Sam Bowman defends CEO pay on BBC 5 Live

Executive Director of the ASI, Sam Bowman, was on BBC 5 Live discussing CEO pay and why they are worth their wages:

One way of checking if salaries are over the top is looking at firm value when they take on a new CEO thats perceived to be good, and if the new CEO comes on and they're paid £5m a year, but the firm value goes up by £50m, then I think thats a sign that the firm has done a really good job, and the new CEO is actually being paid less than they're worth.

Listen to the full interview here (Starts 01:52:35)

Sam Bowman discusses junior doctors contracts on Sunday Politics

Executive Director of the Adam Smith Institute, Sam Bowman, was on the BBC's Sunday Politics discussing the junior doctor contract dispute. He argues that the sticking point ultimately is not to do with patient safety, and is largely just about doctors pay:

If we're talking about how to get the best value for money for people who use the NHS, patients, and taxpayers, then I think the key is to restrict the amount of money we're paying doctors to make sure it doesn't go up any further, because they will go on to earn much more than almost anybody can hope to afford.

Watch the full interview here. (Starts 51:00)

ASI report 'A Garden of One's Own' features in The Times

The ASI's latest report on the Green Belt has featured in The Times. 'A Garden of One's own', by Tom Papworth, advocates building on Green Belt land, potentially on golf courses, in order to alleviate the housing crisis in the UK.

A report by the Adam Smith Institute recommended that more golf courses on protected green land should be sold off. Tom Papworth, the author, said: “We have to choose whether to protect valuable inner-city green space or sacrifice our parks for the sake of low-grade farmland, golf courses and already-developed sites that happen to have once been classified as greenbelt.”

Read the full article here.

Is Facebook’s decision to pay more tax in the UK a victory for the government? | Tim Worstall argues NO in City AM

Senior fellow of the ASI, Tim Worstall, wrote a debate piece for City AM on whether or not Facebook's tax decision is a victory for the government’s diverted profits tax policy.

Facebook overhauls its tax structure but, no, this does not mean that George Osborne’s Google Tax has worked. Facebook is starting to sell to large UK advertising accounts using UK-based and paid salespeople. This constitutes a “permanent establishment” under the usual international tax laws and the profits from this activity will be taxable in 2017, when Facebook starts doing this.

Read the full article here.