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NICE: exit the technocrat, enter the lobbyist?
Kristian Niemietz
7 December 2009
3 comments

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which some label the government’s “drug rationing body”, recently barred an expensive liver cancer drug from being...
Two concepts of poverty, two approaches to tackle it
Kristian Niemietz
27 November 2009
6 comments

Kate Green, the Chief Executive of Child Poverty Action Group, recently responded to an IEA blog piece in which I examined a CPAG article by Polly Toynbee. I had argued that the article was not...
Politicised poverty research misses the point
Kristian Niemietz
23 November 2009
35 comments

It is a bit tricky to criticise an organisation that describes itself as “the leading charity campaigning for the abolition of child poverty in the UK”. But when a charity enters the...
Mr Gorbachev, take out this Wall
Kristian Niemietz
13 November 2009
10 comments

The metaphor of ‘tearing down the Berlin Wall’ has come to be used in a quite inflationary way, and this phenomenon usually peaks around the 9th of November. At this time of the year,...
Against child poverty – and against the child poverty bill
Kristian Niemietz
2 November 2009
6 comments

Policy Exchange has just released a report aptly titled Poverty of Ambition, which criticises the major parties’ approach to child poverty. It explains why our conventional poverty measures...
Beating the endowment effect: denationalising healthcare, step by step
Kristian Niemietz
20 October 2009
6 comments

We all know what would happen if the state nationalised all pubs, integrated them into a “National Pub Service”, and decided that beer should be free at the point of use. Even ignoring...
The Da Vinci Doctrine: why Naomi Klein should team up with Dan Brown
Kristian Niemietz
7 October 2009
10 comments

An ancient brotherhood of sorcerers. String-pullers behind the scenes. A deadly machinery, operating with clockwork efficiency. A chain of seemingly unrelated events which are intimately connected,...
Elections in Germany: it’s the intellectuals, stupid!
Kristian Niemietz
28 September 2009
24 comments

Germany’s federal election yesterday resulted in a stable majority for a "black-yellow" coalition of Conservatives (CDU) and Liberals (FDP). Is this the starting shot of a free-market reform...
From an inflation-fuelled state-run economy to an overregulated high-tax economy
Kristian Niemietz
17 September 2009
comments

What’s the easiest way for a government to push their country into the top ten in a worldwide ranking of economic freedom? Coupling unpopular reforms (such as spending cuts) with popular ones...
How entrepreneurship reduces relative poverty
Kristian Niemietz
9 September 2009
10 comments

Professor Christoph Butterwegge, a political scientist and poverty researcher at the University of Cologne, seems to be angry with his fellow citizens. What is bothering him is that...
Poverty in Britain, past and present
Kristian Niemietz
2 September 2009
4 comments

In A History of Modern Britain, Andrew Marr describes post-war Britain as a grim place in material terms. In 1950, only 4% of the adult population owned a television, and only 3% went on holidays...
Obamacare: will US healthcare go European?
Kristian Niemietz
19 August 2009
22 comments

A new word has recently entered the English language: Obamacare. It does not yet appear in any dictionary, probably because nobody yet knows its precise meaning. But judging from the proposals...
Enemy at the Gates: the lonely struggle of a Welsh Gaul
Kristian Niemietz
13 August 2009
16 comments

Machynlleth, a small town in Wales, is under attack from a vicious superpower. The Guardian’s local correspondent reports first hand from the heart of the combat zone:   “it...
The benefit labyrinth: a cornerstone of the poverty trap
Kristian Niemietz
5 August 2009
72 comments

Allister Heath once labelled Gordon Brown “a man who seems to love making simple things as complicated as possible”. A recent analysis of the benefit system by the Centre for Policy...
“Harmful” tax competition: new actors, same old plot
Kristian Niemietz
3 August 2009
8 comments

Nobody likes competition when it takes place in their own backyard. Tax-hungry government officials are by no means an exception. If their counterparts abroad, either by insight or by lack of...
Don’t blame private schools, learn from them
Kristian Niemietz
9 July 2009
8 comments

We all know the tune. Private schools are a hotbed of elitism, pillars of a neo-feudal class system where people’s position in life is determined by birth and family name, not merit. Not so,...
Child poverty in Wales: increase employment not benefits
Kristian Niemietz
1 July 2009
comments

“Approximately 32 per cent of children in Wales – 192,000 children – live in poverty”, argues a condensed report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The paper (which builds on...
On Anglosceptics and little Englanders: how EU commentators got their terminology wrong
Kristian Niemietz
9 June 2009
8 comments

Whether you read a conservative or a left-wing newspaper, a tabloid or the business press, you have probably read many times in the last few days that “Eurosceptic” parties had recorded...
Tax credits: between a rock and a hard place
Kristian Niemietz
27 May 2009
2 comments

Last week it was revealed that at least £7 billion has been paid out wrongly on tax credits over the last five years. Indeed, the tax credit scheme has been accompanied by administrative...
Progressive conservatism – or how to combine the worst bits of two worldviews
Kristian Niemietz
15 May 2009
10 comments

Understatement is perhaps not Phillip Blond’s forte. The director of the “progressive conservatism” project aims at nothing less than ushering in a new era in British post-war...

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