The shifting sources of greenhouse gas emissions
24 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in development economics, environmental economics, global warming, growth miracles, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: China, climate alarmism, free riding, game theory, global public goods, global warming
Julie Anne Gentner’s myths about health insurance in the USA
24 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
Some people should check their statistics on the Internet before migrating in disgust.
On arguments from authority
22 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming, liberalism, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: climate alarmism, conjecture and refutation, philosophy of science
When fighting child poverty, don’t mention housing costs
22 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in labour economics, liberalism, politics - New Zealand, poverty and inequality, urban economics, welfare reform Tags: child poverty, housing affordability, land supply, Left-wing hypocrisy, RMA, zoning
Robert Lucas on Social Security entitlement reform
20 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, Robert E. Lucas Tags: ageing society, entitlement reform, Social Security reform
What were they thinking? NZ government super fund loses the lot on loan to already failing bank in one of the PIGS.
20 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of bureaucracy, entrepreneurship, financial economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: active investing, corruption, euro crisis, Index of Economic Freedom, junk bonds, passive investing, Portugal, risk diversification, state owned enterprises
A Portuguese bank on the verge of collapse – what were they thinking?
That would have been the response of many newspaper readers this morning upon learning the New Zealand Superannuation Fund has lost nearly $200 million in taxpayers’ cash on a "risk-free" loan it provided to Lisbon-based Banco Espirito Santo (BES) on July 3.
The loan – part of a US$784 million credit package US investment bank Goldman Sachs put together through its Oak Finance vehicle – was made exactly one month before Portugal’s central bank broke up BES and split the country’s biggest lender into two, with one part holding the good assets and the toxic assets placed in the other.
Unfortunately, the Oak Finance loan is now stranded in the so-called "bad bank" following a retrospective law change by the Bank of Portugal.
Christopher Adams: What were they thinking? – Business – NZ Herald News.
This is what the 2015 index of Economic Freedom has to say about Portugal on the rule of law:
In 2013, the OECD expressed concern over Portugal’s reluctance to crack down on foreign bribery, particularly in regard to its former colonies Brazil, Angola, and Mozambique.
Since 2001, Portugal had officially acknowledged only 15 bribery allegations, and there had been no prosecutions. The judiciary is constitutionally independent, but staff shortages and inefficiency contribute to a considerable backlog of pending trials.
What happens when a metropolitan area has way too many governments – The Washington Post
20 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in constitutional political economy, Federalism, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: local government
The OECD, in a report on the "Metropolitan Century" we’ve just entered, found across all of its member countries that when you double the number of municipalities per 100,000 residents within a single metropolitan area, regional labour productivity falls by 5 to 6 percent.
In short: the more little governments you have, the less productive the entire local economy is.
via What happens when a metropolitan area has way too many governments – The Washington Post.
The anti-vaccination movement is drawn equally from across the political spectrum
20 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in health economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: anti-vaccination movement, antiscience left, Green Left, opinion polls
Few UK green party voters are green: Green Party voters look like Lib Dems, think like Labour voters
19 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice Tags: expressive voting, protest voters, Uk Greens, UK politics, voter demographics
Fewer the mushrooming green party vote in the UK too much at all about the environment. It certainly not the major reason for going green.
Green voters are not radically left-wing on economic issues nor are they primarily driven by environmental concerns. How, therefore, can we explain their decision to vote for a party with a far-left, environmentalist agenda?
One way is to look at who prospective Green voters turned to in previous elections…. Around half voted for the Liberal Democrats in 2010 and around a third voted for the junior coalition partner in both 2005 and 2010. There are a number of ways of interpreting this.
First, Liberal Democrats and Green voters traditionally hold similar socio-demographic profiles. Both are likely to be university educated and to work in professional or managerial jobs.
Second, the Lib Dems were, until the 2010 election, the protest vote of many on the left. Since entering government, they have lost this niche and, subsequently, have seen their poll ratings plummet.
Third, the Greens now have a monopoly on certain policies that they once shared with Nick Clegg’s party – for example, ending university tuition fees.
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Al Gore Buys CA Shoreline Mansion…Awkward
19 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
Al Gore has snapped up an ocean front property in California. Obviously, rising sea levels are not any time soon for him when it comes to putting his money where his mouth is. The only explanation is that Mr. Gore does not actually believe his predictions of doom.
Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, have added a Montecito/ Santa Barbara CA -area property to their real estate holdings, reports the Montecito Journal.
The couple spent $8,875,000 on an ocean-view villa on 1.5 acres with a swimming pool, spa and fountains, a real estate source familiar with the deal confirms. The Italian-style house has six fireplaces, five bedrooms and nine bathrooms.
Some of the most memorable images from Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, are the graphics that show how rising ocean levels will dramatically alter our planet’s coastlines. As Greenland’s ice sheets collapse, Gore predicts that our shores will be flooded and sea-bordering cities will sink beneath the water leaving millions of people homeless. His narration tells the audience that, due to global warming, melting ice could release enough water to cause at 20-foot rise in sea level “in the near future.” Al PT…
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The Un-discussed Foreign Policy Alternative | Coyote Blog
19 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in liberalism, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, war and peace Tags: ISIS, Middle-East politics, non-interventionist foreign policy
Why is there not a third alternative to be at least considered — that there is something really broken in a lot of Islam as practiced today (just as there was a lot of sh*t broken with Christianity in, say, the 14th-16th centuries) and that Islam as practiced in many Middle Eastern countries is wildly illiberal (way more illiberal than any failings of Israel, though you wouldn’t know that if you were living on a college campus). But, that we don’t need to saddle up the troops and try to change things by force…
Yes, I know the first response to all folks like me who advocate for non-intervention is “Munich” and “Czechoslovakia”. So be it. But if we sent in the military every time someone yelled “appeasement” our aircraft would be worn out from moving troops around. And we seem to be totally able to ignore atrocities and awful rulers in Sub-Saharan Africa.
As a minimum, I would like to see a coalition of Arab states coming to us and publicly asking us for help — not this usual Middle East BS we hear that Saudi Ariabi (or whoever) really in private wants us there but publicly they will still lambaste us. Without this support we can win the war but we have no moral authority (as we did after WWII) in the peace. Which is one reason so many of our interventions in the Middle East and North Africa fail.
via The Un-discussed Foreign Policy Alternative | Coyote Blog.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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