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The originators of The Spirit Level, Wilkinson and Pickett, take to The Guardian to reveal that they were right all along:Our landmark book revealed the cost of inequality. Fifteen years later, things have only got worseRichard Wilkinson and Kate PickettWe have long thought that the claim was something of a crock. Imagine our joy at the crockness being proven by Wilkinson and Pickett.When economic inequality gets worse, so does our health and wellbeing. Inequality can affect a society's death rates, its levels of chronic disease, and the amount of violence (including murders) it experiences. What we weren't prepared for when we first wrote the book was how much worse things could get.That's the theory. The hypothesis if we are to be more accurate about it.And our data show that even small differences in inequality matter: marginally reducing inequality can have a big impact on people's health and wellbeing.That's a prediction derived from the hypothesis. Which is excellent, it's now possible to do science. We see whether the prediction accords with reality as a test of the hypothesis. Remember, it only needs one of those ugly facts to disprove an hypothesis.Things have got worse - that claim from the first quote. If inequality reduces from what it was in those dying days - 2009/10 - of the Brown Terror then things should get better. So, what has happened to inequality in that time period?






















































































































The Gini, the usual measure of inequality in a society, has declined from 36.6 (all individuals) in that origin year to 35.7 (2022, last year currently calculated). We've had that marginal decline in inequality and yet things are still getting worse. The hypothesis is a crock, isn't it? Sure, sure, we all knew that anyway but it's nice to have the proof from the horses' mouth. No?Tim Worstall

An interesting line from Andrew Sissons about Baumol's Cost Disease. Maybe it's not entirely cost? One interesting part of it being this:Baumol's version of his "disease" actually combines two effects. The first is the famous finding, outlined above, that productivity gains in one sector lift wages in all sectors. The second, less positive part is that productivity growth will necessarily be slow or stagnant in some parts of the economy — typically the service sector. The combination of these effects, according to Baumol, is that the stagnant sector takes up a larger share of the economy over time, and that it gradually drags down overall productivity growth. Because services get more expensive, we have to spend more on them. Because they then make up a larger share of the economy, the economy gets less productive over time. Sounds bad.And Baumol's pessimistic theory matches the empirical data since 1967 (when he first published) pretty well. The rate of productivity growth has slowed down in advanced economies, and the service sector has grown as a share of the economy. The prices of many services have risen, while prices of many manufactures have fallen.If you're looking for an explanation as to why growth has slowed down in advanced economies, Baumol provides a simple, almost mechanical explanation, which presents the slowdown as inevitable. Maybe it's Baumol's world and we're just living in it?As so often we'd not insist that this is everything but we would insist that it's some part of that everything. If productivity is more difficult to improve in services and we've a more service oriented economy then obviously, growth - dependent as it is upon increasing productivity - becomes slower. We would though go on to point out one more thing. We should add Solow to Baumol:It is a tautology that economic expansion represents the sum of two sources of growth. On one side are increases in "inputs": growth in employment, in the education level of workers, and in the stock of physical capital (machines, buildings, roads, and so on). On the other side are increases in the output per unit of input; such increases may result from better management or better economic policy, but in the long run are primarily due to increases in knowledge.The basic idea of growth accounting is to give life to this formula by calculating explicit measures of both.…..While the growth of communist economies was the subject of innumerable alarmist books and polemical articles in the 1950s, some economists who looked seriously at the roots of that growth were putting together a picture that differed substantially from most popular assumptions. Communist growth rates were certainly impressive, but not magical. The rapid growth in output could be fully explained by rapid growth in inputs: expansion of employment, increases in education levels, and, above all, massive investment in physical capital. Once those inputs were taken into account, the growth in output was unsurprising--or, to put it differently, the big surprise about Soviet growth was that when closely examined it posed no mystery. ….How, then, have today's advanced nations been able to achieve sustained growth in per capita income over the past 150 years? The answer is that technological advances have led to a continual increase in total factor productivity a continual rise in national income for each unit of input. In a famous estimate, MIT Professor Robert Solow concluded that technological progress has accounted for 80 percent of the long-term rise in U.S. per capita income, with increased investment in capital explaining only the remaining 20 percent.Baumol does not tell us that increasing services productivity is impossible, he just says it's more difficult. We also have that historical evidence, via Solow, that planned economic systems do not increase productivity but market based ones do. Ah, so therefore we need to have more - and more more - markets in services in order to be able to increase productivity in services. As Sissons points out: The Baumol effect is like a tide that lifts all boats. It brings higher wages to everyone, sharing the benefits of productivity growth across the economy.Improving productivity anywhere in the economy increases wages for everyone. Therefore the reason to have markets in healthcare, in trains, in education, the reason to have markets everywhere they can possibly be crammed in, is to make everyone richer by improving labour productivity. QED.Tim Worstall

