Charities
Ralph Harris and his friends at the Institute of Economic Affairs perform a worthy function and, in their own words, "specialise in the study of markets and pricing mechanisms as technical devices for registering preferences and apportioning resources." A new book from them is The Economics of Charity, a series of mainly transatlantic essays on the comparative economics of giving and selling with application to blood donations. Now this is well and good, and interesting reference is made to Richard Titmuss's The Gift Relationship that implied an inherent superiority of the British over the American character and practice in blood donation. However, I cannot recommend this book as there is nowhere a reference to private charitable trusts and the scandalous ease with which they may be founded. There is no reference to their taxfree status and lack of proper policing and enforcement of distribution. Individualism is an IEA objective, and individualism is about controls that will let it work. The tax-free status of private charitable trusts and of their investment income and capital gains is a national ramp of huge proportions. The IEA should start again, and this time publish a work assembling the case for the pan i passu treatment of all investment and commercial income before the law.
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