Utopia, you are standing in it!

No posts here for a while as I’ve been bogged down in trying to make sense of some events – little more than one week in history – from 30 years ago, where the uncertainty as to what actually happened (a precondition for making sense of what the events mean) is greatly magnified by really poor documentation and recordkeeping by….the Reserve Bank.

I was planning to return with something a bit more longer-term (perhaps tomorrow) but wasn’t yesterday’s inflation number interesting? It seems to have taken almost everyone – notably the people who do detailed components forecasts, including the Reserve Bank – by surprise to some extent.

Almost all the media focus has been on the headline number – 2.2 per cent increase for the quarter, 4.9 per cent for the year – because (I guess) it makes good headlines. (Excluding the two quarters when the GST rate was increased)…

With its Emissions Reduction Plan released last week, the government is promising unprecedented control over every aspect of your life.

How you move. What you eat. Where you live. How you heat your home.

It is little short of a revolution. Between its emissions plan and next year’s Budget, which will also be about climate change, future governments of this country will have more to say about everything.

The problem is that existing policies already have this country firmly on track to deliver emissions targets.

In both its draft and final reports, the Climate Change Commission said current policies and a $50 carbon price will be enough to deliver net zero emissions in 2050. Its analysis did not show undue reliance on removals by exotic trees, although Ministers and officials have repeatedly made misleading statements about the Commission’s findings.

Today’s carbon price is $65. So we are ahead…

The Hunt For Red October (1990) Director: John McTiernan

★★★★☆

The Hunt For Red October, the first film in the Jack Ryan film franchise and the fourth book in Tom Clancy’s “Ryanverse” novel series, is an excellent white-knuckling submarine thriller of deep-sea espionage. It is a classic of high stakes political brinkmanship. Coming off the backs of 1987’s Predator and 1988’s Die Hard, The Hunt For Red October was John McTiernan’s last classic film before a string of mostly forgettable movies and his impending legal troubles.

The story takes place in 1984 during the Cold War (two days after the film was released in 1990 Boris Yeltsin came to power and marked the collapse of the Soviet Union). In the film, the Soviets have developed a nuclear submarine capable of operating without being traced by sonar. Captain Marko Ramius (brilliantly played by Sean Connery) has gone rogue from…

I’m happy to discuss theory when debating economic policy, but I mostly focus on real-world evidence.

That’s because my friends on the left always have a hard time answering my two-question challenge, which simply asks them to name one success story for big government.

They usually point to Sweden and Denmark, but get discouraged when I point out that those nations became rich when government was relatively small.

And I’m embarrassed to admit that some of my fellow economists once thought that communist nations grew faster than capitalist nations.

But let’s not digress. I raise this topic because there are many critics of capitalism who admit that free markets generate more wealth, but they assert that society would be better off if incomes were lower so long as rich people suffered more than poor people.

This strikes me as morally poisonous. But it also gives me an opportunity…

There are a few definitions of slavery, here are some of them, One is taken from Britannica the other from Mirriam-Webster.

“slavery, condition in which one human being was owned by another. A slave was considered by law as property, or chattel, and was deprived of most of the rights ordinarily held by free persons.”

” 1a: the practice of slaveholding
b: the state of a person who is held in forced servitude
c: a situation or practice in which people are entrapped (as by debt) and exploited. 2: submission to a dominating influence slavery to habit 3:DRUDGERY, TOIL”

In none of the definitions is there a reference of skin color, yet anytime you see a picture about slavery it is always of black slaves.

When people see the picture above and out it in the context of slavery, immediately they think that the black man is the slave and…

In the summer of 1727 George I died while fittingly on holiday in his beloved kingdom of Hanover. The crown was left to his first-born son, George Augustus Prince of Wales. Like his father before him, George II was a stolid man. Today, both men are remembered mainly as pig-headed dullards, renowned for their mutual disgust of one another. George II was a soldier through and through -he was the last English King to lead his troops in battle at Dettingen in 1743- and he had little taste for the arts (or “boets and bainters” as he called them) despite a lifelong love of music, particularly the works of Handel and donating the royal library to the British Museum which was founded during his reign. During his long kingship, Britain expanded its colonial and mercantile interests far and wide from India to the American colonies, however through it all George…

1066 – Following the death of Harold II at the Battle of Hastings, Edgar the Ætheling is proclaimed King of England by the Witan; he is never crowned, and concedes power to William the Conqueror two months later.

Edgar Ætheling or Edgar II (c. 1052 – 1125 or after) was the last male member of the royal house of Cerdic of Wessex (see House of Wessex family tree). He was elected King of England by the Witenagemot in 1066, but never crowned.

Edgar was born in the Kingdom of Hungary, where his father Edward the Exile, son of King Edmund Ironside, had spent most of his life, having been sent into exile after Edmund’s death and the conquest of England by the Danish king Cnut the Great in 1016.

Edgar II the Ætheling, King of the English

His grandfather Edmund, great-grandfather Æthelred II the Unready, and great-great-grandfather Edgar the Peaceful…

(Special Operations Chief Edward “Eddie” Gallagher, a highly decorated Navy SEAL, is fighting murder charges tied to the death of an Islamic State operative in Iraq).

It is clear that after recent events that the American experience in Afghanistan did not end well.  With the Taliban victory the future of the Afghan people, especially women are under a darkening cloud.  In this environment the American military approach in the region has come under question and many of the soldiers who fought and the families of those who died or suffered life altering injuries must be wondering if their sacrifices were in vain.  In this environment any book that deals with the American approach to war is timely.  David Philipps’ new book, ALPHA: EDDIE GALLAGHER AND THE WAR FOR THE SOUL OF THE NAVY SEALS fits this category.  Though the book focuses on the conduct of American troops in Mosul, Iraq…