Utopia, you are standing in it!

There is a recipe for achieving growth and prosperity and I used a grade-point-average analogy earlier this year to explain why it is important to get all the ingredients correct.

Let’s look at some empirical data. I wrote back in March about the Heritage Foundation’s 2023 Index of Economic Freedom, mostly to express pessimism about a worldwide decline in economic liberty.

But I also groused that the United States had fallen to #25 in the rankings.

And I noted that score put America “lower than many European welfare states” because those nations “have higher fiscal burdens, but are more market-oriented in areas like trade and regulation.”

Here’s the proof.

As you can see, the five Nordic nations all rank above the United States. But notice that the United States gets much better scores on “Tax Burden” and “Government Spending.”

The reason these other nation rank above the United States…

Giant industrial wind turbines with the tips of their 50-80m blades clocking 350 kph play havoc with radar systems, giving false images and distorting real ones. The result is unnecessary danger for pilots dependent upon accurate weather reports, and air-traffic guidance, both essential for safe takeoffs and landings.

In a number of States, the US military has obtained legislation to prevent the construction of wind turbines anywhere near their airfields and training grounds.

Chris Smith, a Republican Congressman from New Jersey is not only incensed about the effect that America’s offshore wind industry is having (and if their plans come to fruition, will increasingly have) on radar, he’s equally wild about the effect these things will have on America’s ability to defend itself, more generally. Smith has joined with a group of fellow Republicans to investigate the serious and obviously negative effects these things have on our ability to…

I’ve been reading the papers released the other day by Treasury (in one case written jointly with IRD) on the Minister of Finance’s hankering to tax Australian banks more heavily, retrospectively.

There seem to be three such papers, a 10 February Treasury Report, a short 17 February Treasury aide-memoire, and a 10 March joint Treasury/IRD report. Nothing appears to have been withheld from the first two, but there are several, quite lengthy, bits withheld from the 10 March paper, in many cases apparently references to legal advice officials may have received.

The 10 February paper is titled “Windfall gains in the New Zealand banking sector, and responses”, apparently part of something called “Project Cricket”. Retrospective taxes targeted at companies the Minister of Finance doesn’t like and are just considered politically ripe for the plucking are…..really not cricket. But perhaps that irony escaped both the authors and the…

• Bryce Edwards writes –

The ultra-rich can breathe easy and progressive voters can scream into the void, because Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has ruled out any meaningful reform to our broken and unfair tax system. The Labour leader says it won’t happen on his watch.

Official documents were released on Wednesday showing the Government asked officials to draw up ideas for how a wealth tax might work. They then focused-grouped the idea and this exercise showed it wouldn’t be an easy win for Labour so, regardless of its merits, it was thrown on the bonfire.

Hipkins was then asked whether Labour might implement wealth taxes during its next term in government, and he categorically ruled out any such progressive reforms under his leadership.

The Progressive tax reforms that Labour rejected

We now know that Treasury put together a number of different models for how a major taxation reset could be…

Dare we hope that this strong feeling there’ll be a change of government will be what happens?

. . .Appearing on AM’s political panel, Newstalk ZB’s senior political correspondent Barry Soper and Newshub’s Patrick Gower from Paddy Gower Has Issues slammed the current Labour Government.

“Chris Hipkins, he’s liked by his caucus, there’s no doubt about that, but he can’t remove himself from all of the decisions that were made in Cabinet,” Soper said.

He might like us to see him as a new Prime Minister but Hipkins was a senior Minister and responsible for many of the failings under the previous PM.

“You can have as many bonfires as you like, it’s still, essentially, the same Government and when it comes to people getting thrown out like Michael Wood, all the portfolios where do they go? They go to overworked ministers.”

Soper said earlier this year he told Hipkins…