The United Auto Workers’ success in unionizing a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee suggests that the reported death of private sector unions is not imminent. Fifty years ago, even in cyclical industries unionized workers were close to Japan-style lifetime employment, with any layoffs in business downturns allocated by inverse seniority, so that after a few years […]

The European Court of Human Rights’ decision sanctioning Switzerland for having not done enough to combat global warming is typical of all international bodies. It flouted the original restrictions imposed on the court’s activity, the decision did direct economic harm to ordinary Swiss citizens, and the Court exhibited utter contempt for Swiss democracy. International bodies […]

Britain and the United States are together the progenitors of modern democracy and it has since spread worldwide, albeit suffering a retreat in the last decade. Nevertheless, the current governments under which we are groaning suggest that the U.S., Britain and Western Europe are not very good at operating a democratic system. Can it be […]

I was shocked this week to discover that the Pan American Highway, much admired in my youth as a potential connector for the entire American continent, is still incomplete, with a 66-mile Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia that has been held up by environmentalists since 1972. Given the hyperbolic multiplier from completing first-move infrastructure, […]

It has long been a nostrum among economists that central banks should be independent of their countries’ governments. The 1998 decision granting “independence” to the Bank of England was specifically motivated by that thesis. Yet in practice, central banks have not stood staunchly against the free-spending proclivities of their governments; instead, they have indulged them, […]