Insiders had a discussion on the billion dollars that Tony Abbott is alleged to have gouged out of health spending. Let’s remind ourselves what Kevin Rudd told the Parliament (emphasis added).

It goes to the question of indexation. Under the previous healthcare agreement, his predecessor had an indexation clause of 6.3 per cent. That was based on a calculation about the costs in the system. In the subsequent healthcare agreement, which this minister for health presided over—the now Leader of the Opposition—he reduced it to 5.3 per cent. He gouged a billion dollars out of the system. He pretends that that is not a gouge out of the system.

That isn’t quite what they said on Insiders. It turns out that Kay Patterson was the Health Minister when the last healthcare agreement was struck with the States, not Abbott. So Abbott did not reduce the indexation at all. So that part of the Rudd allegation is false. But what of the substance of the claim?

Rudd again. Read more »

Steven Kates is a Canadian-born economist who came to Australia and copied von Mises by working for 24 years with the Chamber of Commerce. He is now employed at the RMIT. This year he delivered the von Mises lecture at the annual conference of the Austrian Scholars.

The entire Austrian Scholars Conference, now on line, was a dream come true. Everyone agreed that it was the best yet, owing to what conference director Joseph T. Salerno called the “Second Austrian Revival.” He dates it from September 2008, when the banking system began to break down as the bust became evident to all.

Kates has made a deep study of the history of  theories about the cause of economic instability (the boom and bust cycle). Read more »

Worth a good look, a taste on line here.

Chris Berg’s editorial on the array of subsidies and grant programs set up to “help” the private sector do what it should be doing without benefit of corporate welfare. The Book Industry Strategy Group, the Australian Tourism Development Program, the Biofuels Capital Grants Program (has everyone noted the inflated food prices in the Third World do to the rush for biofuels), Building Entrepreneurship in Small Business (what about simply slashing the paper work?) and about forty others.

Christian Kerr on the gigantic churning machine that is being planned to address climate change.

A graph of public servant numbers, showing that the election of Kevin Rudd did not arrest the upward slope, despite his promise to “take an ax” to the Canberra public service.

A profile of the wonderful achievements of Geoffrey Blainey, whose legacy will surely outlast history wars.

Alexander Deane on the way that Britain has evolved into the “Surveillance State”. Read more »

There are two eections on today; South Australia and Tasmania. Reading the papers gives the impression that both states might see a change in government after today. The South Australian election is quite interesting. The Australian suggests that the Rann government is unexpectedly in trouble.

Today’s Newspoll shows virtually no chance of Mike Rann’s government retaining the numbers to rule in its own right, despite Labor’s record 10-seat majority.

Taken exclusively for The Weekend Australian during the final week of the campaign, the poll found the Liberals ahead of Labor on a two-party-preferred basis by 52 per cent to 48 per cent.

Alarmingly for Labor, the party’s primary vote in metropolitan Adelaide has dropped by 12 points since the last election in 2006, to 38 per cent, while the Liberals are on 40 per cent.

Labor’s weak primary vote in South Australia’s key city electorates is extraordinary, highlighting the government’s vulnerability as it seeks a third term. Read more »

I’d like to donate some cash to Jacques for the wonderful tech job that he is doing for us. If anyone would like to add to the pot, please email me and I’ll send you the details.

So President Barack Obama is postponing his trip to Australia until June.

This may benefit the Government – being closer to the next election.

But is it merely coincidence that this comes after raucous scenes in the Federal Parliament. Has this scared off the President?

Chris Berg has a nice piece on line, looking at the way Menzies is trotted out from time to time as the yardstick of successful Liberalism.

Menzies is either a stick to be wielded against the modern Liberal Party, or a divining rod for seeking its future direction. But like a divining rod, those who use Menzies’ legacy are revealing more about themselves than about Menzies.

Nevertheless, when Bob Brown states on Twitter that “Tony Abbott’s new front bench makes Sir Robert Menzies look pink”, it’s a fair point. Menzies does look a little pink these days.

