In A History of Modern Britain , Andrew Marr describes post-war Britain as a grim place in material terms. In … Continue reading “Poverty in Britain, past and present”

Allister Heath once labelled Gordon Brown “a man who seems to love making simple things as complicated as possible”. A … Continue reading “The benefit labyrinth: a cornerstone of the poverty trap”

The last decade has been marked by a combination of low savings rates and high debt levels in both the … Continue reading “Time preference, economic crisis and social decline”

Finally, with the release of the DWP White Paper, Iain Duncan Smith has let the cat out of the bag. … Continue reading “Sanctions in welfare: IDS lets the cat out of the bag”

I must confess to being taken aback by the emphasis in popular comment about the impact of the CSR on … Continue reading “How to be pro poor – learn from President Obama, and do the opposite”

Politics, unlike commentary, is the art of the possible. It is about getting things done and surviving in the process. … Continue reading “Do we finally have a grown-up government?”

Here at the IEA, it is something of a rule that if Hayek endorsed an idea then it probably wasn’t … Continue reading “A Hayekian solution to welfare reform”

“The welfare state is now a vast, sprawling bureaucracy that can act to entrench, rather than solve, the problems of … Continue reading “The DWP on welfare reform: good on the generalities, weak on the details”

There has been much discussion over the last week about the coalition government’s first 100 days. Some of this analysis … Continue reading “Entitlement and resentment”