[nmadden]

One of the authors is from the Centre for Policy Studies. Another is from the Adam Smith Institute. These are the gang of shady right-wing think tanks that brought us Truss and Kwarteng. That tells you everything you need to know about their economic competence.

[kranke155]

Their solution is to allow private funds to fund essential infrastructure, it seems.

Which to me just rings hollow, or at best, only a part of the answer. They're correct on some aspects of it, other parts they just gloss over. IE They say that there has been an "erosion" of the industrial base in the UK, while actually the blame could be laid at the feet of Thatcher's service-led policies.

[snapplebobapple]

They are not wrong on that thet just make the same error the socialisys do in thinking that is the solution for all time. The solution foe all time ia to both realize the end state of a free market is monopoly and the end state of a state monopoly is stagnation so one needs to focus the government on being proactive and allowing both to compete and put the finger of government on the scale to favor private when public is stagnating and favor public when private ia monopolizing.

[moomin]

Gotta love the fact they go “Hey, look how great France’s infrastructure is.” and then immediately advocate for yet more private infrastructure deals without mentioning that France’s infrastructure was largely government funded (using those taxes they seem to hate).

[amadeuspagel]

> From 2010 to the summer of 2024, Britain was run by Conservative-led or Conservative Governments. The Conservatives are the traditional party of business, and in the 1930s and 1980s they pushed through reform programmes that successfully renewed Britain’s economy. Virtually any Conservative minister from the past fourteen years would speak warmly about that heritage if asked, and would express the hope of being its inheritor. And yet, with honourable exceptions, the governments of the last fourteen years failed in this vocation. Failing systems remained unreformed, continuing to stifle Britain’s prosperity. Today Britain is ruled by a Labour Government that recognises this failure to build, and which has articulated high ambitions for changing this. But it remains doubtful that they will be any better at delivering on those ambitions than the Conservatives were.

[throwaway48540]

What is shady about them? Are they criminals?

[schmidtleonard]

Their agenda is to frame the self-serving interests of a very narrow group as the economic interests of everyone. That's shady.

[cherrycherry98]

Depending on the specifics, that sounds congruent with some of Adam Smith's economic theories so it's not surprising to see such arguments used, especially if some of the authors are from the Adam Smith Institute.

His whole invisible hand metaphor is about society advancing as a whole from agents acting in their self interest.

It's more likely a sincerely held belief than an attempt at misdirection.

[ninalanyon]

Adam Smith is probably spinning in his grave.

> His whole invisible hand metaphor is about society advancing as a whole from agents acting in their self interest.

That theory is predicated on the market being composed of buyers and sellers of broadly similar financial power. This is no longer the case in most markets, certainly not in the UK as far as ordinary people or most small companies are concerned.

[schmidtleonard]

Yes. Markets pursue the interest of wealth-weighted humans, not evenly-weighted humans. Disguising "wealth weighted value" under the concept of "value" (which, colloquially, has a more even weight) is the propaganda coup of the century.

[moomin]

I doubt Adam Smith would agree with anything the Adam Smith Institute says.

[nmadden]

As rjsw says, they refuse to disclose who funds them. See https://www.monbiot.com/2022/10/07/thinktanking-the-country/ for some background.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

If you consider tanking the UK economy to the tune of hundreds of millions if not billions of pounds, then yes, absolutely.

[throwaway48540]

How could they possibly do that?

[grumpy_coder]

They are referring to the liz truss budget.

[mike_hearn]

What happened wasn't primarily due to her budget. It was due to a meltdown in the pension sector triggered by over-leverage, arguably caused by the BoE not doing its regulatory duties correctly.

Don't get me wrong, a budget that cuts taxes without cutting spending is no good. But the idea that what happened was a direct consequence of that doesn't make much sense as it had been telegraphed a long way in advance, giving the markets plenty of time to adjust. The central bank changed monetary policy a day before the mini-budget, and changes in that are kept secret until the moment of announcement. Additionally, UK spending has since blown through what the mini-budget would have created without any sudden market turmoil.

https://www.ft.com/content/4701b6ac-851e-43fd-a2b2-b38dd07c7...

Regulators failed to anticipate the dangers that borrowing by pension schemes posed to the stability of the UK’s financial system, according to a parliamentary report into the turmoil that hit the gilt markets following Liz Truss’s disastrous “mini” Budget in September last year.

Pension schemes suffered multibillion-pound losses after they were forced to sell assets to ensure that complex derivative-linked strategies — known as liability driven investments (LDI) — did not implode when gilt yields jumped as investors rejected the then prime minister’s economic strategy.

Also, Truss is basically correct that the UK needs more growth. Disagreeing on her tactics is reasonable, disagreeing on her goals isn't. She was unfortunately attempting to create growth from a position of weakness: in a party that didn't want to do anything hard like cutting spending, and with a fragile/over-leveraged financial sector.

[nmadden]

Pull the other one. Only some of the tax cuts had been telegraphed in advance. Abolishing the top rate of income tax and cutting the basic rate early hadn’t been. They ignored all the warnings they were given and sidelined the OBR. The Truss/Kwarteng budget directly crashed the economy and trying to pretend otherwise is some serious revisionism.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/63229204

[throwaway48540]

So it is the elected representatives who are responsible for choosing them and implementing whatever they suggested?

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Being elected doesn't remove your obligations to follow sane, moral policies.

[rjsw]

They refuse to say who funds them.

[pch00]

Led By Donkeys' exposure of the Truss mini-budget and the Adam Smith Institute involvement is enlightening:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRDLIOME47c

[GordonAShumway]

Hats. The fedoras they wear shades their faces from view, m’lady

[sph]

Of course, the second most upvoted comment is an ad personam dismissal that doesn't even engage with its arguments. How's that for HN-level intelligent discourse?

[wtfwhateven]

the parent comment already explained how extremely deceptive and dishonest the article is so what else is there to add? this is like complaining about someone not wanting to bother refuting every individual thing a pathological liar has said when their lies are so obvious