Utopia, you are standing in it!

In my recent interview with John Stossel, I explained that America’s entitlement programs are unsustainable because of demographic change.

Our population pyramid is turning into a population cylinder, so there will not be enough working-age taxpayers in the future to finance all the benefits promised to the elderly. Not even close.

This inevitably and unavoidably means one or more of the following options.

• Massive tax increases.
• Massive benefits cuts.
• Massive borrowing.
• Massive money printing.
• Genuine entitlement reform.

Given those choices, entitlement reform is the only sensible path. Both for the United States and for other nations.

Some readers may think I’m exaggerating in order to push a libertarian agenda. So let’s look at some analysis from non-libertarian sources.

We’ll start with some excerpts from a recent report by the St Louse Federal Reserve Bank. Authored by Amy Smaldone and Mark L.J. Wright, it warns…

Is  anyone  feeling sorry for the Prime Minister? Here, confronted once more by an errant minister, he has had to use his disciplinary powers, but not to the satisfaction of Opposition parties.

 Michael Wood may have been one of the more effective ministers in the current administration, though that is disputed  by both National and ACT.

Certainly  the failure to dispose of  his holding of Auckland Airport shares while he held the Transport portfolio, though told to do so not once  but six times,  aroused  a  measure of  doubt about his  competency, even more so when it was subsequently revealed  by the NZ Herald that he  declined North Shore Aerodrome’s application  for airport authority status while he owned shares in Auckland Airport, a potential competitor.

Some commentators  dismiss the Wood offence  as just another “bit of creeping incompetence” that Hipkins  has had to deal with since he took over  as…

The article containing that quote, Great Myths of The Great Depression has been around since 1998, but it’s always good to put it in front of people repeatedly because there myths don’t die easily.

For example, Old Leftists like Chris Trotter will always bring up the First Labor Government in NZ and FDR’s New Deal in the USA for how they dealt to the Great Depression. What they don’t mention is that Great Britain and Australia had centre-right governments – even with Labour Party involvement occasionally – that did not go for all the industrial nationalisation, new types of welfare support, and most importantly, Keynesian spending. And yet they emerged from the Slump at the same speed as we or the USA did in terms of GDP recovery, dropping unemployment (both Britain and Australia) and so forth.

What’s also not mentioned is that in the USA, after all of…

George III (June 4, 1738 – January 29, 1820) was King of Great Britain and of Ireland from October 25, 1760 until his death in 1820. The two kingdoms were in a personal union under him until the Acts of Union 1800 merged them on January 1, 1801. He then became King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. He was concurrently Duke and Prince-Elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg (“Hanover”) in the Holy Roman Empire before becoming King of Hanover on October 12, 1814. He was a monarch of the House of Hanover who, unlike his two predecessors, was born in Great Britain, spoke English as his first language, and never visited Hanover.

George was born on June 4, 1738 at Norfolk House in St James’s Square, London. He was a grandson of King George II of Great Britain and the eldest son of Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales, and…

 Steven Levitt, famous for his Freakanomics, shows that being an economist is not just mouthing supply and demand.

• Brian Easton writes –

Anyone can call themselves an ‘economist’. Many do, despite having no qualifications in economics and hardly any formal training; they often make elementary errors. That is the result of a conscious decision of the economics profession which resists barriers to exit and entry. In contrast other professions have restrictions, often for good reasons; I am glad my medical advisers are not only qualified but also registered. However, claiming to be expert on economics to contribute to the public commentary without any expertise, is confusing to those with more humble understandings.

On the other hand there are those who have a high reputation in the economics profession but who don’t seem to be really economists. Consider Steven Levitt, who has written of himself, ‘I am having trouble…