The post-war Menzies government was centralist enough to be a blank slate upon which anybody can impose their ideal vision of the past. Well, at least it was centralist by the standards of the time. With the hindsight of half a century, the Menzies government was a protectionist government, supportive of high levels of regulation, restrictive industrial laws, and, most damningly, the White Australia Policy. Read more »

How lucky we are that the rule of John Howard is over.

A blast from the not so distant past (turned up in spring-cleaning the office).

“Nazi-style climate a threat to art: Archer” (The Aust 15/11/97)

Australia is in the grip of neo-conservatism and “fierce anti-intellectualism” which is already destroying the arts and threatens to silence non-mainstream ideas…

Archer was scathing of the Howard Government, likening the artistic climate to nazism.

“The first to go were intellectuals and artists”, Archer said.

I think the intellectuals and artists of Australia managed to dodge the bullet. The nearest we had to sustained polical street violence in this country was the disruption of One Nation public meetings but I don’t recall Robyn Archer or any progressives complaining about that. I know my friend Homer would have deplored it.

Vulgar Keynesianism is said to prescribe that unemployed men should go down the road dig a hole and then refill it. Keynes actually suggested that banknotes be buried in mine shafts and covered up, then the private sector recover them. But you get the idea. Keynesians believe that activity is important, not value-add.

How well has the stimulus done on that score? Consider the insulation program; 1,100,000 houses were apparently insulated, then a whole bunch burned down, creating jobs for the construction industry firemen jobs insurance pay-outs kept the cash ticking over and promoting retail sales when damaged goods were replaced, then it turned out the insulation was faulty and had to be pulled out, creating different jobs, at some point it will have to be replaced, more jobs, and now it turns out some fraud was involved. So police jobs are created, newspapers sold etc. It just doesn’t end.

The schools building program is also starting to payback the initial investment. Read more »

The Texas School Board wants to add Hayek to the high school economics curriculum. This seems to have caused something of a fuss. Justin Wolfers has argued at the Freakonomics site that Hayek is unworthy. This on the basis of a citation search through JSTOR.

But searching for “Friedrich von Hayek” only yielded 398 articles; adding “((“Friedrich von Hayek”) OR (“Friedrich Hayek”))” raised his total to 1242 mentions; also allowing “FH Hayek” raised his count to 1561.

Oh dear. Friedrich Hayek’s middle initial was A. not H. Okay. Mistakes happen. Jacob Levy then tries to replicate the Wolfers exercise. Afterall this isn’t climate science – replicability is an important aspect of what economists do.

Next step, to get a ceiling estimate:
full-text search on Hayek . 12088 results. Browsing through these yields very few false positives– so now I’m suspicious. Read more »

From Hansard March 11, 2010 pg. 49 – 50.

Mr ABBOTT (2.50 pm)—My question is, again, to the Prime Minister. In light of the Prime Minister’s previous answer, is he seriously telling the House that he was never informed about the safety problems, fires and deaths under the Home Insulation Program? Will he now inform the House when he was so informed and who finally informed him?

Mr RUDD—I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. In my earlier answer to his question, I outlined the government’s decision-making process leading up to the commencement of the scheme on 1 July 2009. The honourable Leader of the Opposition asked questions about subsequent safety and compliance matters which arose. Let me provide him with the following information.

On 14 August, I received a letter from the then minister in relation to the Home Insulation Program proposing increased compliance requirements for the program. Read more »

George Monbiot is lamenting the war on science.

The attack on climate scientists is now widening to an all-out war on science.

This idea of a war on science is very popular with the left. But I don’t see it. Rather I see politicised debate with some using science as a weapon and scientists as human shields. But I suspect that Monbiot isn’t helping his cause much by these comments. Read more »

With news that the Government is now going to pay hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to repair the problems caused by its insulation folly, and the waste from the education stimulus payments – driving up construction costs – it is worth remembering Kevin Rudd’s emphatic statement of November 2007:

Today, I am saying loud and clear that this sort of reckless spending must stop.

