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Shouting at clouds again

There is nothing even remotely reasonable about what Dan Neidle is proposing unless you are very wealthy, of course.

But I should add that what Dan is proposing is not his own work. He is promoting the ideas in the 2011 Mirrlees Review of taxation in the UK that was promoted and published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. In chapter 13 of the 2011 version of this (there was a preliminary publication in 2010), it was argued…

Mirrlees got the Nobel for his discussion of taxation systems.

A retired accountant from Wandsworth has disproved it all in a short blog post.

Ho Hum.

36 thoughts on “Shouting at clouds again”

  1. “Mirrlees got the Nobel for his discussion of taxation systems.”

    I have no idea whether Mr Mirrlees is very clever or not, or whether he’s right or wrong about his theories of taxation, but the fact he got a Nobel prize for his work is neither here nor there. Obama got a Nobel prize for Peace, which tells us that getting big prizes from the Global Establishment just means that you’ve pleased the Global Establishment. It has no bearing on your rightness or wrongness, so constantly banging on that Mirrlees is a Nobel prize winner and Spud isn’t is just an appeal to authority, which proves nothing. After all Elon Musk isn’t going to get a Nobel prize is he, despite being far more suited than many, because his face doesn’t fit with the GE. Nobel prizes are just baubles handed out for being good little boys and not rocking the boat.

  2. Obama got the Nobel simply for being sort-of black. No other reason. (Uh, Progressive, too, natch). The entire Nobel awards committee came in their pants whilst awarding it.

    Obama then went on to wage war for every day of both terms of his presidency, and started some new ones. Unlike his successor, who wasn’t awarded the Nobel, because he was orange.

  3. My compatriots have it. The Nobels are just a beauty contest for academics. Count yourselves lucky you don’t have to suffer the swimsuit parade.

  4. Obama got the Nobel Prize just for turning up for work on the first day. The only other less deserving Peace Prize was awarded to the European Union for doing fuck all.

  5. If Economics were a science, as some like to claim, then it would be axiomatic that the world and his wife could criticise any result that is part of it. The issue would then be resolved, eventually, using evidence and logic.

    Mind you, on those grounds “Public Health” – beyond water and sewage management – isn’t a science. That will come as no surprise to anyone who was compos mentis during the Covid fiasco.

  6. Like the Peace Prize, the Economics Prize goes to the favoured flavour of the month. The appeal to authority fallacy doesn’t work with me. Like his blogroll, eighty per cent or more of Tim’s credo is out of date or simply doesn’t work.

  7. I recall the discussion of Obama’s Nobel Prize award at a left of center site which I regularly read. The prevailing reaction was one of regretful, mild embarrassment, but one commenter reported back from a far left gathering that opinion there had been roughly evenly divided – sadly lacking the self awareness that she might as well have reported that opinion on the restoration of capital punishment at a Conservative Party conference was roughly evenly divided.

  8. Southerner

    Take you point but If 80% of Tim’s blogroll is out of date then what of Murphy? 100% of his philosophy based on the Intrawar Soviet Union , North Korea and Mugabe’s Zimbabwe? Are you saying he has even a kernel of a point or any purpose beyond the dissemination of pure evil?

  9. Tim, I believe that you have a degree (Third Class) in Accountancy and Finance from the LSE. What qualifications do you have in economics?

  10. It’s a B.Sc (Econ) with accounting and finance. Almost exactly the same degree as Richard Murphy in fact.

    I also repeatedly point out that I am not an economist, merely someone who writes about economics. I have no advanced degrees in economics, have never worked as one. I am not an economist, just someone who writes about economics.

  11. It baffles me what people who work as economists do. Shake the dice? Disembowel the livestock? Set up the ouija board?

  12. There are many quality analysts of football (Mourinho springs to mind) who never were that good at football themselves.
    The problem with football is there’s so much gambling that people who are even better analysts keep it to themselves.

  13. It is amusing to see so many people arguing that economics is not a science, at a blog specialising in economics, who then go on to argue about economics as if it were a science.

