Wednesday, April 25th, 2007
EUROPEAN INSTITUTES SWEEP ATLAS'S 2007 SIR ANTONY FISHER INTERNATIONAL MEMORIAL AWARDS
Philadelphia, PA, April 25, 2007 – The Atlas Economic Research Foundation is pleased to announce that The TaxPayers’ Alliance, Institute of Economic Affairs, and the Polish Society of Economists are the winners of the 2007 Sir Antony Fisher International Memorial Awards for think tank publications that have made the greatest contribution to public understanding of the free society.
The TaxPayers’ Alliance:
The Bumper Book of Government Waste
by Matthew Elliott and Lee Rotheram
Harriman House Publishing, Hampshire, United Kingdom, 2006
Winner in the $10,000 “Young Institute” Category
The Bumper Book of Government Waste, co-authored by Matthew Elliott and Lee Rotheram, has sold nearly 20,000 copies to date. While poking fun at the government for wasting taxpayers’ money, the book makes a convincing case for lower taxes. In Britain, calls for tax cuts are invariably met with the response that they would lead to fewer teachers, doctors and nurses. By showing that money is wasted, the strength of this response is undermined, making it easier to call for lower taxes. The Bumper Book received widespread coverage in UK national newspapers, such as The Times and The Sun. The book, as noted by one of the Fisher Awards judges, is “Attractive to the educated, and uneducated, layman… You can scarcely write a more congenial book than this about this subject.” As the winner in the Young Institutes Award category of the 2007 Fisher Awards, the TaxPayers’ Alliance receives a $10,000 prize.
Institute of Economic Affairs:
The Welfare State We’re In
by James Bartholomew
Politico’s Publishing, London, United Kingdom, 2006
Winner in the $5,000 “Established Institute” Category
James Bartholomew, author of the Welfare State We’re In, traces the history of the welfare state back to its roots. In doing so, he is able to provide compelling evidence that services that currently provided by the government, were provided through the private means before the state stepped in. The author is able to conclude that the condition of the poor would be much better if the welfare state had never existed. One Fisher Award judge comments, “He tackles state welfare head-on, rightly emphasizing the deleterious effects that such ‘welfare’ has on its recipients. He also makes a compelling case that private civil-society efforts will fulfill those tasks that every decent person believes should be fulfilled but do so in ways that are, in fact, much more beneficial than is state-provided funds for welfare recipients.” Bartholomew also shows that the development of the welfare state has also led to increased crime, delinquency, anti-social behavior and family breakdown. The book has made an enormous press impact, including being serialized in the Daily Mail, and on BBC radio and television news programs. As the winner in the Established Institute category of the 2007 Fisher Awards, the Institute of Economic Affairs receives a $5,000 prize.
Polish Society of Economists: Which Way to Wealth Creation?
Winner in the $2,000 “Innovative Project” Category
The Polish Society of Economists (TEP), an association of free market-oriented economists, won the Innovative Project category’s $2000 prize for its “Which Way to Wealth Creation?” project. This project started with the dissemination of free market ideas to address important economic issues on opinion editorial pages of regional dailies. TEP was able to negotiate successfully with the regional dailies’ editors to publish all the articles, written by some of Poland’s leading economists and journalists, in a series that addresses the spirit of free enterprise. Since 2003, TEP has been able to reach over 2 million readers with each article. In 2006, TEP turned these educational pieces into a book titled,
The Economy Without a Supervisor,
published by Wolters-Kluwer, a distinguished international publisher of academic works. A Fisher Award judge comments that “One of the interesting innovations and features of this project is the wide use, by the book’s editor and authors, of an agreement with several regional dailies in the country, following which agreement the dailies were being regularly provided, at no cost, with short essays promoting free-market ideas.”
The Atlas Economic Research Foundation has been supporting independent think tanks that support the free society for more than 25 years. Atlas currently works with more than 250 think tanks in 80 countries. More than half of these organizations were assisted in their formative years by Atlas through financial support or advisory services. The Sir Antony Fisher International Memorial Awards were named in honor of Atlas’s founder, Sir Antony Fisher. A independent panel of prestigious judges selected the winning publications. For more information about this year’s winners, please contact Atlas at 703-934-6969.