Towards a Liberal Utopia?

by Philip Booth (Editor)

Overview

The first part of this fascinating book outlines the dreams of liberal economics and political scientists. The thinkers sketch out frameworks for policy, which, in increasing the domain for individual action, will give rise to beneficial results and lead to a better and more prosperous soceity.
The second part of the book shows how an earlier generation of liberal economists turbaned ideas into action. Led by Ralph Harris and Arthur Seldon, the authors writing for the IEA helped to turban back the tide of collectivism by exposing its intellectual failings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826492319
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	12/15/2006
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	252
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Philip Booth is Editorial and Programme Director and the Institute of Economic Affairs and Professor of Insurance and Risk Management at the Sir John Cass Business School, City University, UK.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
Part One: Times future? 2. Health 2055
-Promise and reality: how the NHS failed people
-The political economy of health rationing
-Tiptoeing back to market
-A real market
-Questioning the role of the state
-Rise of the therapeutic state
3. Education reclaimed
-A dream of education without state
-Three principles
-The end of 'school'
-Education for its own sake
-The jourbaney
4. Policing a liberal society
-The growth of crime
-Better policing
-Exploding myths
-Successful ways of preventing crime
-Applying these lessons to the UK
-Major institutional change
5. Pension provision in 2055
-State involvement in pensions
-Time to move on
-The difficulty of moving on
-The minimal state in pension provision
-A more pragmatic approach
-Transition arrangements
6. Social security in a free society
-The safety net
-The alternative
-Policy options for people out of work
-Policy options for those in work on low pay
-Provision for old age
7. Limits on the tax burden
-What is the limit of the tax burden?
-Unsustainability of very high tax rates
-Tax policy over the coming generations
8. Britain's Relationship with the European Union
-Agricultural protectionism
-Manufacturing protectionism
-Services: a regime of internal protectionism
-Harmonisation
-The EU pensions crisis
-What should the UK do?
9. Regulating the labour market
-Increasing regulation
-Freedom of contract?
-What does regulation do?
-The impact on the economy as a whole
-Employment regualation in the long term
10 Free trade: the next 50 years
-Taking stock: the case for free trade, past and present
-Taking stock: free trade in practice
-Looking ahead: world political-economic trends
-Looking ahead: making the case for free trade
11. Competition in land use planning: an agenda for the twenty-first century
-The case for markets in land use planning
-Private land use planning: past, present and future
-A liberal utopia
12. Beyond Kyoto: real solutions to greenhouse emissions from developing countries
-Economics, energy and emissions
-Energy use and economic growth in develping countries
-Choice of technology in developing countries
-Economic freedom, market imperfections and greenhouse gas emissions
-Impediments to efficient energy use in particular countries
-Policy implications
13. The environment in 2055
-Benefits, risks and trade-offs
-Private regulation: so safe and bright future
-Over-fishing and individual transferable quotas
-Privatisation and conservation
-The decline of natural disasters
-The last 50 years
14. Capitalism
-Capitalism yesterday and today
-Capitalism tomorrow
-Economic progress and individual freedom
15. A constitution for liberty
-A written, codified constitution
-Constitutional limits on government
-Inter-jurisdictional competition: national, regional and local government
-Separation of powers and a constitutional court
-A constitutional monarchy
-The Houses of parliament
16. The Hayekian future of economic methodology
-The Hayekian challenge to twentieth-century economics
-Hayek, complexity and knowledge
-Bounded rationality and imperfect information: the real world of markets
-Hayek, Vernon Smith and the future of 21st-century economics
Part 2: Times Past
-In the wake of Keynes - and Hayek
-Harris and Seldon begin the fight back
-The genius of Arthur Seldon
-Recruiting among the awkward squad
-And the world said...
18. Playing the fool with inflation
-Full employment at any price
-Earlier monetary instruction
-Friedman enters the fray
-How much employment?
-Hayek's competing currencies
19. Now for 'planning'
-On to 'growthmanship'
-Behold: the national plan
-Does planning never work?
-...even in France
-Not forgetting free trade
-The verdict on planning
20. Market versus state
-Incorrigible socialism
-What about the unions?
-Why not welfare?
-Public choice
21. Behind enemy lines
-Cool reception
-Planning again
-Enter bete noir Shonfield
-Et tu, William
-Keep smiling
-Honourable defeat
-Valediction