Utopia, you are standing in it!

Long-time readers know that I periodically pour coldwater on the notion that China is an economic superstar.

Yes, China did engage in some economic liberalization late last century, and those reforms should be applauded because they were very successful in reducing severe poverty.

But from a big-picture perspective, all that really happened is that China went from terrible policy (Maoist communism) to bad policy (best described as mass cronyism).

Economic Freedom of the World has the best data. According to the latest edition, China’s score for economic liberty rose from a horrible 3.69 in 1990 to 6.21 in 2018.

That’s a big improvement, but that still leaves China in the bottom quartile (ranking #124 in the world). Better than Venezuela (#162), to be sure, but way behind even uncompetitive welfare states such as Greece (#92), France (#58), and Italy (#51).

And I fear China’s score will…

Electricity is a civilising force; once seen as a common good to be provided universally to those without it, but no longer. For the impoverished power is a path out of poverty and not just a means of lighting homes and cooking meals.

The political class that trumpet global warming as the singular threat to life on earth, clearly hate the poor.

Their obsession with subsidising expensive and utterly unreliable wind and solar has already put electrical power out of the reach of the poorest and first world countries, and would, if they could, render it an exclusive preserve of the upwardly mobile and unseemly rich: ie, themselves.

The path out of poverty is always and everywhere about reliable and affordable energy. And entrenched poverty is best explained by its absence.

Want to know how important electricity is to modern life? Try living a comfortable and civilised life without it.

(The message American Japanese were confronted with after Pearl Harbor)

At a time when Donald Trump harangues the American electorate with his views on prohibiting Muslims from entering the United States in reaction to the horrific attack in San Bernardino, CA we find the Republican candidate as well as political pundits pointing to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 which created “internment camps” for American Japanese during World War II.  If we are to accept what Trump says, then FDR’s actions set a precedent for going against the freedom of religion amendment to the United States Constitution.  With the repeated reference to the plight of American Japanese during the war on cable and network news it is propitious that veteran journalist and biographer, Richard Reeves’ latest book, Infamy: The Shocking Story of the Japanese Internment in World War II has recently been published.  The story that Reeves unveils was not…

During World War II the United States government violated its founding principles by incarcerating over 120,000 Japanese-Americans in “internment camps,” a euphemism for “concentration camps.” Families were separated, homes and businesses lost, and possessions sold for little value as people were sent to live in barracks in Wyoming, Colorado, California, Arkansas, and Utah. Of those sent to the camps, two-thirds were American citizens. Despite this treatment Japanese-Americans reacted to the bombing of Pearl Harbor in the same manner as their fellow countrymen with thousands either enlisting or being drafted into the US military. The treatment of these American citizens domestically and the courage and defiance shown by Japanese-American soldiers in Europe is the subject of Daniel James Brown’s latest book FACING THE MOUNTAIN: A TRUE STORY OF JAPANESE HEROES IN WORLD WAR II. Brown the author of the award winning THE BOYS IN THE BOAT: NINE AMERICANS AND THEIR…

Like most libertarians, I favor drug legalization for the simple reason that people should have control over their own bodies, even if they’re doing something stupid.

But I’ve never claimed legalization is a zero-cost policy. Instead, as I wrote in 2018, “I think the social harm of prohibition is greater than the social harm of legalization.”

These two flowcharts both make the same point about why the War on Drugs is foolish.

Apparently, voters and politicians are beginning to get the message. More and more states have moved in the direction of legalization.

Have the results been positive?

In an article for National Review, Aron Ravin has a very critical assessment of legalization.

…the old-fashioned, party-pooper folk with whom I find myself sympathizing tend to fall back on one point: Weed is unhealthy. Since 2002, the proportion of Americans twelve and older who reported having used marijuana in…

VW ID. model

When it comes to personal transport Germans aren’t exactly rushing to play along with the infantile mythology of climate neutrality, contrary to the wishes of their supposedly ‘green’ leaders. Sales targets look increasingly like wishful thinking.
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Germany wants to have 10 million electric cars on the road by 2030 in a bid to meet its climate targets, says DW.com.

But it’s not just the cost and limited range that’s deterring drivers to go along with this ambitious plan.

Germany’s long-established car industry is embarking on a historic transformation to try to shrink its carbon footprint.

Chevy Bolt [image credit: GM Authority] No hope of ever breaking even on that model now, if there was any to start with. Another edition of the recurring lithium-ion safety issue in the world of EVs: battery ’emissions’. 
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DETROIT (AP) — General Motors is recalling all Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles sold worldwide to fix a battery problem that could cause fires.

The recall raises questions about lithium ion batteries, which now are used in nearly all electric vehicles.

President Joe Biden wants to convert 50% of the U.S. vehicle fleet from internal combustion to electricity by 2050 as part of a broader effort to fight climate change.

Critique of Hobsbawm’s Marxisant approach

In the third of his mighty trilogy of histories of the long nineteenth century, The Age of Empire: 1875 to 1914, as in its two predecessors, Hobsbawm makes no attempt to hide his strongly Marxist point of view. Every page shouts his contempt for the era’s ‘bourgeois’ men of business, its ‘capitalists’ and bankers, the despicable ‘liberal’ thinkers of the period and so on. From time to time his contempt for the bourgeoisie rises to the level of actual abuse.

The most that can be said of American capitalists is that some of them earned money so fast and in such astronomic quantities that they were forcibly brought up against the fact that mere accumulation in itself is not an adequate aim in life for human beings, even bourgeois ones. (p.186)

Replace that final phrase with ‘even Jewish ones’ or ‘even Muslim ones’…

This economist clearly has faith in IPCC climate models and theories, but he may be in for his own shock by putting all his climate eggs in the carbon dioxide emissions basket. Meanwhile, brace for economic pain.
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The vast expense of ending global warming [Talkshop comment: reality may differ] will trigger a blow to the world economy that is as damaging as the 1974 oil shock, a top international economist has warned. The Telegraph reporting.

A scramble to cut carbon emissions is likely to send energy prices rocketing and hold back living standards for years to come, Jean Pisani-Ferry said in a report published by the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Mr Pisani-Ferry – a public policy expert who has served in senior economic roles in the European Union for decades – said that although the bill is both manageable and necessary to halt climate change…

I was, conditionally, sympathetic to the Funding for Lending programme the Reserve Bank put in place late last year. At the time they thought (and it seemed plausible they were right) that more monetary stimulus was needed, and – through their own neglect and incompetence over several years – they asserted that a negative OCR could not yet be implemented. The announcement of the scheme clearly narrowed the gap between wholesale and retail interest rates, lowering the latter. This chart from this week’s MPS is one way of illustrating the point.

The effect was achieved by making it known the scheme was coming, and then available. Relatively little was actually borrowed, especially early in the piece.

The scheme works by offering funding to banks (only) at an interest rate equal to the OCR (floating rate, so the rate changes as the OCR does) for terms of three years. The loans…