Guest Opinions.
Independent commentary on UK policy and public finance, contributed by guest authors. Editorially curated. Views are the author’s own.
GBTT publishes guest opinion to widen the debate around tax, spending, housing, welfare and public finance. Authors are selected on the basis of expertise and the quality of argument rather than alignment with the GBTT editorial line. Where a guest piece diverges from GBTT’s own published position, the piece carries an editorial note to that effect. Every figure cited is sourced and every claim is referenced.
Published files
2 pieces · newest firstThe Schoolroom and the Guillotine
Britain runs a single education market. A state monopolist supplies 93% of it, allocates pupils by postcode, suppresses prices, and calls the residue “free”. The fee-paying sector is not the cause of the maintained sector’s failures — it is the predictable response of any market in which the dominant supplier confiscates the means to provide its product. The humanitarian who proposes to redistribute the seven percent has revealed that he believes in choice for himself and allocation for everyone else, and calls this equality. The remedy is to attach the money to the child.
The Scarcity Machine
A social home that costs £200,000 to build is carried at just £85,000 on the RSL balance sheet the moment the keys turn — against an open-market value of £275,000. The £190,000 gap between market value and balance-sheet value is locked by a tenure restriction with no economic justification beyond institutional inertia. We have mistaken managing scarcity for solving it. Here’s what an abundance engine looks like instead.