Utopia, you are standing in it!

When I think about social welfare spending, I mostly worry about recipients getting trapped in dependency.

But I also feel sorry for taxpayers, who are bearing ever-higher costs to finance redistribution programs.

Today’s column won’t focus on those issues. Instead, we’re going to utilize new OECD data to compare the size of the welfare states in developed nations.

We’ll start with the big picture. Here it total redistribution spending, measured as a share of economic output, for selected countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Nobody will be surprised, I assume, to see that France, Finland, Belgium, Denmark, and Italy have the biggest welfare states.

The United States is in the middle of the pack. American taxpayers might be surprised to learn, though, that they finance a bigger welfare state than the ones that exist in Canada, Iceland, and the Netherlands.

The overall numbers…

My series on poverty and inequality (see here, here, and here) focuses on why we should try to help the poor rather than hurt the rich.

We’ll continue with that theme in Part IV, which begins with this video by Russ Roberts of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

Russ makes some great points throughout the video about the importance of creating the conditions for upward mobility.

Here are some of the main takeaways.

1. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting richer as well.
2. Cronyism is bad, especially when it winds up subsidizing the rich.
3. We should focus on reducing poverty rather than fixating on inequality.

Regarding that final point, my favorite part is when he said that, “Focusing on inequality as something inherently bad can blind us to the problems of poverty. Inequality and poverty aren’t the same thing.  …I’m much more…

Back in 2014, I shared two videos, one narrated by Prof. Don Boudreaux and the other narrated by Prof. Deirdre McCloskey, making the point that grinding poverty and material deprivation were the norm for most of human history. It wasn’t until capitalism emerged a few hundred years ago that we made the jump from agricultural poverty to industrial prosperity.

I know at least one person who didn’t watch those videos.

Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley isn’t as well known as other members the “The Squad,” especially Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar (jointly featured in this bit of satire), but she deserves some sort of recognition for being totally clueless about economics and history. Indeed, she may even deserve some sort of prize for uttering the year’s most economically illiterate sentence.

The two aforementioned videos illustrate why her statement is nonsensical, but let’s share some updated numbers to…

Anyone railing against nuclear, coal or gas-fired power hasn’t been forced to rely exclusively on hopelessly unreliable wind and solar. The anti-fossil fuel crowd are, of course, hypocritical and the anti-CO2/anti-nuclear mob are the most hypocritical of all.

For those claiming they’re quite happy to do without coal and gas, wait till one of their loved ones lands in ICU, then tell them that the machines will only go “bing”, when either the sun’s at its zenith in a cloudless sky and/or the wind is blowing just right, and wait for the howls of protest and indignation.

The production and consumption of electricity is, after all, a “here and now”, kind of thing. A megawatt when we don’t need it, is simply a waste but, sometimes, a kilowatt makes all the difference. It’s time to spend some time hanging around in an ICU, if you still think otherwise.

Ross McKittrick…

Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived. For those who study Tudor history, we have heard this unimaginative rhyme to refer to the wives of Henry VIII for the longest time. We all know the stories of the queens, especially Anne Boleyn, but the fifth wife and the second one to be beheaded tend to be cast aside for some of the more intriguing tales. Her name was Catherine Howard, Henry’s youngest bride. Her story is full of rumors and myths, just like her cousin Anne Boleyn. Most know of her romantic dalliances that, in the end, led to her demise, but what was her reign like as queen? What was the court of Henry VIII like during his fifth marriage as his health was failing? In Gareth Russell’s brilliant biography, “Young and Damned and Fair: The Life and Tragedy of Catherine Howard at the Court of Henry VIII”, he dives…

On February 19, 1942, the war-crowded northern Australian harbor of Port Darwin was struck by 198 Japanese bombers. This coordinated land and naval-based air strike surprised the ill-prepared defenders and devastated the port and the shipping concentrated within its harbor. Arriving in two waves, the forty-five minute attack sank eight ships, ran four aground, and severely damaged another eleven. More than 240 people were killed, mostly aboard the ships. Two more ships were destroyed as the planes transited home. They also struck the nearby Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) base, destroying all the aircraft on the ground and downing all but one of the Australian fighters in the air. A follow-up raid finished off the base and inflicted so much wanton destruction that its military personnel fled to the south in panic. Total Japanese losses were only two aircraft. Darwin and its surrounding area endured more than a dozen air…

Elizabeth of York (February 11, 1466 – February 11, 1503) was Queen of England from her marriage to King Henry VII on 18 January 1486 until her death. Elizabeth married Henry after his victory at the Battle of Bosworth Field, which marked the end of the Wars of the Roses. Together, they had seven children.

Elizabeth’s younger brothers, the “Princes in the Tower”, mysteriously disappeared shortly after the death of her father, King Edward IV. Although the 1484 act of Parliament Titulus Regius declared the marriage of her parents, Edward and Elizabeth Woodville, invalid, she and her sisters were subsequently welcomed back to court by Edward’s brother, King Richard III. As a Yorkist princess, the final victory of the Lancastrian faction in the Wars of the Roses may have seemed a further disaster, but Henry Tudor knew the importance of Yorkist support for his invasion and promised to marry Elizabeth…

The Government of Ireland Act 1920 is 100 years old tomorrow. David Torrance examines the legislation and its impact, arguing that a number of the constitutional conventions that regulate relations between Westminster and Holyrood have roots in those that applied to Stormont between 1920 and 1972.

Wednesday 23 December marks the centenary of royal assent for the Government of Ireland Act 1920 (the ‘1920 Act’). That this created the part of the UK known as ‘Northern Ireland’ and its border is well known, but its devolution settlement – a parliament, government, governor and prime minister – has largely faded from public consciousness.

As the historian Graham Walker has observed, Northern Ireland ‘serves as a reminder that devolution and constitutional change has a long, complex, and fascinating history, and did not just appear magically at the end of the twentieth century’ [1]. Indeed, this blog will argue that many of the…

Australian power prices went through the roof as a result of its obsession with chaotically intermittent and heavily subsidised wind and solar (see above).

The relationship is so stark, why even a blind man, open to reality, will readily see it.  However, no amount of evidence appears to register with those who pretend to govern us.

In the week just gone, Australia’s PM, Scott Morrison confirmed (if there was much doubt?) that he’s off with the fairies, with a commitment to Australia hitting a “net-zero emissions” target by 2050.  Central to which is the even wilder and more fantastic claim that the target will be hit by “clean hydrogen”.  Whatever on earth that means?

If Scotty from marketing thinks that we’ll soon be converting all of our ‘excess’ wind and solar power into a gas that no industrialised country has managed to tame in any great volume, as the Americans…