Utopia, you are standing in it!

[…] Without the development of new pragmatic policies and a forceful defence of a cheap energy strategy in face of green opposition, many governments will lack the will to free themselves from the green shackles that are hindering technological progress and economic advance.  Even so, much of the green ballast that is holding Europe back will have to be thrown overboard if Europe wants to keep up with rest of the world.

Just as socialist central planning failed miserably before it was replaced by free market economies, green central planning will have to be discarded before Europe will be able to see a return to economic growth and technological optimism.

Read it all … a lesson for Australia too.

UPDATE from Greenie Watch: Britain ‘faces energy crisis unless ministers abandon green policies’

Britain must abandon its bias towards green policies or face an energy crisis, a key parliamentary adviser has…

One of these energy sources produces a lot more energy than the other, is much more reliable  and is much less damaging to the environment. Which one is it?

Haven’t we got rid of this extravagent spending yet? Only ‘the Green Blob’ support this agenda.

Rich Kozlovich calls it Green Treason. […]The green movement’s foundation is firmly rooted with the nature worshipping religion of the Druids in the ancient dark mist covered forests of Germania.  As Gary Jason pointed out in his article, “Death by Environmentalism”, “I would suggest that there is a major strain of pagan or secularist religion, Gaea worship, that informs the movement. This strain of thought, a weird sort of neo-Romantic pantheistic nature cult, has been prevalent since Rousseau in the Enlightenment era, but it exploded throughout the culture in the 1960s. Not all environmentalists share this worldview, but it is the one that drives the movement. And it is one that often downplays the value of people — devalues them and, indeed, de-animates them. That is a topic I would love to see…

Since I’m a big advocate of the Laffer Curve, that means I favor dynamic scoring. This is the common-sense observation that you can’t figure out the effect of tax changes on revenue without first estimating the impact on taxable income.

And I’ve shared some very persuasive data and analysis in favor of the Laffer Curve and dynamic scoring.

The huge increase in taxes paid by upper-income taxpayers after Reagan slashed the top income tax rate.

The fact that the overwhelming majority of CPAs believe in significant feedback effects.

Even left-wing economists admit that you lose revenue if tax rates get too high.

International bureaucracies even admit that there are “Laffer Curve” limits that make some tax hikes self-defeating.

Notwithstanding all this evidence, we have a system in Washington that is based on static scoring, which simplistically assumes a linear relationship between tax rates and tax revenue.

The Joint Committee…

A superb video explores the evolutionary origins of kindness and sympathy:

by Judith Curry

A few things that caught my eye this past week:

Peggy Noonan has a wonderful piece in today’s Wall Street Journal. It concludes with a dream:

A closing note: I always thought, life often being unfair, that Fidel Castro would die the death of a happy monster, old, in bed, a cigar jutting out from the pillows, a brandy on the bedside table. My dream the past few years was that this tranquil end would be disturbed by this scene: American tourists jumping up and down outside his window, snapping pictures on their smartphones. American tourists flooding the island, befriending his people, doing business with them, showing in their attitude and through a million conversations which system is, actually, preferable. Castro sees them through the window. He grits his teeth so hard the cigar snaps off. Money and sentiment defeat his life’s work. He leaves the world knowing that in history’s great game, he lost.

Open the doors, let…