Utopia, you are standing in it!

A key insight of international economics is that there should be “convergence” between rich countries and poor countries, which is just another way of saying that low-income nations – all other things being equal – should grow faster than high-income nations and eventually attain the same level of prosperity.

The theory is sound, but it’s very important to focus on the caveat about “all other things being equal.” As I explain in this interview from my last trip to Australia, countries with bad policy will grow slower than nations that follow the right policies.

When I discuss convergence, I often share the data on Hong Kong and Singapore because those jurisdictions have caught up to the United States. But I make sure to explain that the convergence was only possible because of good policy.

I also share the data showing that Europe was catching up to…

I only share long videos when they satisfy key criteria, such as being very informative and very educational.

This video from Arthur Brooks is both.

What I like most is that he does a very good job of showing that concern for the disadvantaged is the most important reason to support free markets and limited government.

And he does this by exploring some very interesting and challenging topics, such as Denmark’s unusual mix of free markets and a welfare state (I’ve referred to that country’s public policy as a combination of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde).

But I want to focus on his discussion of India’s partial economic liberalization. We’ll start by perusing the most-recent edition of Economic Freedom of the World to confirm that there was a significant increase in economic liberty during the 1990s.

But it’s also important to stress that India’s partial economic liberalization was…well…

Charles’s beheading was scheduled for Tuesday, January 30, 1649. Two of his children remained in England under the control of the Parliamentarians: Elizabeth and Henry. They were permitted to visit him on January 29, and he bade them a tearful farewell. The following morning, he called for two shirts to prevent the cold weather causing any noticeable shivers that the crowd could have mistaken for fear: “the season is so sharp as probably may make me shake, which some observers may imagine proceeds from fear. I would have no such imputation.”

He walked under guard from St James’s Palace, where he had been confined, to the Palace of Whitehall, where an execution scaffold had been erected in front of the Banqueting House. Charles was separated from spectators by large ranks of soldiers, and his last speech reached only those with him on the scaffold. He blamed his fate on his…

Wind power never adds up: it doesn’t matter how many turbines carpet your horizons, in calm weather total output always amounts to nothing.

For sheer density, the Germans win hands down, with more than 30,000 of these things carpeted across Deutschland’s rural landscapes and, once pristine, forests.

And yet, from late September, through October and well into November last year, wind power output in Germany often ranged between dismal and a doughnut.

Demonstrating that their delusional obsession with wind and solar runs deep, the Germans are determined to axe all of their nuclear and coal-fired power plants, and ‘replace’ the lost output with thousands more wind turbines and solar panels.

As to the former, as this little analysis by Professor Fritz Vahrenholt demonstrates, it simply doesn’t matter how many wind turbines Germany might eventually manage to squeeze into its landscape; when the wind stops blowing, the power stops flowing.

Germany’s…

Case dismissed
Another climate lawfare caper, supposedly by youths (who pays the legal costs?), bites the dust. Governments can’t control the climate, but may pretend they can. Next!
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The Alaska Supreme Court on Friday upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by 16 young Alaskans who claimed long-term effects of climate change will devastate Alaska and interfere with their individual constitutional rights, reports AP via the Daily Mail.

The lawsuit against the state of Alaska claimed the state´s legislative and executive branches had not taken steps to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

The lower court dismissed the case in 2018, saying these questions were better left to other branches of government.

If I were a conservative Catholic bishop, I would think that God had just answered my prayers.

Planned Parenthood in Seattle recently fired a CEO who has been a hero of the reproductive health and rights sector for the last forty years. It’s not hard to find public examples of the Left eating our own to the detriment of real change (here, here, here, here). But when it comes to reproductive health and rights, this is one of the most stark examples of form over substance that I have witnessed. And given the expected evisceration of Roe v Wade, it couldn’t come at a worse time.

Chris Charbonneau was terminated abruptly under a cloud of implied racism after she accurately described, behind closed doors, a donor’s use of the “n-word” to characterize how women in Texas are being stripped of dignity and bodily autonomy with…

The wind and solar industries couldn’t care less whether you freeze to death when winter bites across the northern hemisphere and wind and solar output collapse.