You may have noted that we're not wholly keen on politics as a method of running things. Here's a good example of why:In his first interview since taking up office, he told The Telegraph: "Every single river in England today is polluted... The public quite rightly are furious that they have to worry about letting their kids splash about in the river, for fear of what they might catch, because it's polluted."Mr Reed said he will introduce a new system monitoring sewage spills, which involves independent scrutiny of the data, to stop water companies from "massaging the figures".Oversight of pollution doesn't strike us as a bad idea at all.Sewage was spilt 464,056 times last year, totalling more than 3.6 million hours, a record high since monitoring began, according to the latest data published by the Environment Agency.Water companies are permitted to release sewage into rivers and seas during exceptional circumstances, such as extreme wet weather, to stop it backing up into people's homes.That's because monitoring has hugely expanded in recent years - added to the vagaries of weather which has led to a run of those extreme circumstances. But the thing we think should be noted. As far as anyone knows the situation in Scotland is worse, far worse. But the monitoring is far - far - less intense. And as far as it is possible to see the state owned and run Scottish Water is not to be subject to this greater oversight of pollution issues.The Bill, which will be brought to Parliament in September with a view to getting it on the statute books by Christmas, will also require water companies to install "real-time monitors" at every sewage outlet, with data that can be independently scrutinised by water regulators.England is close to this anyway. Scotland is nowhere near it. As far as it is possible to see this bill will apply only to England.Mr Reed said he will introduce further laws aimed at "fundamentally transforming" the water industry.This will include setting up a "partnership" between the Government and water sector aimed at raising billions of pounds of private sector investment and encouraging water companies to make long-term plans for investment in their infrastructure.We already have this. OfWat already determines allowable investment levels in the water companies. One of the reasons they don't invest more is because OfWat won't let them.Finally:"When I was younger, we'd go to the beach and I'd go in the sea and no one worried about it," Steve Reed recalls. "We'd go to a lake somewhere and I'd go swimming. No one had to think about it twice – you just assumed the water was clean enough to go in and it was."He went on to describe how this care-free approach is a far cry from the attitude of families in modern-day Britain."Today parents worry about letting their kids in the water for fear of what they might catch. I want to get back to a position where you don't have to think about that, you just know that the water is clean," he told The Telegraph.The water is hugely, vastly, cleaner than it used to be.As we say, we're not great fans of politics as a way of running things. For all of the proposals make perfect sense in that political sense. They're all also close to or over the nonsense line in a real sense. The lack of investment is because the regulator won't allow it, the water is cleaner than it's been since the 18th century - and probably the 16th - and the biggest polluter is the state owned company that isn't subject to either the bill or the increased monitoring.Lots of action and little to nothing useful being done - you know, politics?Tim Worstall

Colin Hines tells The Guardian how it all should work: Labour could achieve this by redefining growth as the increase in economic activity directed towards rebuilding public services and turbo-charging a green transition in every constituency. This must include retention and recruitment in these sectors through adequate pay levels, and in the process also boosting the businesses connected with them.We'll all get rich by building each others' windmills. At good union rates too. We think that lacks a certain something as a plan. Quite apart from that little redefinition of growth as being whatever it is that Colin Hines wants rather than what everyone else wants. That little redefinition being a significant logical problem.There's a reason we use "at market prices" in our calculations - definition even - of GDP and therefore economic wealth and or growth. For market prices are the best guide we've got to how people value the output, the production, from our economic engine. The entire aim is, after all, to increase the self-perceived well being of the populace. We thus have to measure how well we're doing by using some measure of how well off the populace think they're being made. The value of production, of their consumption, that is.Change that valuation to whatever it is that Colin Hines thinks is worthwhile and we end up with an economy that makes Colin Hines rich - he's getting what he wants - but that might not quite coincide with what the other 66,999,999 people in the country thinks makes them richer. That being, obviously, why we use market prices as our best attempt at an objective valuation of what the populace desires.Tim Worstall

