Increase Tax on Tobacco

It has been published today that a study by Cancer ResearchUK which looked at all the cancer patients diagnosed in 2010, has found that 43% of tumours are preventable by avoiding unhealthy lifestyle choices.  The biggest cause of preventable cancer cases: tobacco. Smoking causes 1 in 5 cancer cases every year and is to blame for 9 in 10 cases of lung cancer. As well as this, smoking is also a bigger cause of liver cancer than alcohol. 

In 2008, the NHS spent over £5bn on cancer diagnosis and treatment including screening, drugs, surgery, however it is estimated the actual cost to the government is closer to £18bn when taking into account the loss of productivity and hospice costs. So, hypothetically, if we could eliminate all cancer caused by tobacco, the NHS could save up to £1bn a year and in total, the government could save up to £3.6bn.

Clearly, there are great advantages to be had in reducing the number of people smoking, in both lives saved and the reduction in the amount the government would have to spend on cancer patients and it’s no surprise the government has run campaigns to reduce smoking in the past. In 2003, new EU regulations meant that cigarette packets had to carry either the warning ‘smoking kills’ or ‘smoking seriously harms you and others around you’ on one side which had to cover at least 30% of the pack. On the other side, an additional warning had to be displayed covering over 40% of the pack, e.g. ‘Smoking clogs the arteries and causes heart attacks and strokes.’ As these had little effect on the number of cigarettes sold, the government introduced in 2008 legislation which meant that cigarette packets had to display a picture warning on the reverse, however, again, this has had little impact.

My solution: increase tax on tobacco. In March 2010, the duty oncigarettes in the UK was 24 per cent of the retail price plus £119.03 perthousand cigarettes and this duty was set to increase by 2% above RPI everyyear. This rate of tax is one of the highest in the world for tobacco products but I believe it could be increased further. One of the main reasons the government will never consider banning smoking and tobacco products altogether is that it produces a lot of revenue. Therefore, I propose that we squeeze every last bit of money out of the tobacco industry especially at this current time when the government is desperate to reduce the budget deficit in this country.

Tobacco products are very price inelastic, meaning that a big increase in price will produce only a small increase in sales. Therefore, an increase in tax will almost certainly guarantee an increase in income for the government. The Tobacco Manufacturers Association claims that the UK government made over £9bn from excise duty on tobacco in the 2010-2011 tax year.   Let’s assume for now that cigarettes are perfectly inelastic. If we increase the excise duty by 50%, to 36% of the retail price - this would increase the price of a 20 pack of Windsor cigarettes from £5.63 to about £6.30 – the government would gain an extra £4.5bn in tax.  This would almost pay for all of the NHS diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

Now, obviously in reality, no product is perfectly inelastic so the extra tax revenue would not be this high as some people would stop buying cigarettes, or at least cut down.  However, this would mean a decrease in cancer costs for the NHS. I would say that this is a win-win situation for the government – as long as they don’t increase tax too far - as the most likely outcome of an increase in excise duty would be an increase in tax revenue coupled with a decrease in people needing treatment for cancer.

The Opinionated Genius

Education Overhaul: Private Schools

It was announced this morning that plans to force private schools to give free places to poor pupils were being ‘torn up’ after a court ruling which ordered the Charity Commission to scrap its ‘controversial’ guidance.  Although I believe the guidance was a step in the right direction based on the right principles, I don’t think it was ever going to be viable and I am not surprised that the ISC (Independent Schools Council) managed to overturn it. However, I think something has to be done about private schools and if I was Michael Gove, I would be planning a complete overhaul of how the education system works in the UK.

This post is just going to focus on private schools(note: I will be using independent and private interchangeably throughout this post), but I plan to return to the rest of the education system in the near future, including posts on faith and single-sex schools, universities and a conclusion in which I outline my solution to the problems I uncover.

Now, here’s the problem I have with private schools; instead of allowing the best to reach the top, they keep the richest at the top. 35% of the MPs currently sitting in parliament were privately educated. This is over 1 in 3, and although this does not sound like a massive figure as an individual statistic, when you consider that only 18% of British sixth formers study for their A-Levels at independent schools, you can see the advantage that comes from being privately educated. If you focus into the very top of government, we can see that our current Prime Minister, Deputy PM, and Chancellor of the Exchequer all went to independent schools, but not only this, they actually paid more per year for their education than the average salary in the UK. Both Cameron and Osborne attended Eton College, where the fee for the academic year 2010-2011 was just under £30,000.

It’s not just MPs where private education can give you a massive head start in life. 84% of senior judges in England and Wales were privately educated and 54% of journalism jobs are taken by former private school pupils. The Sutton Trust found that 53% of the top 500 leading figures in the UK in politics, law, medicine, business and journalism were educated at independent, fee-paying schools even though only 7% of school-age children are educated privately.

Like many things in life, there is a vicious circle involved here because the rich send their children to private schools, their children get to the top of their respective area, they become rich and they send their children to private school etc. etc. Meanwhile, the poor continue to be poorly educated by the state and despite in many cases having the ability, they never become rich enough to be able to get their own families to independent schools.

