Utopia, you are standing in it!

Countless $billions are being squandered on subsidies to unreliable wind and solar, every single day. Wind and solar power don’t run on sunshine and breezes, they run on a seemingly endless stream of subsidies – without which, we simply wouldn’t be having this discussion.

The merest hint threat of a cut to the subsidies sends rent-seekers into apoplexy and ‘investors’ running for the exit.

The damage done to power grid is and electricity markets is as perfectly predictable, as it was perfectly avoidable.

Alan Moran details the disaster that is Australia’s renewable energy subsidy scam, below.

Why don’t we hear about the $40,000 per household cost of decarbonisation?
Spectator Australia
Alan Moran
25 June 2021

The Irish Times reports that an IMF study of Ireland estimates that the nation will need to spend 20 billion euros a year – or five per cent of GDP – to meet its 2050…

Last week it was announced that Guardian journalist Seamus Milne was to become Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s new Director of Communications. A number of media reports remarked that Milne was once attached to the Communist Party factional journal Straight Left. However few, particularly in the mainstream media, know much about the Straight Left faction or its role in the final years of the Communist Party of Great Britain. I asked Lawrence Parker, an expert on the hardline oppositional and anti-revisionist groups that emerged from the CPGB, to write a little introduction to those unfamiliar with the history of the Straight Left faction.

Origins

Straight Left’s origins lie in the left pro-Soviet oppositions that emerged in the Communist Party of Great Britain in the 1960s. In this period, a definite ‘party within a party’ emerged, with figures such as Sid French, district secretary of Surrey CPGB, becoming key leaders…

If you want people to toe the line, make them afraid. It’s worked a treat for the anti-economic progress crowd in their campaign against nuclear power. It’s the same insidious force that has millions of Australians constantly locked down, cowering under their quilts, thanks to the threat of a virus that’s on a par with the common cold for lethality in a country with first world and first-rate hospitals and healthcare.

Likewise with nuclear power. Long on emotion and short on evidence, the anti-nuke activist has been working up a frenzy of baseless fear for generations.

As Michael Shellenberger outlines in this interview with Chris Kenny, it’s time to engage our critical faculties and stop listening to those who would merrily deprive us all of safe, reliable and affordable nuclear power.

There are ‘fear campaigns’ over nuclear energy
Sky News
Chris Kenny and Michael Shellenberger
28 June 2021

Environmental policy…

Every so often, I see visuals that do a great job of illustrating various economic principles.

This Wizard-of-Id parody contains a lot of insight about labor economics. As does this Chuck Asay cartoon and this Robert Gorrell cartoon.

If you want to understand Keynesian economics, this Scott Stantis cartoon is a gem, as is the house-on-fire image in this post.

Regarding tax policy, the philoso-raptor explains supply-side economics and Paul Bunyan helps to illustrate why double taxation is so destructive.

You can also get clear messages about why a welfare state is economically destructive in this classic from Chuck Asay, as well as these home-made cartoons on riding the wagon vs pulling the wagon.

Regarding the minimum wage, I think Henry Payne effectively shows – in this cartoon and this cartoon – how mandating above-market wages is…

At the end of the “February Revolution”, Nicholas II chose to abdicate on March 15, 1917. He first abdicated in favor of Alexei, but a few hours later changed his mind after advice from doctors that Alexei would not live long enough while separated from his parents, who would be forced into exile. Nicholas thus abdicated on behalf of his son, and drew up a new manifesto naming his brother, Grand Duke Michael, as the next Emperor of all Russias. He issued a statement but it was suppressed by the Provisional Government.

Grand Duke Michael declined to accept the throne until the people were allowed to vote through a Constituent Assembly for the continuance of the monarchy or a republic. The abdication of Nicholas II and Michael’s deferment of accepting the throne brought three centuries of the Romanov dynasty’s rule to an end. The fall of Tsarist autocracy brought joy…