I agreed with Mr Rudd then – some of the Coalition government’s spending during its last few years was wasteful. But has Prime Minister Rudd stopped reckless spending? No, of course not. He has recklessly spent more in 12 months than the Howard Government did in 11.5 years. Read more »

Tim R tells us

It’s worth noting that Rand admired Mises, but hated Rothbard.

Indeed. Jerome Tuccille relates the story in his It usually begins with Ayn Rand. Not only did Rothbard have the poor taste to be married to a practicing Christian – who didn’t appreciate Rand’s refutation of religion – but the ingrate refused to leave his wife. The final straw came in the summer of 1958. Read more »

Robyn Williams March 8, 2010

…debate the widest range of credible views, but recognise the cowboys, the misfits and the sons and daughters of Dr Goebbels for what they are.

Maurice Newman March 11, 2010

At the ABC, I believe we must reenergise the spirit of enquiry. Be dynamic and challenging – to look for contrary points of view, to ensure that the maverick voice will not be silenced. There should be no public perception that there is such a thing as an “ABC view” – we must be neither believers nor atheists but agnostics who acknowledge people have a right to make up their own minds.

I have a piece on Ayn Rand in the new IPA Review. I’m reproducing it below with links.

Ayn Rand remains a best-selling author. Nearly thirty years after her death, and over fifty years since publication, her books remain as popular as ever. Just last year The Economist proposed an Atlas Shrugged Index; the sales of her magnum opus tracking events that herald big government. To be sure her two best known books The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are eerily prescient; her villains especially describe the threats to our freedoms. Her descriptions of second-handers, moochers and looters relate to people and institutions that are readily recognisable. Read more »

KEVIN Rudd says he was alerted to potential safety problems with the government’s home insulation program as early as August 2009 and will be subjected to Opposition questioning on the matter next week.

The Prime Minister was forced to give a detailed run down of his knowledge of problems with the scheme in parliament today, conceding he received notification about compliance issues on August 14 last year.

The Australian

Although the advent of fiat money has not rendered central banks any less capable of generating booms and busts, it has considerably complicated the possibility of fundamental reform because a fiat standard, unlike a gold or silver standard, must be monopolistically administered if it is to retain any value, and because allowing commercial banks the right to issue notes that are themselves redeemable in fiat money, whatever advantages such a policy may have, will not by itself deprive the fiat-money-issuing authority of its crisis-making capacity.
It is important that people recognize the route by which we came to the present impasse so that they might shed their essentially romantic notion of central banking and instead approach it, as Walter Bagehot once did, as a fundamentally dangerous institution—one still more in need of confinement and taming than it was in Bagehot’s own day.

George Selgin in the latest The Independent Review.

Jacob Zuma, the South African president, has nominated former Apartheid era police spy Marthinus van Schalkwyk to replace Yvo de Boer.

Former president Thabo Mbeki used to call him ‘kortbroek’ (short pants) because he was a political lightweight.
(HT: Wattsupwiththat)

A German aristocrat of my acquaintance has figured out that the price he will be paid for the output of a solar panel is so high compared with the price he will pay for his input of normal electricity, that he is thinking of rigging up powerful arc lamps to shine on solar panels on his extensive roof.

(HT: Bishop Hill)

John Quiggin makes an interesting argument in a recent post.

if you can’t get basic stats right, you can’t get economics right either

I’d like to think that’s right, but I know it isn’t. First specialisation and the division of labour suggests that it would/should be possible to get economics right and not stats. Second, Deirdre McCloskey and Stephen Ziliak have tested that hypothesis. From the introduction of their 2003 Journal of Socio-Economics article. Read more »

The Lowy Institute have put up a post asking whether there is a libertarian view on foreign policy.

what do libertarians believe to be the proper role of government when it comes to international affairs? Libertarians like their government small and out of the way, but they presumably agree that there are some things government ought to be good at, like defending the country and protecting its interests.

