Utopia, you are standing in it!

The Independent Review of Administrative Law provoked much criticism and concern when it was announced by the government, but its final report was less radical than many predicted. In the last of our series of posts from speakers at our June conference on the government’s reform agenda, Lord Faulks speaks of the work of the review panel, which he chaired, and the government bill that resulted, which went further than the review recommended in terms of limiting judicial review.

The government has now published the Judicial Review and Courts Bill, which has had its first reading in the House of Commons and will proceed through its remaining parliamentary stages in the autumn.

The Independent Review of Administrative Law, which I had the privilege of chairing,will now be a footnote in the development of the law in relation to judicial review. The panel no longer exists and its members…

Writing about federal spending last week, I shared five charts illustrating how the process works and what’s causing America’s fiscal problems.

Most important, I showed that the ever-increasing burden of federal spending is almost entirely the result of domestic spending increasing much faster than what would be needed to keep pace with inflation.

And when I further sliced and diced the numbers, I showed that outlays for entitlements (programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare) were the real problem.

Let’s elaborate.

John Cogan, writing for the Wall Street Journal, summarizes our current predicament.

Since the end of World War II, federal tax revenue has grown 15% faster than national income—while federal spending has grown 50% faster. …all—yes, all—of the increase in federal spending relative to GDP over the past seven decades is attributable to entitlement spending. Since the late 1940s, entitlement claims on…

According to leftists like Bernie Sanders, European nations have wonderfully generous welfare states financed by high tax rates on the rich.

They’re partly right. There are very large welfare states in Europe (though I wouldn’t use “wonderfully” and “generous” to describe systems that have caused economic stagnation and high levels of unemployment).

But they’re wrong about how those welfare states are financed. Yes, tax rates on the rich are onerous, but not that much higher than in the United States. Instead, the big difference between America and Europe is that ordinary people pay much higher taxes on the other side of the Atlantic.

Indeed, I’ve previously cited Tax Foundation data showing that the United States arguably has the most “progressive” tax system in the developed world. Not because we tax the rich more, but simply because we impose comparatively modest burdens on everyone else.

And now we have…

I periodically warn that the United States is on a path to become a European-style welfare state.

That sounds good to some people since it implies lots of goodies paid for by other people.

So I always explain that there’s a downside. The economic data clearly show that there’s been less growth in Europe and this has real-world consequences.

• Europe is diverging from the United States economically, not converging.
• The average American enjoys much higher levels of income and better quality of life.
• America’s poor people have incomes equal to middle-class Europeans.

This is why it’s so depressing that Joe Biden has a radical agenda of higher tax rates and much bigger government.

He wants us to copy an approach that has produced inferior outcomes.

The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal has been sounding the alarm.

In a recent column, Professor Josef…

The Departed (1996) Director: Martin Scorsese

“When I was your age they would say we can become cops or criminals. Today, what I’m saying to you is this: when you’re facing a loaded gun, what’s the difference?“

★★★★☆

Based on a reimagining of the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs, The Departed brings together an all-star cast to deliver one of the best films of the 2000s. Producer Brad Pitt helped acquire the rights to Infernal Affairs, and with Martin Scorsese on board along with a soup of A-List Hollywood talent (Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg, Jack Nicholson, Vera Farmiga, Martin Sheen, and many others), The Departed delivers a compelling, intellectually engaging movie that explores deep themes of identity, belonging, upward mobility, and hope. The title The Departed comes from a Catholic prayer for souls in purgatory (Martin Scorsese was raised Catholic) and in many ways…

Destroying this ….

You know it’s a cult when followers happily justify clear-felling forests to make way for giant industrial wind turbines.

Those that worship wind power have set new standards in cognitive dissonance. One minute they’re ranting about saving the planet; the next they’re leading the charge in its immediate and permanent destruction.

Germany’s so-called ‘Greens’ were the characters that chained themselves to bulldozers in the 1970s; now they’re working the controls, wiping out thousands of acres of Germany’s once lush forests.

That Germany has already been overrun by 30,000 of these things is hardly surprising. It was, after all, their jack-booted ancestors that started it.

But, as the environmental chickens come home to roost, there appear to be at least a few Germans ready to mount a challenge against the destruction wrought by hypocritical ‘Greens’.

Baden-Württemberg Government Announces Plans To Clear Cut State Forest, Build 1000 Turbines

The  Ardern government is  clinging  to  its Covid elimination strategy, even  as  the  Ministry of  Health   is  looking  at the  need for  booster shots for  those  who were  vaccinated  six months  ago.

A new  study  by researchers  in Britain has found that  protection offered  by the Pfizer vaccine,  which is 88% effective  in  the first  month,  begins  to  fade  within five to six months  of  the  second injection.  By  then  it is  only  74%  effective   The Astra-Zeneca  vaccine   is  only  67%  effective   after  about  five  months.

New Zealand’s Director-General of Health, Ashley Bloomfield, today confirmed officials are considering booster injections for those who received their Pfizer vaccines in  February, March  and April.

Among NZ  experts  there  has  been debate  on  whether    booster  shots   would be  necessary. They  agree the Pfizer vaccine is highly effective at preventing serious disease, hospitalisation and death.

Vaccines continue to perform well, including against the Delta…

The collision between Europe and Africa came at a time when European self-confidence, based on the wonders of science, was at a peak, and African social conditions were at their worst. (p.175)

This book turns out to be longer and more complex than it initially seems. In the first section, which makes up around a third of the text, McLynn details all the important European expeditions and explorers of note from 1788 to the end of the explorer era around 1890 in a packed hundred pages. It feels quite rushed and hectic.

But as you proceed on into the text it emerges that the first part is by way of being a glorified timeline or chronology, merely a sketch of the main series of expeditions, because McLynn’s real interest is in writing a thematic history of the subject, which aims to consider wider the issues and problems and practicalities of…

This is the third year in a row the XR hoodlums have nearly shut down London. Meanwhile London police stand down due to potential legal problems.

When I finished yesterday’s post I realised there was plenty else that could have been said.

First, of course, is the way that the Reserve Bank’s housing graphic feeds a narrative that a fall in house prices would itself be a bad thing, at an economywide level. After all, presumably their mental model is symmetrical.

As I noted yesterday, their framing totally ignores the context in which house prices change. Were a government ever to summon up the intestinal fortitude to free up land use, we would expect to see house/land prices fall, and fall a long way. This would, of course, be tough for some individuals, but their losses would be largely offset by gains to others (the young, the poor, the renters), and for many people – owner-occupiers with modest or no mortgages – it would really make no difference at all. Speaking personally, I would cheer the…