Utopia, you are standing in it!

Power prices driven through the roof by subsidised and unreliable wind and solar means electricity is out of reach for thousands of struggling households.

Reliable and affordable electricity is at the heart of modern, socially stable societies. Deprive the masses of something that has been taken for granted for generations, and get set for serious civil unrest.

Across Europe, the effect of 20 years of a suicidal obsession with intermittent wind and solar is being keenly felt. Germans suffer the world’s highest power prices and power rationing for German industry is now routine.

Like their compatriots across the ditch, Britain’s energy consumers have been treated with utter contempt by their political betters. But, as the Global Warming Policy Foundation contends below, there is a reckoning in the wind.

As energy crisis threatens civil unrest, new study documents 30 years of the EU’s failed climate policies
The Global Warming Policy Foundation

By Muriel Newman

Finally, the mainstream media is reporting that a coup is under way in New Zealand – by the Māori tribal elite.

Admittedly that observation was penned by former Labour Minister and ACT Party leader Richard Prebble in an opinion piece for the Herald – but the newspaper published it and Radio NZ reported it.

The on-line Herald headline read “Three Waters is a coup — an attack on democracy”.

That bold and compelling headline, however, didn’t last. It was changed to remove the words “a coup” and now reads: “Three Waters is an attack on democracy”.

The obvious question is why?

A clue comes from an article written last year by political journalist Andrea Vance, about Jacinda Ardern’s PR machine:

The Government’s iron grip on the control of information has tightened. At every level, the Government manipulates the flow of information.”

She then explained,

“And the prime…

At the start of this interview, I cite Economic Freedom of the World and the Index of Economic Freedom to make the point that more economic liberty is correlated with more human prosperity.

For purposes of today’s column, I want to focus on the last half of the interview. I point out that a handful of nations began to escape poverty, largely back in the 1800s, when the fiscal burden of government was very small.

But that’s just a partial explanation. As Professors Donald Boudreaux and Deirdre McCloskey explained in short videos, the adoption of capitalism in a few nations enabled a stunning increase in living standards starting a couple of hundred years ago.

If you want a one-sentence summary, all you need to know is that capitalism enabled the industrial revolution and the industrial revolution triggered a huge increase in living standards.

If you prefer to see…

Times Square Billboard

World Economic Forum Urges Public To Eliminate Ownership Of Private Vehicles

The World Economic Forum is advocating for the abolition of “wasteful” private vehicle ownership for the planet’s greater good as the organization attempts to advance its “Great Reset” agenda and transform the world so that the average person will “own nothing.”

“We need a clean energy revolution, and we need it now,” states a WEF’s July 18 article titled, “3 circular economy approaches to reduce demand for critical metals.”

“But this transition from fossil fuels to renewables will need large supplies of critical metals such as cobalt, lithium, nickel, to name a few. Shortages of these critical minerals could raise the costs of clean energy technologies,” the forum continues.

The unelected globalist group recommends the public “go from owning to using” by implementing “vehicle sharing initiatives” to decrease mass reliance on critical metals.

“The average car…

It only takes a moment’s reckoning to appreciate that the grid-scale storage electricity generated by wind or solar is a perfect nonsense.

Those profiting from hopelessly intermittent wind and solar still claim that mega-batteries are the solution to their obvious lack of reliability. Others point to pumped hydro and even ridiculously claim that “excess” wind and solar can be converted into ‘green’ hydrogen gas; the latter is total nonsense, thanks to the laws of physics and economics.

But then there is the gargantuan scale of the task if the object is to store sufficient wind and solar generated electricity to account for the period after sunset and sunrise when solar producers nothing and calm weather when wind power does likewise.

David Wojick has taken a keen interest in the subject over the last few years. Here he is again, demonstrating how the grid-scale storage of wind and solar-generated electricity is…

George I (May 28, 1660 – June 11, 1727) was King of Great Britain and Ireland from August 1, 1714 and ruler of the Duchy and Imperial Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg (Hanover) within the Holy Roman Empire from January 23, 1698 until his death in 1727. He was the first British monarch of the House of Hanover.

