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Please be aware when reading this that the "Institute of Economic Affairs" is absolutely notorious in the UK for it's partisan and extreme libertarian views(at
by jonp888 3y ago
Please be aware when reading this that the "Institute of Economic Affairs" is absolutely notorious in the UK for it's partisan and extreme libertarian views(at least in a British context), whether it be on tax cuts, climate change denial, promotion of gambling or the benefits of Brexit.
It is extremely secretive about who it is funded by, to the point of deliberately losing court cases to avoid having to disclose anything.
Even it's address, 55 Tufton Street is notorious as the home of multiple organisations which promote the same viewpoints, but it is by far the best known.
A brief attempt by Prime Minister Liz Truss to embrace it's economic wisdom by implementing massive tax cuts primarily for the wealthy without any decrease in spending almost crashed the UK economy and ended her term in office after a few weeks.
This doesn't mean everything they write is nonsense, but they most definitely will have started with a predefined conclusion and worked backwards to find a way to justify it.
- veave 3y agoHN is now a place where users warn about points of view being libertarian. The ideological shift has been tremendously real.
- Auracle 3y agoI get your point but it’s always good to know where a bias might be.
- jonp888 3y agoAs I said, there's no need to completely disregard what they say, but readers outside the UK should be aware that some aspects of how the IEA operates are controversial, and though it presents itself as an institution carrying out empirical research, it is in reality a political lobbying group.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoAre British libertarian political views akin to an American ones: tiny government, lack of regulations, social liberalism, and fiscal conservatism? The American libertarianism brand is tainted by the Koch brothers and their CATO institute, a think-tank that put out false IPCC "addendums" in furtherance of denying climate change and promulgation of junk science to support industrial pollution and deregulation. https://whistleblower.org/politicization-of-climate-science/global-warming-denial-machine/cato-institute-counterfeit-u-s-climate-change-impacts-assessment/ https://whistleblower.org/politicization-of-climate-science/...
- ZeroGravitas 3y agoBritish Libertarianism is just an offshoot of the US one, that's where they get their funding and ideas.