So get the discussion going, I thought some quotes from Ludwig von Mises would be in order. From Liberalism Read more »

Henry Ergas provides an FAQ on the Rudd health policy in the Australian. Read the whole thing – I especially loved this bit.

True, the states may not have the tax base to easily fund rising health costs. But if you believe the recently released Intergenerational Report, neither does the commonwealth.

Henry then provides some analysis of the money being stripped out of the State budgets.

The 2009-10 Intergenerational Report projects that GST revenue will average about 3.5 per cent of gross domestic product during the next 40 years. One-third of GST revenue would therefore be 1.15 per cent of GDP. The report also projects that commonwealth spending on hospitals amounts to 1 per cent of GDP in 2009-10, increasing to 1.1 per cent of GDP in 2019-20. Read more »

Michael Foot, former UK Labour Party leader, has passed away aged 96. In her autobiography Mrs Thatcher described him as being a gentleman.

Looks like we will be waiting a while for any meaningful or coherent tax reform

KEVIN Rudd has put the Henry tax review firmly on the backburner, confirming today that his $50 billion public health takeover plan is his top priority.

The Prime Minister said this morning he had not decided on a specific timetable for the release of the review, which was delivered to the Rudd government by Treasury secretary Ken Henry in December.

“I believe what Australian people wanted me to do is to get on with the business of delivering health and hospitals reform. Number one priority,” he told ABC radio.

“Each thing in its season, we’ve got to do one thing at a time.

“But in terms of specific timetables for doing it, no, I don’t have anything particular in mind.”(The Australian 04/03/2010) Read more »

I have an op-ed in The Australian today talking about the Rudd health policy. Like Samuel J I am underwhelmed by the proposal and believe it to be fundamentally flawed.

Do we really want some Canberra bureaucrat (note the “no net increase in bureaucrats” promise) determining how much should be spent on our health? Do we really want to have health spending allocated on the same basis that the Commonwealth Grants Commission divvies up the GST?

This policy is to be financed by one-third of the GST revenue. People may think that to be sensible, but hang on to your wallets. Rudd promised further ostensible reform. He identified that the gap between expected GST revenue and demands on the health system is expected to increase.

That’s code for a future increase in the GST rate. No doubt, through time the commonwealth will find that it needs to spend more and more on health. “GST up” will become the new perennial budget headline. Read more »

John Quiggin has just put up another post on the Phil Jones statistical significance issue. This time putting the boot into Richard Lindzen. It seems Lindzen is the originator of the claim that there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995. Jones agreed with that statement at the 95 percent level, but only just. Recall my discussion on that point here and here.

This is what John Quiggin says (emphasis added) Read more »

Peter Costello has a good article in the Age today.

Once you announce there is $2.7 billion of free insulation to be distributed, you can hardly be surprised when contractors materialise from thin air to take up the business. If the government’s plan is to shovel out money as fast as possible, then safety and training is not going to be their priority.

Nor was it a priority for the government when it announced the scheme on February 3 last year. The government declared: “The insulation program is expected to create a significant number of new Australian jobs. These jobs require limited retraining and so the benefits to the community can be realised quickly.”

What a tragic miscalculation that proved to be. The retraining was so “limited”, four young men tragically lost their lives and thousands of homes are now at risk. So where did the idea to insulate houses come from? Read more »

In Greek mythology, the gods were anthropomorphic. They were spiteful, vengeful and capricious. People knew that they had to offer sacrifice or earn the wrath of the god they offended.

When Zeus defeated his father Kronos and the other Titans, hurling them off to Tartarus, he established himself as the king of the gods.

But sacrificing to Zeus was insufficient – the other gods had their realms and needed offerings too.

Thanks to Prometheus, mankind enjoyed the best part of the meat that is sacrificed, with the offal and blood reserved for sacrifice to the gods.

The Greeks – and  other civilizations with their own gods – knew how important it was to keep the gods happy.

Now, curiously, we have a reversal. It is the god Gaia that predominates, who the Greeks knew as the grandmother of Kronos and the great grandmother of Zeus.

