Utopia, you are standing in it!

California is synonymous with rocketing power prices and mass summer blackouts, courtesy of subsidised wind and solar.

Last summer, whenever periods of peak demand coincided with sunset and calm weather, millions were plunged into sweltering darkness.

But, for Californians, that indignity was simply a taste of things to come. That’s if California is truly serious about meeting a mandated target of 100% carbon-emissions-free electricity, while simultaneously shuttering every last nuclear power plant within the state.

Francis Menton takes a look at the colossal cost of chasing Utopia.

California’s Zero Carbon Plans: Can Anybody Here Do Basic Arithmetic?
Manhattan Contrarian
Francis Menton
11 May 2021

In California, as we all know, the inhabitants and their elected officials are far more sophisticated and virtuous than the rest of us rubes who inhabit the other parts of the country. This particularly goes for the arena of climate change, where California is leading…

While Paul Krugman sometimes misuses and misinterprets numbers for ideological reasons (see his errors regarding the United States, France, Canada, the United States, Estonia, Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom), he isn’t oblivious to reality.

At least not totally.

He’s acknowledged, for instance, that there is a Laffer Curve and that tax rates can become so onerous that tax revenues actually decline.

Now he’s had another encounter with the real world.

In a column that was mostly a knee-jerk defense of Biden’s class-warfare tax policy, Krugman confessed yesterday that big government ultimately means big tax increases for lower-income and middle-class people.

…is trying to “build back better” by taxing only the very affluent feasible? Is it wise? …There’s a good case that the kind of society progressives want us to become, with a very strong social safety net…

Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert; January 27, 1859 – June 4, 1941) was the last German Emperor (Kaiser) and King of Prussia, ruling the German Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia from June 15, 1888 to his abdication November 9, 1918. He was the eldest grandchild of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and related to many monarchs and princes of Europe, most notably King George V of the United Kingdom and Emperor Nicholas II of Russia.

After abdicating at the end of World War I on the night of November 10th the Kaiser left Spa by train to seek asylum in the Netherlands. He was granted asylum by Queen Wilhelmina.

Wilhelm first settled in Amerongen, where on November 28, he issued a belated statement of abdication from both the Prussian and imperial thrones, thus formally ending the Hohenzollerns’ 500-year rule over Prussia. Accepting…

Once upon a time Aucklanders were musing on the merits of  a private-sector proposal aimed at satisfying the demands from the  lycra lobby for a tolled pedestrian and cycle path across Auckland Harbour Bridge.

Orewa-based Hopper Developments – with pioneering projects such as canal housing and marina schemes at Pauanui, Whitianga and Marsden Pt under its belt – had signed a heads of agreement to work with a walking and cycling charitable trust on a $16 million pathway over the bridge.

This  differed from a proposal by Transport Agency consultants, rejected by the agency’s board in 2008, for separate paths to be cantilevered at road level off each edge of the bridge for up to $43 million.

The SkyPath project since then has become, first, a privately funded project underwritten by the Auckland Council, and then a project to be paid for by taxpayers – and the costs have burgeoned.

Tyler Durden writes a zerohedge, Russia & OPEC Ministers Blast IEA’s ‘Net Zero By 2050’ Plan As “La-La-Land” Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

After in recent months crude oil prices have clearly recovered from their COVID-19 slump on steadily increasing demand, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak addressed the much anticipated decision-making at the upcoming OPEC+ conference set for August and the expectation that it will decide to raise output significantly beyond the current pandemic-induced strategy of gradually releasing more barrels into a strengthening oil market.

Novak said in his Thursday remarks at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum that while it remains “premature” to talk about output decisions for August, he affirmed “The current oil price is good enough for Russia,” adding: “Oil prices reflect the balance of supply and demand,” and noted it’s expected the seasonal oil demand will increase in the third quarter of the…

Generalized Walker Circulation (December-February) during ENSO-neutral conditions. Convection associated with rising branches of the Walker Circulation is found over the Maritime continent, northern South America, and eastern Africa. [Credit: NOAA Climate.gov — drawing by Fiona Martin] El Niño and 100,000 year glaciation/climate cycles feature prominently in this research. The Walker circulation has been described as ENSO’s atmospheric buddy.
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While it is widely accepted that climate change drove the evolution of our species in Africa, the exact character of that climate change and its impacts are not well understood, says Phys.org.

Glacial-interglacial cycles strongly impact patterns of climate change in many parts of the world, and were also assumed to regulate environmental changes in Africa during the critical period of human evolution over the last ~1 million years.

The ecosystem changes driven by these glacial cycles are thought to have stimulated the evolution and dispersal of…

Clean’, ‘green’ wind and solar were meant to save the planet, but the obsession with the unreliables will only expedite its consumption. Every solar panel and every wind turbine are an aggregation of minerals, requiring mountains of real energy in their creation. Many of those minerals are scarce, generally referred to as “rare earths”. Thanks to the growth in the number of turbines and panels, many of those scarce minerals are likely to become rarer still.

The rent seekers that profit from the generosity of Joe Biden and his Squad can’t believe their luck. Sure, the doddering President struggles to master a complete sentence without a teleprompter (and often struggles with one). But his Squad’s desire to carpet America in a sea of solar panels and wind turbines is crystal clear; the fortunes of the wind and solar industries have never looked rosier.

As Mark Mills reports, however…

In a new documentary film, Race to the Bottom, I had an opportunity to pontificate briefly about corporate tax and the Laffer Curve.

At the risk of understatement, I represented a minority viewpoint in the documentary. Most of the people interviewed had a negative view of tax competition, considering it to be (as suggested by the title) a “race to the bottom.”

By contrast, I view tax competition as a way of constraining the “stationary bandit” so that we don’t wind up with “goldfish government.”

For purposes of today’s column, though, I want to focus on the narrower issue of the relationship between corporate tax rates and corporate tax revenue.

In the above video, I asserted that lower rates did not result in lower revenue. Indeed, I even made the bold statement that revenues increased.

Is that correct?

Fortunately, I don’t need to do…

Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., or “Ted,” as his friends called him, lived up to the legacy of his father and namesake, President Theodore Roosevelt. The younger Roosevelt was a proven combat leader in both world wars, an aspiring politician, a successful businessman, an accomplished hunter and explorer, as well as governor of Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., like his father, received the Medal of Honor, one of only two father–son duos to be awarded America’s highest honor (the other being Arthur MacArthur and Douglas MacArthur). Roosevelt rose through the ranks during the Great War, ending it as a lieutenant colonel commanding the 26th Infantry Regiment in the 1st Division. He participated in numerous engagements in 1918, which included Cantigny, Soissons, and the Meuse–Argonne campaign. He was cited for bravery, wounded in action, the first reserve officer to command a regiment in combat, and was the spearhead of the…

In the world of public finance, Ireland is best known for its 12.5 percent corporate tax rate.

That’s a very admirable policy, as will be momentarily discussed, but my favorite Irish policy was the four-year spending freeze in the late 1980s.

I discussed that fiscal reform in a video about 10 years ago, and I subsequently shared data on how spending restraint reduced the overall burden of government in Ireland and also lowered red ink.

It’s a great case study showing the beneficial impact of my Golden Rule.

Spending restraint also paved the way for better tax policy, and that’s a perfect excuse to discuss Ireland’s pro-growth corporate tax system. The Wall Street Journalopined last week about that successful supply-side experiment.

Democrats want a high global minimum tax that would end national tax competition and reduce the harm from their huge tax increase on U.S. business. But…