    Some internal consistency would be an improvement.

    The Nobel for Economics is not some bauble handed out for attendance, unlike the Peace Prize. It might be awarded to people who are wrong, but they are at least interestingly wrong.

  14. Well, I think it’s pretty straightforward to make experiments to test the basic principles, and those experiments will yield consistent results, so that qualifies the basics as a science, or at least, authenticated and validated knowledge.

    Most of the 2nd and 3rd order mathematical clevercunt shit is definitely open to question, which is why it’s always being argued about, and predictions based upon it (and they’re always presented to the public as predictions, not possibilities or probabilities) are the stuff of chicken entrails.

    And that’s before we get onto ‘political economy’, which is 100% superstitious wishful thinking, not least because it pretends the basic principles don’t exist, or for some reason can be made not to apply.

  15. Yasser Arafat got a Nobel too. They’re still trying to chase the money.

    The bloke who invented lobotomies got one too. I wonder if there is a hereditary component or action at a distance or something? dearieme, you’re the expert on this?

  16. So, have I got this right:
    1. Neidle writes about a tax reform proposal;
    2. Murphy criticises Neidle
    3. Tim points out here that Neidle’s idea comes from Mirlees
    ( https://www.timworstall.com/2024/10/this-is-bad-even-by-his-standards/)
    4. A few hours later, Murphy criticises Neidle for taking his idea from Mirlees.

    Question is, how did Murphy discover that Neidle’s idea comes from Mirlees? Is the timing just highly co-incidental, or did he nick the idea from Tim in order to accuse Neidle of nicking his ideas from Mirlees? That would be chutzpah.

  17. Bloke in North Dorset

    The Nobel for Economics is not some bauble handed out for attendance, unlike the Peace Prize. It might be awarded to people who are wrong, but they are at least interestingly wrong.

    One of the best explanations about economics, like all social sciences, I’ve come across recently is_

    In the hard sciences for something to be useful it has to be objectively true.

    In economics for something to be useful it only needs to be stochastically true.

    The problem is that the MSM and politicians want simple all answers to all problems that avoid trade-offs so they look evermore to snake oil salesmen and their “models” that tell them what they want to hear.

  18. Bloke in North Dorset

    Question is, how did Murphy discover that Neidle’s idea comes from Mirlees? Is the timing just highly co-incidental, or did he nick the idea from Tim in order to accuse Neidle of nicking his ideas from Mirlees? That would be chutzpah.

    Its been known for a long time that Spud reads this site, although he would never admit it now. A very long time ago he would occasionally quote the site thinking that he had a mic drop argument, but got handed his arse back too many times.

  19. My hunch is Spud subscribes to DanNeidle’s emails/substack whatever he calls it – he gets the Hargreaves Lansdowne one and a few others from people he finds interesting but disagrees with.
    He will have come across this from Neidle a few days ago, or someone pointed him to it.
    https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2024/10/16/how-to-reform-capital-gains-tax-and-cut-income-tax/
    which credits Mirrlees twice in the first section.
    If Neidle had been clever and put the credit to Mirrlees in section 5, I doubt Spud would have seen it.

  20. It is amusing to see so many people arguing that economics is not a science, at a blog specialising in economics, who then go on to argue about economics as if it were a science.
    Some internal consistency would be an improvement.

    Economics is a useful historical subject. It can tell you why what happened happened as a guidance to what results will be in the future. But it’s not like physics, where you can say “If you do this, that will be the result” If it was, all economists would be millionaires. And Tim’s still scratching around in Portugal’s campo trying to get writing gigs.* It’s not necessarily predictive. It’s a bit like military history. To be a good general, it would be worthwhile to study military history. But you wouldn’t want a military historian conducting battles, would you?

