Utopia, you are standing in it!

Edward, the only son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, was crowned king of England in February 1547 at age nine. Thomas Cranmer, the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, presided over the boy’s coronation. Sixteen years earlier Cranmer had helped Henry VIII establish the crown’s supreme authority over the church. Now, Cranmer used Edward’s coronation to showcase his newfound power. He surprised the coronation audience by turning to face them and explain that the king’s imperial authority was not answerable to the people, but only to God. This manner of absolutism that began under Henry VIII was more fully realized in the kingship of young Edward VI.

From a very young age, Edward was educated into the new school of Protestant reform. He was a serious and studious young man who was fervent, severe, and self-righteous in his theological inclinations. The…

Exactly one month ago, I declared that Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley deserved an award for the “world’s most economically illiterate statement” because of her claim that “poverty is not naturally occurring.”

In reality, poverty has been the norm throughout history. As documented by Professors Deirdre McCloskey and Don Boudreaux, it was only the development of capitalism (starting a few hundred years ago in Europe) that enabled humanity to enjoy amazing and unprecedented increases in living standards.

Moreover, Ms. Pressely was trying to argue that redistribution was the proper way to address poverty, and I concluded my column by noting “that part of her statement also is wrong, according to both U.S. data and global data.”

Today, I want to debunk another preposterous assertion.

David Smith of the U.K.-based Guardian wrote a column yesterday claiming that Biden’s so-called stimulus should be celebrated since it marks an end to forty years…

The departure of Donald Trump from the White House was a victory for the US democratic system, which only just succeeded.If then Vice President Mike Pence had wavered under enormous pressure from President Trump and his cult-like supporters, Joe Biden might not be in the White House and there would have been serious civil disorder.The Republicans haven’t given up, they are now trying to make voting more difficult in several states.Democracy is a model under threat from many quarters, and losing around the world.

It is easy to forget how recently democracy has become mainstream.In Britain women over the age of 21 only got the vote in 1928 and in the US, universal suffrage only became accessible to all Afro-Americans in the last 55 years, because, prior to the 1960s voting reforms, there was serious voter suppression in parts of the country.Some former East European countries like Hungary have retreated…

The National Party’s deputy leader and health spokesperson, Shane Reti, popped into the news yesterday because he was promoting a bill before Parliament which aimed to make medicinal cannabis more affordable and accessible.

The Greens Chloe Swabrick was among the MPs who voted against the bill, among other reasons because …

“It represents a highly pharmaceuticalised, commercial model…” 

Does this mean she wants amateur growers to get a slice of the medicinal action? Or gang members?

Reti told RNZ the bill had three key points: cannabis with low THC could be obtained over the counter; it improved the MedSafe consenting process; and the prescribing regime would be pharmacy dispensing, such as in the US.

Moreover, the bill addressed some issues under the current regime, such as tightening up the eligibility of who can manufacture medicinal cannabis.

A key consideration was that two years after the medicinal cannabis law took effect

Today we find ourselves living in an America where the Republican Party seems to stand for voter suppression (see Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia state legislature just to name a few) as they try and place as many obstacles in the path of African-Americans who would like to exercise their franchise.  The strategy is clear – they fear they cannot win elections without making it difficult for minorities to vote and reminds this writer of the Jim Crow era and harkens back to the post-Civil War period, particularly after the election of 1876 as southern politicians began to reassert control of their region and try and undo the gains brought forth by the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th amendments for African-Americans.  The post-Civil War southern leaders worked to undo the life’s work of Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stevens who fought against slavery and…

by Judith Curry

New Jersey has a sea level rise problem.  How should this be managed?

If having no power at all was the object of our ‘inevitable transition’ to an all wind and solar ‘powered’ future, then we’re well on our way.

The bitter northern hemisphere winter just gone, has shown wind and solar for what they are: pointless and expensive vanity projects, that only a lunatic would promote and the delusional would accept.

