Utopia, you are standing in it!

If  Dr Shane Reti happened to insist the world is not flat, would RNZ see much merit in reporting  he had come under fire from flat earthers?

We ask because a recent RNZ report was headed Shane Reti stands firm in face of criticism of Māori health comments

Oh dear.  What did he say?

The opening paragraphs inform us:

National’s Health spokesperson Dr Shane Reti is under fire for comments he made comparing Māori life expectancy to the 1840s.

It follows his appearance on The Hui where he said the life expectancy for Māori was 30 years in the 1840s but today it is around 73.4 years.

Was Reti really obliged to defend himself, saying he was trying to argue how the life span of Māori has increased over time?

No country has ever powered itself entirely on wind and solar; no country ever will. And the reason is very simple: sunset and calm weather.

Pressed on the inherent intermittency of wind and solar, the acolyte starts muttering about “storage” as if it were a thing. It isn’t and, for reasons of physics and economics, will never be. As Francis Menton spells out below.

No Amount Of Incremental Wind And Solar Power Can Ever Provide Energy Independence
Manhattan Contrarian
Francis Menton
15 March 2022

Here’s the single most important function of this blog: Saying the things that are patently obvious but that just can’t be said these days in polite society. Yes, it’s The Emperor’s New Clothes every day here at Manhattan Contrarian.

With war raging in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, there is a renewed concern in many quarters for “energy independence.” Until recently, the sophisticated countries of Europe had…

The wind and solar acolyte in their more delusional moments readily proclaims that an all-wind and sun-powered future is upon us.  Never mind sunset; never mind dead calm weather; and never mind the fact that the idea that giant lithium-ion batteries economically storing wind and solar power at grid-scale is pure hokum – for the dreamer, the only thing in our path is a bunch of fossil-fuel loving ‘dinosaurs’.

The renewable energy rent-seeker preys on the naïve and ignorant, with a marketing mantra that, for a few dollars more, we can all enjoy electrons exclusively harvested from sunshine and breezes. Never again will our consciences be troubled by the notion that our lights and fridges are running on coal-fired electricity. Perish the thought.

Or, so the story goes.

Karsten Neumeister – quite apparently a subsidised solar worshipper – takes a look at the methods used by power retailers to dupe…

The Elections Act 2022 – finally law after a long and contentious development in the Commons and the Lords – implements a number of controversial measures. The IDprovision requires that persons present a photographic identification at the polls. This has raised concerns of suppressing the vote of economically and socially vulnerable groups who may be less likely to possess such ID. The lack of evidence of widespread voter deception in the UK undermines its justification as an anti-fraud measure. A separate provision places the Electoral Commission under greater governmentcontrol, politicising the previously independent watchdog of campaign financing and electoral integrity. While advocates for the provision argued for it on the grounds of political accountability, it has raised concerns that the neutrality desirable of an electoral regulator is being needlessly sacrificed.

The legislative unfolding of the Act casts light on a deeper political crisis facing democratic self-rule in…

Labour  backbenchers, conscious   that  recent polling shows their  political futures  could be  cut  short,  will  be  looking to  this week’s  budget  to replenish their  party’s  popularity with  handouts  to  swing  votes.

They  could  be  disappointed, if the Budget’s programme does not tackle voters’ concerns.

BNZ  economists  last week  warned  that the  chances of  a  recession  are “increasing  by  the  day”.  Economist  Cameron  Bagrie  says  controlling  government  spending  to  tamp  down the  factors causing high inflation should be  a  priority for  the  government, but  a  big-spending  budget is  already  locked  in.

Meanwhile  investors  in the  local  sharemarket, taking  a gloomy  view  of  NZ’s  economic  prospects,  are  already  reeling  from the  downward  trend  in  the  local indices.  Similarly   the  NZ  dollar  has  dipped  sharply against both  the  greenback   and the  Australian  dollar, as  New Zealand’s  main   export  market in  China suffers  from a severe Covid  lockdown.

This  then  could  be  the  moment…

I shared last year a matrix to illustrate Milton Friedman’s great insight about the superior results achieved by markets compared to government.

Incentives explain why markets work best. When you spend your own money on yourself (box 1), you try to maximize quality while minimizing cost. And that drives the businesses that are competing for your money to constantly seek more efficient ways of producing better products at better prices.

This system generates creative destruction, which sometimes can be painful, but the long-term result is that we are vastly richer.

Governments, by contrast, don’t worry about efficiency or cost (box 4).

Today, though, let’s  use Friedman’s matrix to understand the shortcomings of the US healthcare system. Way back in 2009, I opined that the most important chart in healthcare was the one showing that American consumers directly paid for less than 12 percent of health expenditures.

For all…