Alex Singleton

The Keynesian economist J K Galbraith died yesterday aged 97. Born in Canada, he studied at Ontario Agricultural College and then Berkeley. He served as the United States’ “price czar” in the Office of Price Administration during World War II, then editor of Fortune magazine (1943-1948), before becoming a Professor at Harvard University from 1948 […]

Johan Norberg - author of the brilliant book In Defence of Global Capitalism - writes:
There were only 150 Polish plumbers in France, when “the Polish plumber” became the French protectionists’ symbol of destructive competition. As if that wasn’t absurd in itself, yesterday I heard Kjell-Albin Abrahamsson on the radio saying that even the French plumbers’ […]

Nicholas Negroponte’s $100 laptop, announced to much fanfare last year, falls down as a sensible approach to increasing IT provision in developing countries because of its reliance on massive government purchasing and distribution of free computers. As this site has pointed out previously, governments and donor agencies have limited resources: it is unlikely that giving […]

“Stop Clone Town Britain!” is the new rallying cry of left-wing intellectuals who view supermarkets as the symbol of global capitalism they dread so much. The slogan is the brainchild of the New Economics Foundation, an anti-globalisation “think and do tank” which dislikes economic growth. They demand that supermarkets be broken up and permitted only […]

I was on BBC 1’s Breakfast news, Radio 4’s Today Programme, and BBC News 24 this morning discussing a new report which claims that Britain is in “ecological debt”, and it’s getting worse each year. I think the report is misguided: the fact is that, by most measures, Britain’s environment is getting cleaner. For example, […]

“We advocate nothing but what is agreeable to the highest behests of Christianity - to buy in the cheapest market, and sell in the dearest.” - Richard Cobden
Someone I know recently bought a 40in Sony television. He was going to buy it from a high street retailer, but saw that that it was £300 cheaper […]