Utopia, you are standing in it!

I’m a big fan of New Zealand because the nation is a great example of how sweeping free-market reforms lead to very good results.

• The Kiwis got rid of all agriculture subsidies and farmers benefited.
• The Kiwis put the clamps on government spending, both in the 1990s and 2010s.
• The Kiwis used private property rights to rescue ocean fisheries.

Perhaps most impressive, New Zealand has very high levels of societal capital, ranking #1 in the new Global Index of Economic Mentality.

And the country also gets very high scores from Economic Freedom of the World and the Index of Economic Freedom.

But that doesn’t mean policy is perfect. The current Primer Minister already has demonstrated she has a very limited understanding of economics, and now she’s proving her lack of knowledge by imposing a version of “comparable worth.”

In a column for the New York Times, Anna…

Not the latest model
They may imagine this will have some sort of effect on the global climate in the long run, but even if it does it will be too small to be worth mentioning. But so-called green ideology must prevail, in the minds of most of today’s political leaders.
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson plans to announce next week a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030, five years earlier than previously planned, the Financial Times reported on Saturday.

Britain had originally planned to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel-powered cars from 2040, as part of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and in February Johnson brought this forward to 2035, reports Car and Bike.

Citing unidentified industry and government figures, the FT said Johnson now intended to move the date forward again to 2030 in a…

Everyone loves New Zealand and Jacinda Ardern. According to the conventional wisdom ‘countries with the quickest and strictest lockdown have had the smallest reductions in their GDP’. But did you know that in the second quarter in New Zealand GDP fell by 12.2% – a very large hit.

This blog is not about the wisdom of New Zealand’s health policy. In these terms New Zealand may be world beating. The problem is the myth that there is a painless economic way to solve the coronavirus problem.

New Zealand’s Great Success

New Zealand is a highly developed economy with a population of some 5 million. It is made up of two big islands and a cluster of smaller ones.

It has the advantage of being isolated. Wellington to Sidney is over 2000 km. 3 hours by air (farther than London to Moscow). Wellington to Shanghai is nearly 10,000 km. This has…

We all know that the promised “blue wave” of Democratic victories didn’t occur. While Trump has been given the boot (but got nearly half the vote), the Dems lost seats in Congress, failed to flip state legislatures, and doesn’t look as if it will control the Senate, either. Why, with a President who is so palpably unfit for office that his coattails should have swept many Republicans out of office as well.

In this bit from his latest Real Time, Bill Maher has what I think is a pretty good analysis: he attributes it largely to wokeness. While the GOP may be an unpalatable alternative, so are Wokies to many Americans. And that’s what I was afraid of. While, thank Ceiling Cat, Wokeness didn’t keep Biden from being elected (but might have done so for Bernie Sanders), it didn’t, says Maher, inspire many Americans to vote for Democrats. You…