Coppola Comment

I can't stop looking at this table. Mortality rates in England rose between 2011-16 for teenagers and most working-age adults under 50: That's bad enough. But what should give all of us pause is the reason that Public Health England (PHE) gives for rising mortality among young and middle-aged adults: Among people aged 20-44, an increase in mortality rates from accidental poisoning had a negative effect on life expectancy between 2011 and 2016 of -0.06 years in males and -0.11 years in females....  Data from ONS indicate that in this age group, over the whole period from 2011 to 2016, 70% of accidental poisonings were due to drug misuse and 10% were to alcohol. PHE also notes a slight increase in male mortality rates due to cirrhosis, which is in the top 10 causes of death for men. Among women, suicide is playing a slightly larger role: An increase in the female suicide rate in the 20-44 age group also had a small negative effect on life expectancy between 2011 and

A version of this post appeared on Pieria in December 2013.  In my post “ The desert of plenty ”, I described a world in which goods and services are so cheap to produce that less and less capital is required for investment , and so easy to produce that less and less labour is required to produce them. Prices therefore go into freefall and there is a glut of both capital and labour. This is deflation. There are two kinds of deflation. There is the “bad” kind, where asset prices go into a tailspin and banks and businesses fail in droves, bankrupting households and governments and resulting in massive unemployment, poverty and social collapse. America experienced this in the Great Depression and narrowly avoided it in the Great Recession. More recently, at least one European country has felt the effects of this catastrophe. But there is also another kind. This is where falling costs and increasing efficiency of production create a glut of consumer goods and services.

Eugenics has a bad reputation. Even the word "eugenics" is repugnant to many people, associated as it is with atrocities - forced sterilization programmes in America , for example, and of course the horrors of Nazi Germany . We like to see eugenics as discredited pseudo-science that has been consigned to the dust of history. Never again will we treat people as expendable simply because of their inherited characteristics. But ideas that we discard because of their horrible consequences have a way of returning, dressed up in respectable clothing. Eugenic ideas have existed - and been acted upon - since ancient times. The idea of eliminating those who are, or will be, a burden on society because of disability raises hackles now, but in ancient Rome it was regarded as a public duty. The Biblical ban on marriage between close relatives effectively prevented birth defects due to consanguineity - but among the Pharaoahs of ancient Egypt, marriage between very close relatives wa

I'm sitting in a coffee shop opposite Haymarket Station in Edinburgh. Just up the road, the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) is holding its conference. I'm supposed to be there, as I was yesterday and the day before. But I am not at all sure I want to go. The last two days have left a very bitter taste. This conference, grandly entitled "Reawakening", is supposed to be a showcase for the "new economic thinking" of INET's name. I hoped to hear new voices and exciting ideas. At the very least, I expected serious discussion of, inter alia , radical reform of the financial system, digital ledger technology and cryptocurrencies, universal basic income (recently cautiously endorsed by the IMF), wealth taxation (also recently endorsed by the IMF), robots and the future of work. And I looked forward to the contributions not only from the speakers, but from the young, intelligent and highly educated attendees. Not a bit of it. In the last two

Are inheritance taxes unfair? Many people think they are. "Why should I be taxed twice on money I've earned during my lifetime?" they say. This is, of course, a fallacy. Dead people don't pay taxes. Living ones do. So inheritance tax is not double taxation of money the dead person earned while they were still alive. It is taxation of an unearned windfall for the people to whom they leave their assets, usually their children. Other forms of unearned income, such as interest on savings and capital gains, are taxed. Why should someone be taxed on unearned income they receive as a result of investments made from their own earnings, but not on unearned income they receive as a result of investments made from someone else's earnings? That doesn't look very fair, does it? Surely taxing that unearned windfall must be fair.  No. According to the economist Greg Mankiw, taxing inheritance is fundamentally unfair: From my perspective, the estate tax is a

As Henry Tapper puts it , today is WASPI day. Today is the day that "Women Against State Pension Inequality" get the Westminster debate for which they have campaigned. Eh, wait? Wasn't there a debate on this back in early January? Yes, there was . It was a backbench motion proposed by the SNP MP Mhairi Black. It called on the government to re-examine the acceleration of the equalisation of women's and men's pension ages in the 2011 Pensions Act, which added up to 18 months to the state pension age of some women born in the 1950s: That this House, while welcoming the equalisation of the state pension age, is concerned that the acceleration of that equalisation directly discriminates against women born on or after 6 April 1951, leaving women with only a few years to make alternative arrangements, adversely affecting their retirement plans and causing undue hardship; regrets that the Government has failed to address a lifetime of low pay and inequality faced by

There is a widespread belief that the Bank of England’s QE only benefited banks. Promoters of Jeremy Corbyn’s “People’s QE” use the strapline “QE for the people, not for banks”, and describe conventional QE as “bankers’ QE”. So is this true? Did QE primarily benefit banks? The Bank of England’s QE programme did not purchase gilts directly from banks, but from non-banks – pension funds, insurance companies, asset managers, high net worth individuals. However, because the Bank of England does not deal directly with non-banks, banks intermediated QE purchases. Banks bought gilts from investors, and sold those gilts to the Bank of England. Customer deposits increased as a consequence of the banks’ gilt purchases: bank reserves increased as a consequence of the banks’ gilt sales. The end result was a vast increase in both base money M0 (bank reserves) and broad money M1 (customer deposits). Because QE has vastly increased bank reserves, many people are angry that banks have c