    * The advice I’ve given both Tim & jgh. If you want money, don’t try & flog what you can do. You’re going to find lots of people can do the same thing better than you. Look around for what people want, they can’t get because there aren’t people who can do it. Then learn how to do it & flog it to them. But I’m not an economist, I’m a business geezer. To be good at that, half the time, is recognising when economics won’t apply. That people aren’t necessarily rational, from an economics point of view.

  21. BiS, had a similar conversation with my mate yesterday regarding shops that open, flogging the same sort of coffee / food / Chinese tat as Costa, Greggs, Poundland, B & M, QD etc., which close not long after.

    Not being a business geezer I haven’t the first idea of running a business, but to me, it would be advantageous to find a product / niche / gimmick that the rest of the high street doesn’t cater for to have any chance of success.

  22. @Addolff
    Here we have Africans infest the beachfront trying to sell sunglasses, watches, women’s handbags & in one case carved wooden elephants. Imagine how fortunate you’d feel if you’d inadvertently come to the beach without your elephant! But pretty well anyone who needs them will already have their sunglasses, watch or handbag.
    Last week it rained. A fairly predictable event here in October. Were any of them selling umbrellas?
    There are occasions when selling what other people do is advantageous. If you want to open a shoe-shop, open it in the street full of shoe shops. Because that’s where people go to buy shoes. It’s the same with a bar. You’ll likely make more money in an area with lots of bars. Because that’s where people with money go out for the evening looking for a bar to drink in. You just need to be the best bar. With an isolated bar in a street, your only customers are people live or work nearby. Your limitation is how much money they have.
    Is this economics? It’s certainly business.

  23. The beachfront. If I could be bothered, I’d have a couple of girls on the beach selling plastic water pistols to Mums or Dads for their kids. 50 cents wholesale sell for 3€. All the ingredients are there. Water & other kids to squirt at. And pesterpower. The kids you’ve sold water pistols to advertise your product to the others. I’d even give a few away to start the ball rolling. End of the day, the water pistol’s full of sand & fucked, lost or broken. Tomorrow we’ll be selling them another one. Could take 40€ off of just one family in a good week.

  24. BiS

    Some of economics is predictive. Impose minimum wages, get youth unemployment. Impose rent controls, get a shortage of rental property and higher rents for new properties coming on the market. Prevent suppliers from satisfying market demands (such as preventing local suppliers supplying more gas and oil), get shortages and higher prices.

    These are all variations of what happens when you mess with the supply & demand equation, as Thomas Sowell points out in Basic Economics, with examples of these consequences from all over the world, throughout history.

    And yet our lefty “leaders” persist in doing all of these things, because as a result of their sheer personal integrity and moral rectitude, this time it’ll be different and magically the intervention will actually work they way they claim they want it to.

  25. Norman. Economics is not predictive. You can always find examples where economics predicts something & the opposite happens. It may be statistically predictive, at times. But that’s not going to help you in your single instance decision.

    Tim’s long proselytised here the merits of Pigou taxation. An economic theory. But he’s yet to give to an example where it’s actually worked according the theory in practise.

    Try to describe the success of the bait & switch tactic in economic terms.

  26. “And yet our lefty “leaders” persist in doing all of these things, because as a result of their sheer personal integrity and moral rectitude, this time it’ll be different and magically the intervention will actually work they way they claim they want it to.”

    Some of it is ignorance for sure, but I have to suspect that many (most?) know what’s going to happen, and realise that the consequence of the inevitable failure will result in public demands for more intervention, to solve the problems the politicians have themselves created. Thus meaning more and more power for politicians. Its a win/win for politicians, they get to pander to the ignorance of the voters, then to capitalise on the resulting mess. Never let a crisis go to waste, and if you can manufacture the crisis yourself, so much the better!

  27. I think you’re correct there, Jim. There’s little economics there but bags of politics.
    I have never seen “People will seek to maximise what they perceive as their own personal advantage” in any economics textbook. But that guides the majority of what happens. To me it should be in large, bold type occupying the entirety of the first page.

