100,000 asylum seekers a year is massive, especially when you consider the many countries one has to pass through to get to the UK. The right of asylum is an ancient right to flee a government or ruler that persecutes you. It goes back thousands of years. In the modern era the UDHR says: Everyone […]
Bet On It reader Dan Barrett wrote these notes for his Book Nook book club on my Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent Is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think. Dan’s idea:I’m organizing reading groups packaged as the Book Nook to help colleagues (1) guide their own learning…
How can I not link to a new Sam Peltzman piece on such a topic? Here goes: Since 1972, the General Social Survey has periodically asked whether people are happy with Yes, Maybe or No type answers. Here I use a net “happiness” measure, which is percentage Yes less percentage No with Maybe treated as […]
MSNBC analyst and former Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill has long been criticized for unhinged rhetoric. That was evident on “Morning Joe” recently when McCaskill said that the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members was akin to Putin “disappearing” people. It is not the first such analogy by McCaskill, who has called those opposing the censorship […]
Simeon Brown announced: The Government has agreed to progressively lower the age of eligibility for bowel cancer screening tests to align with Australia. “Today, I am pleased to announce that we are taking the first step by lowering the age to 58, with redirected funding of $36 million over four years. “This means free bowel […]
This announcement came from our Provost’s office, but apparently hasn’t been sent to all parts of the University. Nevertheless, it surely applies to all job ads for the University of Chicago. What it shows is that the University has updated its Equal Employment Opportunity statement, a statement that must be included in all ads for […]
David Farrar writes – The Herald reported: The Greens’ Tamatha Paul has expressed “regret” about a claim she made on social media that the “vast majority” of people in prison are there for non-violent offences that they’ve “had to do as a response to poverty”. Police and Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell has described comments in her video as “total nonsense” and an […]
Tweet… is from page 172 of the 2012 revised edition of Steven Landsburg’s great 1993 book, The Armchair Economist: [I]ncome statistics don’t account for everything we value. For one thing, we care about the quantity and quality of our leisure time. Here it’s by and large the poor who have made great strides, while the…
It’s not so surprising that Auckland University harbors a Māori activist like Eru Kapa-Kingi; what is surprising is that Auckland University has publicized his words and activities, amd they seem proud of them! For Kapa-Kingi’s goal is apparently to decolonize not just Auckland University (once the best university in New Zealand, now a hotpot of identity […]
Long ago, I co-blogged for EconLog with Arnold Kling. Now he’s running a book club for Liberty Fund. Last month, Arnold invited me and philosopher Rachel Ferguson to discuss Mike Huemer’s new Progressive Myths. Enjoy!
Elon recently re-opened the perennial debate about whether Social Security is a ponzi scheme. Here’s my, lightly edited post from 2011. Elon is in good company calling social security a ponzi scheme. First up is Nobel prize winner Paul Samuelson who wrote: The beauty of social insurance is that it is actuarially unsound. Everyone who reaches […]
Ananish Chaudhuri writes – Dame Anne Salmond recently wrote a column on Newsroom berating people for having views on the Treaty of Waitangi when they cannot even read the Māori version of the treaty. So, what she is saying is that even when customs, laws or treaties impinge on your daily life, you cannot hold any views […]
Economist: In America returns are especially large in computer science and in engineering. They are slightly smaller in other science subjects, in part because an undergraduate degree in these already bumps up salaries by quite a lot. Teachers who bag graduate degrees in education tend to earn more, even if wages for the profession as…
ADDENDUM: See added comments and clarifications under “addendum” at bottom. ******************** I’ve written many times about the battle of the indigenous people in New Zealand (the Māori) to get their “way of knowing”—which includes a lot of superstition and unreliable word-of-mouth “knowledge,” as well as legends and morality—adopted as official policy or as a “way […]
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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