A useful example of why direction from the top does not work:It is the latest sign of a wobble over hydrogen, a so-called superfuel that has been championed as a solution to decarbonise everything from transport and heavy industry to home heating and power generation.Across the West, politicians have pledged to meet ambitious climate targets partly through developing different sources of the fuel, such as "blue" hydrogen made from natural gas, and "green" hydrogen derived through electrolysis of water.Collectively, they have pledged to produce millions of tonnes of hydrogen in the coming decades – despite there being no proven path to doing so commercially.If it were possible to produce green hydrogen in volume then pipe it to every house we'd indeed have a glorious solution to climate change. Even better if we could do so economically. That's proving between hard and impossible. The big problem is not, in fact, in the creation, it's in the storage and transport. Well, OK. But politics - in the grip of those mission critical with strict conditionality plans - has demanded that it be done at vast cost. Which just isn't how technological advance happens. The envelope of what can be done expands as technology advances - or changes if you prefer. What people want done also changes according to knowledge, fashion and sheer obstinacy. The trick is in matching what can be done with what people want done. This means constant and continual experiment. That is, not some baby-kisser deciding what will be done, but that mess of markets of everyone trying everything until we see what works.Now, we at times have praised the idea of green hydrogen. Largely because of some actual work in the field, one of us has worked at the, ahahaha, coal face. We as a result think it's still a pretty neat idea. But not in the manner that politics has decided it should be dealt with. Rather, hydrogen might - note the might - be useful as a local and medium term (so, days to weeks) storage system. Electrolysis to storage to fuel cell. Akin to batteries that is. Equally, once we have green hydrogen to Fischer Tropsch it up to such things as jet fuel could make sense. This is not, really not, the same as thinking that we can pipe H2 to every house in the country to run gas stoves or water boilers. But we also have the necessary humility here. Which is to agree that while it's all a very neat idea we do require proof of that contention. The only way we'll gain that proof is it everyone tries everything then we see what works and do more of it. Markets that is. Not Ministers, bureaucrats or committees demanding vast industrial combines based on a technology that no one knows will work or not. We're very sceptical of political ability to do anything. But especially so of the ability to decide upon technology. As here, the system always does seem to plump for what might not, in fact, be possible at all. Whereas the correct idea is to find out what is possible and economic - at which point, of course, no urging, forcing nor subsidy is required as that proof of what is possible and economic is all that is required for general adoption.That logic is a fundamental problem with the very idea of politics guiding all. That's before we get to the problem of the plans being pulled from fundaments.Tim Worstall

The first point being missed here is that this is theft:Landowners will receive less in compensation when they are forced to give up land for house building, under a tough new Planning and Infrastructure Bill.As part of its plan to "get Britain building", Labour will toughen up the rules around compulsory purchase orders.It will mean that the amount of compensation paid to landowners will be "fair but not excessive".We agree that we are projecting a little here. But there's long been muttering that compulsory purchase should be at current permitted use prices, not potential permitted use prices. This is, as we say, theft. For the current market price of a piece of land is both current permitted use and also some element of potential permitted uses. Some estimation of the value if permits were changed times the perceived probability of those permits changing. Options have value - there are vast financial markets worldwide that prove that contention - therefore to pay only current permit value without that potential is theft. But horrific though theft by the government is this is still missing the point. For what they want to stop having to pay is that uplift in value from gaining planning permission. Which is that missing the point entirely. We all want a system where there is no uplift in value from planning permission. We want so much planning granted that there is no scarcity value to gaining planning. So, wibbles about how to tax - or how not to pay for - the very thing we want to abolish in the first place is to very much miss that point. Increase the supply of planning so that planning has no value. In short, abolish the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors. Blow it up, proper blow up - kablooie.Tim Worstall

Yes, yes, government can just instruct the Bank of England to print more money. But even then there's no money left. Labour needs a "growth miracle" if it is to fund its aspirations for public services, economists have warned, ahead of the King's Speech. Economists have raised doubts over the new Government's ability to boost the economy and expect a repeat of the slow expansion in growth since the global financial crisis.We can't have government buying us lovely new things because all hte money's already been spent. The promises that have been made to us about pensions, services, depend upon economic growth happening already. They can't be afforded if there is no growth - if there is growth we can only have what we've already been promised. But it gets worse:The Resolution Foundation has estimated that Labour's spending plans commit the party to around £18bn of annual budget cuts over the next parliament. As they stand, these would affect "unprotected" areas of government such as the Department for Work and Pensions, the Ministry of Justice, local councils and higher education – and a funding shortfall for a depleted NHS. Ahead of this week's king's speech, when the new government will lay out its legislative agenda, five public sector workers give their verdict on Labour's approach.Every single one of them insists that the correct move is to send them lots more money. Hey, that could even be true. But it's another reason why we can't have nice new things from government. Any extra money around is simply going to pay those who do what we currently get more.There's no money for new things because we need growth to pay for the current promises. Even if we do have growth we'll not gain new things because we're going to end up paying the current suppliers more. There really is no money left for new things. To gain new things we'll have to stop having some other things. We are back in that world where opportunity costs reign. So, what does government currently do that we'd be happy to do without in order to gain some other new and lovely thing? That's the world we're in…..Tim Worstall

