Why a Martian would never manufacture in Britain

The West's economic problems are caused almost entirely by the fact that we tax everything the wrong way round.

I had lunch with a long-time MoneyWeek reader this week. He is convinced that the problems of Western economies are caused almost entirely by the fact that we tax everything the wrong way around.

To illustrate this he told me his Martian story. It goes like this. There was once a Martian manufacturer who made exceptionally good sweets he was solar-system famous for his special space-dust recipe. He also knew how much we Earthlings like candy. So with an eye to cleaning up in the Earth market, he landed in the UK countryside to look for a manufacturing site. He went to an estate agent and asked to be shown a suitable 20-acre site stipulating that it must be as cheap as possible.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.