Our sacrifice must be an emissions trading scheme. Failure to make deep cuts in carbon emissions, we are told, will cause Gaia to be upset and woe betide those humans that offend her dignity. Read more »

Roger Pielke Jr. linked to an old post today. In February 2009 he made these comments.

The political consensus surrounding climate policy is collapsing. If you are not aware of this fact you will be very soon.
…
The current shrillness that has been put on display by many politically-active climate scientists and the feeding-frenzy among their skeptical political opposition can be explained as a result of this looming collapse, though many will confuse the shrillness and feeding-frenzy as a cause of the collapse.
…
The climate scientists (and their willing allies) have taken their battle to the arenas of politics, waging a scorched earth campaign of bullying, name calling, threats, and obnoxiously absurd appeals to authority. The skeptics participate in similar fashion, and the result is an all out brawl that we see escalating still before our eyes. Read more »

The SMH has an op-ed today by George Williams arguing against the death penalty. Apparently the federal parliament is considering a ban. This would prevent any State or Territory government from reintroducing the death penalty. Putting this in context, the last person executed in Australia was hanged in 1967. The last jurisdiction to maintain the death penalty on the books was NSW (abolished in 1985) but the last time someone was executed there was in 1940. The last ANU election survey indicates that support for the death penalty has fallen below 50 percent. So what’s the problem?

This leaves Australian law in an unsatisfactory state and our citizens facing the death penalty overseas in an even worse situation. Equivocation on the death penalty by our leaders, such as by recognising it as appropriate for someone like Saddam Hussein, makes it harder to oppose the execution of Australians overseas. Read more »

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the introduction of cycle paths adjoining Canberra roads has led to an increase in bicycle rider injuries. Often cyclists travelling between 20 and 30 km/h are riding alongside cars doing 80 km/h.

A report in the Canberra Times cites a survey that found that:

Canberrans are more likely than anyone else in Australia to find cyclists to be a road hazard

and that cyclists make up around 1/4 of road accident related hospital episodes in Canberra.

I have observed some appalling behaviour by some cyclists – colleagues have observed similar behaviour. (Note I am an occasional cyclist too).

Bad behaviour in motorists and motorcylists is punished.

Motorists and motorcyclists are required to drive/ride roadworthy vehicles. They are required to meet competency standards. They are required to pay for a license and to register their vehicles. They are required to take out third party insurance. Read more »

Kevin Rudd went on Insiders this morning and did quite well I thought. The only time he looked in any trouble was when Barrie Cassidy asked him why he has misjudged how hard it would be to get things done. Rudd hadn’t expected that question. Clearly he had hoped to be able to make the otherwise sensible argument that things often take longer than you might first expect. Cassidy came back with the question was that naivity or inexperience that lead to that misjudgment? Good question; afterall Rudd had public service experience in the Goss government and should have had some idea about these sorts of practicalities.

There seems to be some confusion as to what Rudd promised on hospitals. In the interview he said he supports local control and he had only promised national funding. This is what he said at the ALP campaign launch in 2007. Read more »

This is prompted by Andrew Bolt’s alarm about teaching dreamtime stories and cognate mythology before exposing students to the periodic table.

Ron Horner turned up at Launceston Grammar from Manchester in 1960. He was appointed as Senior Science Master and also the Head of the Junior School.

On the side he started a Classical Music Club, a Science Library and a wandering Sunday cricket team that played village green matches around the country. This gave a handful of  lucky boarders the chance to get some decent tucker one day a week. Read more »

The House of Commons Science and Technology committee is having an inquiry into the ClimateGate affair. Hearings start on Monday (although if a general election is called over the weekend then they’re off). The submissions are here. I haven’t read them all, but here is a sampling of two that comment on Phil Jones.

Hans von Storch and Dr. Myles R. Allen

The fact that we disagree with Professors Jones, Mann and others on some matters, such as proxy-based reconstructions, has no bearing on our respect for Professor Jones’ analysis of the instrumental temperature record.

