Utopia, you are standing in it!

I periodically get asked who should be in the White House.

Since I’m a policy wonk rather than a political pundit, I generally sidestep the question.

Though it probably isn’t too hard to figure out my preference if you peruse what I’ve written about previous presidents.

I’m a huge fan of both Ronald Reagan and Calvin Coolidge, for instance.

But I’m definitely not partisan. I’ve also said nice things about John F. Kennedy and even Bill Clinton.

And to further demonstrate my independence, it’s time for me to endorse another Democrat.

Yes, you read correctly. The person I want in the White House is….(drum roll, please)…the 22nd and 24th President of the United States, Grover Cleveland.

He’s mostly famous for being the only President to serve non-consecutive terms (he won in 1884, lost in 1888, and won again in 1892). And perhaps also for marrying a 21-year woman…

I’ve repeatedlyheaped praise on Ronald Reagan.

I’ve also lauded Calvin Coolidge on severaloccasions.

And I even once extolled the virtues of Grover Cleveland.

Today, we’re going to celebrate the fiscal achievements of Warren Harding.

Most notably, as illustrated by this chart based on OMB data, he presided over a period of remarkable spending discipline.

Harding also launched very big – and very effective – reductions in tax rates.

And his agenda of less government and lower tax rates helped bring about a quick end to a massive economic downturn (unlike the big-government policies of Hoover and Roosevelt, which deepened and lengthened the Great Depression).

In an article for National Review last year, Kyle Smith praised President Harding’s economic stewardship.

In a moment of national crisis, Warren G. Harding restored the economic health of the United States. …America in 1921 was in a state of…

Yesterday’s post was a bit discursive. Sometimes writing things down helps me sort out what I think, and sometimes that takes space.

Today, a few more numbers to support the story.

I’m going to focus on what the experts in the macroeconomic agencies (Treasury and Reserve Bank) were thinking in late 2020, and contrast that with the most recent published forecasts. The implicit model of inflation that underpins this is that even if the full effects of monetary policy probably take 6-8 quarters to appear in (core) inflation, a year’s lead time is plenty enough to have begun to make inroads.

Forecasts – and fiscal numbers – in mid 2020 were, inevitably all over the place. But by November 2020 (the Bank published its MPS in November, and the Treasury will have finalised the HYEFU numbers in November) things had settled down again, and the projections and forecasts were able…

Many of the world’s biggest companies are failing to meet their own targets on tackling climate change, according to a study of 25 corporations.

They also routinely exaggerate or misreport their progress, the New Climate Institute report says.

Google, Amazon, Ikea, Apple and Nestle are among those failing to change quickly enough, the study alleges.

Corporations are under pressure to cut their environmental impact as more consumers want green products.

Some of the companies told BBC News they disagreed with some of the methods used in the report and said they were committed to taking action to curb climate change.

The firms analysed account for 5% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, the report says – which means although they have a huge carbon footprint, they have enormous potential to lead in the effort to limit climate change.

“The rapid acceleration of corporate…

The National Party, in particular, has been seeking to make the rate of inflation a key line of attack on the government. Headline annual CPI inflation was 5.9 per cent in the most recent release, and National has been running a line that government spending is to blame. It is never clear how much they think it is to blame – or even in what sense – but it must be to a considerable extent, assuming (as I do) that they are addressing the issue honestly.