George Louis was born on May 28, 1660 in the city of Hanover in the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg in the Holy Roman Empire. He was the eldest son of Ernst August, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and his wife, Sophia of the Palatinate.

Sophia was the granddaughter of King James I-VI of England, Scotland and Ireland through her mother, Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, the wife of Elector Friedrich V of the Palatinate, who was briefly King of Bohemia.

George in 1680, aged 20, when he was Prince of Hanover. After a painting by Sir Godfrey…

Nicholas II (May 18, 1868 – July 17, 1918), known in the Russian Orthodox Church as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer, was the last Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Poland and Grand Duke of Finland, ruling from 1 November 1894 until his abdication on March 15, 1917.

Nicholas Alexandrovich was the eldest son of Emperor Alexander III of Russia and Princess Dagmar of Denmark the daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark and Princess Louise of Hesse-Cassel.

On November 26, 1894 Emperor Nicholas II married his cousin Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine the daughter of Grand Duke Ludwig IV of Hesse and by Rhine and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom.

Princess Alix converted to the Russian Orthodox Church and was renamed Alexandra Feodorovna.

On June 28, 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was assassinated by a Bosnian Serb nationalist, Gavrillo Princeps, in…

Ten years came and went, and in this decade there were no less than four popes –Celestine II, Lucius II, Eugenius (“Eugene”) III, and Anastasius IV. It was an era marked by constant infighting between the two chief ruling families of Rome (Frangipani and Pierleoni) as well as the continual rise of King Roger II in Sicily. Lucius II was publicly stoned to death (perhaps by accident) after allowing the Senate to be reinstated in Rome, while Eugenius was a gentle soul who was easily driven from Rome amidst the heat of battle. However, abroad the Crescent was now conquering the Cross, as Edessa in present-day Turkey fell to an Arab army under Imad ed-Din Zengi. Thus Pope Eugenius sought the help of Louis VII of France and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine to raise a Frankish army (Louis and Eleanor were soon to separate on grounds of sanguinity before…

In yesterday post, the first in this series, I tried to review and assess the Reserve Bank’s preparedness and its policy response to the Covid economic shock in the first 2-3 months (January to April 2020). They weren’t very well prepared, as it turned out, and this probably contributed to them rushing (and rushing The Treasury and the Minister) into some elements of the response that bore financial risks that were grossly proportionate to the likely economic or financial returns. But on the information they had at the time, and the way most other forecasters and commentators were thinking about the likely economic implications of Covid (and associated other policy responses), there wasn’t much doubt that a significant monetary policy response – easing monetary conditions – was well-warranted at the time. But there were mistakes – some perhaps not that consequential as it turned out (the pledge not to change…

I hate the term “apples-to-apples.” I’ve heard those exact three words from so many senior people at or near New York subway construction in response to any cost comparison. Per those people, it’s inconceivable that if New York builds subways for $2 billion/km, other cities could do it for $200 million/km. Or, once they’ve been convinced that those are the right costs, there must be some justifiable reason – New York must be a uniquely difficult tunneling environment, or its size must mean it needs to build bigger stations and tunnels, or it must have more complex utilities than other cities, or it must be harder to tunnel in an old, dense industrial metropolis. Sometimes the excuses are more institutional but always drawn to exculpate the political appointees and senior management – health benefits are a popular excuse and so is a line like “we care about worker rights/disability rights…

One of the best things about 2021 was the fact that Congress did not approve Joe Biden’s economically debilitating plan to raise taxes and expand the welfare state.

His so-called Build Back Better plan was a very bad mix of class-warfare tax policy and redistributionist spending policy.

But one of the worst things about 2022 may be the reincarnation of a slimmed-down version of Biden’s plan.

Simply stated, the “slimmed-down version” of a terrible piece of legislation is bad news – even if it is possible to envision something even worse.

The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial on the package illustrates why it is bad news that Senator Joe Manchin is trying to rescue Biden’s statist agenda.

As the economy slouches near recession, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin…unveiled a tax-and-spending deal that they call the Inflation Reduction Act. Is their aim to reduce inflation…