That is a huge endorsement.

Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen Read more »

And we now see a department with a split personality.

One part of the department seeking to implement an emissions trading scheme with the aim to reduce carbon emissions

and

a second part of the department seeking to install insulation with the effect on increasing carbon emissions (see article by Hedley Thomas in the Australian of 26 February 2010 Woolly claims on insulation and that of Henry Ergas Energy Efficient, Benefit Deficient).

Only it seems that the insulation part of the department has been more successful in increasing emissions than the other part of the department has been in reducing emissions given the CPRS is dead.

Bizarre.

Canberra is now Constantinople under the Byzantine Empire.

I haven’t really followed this much. I did hear on the news that the Rudd government fears home-grown terrorism from individuals born in Australia – so that’s Jason and me off the hook. Greg Sheridan at The Australian has put in a good word for the report.
The point that he makes that shoud be shouted from the rooftops is this:

The best counter-radicalisation program is a good, open decent society.

He goes on

There are only two overt counter-radicalisation programs we should engage in. One is to provide intensive settlement assistance to people we take in under the refugee and humanitarian program. To bring someone from war and refugee camp-living in Somalia or Sudan, with no competence at living in our sort of society, and dump them in Footscray or Bankstown with a Centrelink leaflet is asking for trouble. Read more »

The Rudd government has been making the argument that their stimulus packages (there were two) have prevented unemployment from increasing to very high levels. They haven’t always been on message – poor Nick Sherry got his numbers mixed up and was quite insistant in early January that unemployment would rise above 8 percent in the second half of this year. Last November Treasury was forecasting 6.75 percent by the end of this year. That doesn’t look like happening. The unemployment situation has not been nearly as bad as was feared in late 2008. Rudd has even tried to claim that his government has created jobs. Well, no. Unemployment is higher than when they were first elected. Read more »

Barnaby Joyce has an op-ed in the Australian.

Debt is less of a problem when it is backed by an asset that is readily exchangeable to restore the wealth of the public coffers. However, I do not know how exchangeable the ceiling insulation will be when we need to repay the debt.

Previous posts on Joyce and debt are here and here.

Robert Barro has an analysis of the US stimulus in the WSJ.

We need to ask whether the government’s spending reduced or enhanced private spending and whether public-sector hiring lowered or raised private hiring. This requires an empirical model based on the history of past fiscal actions in the U.S. or other countries. The administration must have such a model, but my own analysis makes me skeptical about the numbers they’ve reported about GDP increases and saved jobs.
…
Thus, viewed over five years, the fiscal stimulus package is a way to get an extra $600 billion of public spending at the cost of $900 billion in private expenditure. This is a bad deal.

The fiscal stimulus package of 2009 was a mistake. It follows that an additional stimulus package in 2010 would be another mistake.

The Rudd government is trying to introduce a backdoor Australia Card. All school kids will be given a unique number that will allow the government to track their progress through the education system. I agree that using unique numbers is often more useful than using names – for example some universities use student numbers in examinations to anonymise exam scipts to prevent favoritism. Numbers also allow institutions to separate common names. People have a host of different numbers for different purposes. These numbers are usually either temporary or situation specific.

I can imagine Gillard’s unique student identifiers taking on a more permanent status. It also misses the point about school performance. The Australian has a ghastly op-ed today defending the program. Read more »

Boskin’s article in the Wall Street Journal is worth reading and outlines how politicians have been seeking to change statistical collections to achieve better results. Fortunately most people can see through such charades.

I have a significant concern that the wellbeing framework (which comprises the triple bottom line of economic, environmental and social) promoted by the Sarkozy Commission including Stiglitz will result in meaningless, symbolic statistics.

It would be nice to directly measure utility, but the Sarkozy approach is in the wrong direction. The status quo – national accounts with GDP etc – remains the most useful such statistic until an alternative is proven to be superior.

First some background from the WSJ.

IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard, in a recent paper, said maybe the U.S. central bank’s future inflation goal should be 4% instead. John Williams, head of the San Francisco Fed’s research department, argued last year that higher targets might be needed to provide a cushion for future crises.

The proposals underscore a broader rethink that is rumbling through the economics profession in the wake of the financial crisis. Many of the things economists thought they knew turned out to be wrong.

Ludwig von Mises addresses these points in his Economic Freedom and Intervention. Mises on what economists know (pg. 127) Read more »

The Calvary Hospital saga seems to be ongoing. You may recall that the ACT government planned to acquire the Hospital using some very dodgy analysis. Well the deal has fallen through.

Ms Gallagher says LCMHC also made it clear the Catholic Church would fight any plans for the Government to use compulsory acquisition to takeover the hospital.

The politics continue.

MR HANSON: My question is to the Treasurer. Treasurer, on 17 December 2009, you issued a press release which stated:

But no one has been able to dispute the Treasury Analysis.

This is in reference to the Cavalry hospital purchase. Treasurer, Professor Sinclair Davidson was able to dispute your analysis on 28 October 2009—prior to your making that statement—when he said: Read more »

When I wrote that Peter Garrett’s position was untenable back on 11 February, I had assumed that he would have departed by now.

It seems that I might have been wrong with a common view now being put that Garrett will survive as a weakened minister because the Prime Minister can ill afford to lose a minister at this stage of the political cycle.

This is very sad. While I disagree with much of what Garrett stands for politically, I’ve always thought of him as an honourable person who had strong principles.

I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t resign. His conscience must be torn – he is clearly upset that his pet project has gone so awry. He is very aware of ministerial standards and responsibility for the design and implementation of the insulation program rests entirely on his shoulders. Is it so important to remain a minister? There are so many better things in life he could be doing. Read more »

Every now and then organisations get questions like, ‘How much ethic diversity is there in your organisation?’ or ‘How many foreign born staff do you have?’, or ‘What is the average age of your staff?’. These may well be interesting questions, but I often wonder why organisations would collect information like that. If we live in a world where discrimination on the basis of gender, age, ethnicity, religion etc. are all illegal its not clear what purpose any organisation would have in keeping information like that on file. I imagine the only purpose anyone would have for collecting information like that is for committing an offense. So why do it? On the other hand, I can understand why an organsation would collect information on the academic qualifications of its staff. So I wonder what Doug Cameron is up to? He wants to know from the Productivity Commission whether their staff attended public or private schools. Read more »

As Sinclair has posted below, our learned colleague Clive Hamilton has begun publishing a five part epic on the conspiracy of climate denialism.  Either Clive has started writing satire, or else he has no sense of irony.

Part 1 of this series was called “Bullying, lies and the rise of right-wing climate denial“. The article details the threats and personal abuse that have been made against journalists and scientists involved in the climate change debate.

I agree with Clive that there is no place in the current debate for threats of violence and harm against those with opposing views. Anyone on either side of the debate who is threatening violence is doing their cause a great deal of harm and threats of violence or repeated harassment should be referred to law enforcement for appropriate action.

However Clive also complains about the fact that scientists are receiving abusive emails such as these: Read more »

You may have missed the excellent article by Frank Furedi published in Saturday’s Australian (see below) about the corruption of the peer review system.

For too long it has been asserted that the gold standard in scientific research is peer review.

That’s false. Peer review is second best to the true gold standard: where scientists undertake repeated research in controlled circumstances and present their analysis and full data for scrutiny. That is, that they seek to have their findings falsified. And the more times in which the analysis is subjected to rigorous testing and remains extant, the more confident we can be in the analysis. But it survives only until it is disproved.

Karl Popper is famous among other things for his falsifiability / refutability view. That is, something is not a theory if it cannot be refuted. My theory: all swans are white can be disproved by showing me a black swan. Obviously anthropogenic global warming is therefore not a theory – there is no evidence that could be presented that would be classed as refuting the AGW “theory”. Read more »

Retro is in fashion at the moment. The Age today has a retro-opinion piece. All the chestnuts so beloved by the left. Australian is a low-tax nation, taxation is good because it buys civilisation etc. etc. etc.