It is no wonder with the education system in place in this country that Britain has the fastest growing gap between rich and poor in any developed country.

Step 1: Abolish Independent Schools.

Step 2: I will explore in the next couple of weeks!

Morning-After Pill Available For Free Over Christmas

The government have announced today that the morning-after pill will be available to women for free over the Christmas period – and I for one believe this is a very good decision.  As I posted the other day, teenage pregnancy in the UK is very high (see: http://opinionatedgenius.blogspot.com/2011/12/birth-control.html), and that’s just teens. The total number of abortions carried out last year (2010) was 189,574, so clearly the problem of unwanted pregnancies is more widespread than just teenagers.

The anti-abortion group, Life are obviously strongly opposed to the move, however I would have to argue that the Government can not afford any unwanted babies at the current moment in time, and the morning-after pill is also a much cheaper alternative to other methods of abortion that the government provides on the NHS.

I would also argue that (although this goes further into the ethical debate of abortion which I may come back to in the future) that aborting an embryo with the morning-after pill is less likely to be considered a termination of life than the aborting of a foetus which can be done legally up until 24 weeks into the pregnancy - at which stage it would be able to survive outside of the womb in most cases.

Population Crisis - I May Have The Answer

The population of planet Earth was estimated to have reached 7 billion on the 31st October 2011. That was 5 weeks ago today. The population is estimated to have grown since then by over 7.2 million. By 2027, the UN predicts that there will be 8 billion humans living on the Earth and by 2050, there will be 9 billion. This, I believe, is completely unsustainable.

Every one of these people needs food, clean water, shelter and energy, but how much more of this can we provide? If we look at the current situation, we can see that the answer is: not much. The United Nations estimated in 2009 that there were roughly 1 billion people in the world who were chronically malnourished and about the same amount do not have access to safe drinking water.

As more people join the planet, more shelter is going to be needed. This means more land is going to be covered, and so there will be less suitable land to grow crops, and rear cattle etc. There is another reason why there is going to be less land to grow food though: global warming. Not only do increasing temperature adversely affect crops in regions where summer heat already limits production, but as the ice caps melt and the seas rise, potential food-growing land is being lost to the ocean.

This brings us nicely onto energy. It's estimated that over 80% of the world's energy comes from fossil fuels - this is problematic for two major reasons. Firstly, fossil fuels appear to be running out. With oil and natural gas both expected to effectively run out within 50 years, coal will be the only fossil fuel left for us. Coal provides us with about 27% of the world's energy at the moment and you would have to assume that once the natural gas and oil have gone, the use of coal will shoot up. Unfortunately, coal is (usually) the least clean to burn and so this will surely send the world over the edge in terms of global warming. This is problem 2. With more people on the planet, more energy is going to be used, meaning more fossil fuels burnt, meaning the global warming process is sped up, meaning even less food is available to the world's increasing population.

It's a vicious cycle and one that needs to be stopped before it's too late. However, at the moment, governments are doing very little to stop the population growth that's getting massively out of hand. In fact, the only government that's had any success in slowing their population growth is China with their one child policy. Official figures say that they've stopped 400 million births in the 33 years it's been running. Although their policy has caused problems mainly due to their culture having a son preference, the policy has succeeded in its primary purpose - to slow population growth.

Now, I'm not suggesting the whole world needs to adopt a one child policy, this would in fact be just as unhealthy for the global society as the current levels of population growth - see the problems that China has had with their 'Little Emperors'. However I am suggesting the whole world adopts a two child policy. This would slow down growth as the current fertility rate for women in the world is 2.34, so this would be reduced and logically, the population would have to eventually peak. Although it would continue to increase whilst the current trend of increasing life expectancy remained, this can surely not continue forever.

The policy could be put in place in a number of ways. In China, each couple (for whom the rule applies) can only have one child. However, I have to question whether this would work in a society where people can have children outside of marriage or formal partnership and where divorce and remarriage is common. The alternative therefore is to limit each woman to two children.

This does not only have the benefit of slowing population growth, there could be financial benefits involved for the government and other side effects. Firstly, I propose that women who have not used their quota, could receive a cash reward from the government for being castrated. The government could then sell this quota to couples wanting extra children for an increased fee. This policy would also not only reduce the number of children being put up for adoption, but it would increase the levels of adoption as couples who want more children but who could not afford to pay for the extra quota would have to turn to adoption. Obviously, there would be an exception for the rule in the case of a woman having multiple babies simultaneously.

The benefits of this policy would be global as it would help prevent the problems with food, water and energy shortages I discussed earlier from getting worse as well as providing an economic benefit to world governments. Now, we just need to get it implemented as soon as possible, before it's too late.

The Opinionated Genius
Thinking like an economist and saving the world since 2nd December 2011.

