Category
Freedom
Where personal finance meets politics, history, and the long arc of who actually owns the country.
"Freedom isn't free" is the site's thesis: financial independence is not just a maths problem. Knowing how to invest matters, but so does understanding who controls the rules of the wrapper your money sits in, which way state policy is leaning, and what the historical pattern looks like when governments run out of options.
These pieces are longer, more argumentative, and less how-to than the rest of the site. Some are historical (how debt felled the British Empire, the case for a UK sovereign wealth fund). Some are forward-looking (AI and the labour market, the auto-enrolment story). All of them assume you're the kind of reader who wants to know the political weather as well as the index fund.
47 articles
Showing 1-10
What Is a NEET? The UK Definition and the Real Cost
The state loses £244,000 per NEET. The young person loses up to £300,000. Only one of those numbers gets quoted.
How Is Council Tax Band Calculated? The 1991 Catch
Your council tax band is frozen to a 1991 valuation your home has long outgrown. A Band H house pays just 3x a Band A flat, but it is worth 8x more. Here is how the band maths really works.
UK Income Tax History: How It Ate Your Payslip
In 1900 the UK ran on beer and baccy tax. Income tax was almost a rounding error. Watch how the whole bill quietly moved onto your payslip instead.
Can You Switch Water Supplier? Why the Answer's No
You can't switch your water company. One set of pipes runs to your street and one firm owns it, which is exactly why the bill only ever moves one way. Here's what that monopoly costs you.
Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century Review
Piketty spent years proving one uncomfortable thing: money made from owning grows faster than money made from working. Here is what r > g means for your payslip.
Foreign Aid: How Much the UK Spends and Why
Foreign aid isn't charity. It's the cheapest foreign policy a country can buy: leverage, votes, and the odd signature, priced in pounds. Here's what the UK's billions really purchase, and what gets surrendered when the tap is turned off.
Is the Economy a Zero Sum Game?
The economy is not zero-sum. But housing, active trading and status spending are. The winning move is to stop playing the games where your gain needs someone else's loss.
What Is Financial Nihilism?
Young people aren't reckless for betting on crypto instead of saving. A Chicago paper shows it turns rational once a house is out of reach. The catch is it locks in the loss.
Buy, Borrow, Die: Does It Work in the UK?
The rich don't sell shares, they borrow against them and never pay capital gains. Buy, borrow, die works cleanly in America. In the UK, inheritance tax is waiting.
Machiavelli's Virtue and Fortune: Skill vs Luck
Ten brilliant candidates, one job. The one who wins probably went to university with the boss's sister. Machiavelli knew skill was only ever half the game.