We're willing to be fair to Will Hutton here. That's a difficult job but someone's got to do it. This line comes from the Observer's subeditor, not Hutton himself - headlines and subheads are written by subs, not journalists or columnists. It does capture, well, the argument Hutton is making but these still aren't his direct words:Wealth is a privilege, and with it comes the obligation of paying tax to benefit societyThis is, obviously, piffle. For what is being said there is that only by paying tax does wealth benefit society. Which is, obviously, that piffle. It's actually true that wealth is the product of having benefitted society. As in the William Nordhaus paper about who gains from entrepreneurial activity. It's us out here, us consumers, who gain the vast, vast proportion of it. The entrepreneurs themselves gain some 3% or so of total value created. Only 3% too.As an example, Jeff Bezos has some $200 billion. A lorra cash, agreed. It's also true there's been the "Amazon Effect". By making the retail system more efficient the simple existence of the company has knocked 0.1 to 0.2% off the inflation rate. Every year for two decades. No, not 2 to 4% off retail sales that is, but 2 to 4% off the whole cost of living for everyone. That's a sum vastly larger than the Bezos pile - especially when we convert that annual benefit into a capital sum so as to be able to compare it with the Bezos capital sum.It simply isn't true, not in the slightest, that the justification for wealth is the tax paid upon it. It's how much better off are we made by someone having made that wealth? Tim Worstall

There are those who think that the mere existence of billionaires is, as the cool kids say these days, problematic. There are those who say that it doesn't matter very much. We're in that second camp: The three-day wedding itself — which begins on Friday evening with the traditional Hindu ceremony, followed by the shubh aashirwad or blessings ceremony on Saturday, and a reception on Sunday — would make an extravagant maharajah blush. While the cost of the months-long wedding celebrations has not been confirmed, analysts have estimated that they may have cost up to 50 billion rupees (£462 million). This would still represent a small fraction of Ambani's net worth of $123 billion (£94 billion), according to Forbes.An extravagant display indeed. And yet, as Britannica has Adam Smith saying:….that the self-seeking rich are often "led by an invisible hand…without knowing it, without intending it, [to] advance the interest of the society."The point being made is not that someone having $94 billion is either good or bad, this is a comment upon a different part of the action. Those self-seeking rich, through their extravagant display, are moving £462 million from their pockets to the pockets of all those others supplying that wedding. That initial argument is that billionaires should not have so much. They now have less than they started with and others now have more. That's that very initial argument - that the Ambanis should have less, others more. So, it's happening - good, eh? This mention of "invisible hand" in Theory of Moral Sentiments is not saying that wealth, billionaires, are good. Nor that free markets are the very tops, the Colisseum, the Louvre Museum. Rather, just the obvious note that rich people spend their money which means that other people end up with it. Which, you know, seems obvious despite all the vitriol directed at the idea.Tim Worstall

A complaint here about marginal tax rates at one point on the distribution:More than half a million people are paying income tax of up to 60 per cent on the top slice of their earnings. A punitive tax trap catches out those on salaries of between £100,000 and £125,000 a year and the number being caught in it is higher than ever, …That's a bad idea, obviously. Well above any rational estimation of the peak of the Laffer Curve where revenue is maximised*. So, it should be lower, obviously. But one of our regular reminders, the Laffer Curve does not only apply to rich people. Marginal tax rates can be too high for poorer people too. As that interface between the income tax system and universal credit is:Under the UC taper, payments are reduced as claimants earn more. The current taper "rate" is 55%. That's too high by the best estimate the literature seems to have of that peak of the Laffer Curve. That is, we've already tapped out the ability of squeezing money from the populace in the form of incomes taxes (note, that means taxes upon income, income tax itself plus national insurance, both employees' and employers'). Which is why there're so many beady eyes upon other methods of squeezing of course. Our own solution would be that government just spend less. Sadly, an extremely unpopular idea among those who gain the joy of spending however much the populace might like it.Tim Worstall*No, really, the Diamond and Saez estimate is of 54% (including employers' NI) as the peak in a system like ours

