In “The Indispensable Right,” I discuss how academics are now leading an anti-free speech movement on campuses that challenges the centrality (or even the necessity) of free speech protections in higher education. The latest such argument appeared this month in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Tax rates matter for work incentives. When tax rates are high, there is less incentive for people to work. They may pass up additional work and choose leisure time instead. However, it isn’t just taxes that matter. It is the loss of other entitlements as well. All of these are bound up in what is…
“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.” – Sun Tzu (544 ─ 496BC)ISRAEL’S LEGAL RIGHT to strike back at Hamas is unchallengeable. No nation, having suffered the sort of horrific attack unleashed upon Israel by Hamas terrorists on 7 October 2023,…
Below is my column in USA Today on the “deactivation order” issued to a controversial pro-Palestinian group at the University of Florida. The order in my view is unconstitutional. We need to focus on deterring acts of destruction and any violent threats or acts on our campuses. We can maintain a safe space for all…
Several good friends warned me not to publish Don’t Be a Feminist. I appreciate their concern, but I’m glad I kept my own counsel. Here’s my interview with Chris Williamson on the book and beyond. Apparently he’s kind of a big deal…
Under the English common law doctrine of jure uxoris, the property and titles belonging to a woman became her husband’s upon marriage, and it was feared that any man she married would thereby become King of England in fact and name. Because of this common law, and with Mary being England’s first Queen Regnant of […]
Cass Sunstein has a lovely New York Times essay that tries to give us back the word “Liberal.” I hope it works. “Liberal” from “Libertas” means, at bottom, freedom. In the 19th century, “liberals” were devoted to personal, economic, and increasing social freedom from government restraint. “Conservatives” wanted to maintain aristocratic privileges, and government interventions in the traditional way…
It is common lore in YIMBY circles that Tokyo is such an inexpensive city because Tokyo/Japan has allowed so much freedom to build. Sometimes it is mentioned that Japanese building and regulatory decisions are made at higher levels than the strictly local, which lowers the power of the NIMBYs to restrict building. I don’t doubt […]
2023 will go down as the year that the wind industry began its inevitable implosion. Unable to deliver power as and when power consumers need it (therefore generating electricity with no commercial value), the wind industry was only ever the product of mandates, tax breaks and massive subsidies. Call it a Ponzi scheme, call it […]
Opening The Post on Monday morning it was as if the 2026 election campaign had gotten underway already, even as we sit waiting for the new government to form. Under the headline “An answer to National’s revenue gap” was a column by the CTU economist, and former Grant Robertson adviser, Craig Renney suggesting that National […]
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.
Recent Comments