The world’s poor deserve better than another utopia designed for them by the globalist intelligentsia. They deserve cheap energy, open markets, secure property rights, and the freedom to industrialise on terms they choose for themselves. That is what worked in East Asia. It is what will work in South Asia, Africa and Latin America. And…
Piketty’s Eco-Marxist Utopia: Why Degrowth and Global Redistribution Will Trap the Poor in Poverty
Piketty’s Eco-Marxist Utopia: Why Degrowth and Global Redistribution Will Trap the Poor in Poverty
13 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, development economics, econometerics, economic growth, economic history, economics of climate change, economics of regulation, energy economics, environmental economics, environmentalism, fiscal policy, global warming, human capital, income redistribution, industrial organisation, international economics, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, Public Choice, public economics Tags: climate activists, climate alarmism, regressive left
Dr Ruth—Holocaust Survivor, Sex Therapist and Sniper
13 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics of education
Ruth Westheimer (June 4, 1928 – July 12, 2024), widely known as Dr. Ruth, was an American sex therapist, media personality, and author. The New York Times described her as a “Sorbonne-trained psychologist who became a cultural icon in the 1980s,” noting that she “ushered in a new age of freer, franker talk about sex […]
Dr Ruth—Holocaust Survivor, Sex Therapist and Sniper
Why Everything Feels More Expensive (hedonic adaptation)
12 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic growth, economic history, economics of media and culture, macroeconomics
Middle-class Americans have more income than they did 50 years ago, but the squeeze is realBy Roland Fryer. He is a professor of economics at Harvard. Excerpts: “Before indicting the economy, consider what 50 years of growth actually delivered. The car in your driveway is far less likely to kill you than its 1975 counterpart—traffic fatalities…
Why Everything Feels More Expensive (hedonic adaptation)
A weird way of slicing the stats
12 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, econometerics, economic history, economics of education, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice
Ages ago I supervised a superb Honours thesis, which turned into a Masters, looking at the lesbian wage premium. It showed up regularly in the US data: homosexual women earned more than heterosexual women – the opposite of the pattern that obtains for men. I was curious whether the difference could in part be due to…
A weird way of slicing the stats
Professors Behind the California Wealth Tax Threaten Possible Legal Action Against Critic
11 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in income redistribution, law and economics, politics - USA, Public Choice, public economics Tags: taxation and entrepreneurship, taxation and investment
There is an interesting controversy brewing in California after four California university professors threatened a political candidate, Richard Lucas, for…
Professors Behind the California Wealth Tax Threaten Possible Legal Action Against Critic
How well does current AI find errors in economics papers?
10 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
Can artificial intelligence (AI) refute economic theory? I document experiments in which I asked several AI models (Gemini, Refine, Claude, and ChatGPT) to check the correctness of four published papers in economic theory, each containing an error that I helped identify or correct. ChatGPT Pro performed best, occasionally constructing counterexamples and corrected proofs, while other…
How well does current AI find errors in economics papers?
The Real Story of the D-Day Weather Forecast
10 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in defence economics, movies, war and peace Tags: D-Day, World War
Weather prediction was a primitive, subjective affair at that time. There were no numerical weather prediction models, little understanding of jet streams and upper-level weather features, and an acute lack of observations, particularly over the ocean. The post The Real Story of the D-Day Weather Forecast appeared first on Watts Up With That?.
The Real Story of the D-Day Weather Forecast
The population bust is with us
10 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in labour economics, labour supply, population economics Tags: ageing society, population bust
Superannuation affordability options
09 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in economic growth, fiscal policy, income redistribution, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice, public economics Tags: ageing society, economics of immigration, population bust
Lyric Waiwiri-Smith at The Spinoff asked me what I thought the options might be for dealing with rising superannuation costs. Her story’s here, along with comment from Max Rashbrooke and Shamubeel Eaqub. My most-preferred option is ongoing increases in immigration rates, coupled with shifting to CPI-indexation of super benefits and indexing the age of eligibility to healthy…
Superannuation affordability options
Hayekian Literary Criticism
09 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in economics of education, Marxist economics, movies, television
In economics, Marx is relegated to the history of thought as his ideas were an economic dead end and a political disaster. Yet Marx-influenced literary criticism is a dominant mode of analysis in nearly every English department in the country. It’s not that the English professors are all Marxists, it’s that even the non-Marxists reach…
Hayekian Literary Criticism
Nazi camp administration-Documenting the Holocaust.
09 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in defence economics, economics of crime, law and economics, war and peace Tags: Nazi Germany, The Holocaust, World War II
The one thing that always puzzled me is why did the Nazi’s insist in having such a thorough administration? If you are planning to eradicate millions, why document it? I just don’t understand the psyche of it. Of course the Nazi’s didn’t see “the final solution” as a crime but only a method of getting […]
Nazi camp administration-Documenting the Holocaust.
A superb piece: Sam Harris explains why, though he has criticisms of Israel, he won’t debate Israel’s critics
08 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in defence economics, economics of crime, International law, law and economics, laws of war, war and peace Tags: Gaza Strip, Israel, Middle-East politics, regressive left, war against terror
I always find Sam Harris’s writings absorbing, but in today’s piece he’s really hit his stride, telling us why, despite his own criticisms of Israel, he won’t debate those people—he calls them “scholars, grifters, and moral lunatics”—who demonize Israel as not only morally worse than its enemies, but the worst country in the world. In…
A superb piece: Sam Harris explains why, though he has criticisms of Israel, he won’t debate Israel’s critics
Who gets in on Labour’s List?
08 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in politics - New Zealand Tags: 2026 general election
Labour have released their party list. People want to know who is likely to get in as a List MP. First how many overall seats will they get? On the average of the public polls it is 39. Then it is how many electorates will they win? Well purely on applying the current party vote…
Who gets in on Labour’s List?
U.S. colonies on the Moon and Mars are a waste of money: a guest post
08 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in economic history, transport economics Tags: Mars, moon, space
From PCC(E): After watching the explosion of Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket last week, a rocket that is designed to help create the first human colony on the Moon, I thought to myself, “What is all this mishigass? Why do we need a human colony on the Moon? What will it tell us that unmanned…
U.S. colonies on the Moon and Mars are a waste of money: a guest post
Artificial Intelligence, Natural Ignorance
07 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in economics of information, economics of media and culture, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, financial economics, history of economic thought, industrial organisation, market efficiency, politics - USA, regulation, survivor principle Tags: creative destruction
Everyone in Washington seems to agree that artificial intelligence must be governed. The only real dispute is who gets the steering wheel. Congress? Federal agencies? State legislatures? Some newly minted task force with a long acronym and a taste for reporting requirements? That debate is already too narrow. President Donald Trump’s recent executive order on…
Artificial Intelligence, Natural Ignorance
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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