A new government, yes, and what excitement, eh? Then it begins - the shrieks for more money from this or that sector:Labour will miss its target of delivering 1.5m new homes this parliament without an emergency cash injection into the affordable housing sector, providers have warned.Housing associations and councils have written to deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, saying her promise to deliver "the biggest boost to affordable housing in a generation" will be impossible unless there are urgent interventions to fix the financial pressures providers face.Our word, this is a surprise. More of everyone elses' money simply must be poured into our, our very vital and special, sector. Well, perhaps not so much of a surprise, the only piece of news here is who has been first out of the blocks.There is, of course, an alternative solution: ….cash from rents was currently not enough to cover its costs.Umm, rents could rise? ….the provider had stopped buying new sites because….Or, possibly, lower the cost of new sites. Which really does mean that supply side reform of blowing up the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors. Proper blow up - kablooie. For as we're being told here, even the taxpayer assisted social housing sector cannot afford current land with planning permission prices. The solution is therefore to flood the zone with land with planning permission and so reduce those prices. This then makes housing cheaper for everyone, of every type of tenure. Further, we don't need to increase the subsidy to the social housing sector and, even, the housing benefit bill will fall. In fact, if we really flood the zone with land for building we'll not need to have a social housing sector at all - for housing will be cheap for all. Amazin' what a bit of supply side reform can achieve, no? Tim Worstall

A current complaint echoes one made by Naomi Klein a decade back. Which is, as the kids say these days, problematic. For if you're echoing a Naomi Klein economic argument you're going to be somewhere between wrong and wildly wrong. The amount of wind and solar power under construction in China is now nearly twice as much as the rest of the world combined, a report has found.Research published on Thursday by Global Energy Monitor (GEM), an NGO, found that China has 180 gigawatts (GW) of utility-scale solar power under construction and 15GW of wind power. That brings the total of wind and solar power under construction to 339GW, well ahead of the 40GW under construction in the US.…The findings underscore China's leading position in global renewable energy production at a time when the US is increasingly worried about Chinese overcapacity and dumping, particularly in the solar industry.Klein whined, bitterly, about the absence of trade tariffs on Chinese solar panels. As those were illegal under WTO rules they got banned and as a result a solar panel factory in Canada went bust. Well, OK, you can be nativist if you like but Klein's actual complaint was that this was a blow in the fight against climate change. Canadians being restricted to only expensive home made panels would lead to more solar panel installation than Canadians being able to buy cheap solar panels from China. No, really, that was her argument. Wildly wrong, of course, but then Ms. Klein rarely does let us down.The American complaint is that China has wildly overinvested in - perhaps even subsidised - the solar panel and cell industry. As a result the price to buyers is below what anyone unsubsidized or not wildly overcapacity can possibly sell at. The claim then is that this is a problem.But we also have this climate change will be the death of us all idea. We've got to install solar as fast as we possibly can. Further, we actually subsidise factories to make such solar systems. So, what's actually happening here is - by allegation at least - that it's the Chinese taxpayer taking the hit of saving the world not our own home grown and patriotic taxpayers.We think this is an excellent idea. They're paying and we're not, the climate gets saved all the same.Really, someone needs to tell us why cheap solar cells is a problem. Possibly of more importance in the long run is why is anyone lifting economic ideas from Ms. Klein?#Tim Worstall

Apparently that sugar tax was very good, very good indeed. So say all the newspapers:






















































































































A repeat:The amount of sugar consumed by children from soft drinks in the UK halved within a year of the sugar tax being introduced, a study has found.The tax, which came into force in April 2018, has been so successful in improving people's diets that experts have said an expansion to cover other high sugar food and drink products is now a "no-brainer".The research, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, looked at responses from 7,999 adults and 7,656 children between 2008 and 2019 to the annual nationally representative UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey.It showed that the daily sugar intake for children fell by about 4.8g, and for adults 10.9g, in the year after the levy's introduction.Except pretty much none of that was true. Or even is true with the exception that there really was a sugar tax imposed on soft drinks.As Chris Snowdon points out here. For example:Firstly, the study doesn't claim sugar consumption halved, as the headline says, nor that "sugar consumed by children from soft drinks in the UK halved within a year of the sugar tax being introduced" as the article says. It found that sugar consumption by children from soft drinks halved between 2008 and 2019, with nearly all that decline occurring before the sugar tax was introduced in 2018.That, of course, is a less than ringing endorsement of the success of the tax in reducing sugar consumption - and therefore obviously of the case for any extension. As Snowdown goes on to point out it's also not had the slightest effect upon child obesity which is the background justification for the whole idea.We're being fed unsugared pap as propaganda here.Which does make us think more kindly of that Welsh idea. It should be a criminal offence to lie in politics. As we've noted that is going to curb politics rather a lot. But it is going to be interesting.This is clearly politics - it's advocacy of a tax, that is politics. Somewhere between fact and what we're being told there's a certain error. So, who do we bring the private prosecution against for lying in politics? The authors of the original paper? The journal that published? The Press Association (we assume the reason everyone is running it is because that's the intermediate source)? The individual newspapers? Or perhaps just all of them? It really is going to be fun, isn't it? Now, how does that crowdfunding lark work - if Jololyon can get piles of cash to pay lawyers then….Tim Worstall