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Birth Control

50 years ago, a pill that would have a massive impact on society became available to the general public on the NHS. The contraceptive pill changed attitudes towards women, relationships and family planning and thus was a major boost for women's rights in the UK with women being able to take control over when they had a child. This meant they could plan this around a career and would not have to sacrifice their job to start a family.

However, it is not women's rights that I am concerned with in this post, but the fact that the rate of teenage pregnancy in this country is still horrendously high. In 2009, 38.3 girls (aged between 15 and 17) in every 1000 became pregnant - 38,259 girls in total. Although, almost 50% of these were aborted, this still led to over 19,500 babies being born to teenage mothers.

There is of course a chance that some of these pregnancies were planned, but I imagine very few, and there is also a chance that many, or at least some, of these mothers will try very hard to bring up and their baby well and even succeed. However, a study carried out in the US found that babies born to teenage mothers are at risk of long-term problems in many major areas of life, including school failure, poverty, and physical or mental illness. There is also an increased chance of babies born to teenage mothers (and fathers) growing up and becoming pregnant in their teens as well, setting off a chain reaction.

Whilst trying not to generalise too much, there is a good chance that a lot of these families are going to cause a great strain on the resources of the government. As the study found that babies born to teenage mothers are often subject to school failure and poverty, it is reasonable to suggest that them and their potential families are going to be living off the state. I've mentioned it before, and I'm sure I'll mention it many times in the future, but the government in the UK has a massive budget deficit, and one of the biggest reasons for this is that there are too many people living off the state and not contributing to society.

This is where the contraceptive pill, celebrating its 50th anniversary, comes in. The pill which has already done so much for society, I think, could do so much more. The government is keen on cutting teen pregnancy in the UK, and the answer is: make the contraceptive pill even more available than it is now. It should be offered to every girl at age 16 (maybe even 15 although whether this might promote underage sex is a different matter), or maybe even provided regardless of whether it is wanted. This would remove any social stigma with taking the pill and I believe many more young girls would take it if they did not have to take the initiative to put themselves on the pill.

There is another possible benefit of encouraging more people to take the pill, unrelated to teenage pregnancies. It is believed that women who have taken the pill for between 10 to 15 years reduce their overall risk of cancer - a bonus for the government and the NHS as less cancer patients means less money spent there as well.

The first criticism that I envisage many people will have of this strategy is that it will promote unprotected sex even further as pregnancy is possibly a bigger deterrant for many people than STIs when it comes to sexual congress. Without the risk of pregnancy, condom use may be reduced. What I would say to that is that I would hope that people who already use condoms whenever they have sex would continue to do so and so the STI level should remain pretty constant.

As well as this, the most common long-term effect of STIs is infertility, and in more severe cases, death. So, my theory is that the type of people who do not use condoms will be unable to have kids, and thus this practice will die out with them. Natural selection at its best, and yet another bonus for any government that implements this strategy.

Clarkson's 'Blunder'

So, perennial figure of controversy, Jeremy Clarkson, has done it again. In the past, he has upset lorry drivers, the Royal National Institute for the Blind, and gay rights campaigners to name but a few, but now it is the turn of public sector workers to feel aggrieved after his 'rant' on The One Show.

I say 'rant' because this is exactly what it wasn't. Clarkson was asked for his view on the strike action of the public sector workers on Wednesday 30th November and here is what he said: "I think they (the strikes) have been fantastic. Absolutely. London today has just been empty. Everybody stayed at home, you can whizz about, restaurants are empty. It's also like being back in the 70s. It makes me feel at home somehow."

Now here is the part that has caused the BBC to be inundated with over 21,000 complaints about his comment (read carefully what he says before his 'outrageous' comment): "But we have to balance this though, because this is the BBC. Frankly, I'd have them all shot. I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families. I mean, how dare they go on strike when they have these gilt-edged pensions that are going to be guaranteed while the rest of us have to work for a living?"

His words were clearly meant as a joke and were not his actual opinion. The head of Unison called for Clarkson to be sacked by the BBC and that the union was seeking legal action to see if 'Jezza' could be referred to the police. In my opinion, this is absolutely ridiculous and the head of Unison needs to take a chill pill.

I'm not Jeremy Clarkson's biggest fan, and some of his political views definitely do not match my own, but he can not be sacked for something so tame... especially because the view that many people believed he expressed was not that outrageous at all. The public sector workers have no reason to go on strike. They're in jobs, and they will be getting pensions - they should spare a thought for the 2.62m people out of work in the UK.

The global economy is in a terrible state right now, and the UK has a massive budget deficit that needs to be cut. Many people do not realise that the deficit is so large that even after all the cuts the current coalition government is imposing by 2015, our debt will still be increasing. There is no way the country can sustain so many people running how it is and the only humane solution is to force people to pay more and work longer. If they don't like that, then Clarkson's idea is the next best bet. If the people striking are shot and therefore no longer in the picture, the jobs can go to some of the currently unemployed meaning the government will have a much smaller welfare bill.

The only criticism I would have of this plan is to make their families watch. That's not pleasant at all.