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Counter-intuitive argument of the year goes to one of the UK’s funkiest economists – Tim Harford – who claims that the pure miserliness of Dickens’ character Scrooge is actually of benefit to greater mankind. By not spending his money on goods and services, he leaves more of those goods and services for everyone else to enjoy. “There is nobody more generous than the miser — the man who could deplete the world’s resources but chooses not to.”

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