Enjoyment comes in many forms of course:Meta has claimed news is not the antidote to misinformation and disinformation spreading on Facebook and Instagram, as the company continues to push back against being forced to pay media companies for news in Australia.Meta announced in March it would not enter into new agreements with media companies to pay for news following the end of contracts signed in 2021 under the Morrison government's news media bargaining code.The assistant treasurer, Stephen Jones, is considering whether the Albanese government should use powers under the news media bargaining code legislation to "designate" Meta under the code, which would force the tech company to enter negotiations for payment with news providers, or risk fines of 10% of its Australian revenue.If that happens then perhaps Meta will do as it did in Canada, simply stop allowing news links on the site(s). That would be bad because:Publishers have said the effect of a news block would be devastating. Broadsheet – which publishes city, restaurant and entertainment guides – told the committee in a submission it would lose up to 52% of its revenue should news be blocked. The publisher said it "would make it nearly impossible for the business to survive".The traffic from Meta is an essential part of the news business plan and ecosystem. Some of us here having worked in the online news industry it's very much a part of the game to try to craft articles, headlines, that then go viral on social media. Pats on the back ensue from having done it successfully.So, the actual argument being deployed by the news industry. We make lots of money from Meta sending us traffic but Meta must also pay us for running the articles - our copyright, d'ye see? - which send us lots of luvverly, profitable, traffic.We do rather expect competent adults to be able to see through this but apparently some governments don't have any of those. There is that stated enjoyment of seeing an entire industry having enough brass neck to try it on in this manner. But we'd also make the observation that any government that can't see through this perhaps doesn't have enough competent adults to run the water systems, electricity industry and so on - all the things they claim they've also got to do.Tim Worstall

A note from Germany:Activists who campaigned for decades for legalisation say that the rollout, closely watched by countries around the world to see how the experiment plays out, has been hampered by that most German of substances: red tape.The hotly disputed law passed by Olaf Scholz's three-party coalition, which took effect in April, legalised cultivating up to three plants for private consumption, the possession of 50g (1.75oz) of cannabis at one time at home and 25g in public.But euphoria at the market finally emerging from the shadows has been stubbed out by regulatory zeal and what activists call political chicanery in conservative regions where the opposition to cannabis is strongest.Frankly, given the usual German proclivity for bureaucracy we're surprised they didn't make home growing mandatory. But there's also a note from Britain:The planning system is the last unadulterated vestige of postwar socialist utopianism, created in 1947 by the Town and Country Planning Act and founded on the well-meaning but ultimately flawed belief that a small group of people should dictate the development of complex systems, like an economy. Or a city. So real reform by Starmer will mean taking on cherished ideas of the left.The tales of the wholly and entirely vile corruption of the system are there. But so too is the vast cost of having that bureaucracy in the first place. The correct answer in both cases is simply to kill the bureaucracy. Simply state that there is no regulation of the activity, there are no permissions required. Now, the Soviets used to, when the system became constipated like this, shoot a few commissars, something that has its attractions. But given that we're liberals, proper ones, we'll run with just killing the bureaucracy, not the bureaucrats. The rest of the Carthaginian solution, razing the system to the ground, ploughing the land with salt, should still proceed of course. Abolish the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors. Blow up, proper blow up, kablooie.The result would be the most lovely housebuilding led boom, just as we had in the 1930s. The last time we actually had the private determination of the use of land. It would even solve this problem:Green MP opposes 100-mile corridor of wind farm pylons in his Suffolk constituencyAdrian Ramsay, the party's co-leader, will go against the Government's net zero plansWell, perhaps not solve, entirely, what could be considered to be gargantuan hypocrisy but at least we'd have to pay no attention to it when solving climate change.Let's just be liberal about it - we want to be free, to do what we want to do.Tim Worstall