  28. “I have never seen “People will seek to maximise what they perceive as their own personal advantage” in any economics textbook. ”

    That’s there. “Utility maximisation” is a standard assumption in neoclassical economics – ie, normal economics. Of course Spud rails against it but then that’s just Spud.

    When we apply it to politics (and bureaucracy) then that same concept is called “public choice economics”. And Spud rails against it but then Spud.

    Your point is, in fact, a founding assumption of standard modern microeconomics.

  29. No, I think there is an important point in that statement that economics ignores The personal & the perceived. All economic choices boil down to individual’s choices, because we are individuals. So you can’t just accept standard assumptions as being true. Theory is not the same as reality. It is the chaos that underlies economics, that makes economic predictions so unreliable. You cannot know why people are making their choices & thus what choices they’ll make.
    Why I mentioned the bait & switch tactic. A way of forcing people to make a choice against their economic interests.

  30. BiS

    Bait and Switch is just a way of turning real goods into Veblen goods. You’ve managed to con the punter into paying more because they feel better/validated by the more expensive purchase they’ve made, no matter that they haven’t bought more utility. If one of the functions of economic activity is to make people feel better about themselves, no matter how fleetingly, then they’ve made an economic choice in their (manipulated) perceived self-interest.

    Look at the whole beauty industry.

  31. No it, Norman. With the bait & switch there are two stages of any transaction. The expectation of the result of the transaction & the revealed result of the transaction. And people tend to be so psychologically wedded to the expectation of the transaction they will go ahead with it even after it’s been revealed as something they wouldn’t have accepted as an outcome at the start. And the art of the B&S is how far you can depart from the expectation with them still transacting. Speed & finesse.
    Are you talking about upselling? Different thing.

  32. BiS

    I’m not sure I see the difference. All the way through you’re persuading the punter that going ahead is in their interest and manipulating them so that they continue to perceive it that way until the sale completes. Rational utility and objective self-interest doesn’t come into it.

    Why else would an ordinary, plain bird go into a beauty parlour and come out looking like Dame Edna? She thinks she’s the dog’s bollocks; blokes run a mile. Well, perhaps some don’t.

    Why the fuck do women get those appalling fingernails? It’s beyond my comprehension. And as for Instagram filler and botox, it makes ’em all look like Lady Penelope.

  33. Norman. You’re describing things where the expectation continues past the transaction. The nature of the goods or service changes, in their opinion, after they’ve bought it. Normal retailing experience. The thing about the bait & switch is the expectation changes before the transaction. The buyer is actually buying something that they wouldn’t have bought otherwise under the terms of the transaction.
    I wholeheartedly agree with your opinions on women’s beauty treatments. They fall in line with the definition of insanity “repeatedly doing the same thing & expecting a different outcome”. Opposite me is a branch of Primor carries hundreds of bottles, jars & tubes, some of them at extraordinary prices. They all contain an oil emulsified in water. You could get the same result putting cooking oil & water in a blender Yet I have great difficulty prising my companion here away from them. I once declined to buy a woman a bottle of transparent liquid with fragments of real gold leaf floating around in it* for over 40€. My guess, under a cent’s worth. You can buy whole sheets of the stuff for 3 quid at an art supplier.(see that Bey geezer’s restaurant). And pure gold is practically inert. so what effect’s it going to have? In some areas, women are insane. But not as insane as a balding, fat geezer thinking he looks good in a football shirt.

    *Curiously, I have a bottle of Blue Nun wine here with gold leaf floating in it, someone gifted me. Gilded or not, I wouldn’t drink Blue Nun if you paid me. Vile stuff. But at least it must have an alcohol content.

  34. Why the fuck do women get those appalling fingernails? It’s beyond my comprehension. And as for Instagram filler and botox, it makes ’em all look like Lady Penelope.
    When you grow up you may learn that women dress, hairstyle, manicure & slap-up primarily to impress other women. Understanding that is one of the secrets of life.

  35. Maybe the fat, balding geezer believes his football shirt impresses other men. Who knows? It certainly doesn’t impress women.

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