I’ve seen quite a bit of talk that government spending (core Crown expenses) is estimated to have risen by 68 per cent from the June 2017 year (last full year of the previous government) to the June 2022 year – numbers from the HYEFU published last December. That is quite a lot: in the previous five years, this measure of spending rose by only…

We’re told that the majority of people in the UK are very concerned about global warming and climate change. But only 3% are so concerned that they are willing to pay even a trifling sum to offset their air miles. The Sunday Times carried a story about this and told us:

The airline offers all customers who are about to buy a ticket the chance to “fully offset your CO2 emissions for this flight” by paying a fee. The 730km journey from Dublin to Paris can be offset for €1.20, while a 486km journey from Dublin to London, one of the world’s busiest air routes, can be offset for 78c. Ryanair said: “The 3 per cent of customers that chose to go greener in 2019 has yet to substantially increase, with the impact of the pandemic on air travel potentially playing a part. To date, these customers have contributed €3.5…

This piece considers two recent decisions – one by the Court of Appeal (“CA”): D4 v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWCA Civ 33, and the other by the Supreme Court (“SC”): R (The Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] UKSC 3 (“PRCBC”). At a general level, the cases raised similar issues: both involved challenges to delegation legislation on grounds that they were ultra vires; both related to citizenship – D4 about its deprivation, PRCBC about its conferral. This piece seeks to draw some threads from the two cases about statutory interpretation and the common law in the context of citizenship.

D4 v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWCA Civ 33

D4 was deprived of her citizenship pursuant to an order made under s.40 British Nationality Act 1981…

Three years ago, I unveiled this video to help explain that trade deficits are nothing to worry about.

The most important thing to understand from the video is that the flip side of a trade deficit is a capital surplus.

To be more specific, foreigners earn dollars by selling products to Americans. They then use those dollars to buy goods and services from American producers, or they use those dollars to invest money in the American economy.

And when foreigners choose to invest their dollars, that necessarily is accompanied by a trade deficit.

At the risk of understatement, it’s not bad that foreigners want to invest in the United States.

Why am I discussing this topic today?

Because we have final data on trade flows for 2021. Here are some excerpts from a report by Ana Swanson for the New York Times.

The U.S. trade deficit in goods soared…

This morning Australia woke up to the news that at an all-night sitting which concluded around 5 am, the House of Representatives has passed the Religious Discrimination Bill 2022. (The link there will take you to official Parliamentary site for the Bill; as I write the updated version given a third reading has not been published but should be later in the day.) The government amendments which I noted in a previous post were apparently all accepted.

There was an amendment moved by the Opposition which came very close to being accepted, but which in the end did not pass. (It can be seen here in the Opposition amendments document.) It would have introduced a prohibition on “religious vilification”. I do not think Australia needs more such laws; in the time available now let me link a paper I produced a few years ago on the dangers of limiting…

Roger Pielke Jr. is a political scientist who writes on a diverse range of policy and governance issues related to science, technology, environment, innovation and sports. He is most famous (or infamous?) for his work on climate change. We cover his Iron Law of climate policy, his views on the problems with business-as-usual climate scenarios, and the challenges of attributing extreme weather. We also touch on the extent of his relationships with climate change skeptics and the efforts to discredit him, including the congressional investigation into his funding.

Roger is a Professor at the Department of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He is the author ofThe Climate Fix: What Scientists…

Me in the WSJ.

I testified before the House Science Committee on 29 March 2017. In my testimony I asked members of Congress to call a bipartisan truce in attacking scientists whose work they find inconvenient. I also emphasized the importance of scientific assessments such as the IPCC.

You can see the whole hearing above and read my testimony from the link below.

Statement by Roger Pielke Jr. before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology US House of Representatives, Hearing on Climate Science: Assumptions, Policy Implications, and the Scientific Method, 29 March (PDF).

There is a place for solar power, but it ain’t connected to a power grid. Delivering power for no more than seven hours a day (ordinarily between five and six hours, at best, and less in winter) means sticking solar panels on homes connected to conventional power grids makes no sense at all.

As the sun sets, each and every one of those homes draws the power its occupants need from the very same grid that their solar panels have been destabilising throughout the day.

On the other hand, for “off grid” households – remote from the grid – a system involving solar panels, feeding excess generation to lead acid batteries, with a diesel generator for backup, is both practical and economic. Where electricity independence is a necessity in the only option, solar make sense. Think sheep and cattle stations hundreds of kilometres from the nearest SWER line.

Portable solar…