James Bartholomew > Quotes

“So the economic benefit of higher education in arts subjects appears to be nil. In fact, it is a luxury in the sense that it costs money rather than yielding it. It is a luxury which is paid for out of general taxation, including taxation of the poor.”
― James Bartholomew, The Welfare State We're In

“The incidence of teenage mothering among the elite turns out to be tiny. But among the girls whose fathers are unskilled workers, 23 per cent became teenage mothers. The lowest socio-economic classes are eleven times more likely to have babies in their teenage years – normally outside marriage.”
― James Bartholomew, The Welfare State We're In

“His calculation showed that the NHS employs more than four times as many managers and support staff per nurse than a private hospital.”
― James Bartholomew, The Welfare State We're In

“Why should anyone expect that sending a person to a second-rate university to think about the media or philosophy will increase economic growth? It is surely more likely to put into their heads thoughts of a non-economic sort which could actually divert them from making an economic contribution of any substance. Even if some of them are eventually well paid, how useful are they? As the Daily Mail columnist Linda Lee-Potter put it, ‘I have often been in urgent need of a plumber. I have never desperately thumbed through the Yellow Pages trying to find a sociologist.”
― James Bartholomew, The Welfare State We're In

“The Collectivist State Is a Prig and a Bandit; It may be my Fate, But I’m damned if I’ll stand it.’469 G. K. Chesterton”
― James Bartholomew, The Welfare State We're In

“The unemployed themselves suffer most from unemployment. But the rest of us are affected too. We pay for the benefits, the hospitalisation of those who become unwell, the policing. We may become victims of the crimes and we receive the everyday incivility.”
― James Bartholomew, The Welfare State We're In

“In 1931 there were three crimes a year for every police officer. In 2001 there were 44.”
― James Bartholomew, The Welfare State We're In

“The OECD similarly looked at many countries to establish the relationship between tax and growth. It came to the conclusion that for every 1 per cent of a country’s economic output that is taken by tax, the output per person falls by 0.6 to 0.7 per cent.”
― James Bartholomew, The Welfare State We're In