Solar panels plastered in snow and ice produce nothing; wind turbines frozen solid during breathless, frigid weather produce even less (they actually consume power from the grid to run heating systems meant to prevent their internal workings suffering permanent damage).

So, if you’re sitting freezing in the dark, don’t expect wind and solar power generators to come to your rescue.

No, if the lights and power are on this winter, then you ought to raise a glass for the gas, coal and nuclear power generators separating you and your loved ones from a date with hypothermia and, ultimately, the morgue.

Hundreds died during the Big Freeze that hit Texas last winter, thanks to a complete collapse in wind and solar output. Thousands more would…

At the start of Mary Beard’s comprehensive but pedestrian history of ancient Rome she gives some examples of the ‘legacy’ of Rome as reasons why people should know more about ancient Rome and read her book. I critiqued her reasons for being arbitrary, superficial and not really justifying her case. Nonetheless it does broach an interesting subject: just what should be included in the Legacy of Ancient Rome to the present day? Over the week it took to read her book, I began to make a list of aspects of the legacy of Rome which live on in the modern world. Can you add any more to my list?

Roman Catholicism, the religion of power

Surely the biggest legacy is the Roman Catholic church, founded and spread across the eastern Mediterranean but given its definitive organisational and liturgical form after it was decriminalised by the Emperor Constantine in 313 and…

I have a four-part series (here, here, here, and here) that explains why it’s much better to focus on fighting poverty rather than fretting about inequality.

I also think that our friends on the left who fixate on inequality are mostly motivated by an ideological desire for bigger government (or an ideological desire to hurt the rich).

Helping the less fortunate seems to be – at best – a secondary concern for them.

But let’s not worry about deciphering their real motives and instead look at why their approach is misguided.

Here’s a tweet from Gabriel Zucman, who (along with Thomas Piketty) is one of the most widely cited crusaders for class-warfare policy.

He is upset that the richest people in the world earn a lot more than the poorest people, and he obviously wants people to view these numbers as scandalous…

The CPI for the December quarter was finally released yesterday – even later in the month than that other CPI laggard the ABS. The picture wasn’t pretty, even if at this point not particularly surprising. My focus is on the sectoral factor model measure of core inflation – long the Reserve Bank’s favourite – and if, as my resident economics student says “but Dad, no one else seem to mention it”, well too bad. Of the range of indicators on offer it is the most useful if one is thinking about monetary policy, past and present.

Factor models like this provide imprecise reads (subject to revision) for the most recent periods – that’s what you’d expect, especially when things are moving a lot, as the model is looking to identify something like the underlying trend. The most recent observations were revised up yesterday, and the estimate for core inflation for…

This BBC report trots out the usual evidence-free assertions about the supposed human causes of recent warming. But ignoring the role of natural variation and spending fortunes on the basis of poorly performing climate models looks little better than casino gambling. For waverers the threat of extreme weather is pulled out of the hat.
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Trillions of dollars need to be spent every year for almost three decades to hit net zero targets, according to consultancy McKinsey. — BBC News reporting.

On top of current spending, the equivalent of half of all corporate profits will have to be invested to tackle global warming, it says.

McKinsey highlights that gaining acceptance will be tough, especially from those paying energy bills.

But the alternative is more extreme weather, experts have warned.

Pope Clement VI (1291 – December 6, 1352), born Pierre Roger, was head of the Catholic Church from 7 May 1342 to his death in 1352. He was the fourth Avignon pope. Clement reigned during the first visitation of the Black Death (1348–1350), during which he granted remission of sins to all who died of the plague.

Pope Clement VI

Roger steadfastly resisted temporal encroachments on the Church’s ecclesiastical jurisdiction and, as Clement VI, entrenched French dominance of the Church and opened its coffers to enhance the regal splendour of the Papacy. He recruited composers and music theorists for his court, including figures associated with the then-innovative Ars Nova style of France and the Low Countries.

Like his immediate predecessors, Clement VI was devoted to France, and he demonstrated his French sympathies by refusing a solemn invitation to return to Rome from the city’s people, as well as from the…