The frigid weather that struck the USA on 16-17 February left its Texan heartland powerless, as solar and wind power output plummeted.  Clearly rattled by the event, the wind and solar cult have tried to pin the blame on everything, except the obvious.

The same goes for events across Germany during January, when dead-calm, freezing weather left Germans desperate for coal-fired power – forcing them to have a good, hard think about their obsession with ‘green’ energy.

STT’s reports on Germany’s renewable energy calamity, sent our site into meltdown for…

The role of the Hawley-Smoot Tariff (aka Smoot-Hawley Tariff) in causing the Great Depression has been an ongoing subject of controversy for close to a century. Ron Batchelder and I wrote a paper (“Debt, Deflation and the Great Depression”) published in this volume (Money and Banking: The American Experience) that offered an explanation of the mechanism by which the tariff contributed to the Great Depression. That paper was written before and inspired another paper “Pre-Keynesian Theories of the Great Depression: What Ever Happened to Hawtrey and Cassell“) I am now revising the paper for republication, and here is the new version of the relevant section discussing the Hawley-Smoot Tariff.

Monetary disorder was not the only legacy of World War I. The war also left a huge burden of financial obligations in its wake. The European allies had borrowed vast sums from the United States to finance their…

Government estimates usually mean ‘not less than’, but this is worse than that. It’s supposed not to be possible to tie the hands of future governments on policy matters, but that’s what the Climate Change Act does, based on the notion that CO2 is ‘harmful’ – except for plant growth and in fizzy drinks.
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Brits were misled about the cost of the Government’s net zero carbon emissions target by 2050 after Whitehall officials played down the estimated £70 billion annual hit, says The Sun (via The GWPF).

In bombshell emails released after a two-year FOI battle, Treasury civil servants admitted to then-Chancellor Philip Hammond that the cost of going green would likely be £20 billion a year more than the £50 billion figure they were told to champion publicly.

Back in Cambridge, I naturally had to read the works from my renown lecturer, Dr. Ha-Joon Chang. One of them was his book Bad Samaritans: The Guilty Secrets of Rich Nations & the threat to Global Prosperity(Random House Paperback version). For those who don’t know, Chang in this book launches into a critic ofthe tenetsof the “Washington Consensus”. He further explores the economic history of today’s industrialised nations (some which he covered more extensively in his previous book, Kicking Away the Ladder) to argue that these nations did not develop based on pure market-based policies and ideas, but rather through active state-led actions. Written in a story tale style for laymen (non-economic readers), the book gained much praise from the development and non-development community.

In comes, William (Bill) Easterly, Professor and well-known author of The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s efforts to aid the rest have done…

A Financial Times leader delivers advice that Finance Minister Grant Robertson should (but probably won’t) consider.

Essentially, the advice is to resist the temptation to  involve the central bank in the challenge of slowing the rise in house prices.

Changing regulation and reforming planning law is a smarter way to go.

The FT observes that – to many – it may seem obvious that the central bank quantitative easing programmes launched after the 2008 financial crisis have led to inflation, as money printing inevitably does.

But the inflation has has shown up in booming stock markets, high prices for art and collectibles, and surging cryptocurrencies.  Rather than higher consumer prices, cheap money has led to asset price inflation.

In this reading, the FT says, central banks should reconsider their stimulus policies because they are only delaying and deepening the eventual bust.

Furthermore, according to the critics, stimulus is increasing…

German Autobahn
EU politicians seem determined to hobble their car industry regardless of economic consequences, to save a few molecules of a harmless trace gas that’s essential to plant and tree growth.
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The European Commission’s proposed Euro 7 emission rules on cars, vans, trucks and buses would amount to “a ban through the back door” of internal combustion engines as of 2025, if implemented in their current form, industry has said, calling the proposal premature and “completely out of the question”. Euractiv reporting.

The ‘Euro 7‘ rules aim to ensure vehicles are clean over their entire lifetime, helping Europe to meet its European Green Deal emissions targets.

The exact details of the measure are still under discussion, but they are already creating jitters at VDMA, a German trade association representing mechanical engineering companies.