Bob Edlin writes – Come in Chloe and your fellow champions of Palestinian statehood and tell us what you think of happenings in the Middle East in recent days. There was widespread celebration – not only in Israel and Gaza but around the world – of news of a cease-fire and that the hostages taken […]
I wrote a column about taxes and growth in 2020. Let’s augment that analysis by digging into some details. I decided to address the issue today after seeing a tweet with this helpful summary of how different taxes cause different levels of economic damage (the Tax Foundation also has a table that ranks different taxes, […]
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025 was awarded this morning for “for having explained innovation-driven economic growth.” The award was divided between Joel Mokyr ““for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress” to Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt “for the theory of sustained growth through…
Macron’s government consistently spent more as a share of total output than any other OECD member, with the public sector accounting for over 57% of GDP in 2024. The telling trend is France’s divergence from its neighbors. When Macron took office, France’s debt-to-GDP ratio was 11 percentage points above the Eurozone average; by 2024, that gap […]
A former vice-president of your party (and son of one of your MPs) says your party is run like a dictatorship. When this accusation is put to the co-leaders, the male co-leader refuses to answer and heads off. He sees the female co-leader is not following him and may be about to answer the question, […]
TweetHere’s a letter to a new correspondent. Mr. __: Thanks for sharing Sohrab Ahmari’s tweet, which I’d not otherwise have noticed. It is, frankly, pathetically inept. In order to criticize the pro-free-market Acton Institute, Ahmari favorably quotes Pope Leo’s assertion that “pseudo-scientific data are invoked to support the claim that a free market economy will…
In my ECONS102 class, we cover economic explanations for media bias. Drawing on past research from Matthew Gentzkow and others, we demonstrate that there are demand-side explanations (media bias arises because of a bias in the preferences of the news-consuming public) and supply-side explanations (media bias arises because media firms segment the market, and focus…
The World Bank and other Western institutions retreat from fossil fuel finance has created a significant geopolitical opportunity for China. China is willing to finance fossil fuel projects in Africa and the developing world and reap the strategic benefit of control of energy infrastructure in many countries.
The lead story on last night’s NBC News was about the cease-fire in Gaza, and it showed Israelis celebrating the return of the hostages, and Gazan civilians celebrating the cessation of war. Even my Jewish friends in America are celebrating, though they’re properly wary of “stage 2” of the deal: will Hamas gives up its […]
Twenty years ago, with the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the US decided to encourage “biofuels” in a big way with the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program, which started with RFS1 and later was amended to RFS2. Gabriel E. Lade and Aaron Smith provide an overview of what has happened since then in Biofuels: Past, Present,…
Roger Partridge writes: When Parliament says gang insignia “is forfeited to the Crown,” citizens are entitled to assume those words mean what they say. Yet on 11 August the District Court ruled otherwise. Judge Lance Rowe directed that a Mongrel Mob vest, seized under the Government’s new Gangs Act 2024 and forfeited following a guilty plea, should nevertheless […]
Robert Bartholomew writes: For millennia, indigenous cultures have accumulated a vast repository of information that has helped them to adapt and survive. Prior to European contact, the Quechua of the Andes used quinine from the bark of the cinchona tree to treat fevers. It later proved to be the first effective treatment for malaria. Salicin from […]
By Paul Homewood Mike Graham interviewed Matt Vickers, Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, yesterday. At about 3hr 12 minutes in, the topic of Net Zero is raised. Vickers is asked whether the ban on petrol cars will be lifted – answer came there none! It is astonishing that no thought seems […]
Stuff reports: Celebration – tinged with anxiousness – has broken out in parts of Israel and Gaza after the announcement of a ceasefire deal between the warring parties. Israel has begun implementing the ceasefire deal in Gaza, after it reached an agreement with Hamas for the Palestinian militant group to release all the hostages it holds. Crowds in both […]
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.
“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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