they will go on to earn much more than almost anybody can hope to afford.
Watch the full interview here. (Starts 51:00)
The ASI's latest report on the Green Belt has featured in The Times. 'A Garden of One's own', by Tom Papworth, advocates building on Green Belt land, potentially on golf courses, in order to alleviate the housing crisis in the UK.
A report by the Adam Smith Institute recommended that more golf courses on protected green land should be sold off. Tom Papworth, the author, said: “We have to choose whether to protect valuable inner-city green space or sacrifice our parks for the sake of low-grade farmland, golf courses and already-developed sites that happen to have once been classified as greenbelt.”
Senior fellow of the ASI, Tim Worstall, wrote a debate piece for City AM on whether or not Facebook's tax decision is a victory for the government’s diverted profits tax policy.
Facebook overhauls its tax structure but, no, this does not mean that George Osborne’s Google Tax has worked. Facebook is starting to sell to large UK advertising accounts using UK-based and paid salespeople. This constitutes a “permanent establishment” under the usual international tax laws and the profits from this activity will be taxable in 2017, when Facebook starts doing this.
The Adam Smith Institute has featured in the Evening Standard for our position on the Green Belt. We advocate reducing regulations around building on Green Belt land, in order to resolve the growing housing crisis:
To date only the Right-wing think tank the Adam Smith Institute has advocated the alternative of sacrificing some of London’s heavily-protected “green lung” for housing.
