The Advertising Standards Authority has no business policing gender stereotypes

Len Shackleton
15 August 2019
Regulation

The Advertising Standards Authority has no business policing gender stereotypes

The news that the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned adverts for Philadelphia cheese and Volkswagen eGolf cars looks like a classic silly season story, a filler for phone-in radio. But I think it’s worrying. The advertisers are accused of “perpetuating harmful stereotypes”. In the first case this was by portraying men as “unable to ... Continue reading
Len Shackleton
15 August 2019
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How government subsidies to the media undermine editorial independence

Matteo Baccaglini
13 August 2019
Society and Culture

How government subsidies to the media undermine editorial independence

Media pluralism in Europe is under threat. Far from exhibiting a rich diversity of opinions, content, ownership and structures, Europe’s media sector faces considerable and rising risks to market competition and editorial independence. So concluded the 2017 annual report of the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom (CMPF), a research centre co-financed by the ... Continue reading
Matteo Baccaglini
13 August 2019
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[PODCAST] Is the NHS broken and decades overdue reform?

8 August 2019

[PODCAST] Is the NHS broken and decades overdue reform?

In this week’s podcast, the IEA’s Digital Manager Darren Grimes is joined by the IEA’s Head of Political Economy Kristian Niemietz and Economics Fellow Julian Jessop. The discussion is centred around the recent decision by Prime Minister Boris Johnson's £1.8bn granted funding for the NHS. Whilst cash injections may help in the short term, Dr Kristian Niemietz argues they will ... Continue reading
8 August 2019
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How, and how not, to disagree on healthcare

Kristian Niemietz
6 August 2019
Healthcare

How, and how not, to disagree on healthcare

A while ago, I got an e-mail from someone who had recently finished reading my book Universal Healthcare Without The NHS, which makes the case for replacing the NHS with a Social Health Insurance (SHI) system similar to the Swiss and the Dutch model. That reader offered mixed feedback. They liked parts of the book, ... Continue reading
Kristian Niemietz
6 August 2019
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[PODCAST] Fully Automated Luxury… Communism?!

31 July 2019

[PODCAST] Fully Automated Luxury… Communism?!

In this week's podcast, the IEA’s Digital Manager Darren Grimes and Dr Kristian Niemietz discuss two new books in which the authors claim to lay out their socialist alternatives. The first book is Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani, which explores everything from the route to communism through socialism to Universal Basic Services, but ... Continue reading
31 July 2019
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The importance of free trade – and how to derive its full benefits

Shanker Singham
31 July 2019
Trade, Development, and Immigration

The importance of free trade – and how to derive its full benefits

The gains in economic activity derived from free trade are well established. Adam Smith and David Ricardo, who respectively discussed the importance of specialisation and comparative advantage, are often cited as the first to have formally illustrated the benefits of trade. However, the benefits of specialisation have long been well-understood: writing in the 1st century ... Continue reading
Shanker Singham
31 July 2019
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Do we need a welfare state at all?

Carolin Bollig
29 July 2019
Welfare

Do we need a welfare state at all?

Given the manifold problems with both the implementation and the design of Universal Credit (UC), as well as similar problems in other welfare systems, one feels tempted to take a step back, and ask: is all this really necessary? Has the state created an overly complicated system where private initiative would have sufficed? Or more ... Continue reading
Carolin Bollig
29 July 2019
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Britain’s housing crisis is uniquely severe – but it is solvable

Radomir Tylecote
26 July 2019
Housing and Planning

Britain’s housing crisis is uniquely severe – but it is solvable

On Monday, Jacob Rees-Mogg and I released Raising the Roof: How to solve the United Kingdom’s housing crisis. This new IEA paper will feature in a book of the same title, including the winning essays for the Koch Prize 2018. The prize asked entrants to offer free market solutions to the UK’s housing crisis. This ... Continue reading
Radomir Tylecote
26 July 2019
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Is the capitalist pot calling the socialist kettle black?

Kristian Niemietz
24 July 2019
Society and Culture

Is the capitalist pot calling the socialist kettle black?

Der heimliche Aufmarsch (“The Secret Deployment”) is an old socialist revolutionary song from the Weimar Republic. It calls upon the workers and peasants to arm themselves, rise up, and smash the system. Thirty years later, a modified version of the song was re-released in the GDR. It was now called Der offene Aufmarsch (“The Open ... Continue reading
Kristian Niemietz
24 July 2019
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Calm down, Guardian: the NHS is (still) not being privatised

Kristian Niemietz
23 July 2019
Healthcare

Calm down, Guardian: the NHS is (still) not being privatised

On Sunday evening, Twitter exploded with rage. That, admittedly, doesn’t mean much. If you have ever been on Twitter, you will be aware that that medium explodes with rage at least every other day. But this time, the rage explosion was about an issue that I happen to know a little bit about, so I ... Continue reading
Kristian Niemietz
23 July 2019
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