J. Scott Turner explains how the roots of environmental stewardship were poisoned, resulting in the perverted modern decarbonization movement. His Spectator Australia article is Environmentalism: from concern about clean air to throwing soup at the Mona Lisa. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images. H/T John Ray Garrett Hardin was a professor of biology […]
By Paul Homewood London, 5 March – In the run-up to Budget Day (6 March), a new paper by a former World Bank economist and published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation warns that the UK’s current decarbonisation timeframe is unrealistic and threatens to be economically and socially unsustainable.
One annoying thing about writing a Saturday column for the Stuff papers is never knowing whether a piece will show up in print.I’d thought this one was a banger. I’ll be talking about related issues tomorrow night as part of a panel for A City for People. 🟨🟪 Our speaker line up has dropped! 🟪🟨Join us on…
Besides the usual, that is. Max Thilo of the UK has a new and excellent study on this, here is one excerpt from the foreword by Lord Warner: Second, and critical, the Singaporeans are not fixated on delivering services from acute hospitals – the most expensive part of any healthcare system because of its fixed […]
Last week, Housing Minister Chris Bishop gave perhaps the most important speech by the new Government since the election. In a speech to the Wellington Chamber of Commerce, he said he wanted the ratio of house prices to median household income to more than halve to between 3 and 5 over the next 10…
The Housing Theory of Everything has one of those wonderful self-explanatory titles. A good title matters. The recent and thorough essay explains how the anglosphere’s unnecessarily expensive housing affects, well, everything. Or at least almost everything.Zoning makes it too hard to build houses where people want to build. Urban containment policies block new subdivisions, so…
Demand shocks as technology shocks: We provide a macroeconomic theory where demand for goods has a productive role. A search friction prevents perfect matching between producers and potential customers. Larger demand induces more search, which in turn increases GDP and measured TFP. We embed the product-market friction in a standard neoclassical model and estimate it […]
I’ve referred to “creative destruction” as the “best and worst part of capitalism.” This short video from the Fraser Institute is a good tutorial on the topic. The core message is that entrepreneurs improve our lives by coming up with new ideas, new technologies, and new products. That’s the good news. The bad news is […]
Genetic testing identifies disease risk, enabling individuals to dodge environmental triggers, optimize treatments, and improve planning. Yet, the fear of increased insurance premiums deters many from undergoing tests. Genetic testing offers societal benefits but also presents significant distributional challenges. To address this, my 1994 paper proposed the idea of genetic insurance. For a small fee […]
In a post from July 2021, I discussed housing affordability and “zoning taxes” — in other words, how land use restrictions such as zoning were driving up the cost of housing in some US cities. San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York stood out as the clear outliers, with “zoning taxes” adding several multiples […]
Five things to know about WA proposal to limit rent hikes | The Seattle Times Isn’t rent control one of the most studied economic experiments? And hasn’t it been shown to be, over the long term, a disaster for everyone involved? What does economic evidence tell us about the effects of rent control? | Brookings […]
Question: Do you understand how the child poverty statistics are derived? Clearly some people do not. Last week the latest child poverty statistics were all over the media. But there are a number of misunderstandings that need addressing. Like this one from NewstalkZB’s John MacDonald who wrote: “Living in households that get-by on less than…
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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