I’ve used here before the snippet from older books that in the decades before the Second World War it was generally accepted that New Zealand had the highest value of foreign trade per capita of any country. Estimates of historical GDP per capita suggest we also had among the very highest levels of real GDP […]
Why try to stop that evolution? Brian Easton writes – In 1956, historian Ruth Ross presented her investigations of the treaty signed at Waitangi on 6 February 1840 to a seminar concluding, ‘The [Māori and Pakeha] signatories of 1840 were uncertain and divided in their understanding of [Te Tiriti’s] meaning; who can say now what […]
Below is my column in The Hill on the worsening situation at the Southern border and how the Supreme Court laid the seeds for this crisis over a decade ago. The courts have left few options for either the states or Congress in compelling the enforcement of federal law. Here is the column:
TweetWriting in the Wall Street Journal, David Henderson and Charley Hooper explain why we should be thankful for high drug prices. Two slices: For Americans, paying for the discovery and development of new drugs rests on our shoulders. If we pay, we get new lifesaving medicines. If we don’t, we don’t. Almost all new drugs…
Roger Palmer speaks quietly, but with the force of knowledge and logic on the subject of global warming/climate change. Two expressions of his perspective are presented here: firstly a brief video and transcript, and secondly excerpts from his 2024 paper. Transcript in italics with my bolds and added images. H/T Raymond Inauen 1. Trust Climate […]
Last Sunday, the Sunday Star-Times recalled on its front page the “fiery debate” triggered by my speech to the Orewa Rotary Club just 20 years earlier. Articles by several authors in the same paper brought the debate up-to-date and warned of the dangers of ACT’s Treaty Principles Bill, which the National Party’s coalition agreement with…
The euro technically started in 1999, when the 11 founding European members of the currency agreed to keep their exchange rates fixed and to hand over monetary policy to the European Central Bank. The euro then became the actual currency that people and firms used in 2002. I confess that, back in the early 1990s,…
One hope that has occasionally been expressed since the beginning of the modern era of Treaty of Waitangi (ToW) settlements, has been that the Iwi showered with money and empowered with control of hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars worth of assets, would be able to then make a difference to all the […]
King Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland was the second son of King James VI of Scotland and Princess Anne of Denmark, the second daughter of King Frederik II of Denmark and Princess Sophie of Mecklenburg-Güstrow. Prince Charles was born in Dunfermline Palace, Fife, on November 19, 1600. At a Protestant ceremony in the […]
Coal, then oil and gas, have driven the mechanization and industrialisation responsible for lifting billions out of agrarian poverty, and all in the space of little more than a century. As a band of miserable misanthropes would have it, oil, coal and gas are an unadulterated evil to be driven back to the earthly depths […]
The King returned from the hospital today after undergoing treatment for an enlarged prostate on Friday. According to the BBC, there was no delegation of royal authority during his stay in the hospital. This approach is in marked contrast to that of the United States where Presidents have temporarily transferred their powers to the Vice-President […]
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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