I have written in the past that while Keynesian stimulus spending made no sense whatever for western countries whose budgets were substantially in deficit before the 2008-09 recession began, it was more justifiable in China, with a substantial budget surplus at the start of the recession. However it now appears I was wrong. Far from […]

On October 31, the world’s seven billionth inhabitant will be born. This should be a matter for deep mourning. Not only does inexorably increasing population pollute the planet, and lessen the likelihood that the majority rather than a minority of the world’s inhabitants can achieve a Western living standard, it also hugely raises the probability […]

The Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter in his 1942 masterpiece “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy” described the process of capitalist wealth creation as being one of “creative destruction.” It’s a lesson that policymakers have not taken sufficiently to heart, largely because they have to answer to sentimental democratic electorates. Creation sells well to an electorate whose instincts, […]

Mass protest movements should be deeply distrusted, but taken seriously. They almost never represent the populace as a whole, but they sometimes represent the future – many of the unpleasant novelties of 1968 have been inflicted on us ever since. Also, like the Bonus Marchers of 1932, their demands may make more sense than the […]

We are now within three months of the climacteric year of 2012 around which the 1997 Kyoto Protocol was built, and therefore within fifteen months of a period in which the Kyoto restrictions will no longer have effect. No fewer than sixteen conferences have been held in an attempt to find a successor to Kyoto, […]