Many of us are clearly infuriated by the thought that people we know might be shirking their fiscal responsibilities…

Indeed. The best way to not shirk your fiscal responsibility is to get off your bum and get a job and get off welfare.

It is time for the Government to consider a voluntary tax bill.

How many times have you observed a prominent person bemoaning ‘the fact’ that Australians don’t pay enough tax?

Usually it is an ideological pretext to increase the amount of income redistributed.

What about those that accused the previous government of profligate spending because of tax cuts. Well yes, the previous government did have some silly and expensive programs. But a tax cut is not spending. It is a tax cut! A cut to revenue not an increase in expenditure.

What we need is a voluntary tax bill.

Those piously calling for increased taxes can then lead by example. Put their money to a good cause – taxation.

I propose that tax deductible contributions to the Australian Tax Office be permitted and indeed encouraged.  And just like donations to say Opera Australia, the donor’s name should appear on the ATO’s website and in its annual report. We could even give donors different titles: a platinum donor for those paying voluntary tax above say $20,000. A gold donor for those paying between $15,000 and $20,000 and so forth. Read more »

The ACT Greens – fortunately with their power base confined to a relatively small part of Australia – want Canberra’s newest town to have a seven star rating with 30 km/h speed limits, bicycle “highways” and only one car parking space per household. Clearly the Greens want to rob us of cars.

Now it is all very well to have an energy efficient house if it is cost effective. But to impose dramatically increased costs on home building which swamp any energy savings is silly. And hits at the very people the Greens claim to represent: those that are less well off and want “affordable housing” whatever that means.

Imagine hosting a party in one of these utopian homes in Canberra – sorry you have to come by bicycle or public transport. And as everyone knows, the longest distance between any two points is an ACTION bus route.

The Parliament will soon consider a private members bill on gay marriage.

Both Labor and the Coalition are opposed to changing the marriage act to allow for same-sex marriages.
…
“I’m calling on Tony Abbott and Kevin Rudd to allow their members to speak freely on the issue and to have a conscience vote. It’s important that our parliamentarians represent the wills and needs and desires of their communities and on this issue more than ever.”

My good friend Tim Wilson has done a lot of thinking in this area, even beating up Penny Wong on national television, and his idea of competitive marriage contracts should be seriously considered. Read more »

Jason and I had an exchange in the last open forum over the individual who flew a plane into an IRS office killing himself and an IRS employee.

Sinclair

This guy attacked the IRS. Waging war against the government over tax is the foundation activity of the US republic.

Jason

And tax is a necessary evil. No taxes, no civilisation, no military or cops or other things that everyone but nutty anarchists think should be provided by government.

Innocent people died in this act of domestic terrorism. You’re not seriously suggesting his actions are any less worthy of condemnation than that of the other nuts.

Sinclair Read more »

There was a good article the other day about Stephen Conroy aka the Dalek. It called for his dismissal.

He has been involved in a litany of disasters and poor public administration.

He has failed to serve the people of Australia in his present position - squandering billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money.

While there is no evidence that Conroy’s meeting with Kerry Stokes in a United States ski resort and subsequent granting of a $250 million gift of taxpayers’ money was corruption, the fact of the meeting itself is sufficient for Conroy to lose his job.

For we expect our Ministers to exercise good judgement. The fact that he thought it reasonable to meet a media mogul in an overseas resort shows extremely poor judgement. Even if, as stated, there is no corruption, the appearance of the meeting is sufficiently bad to reflect on his position.

Caesar famously divorced his wife Pompeia, declaring that Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.

Ministers too must be above suspicion.

Conroy must resign.

I have a book chapter coming out in the next few weeks where I write about the original ClimateGate email scandal. The chapter was written in late November, early December and the scandal has moved on considerably. Here is a section of the chapter where I talk about peer-review.

In a society characterised by the division of labour and specialisation mechanisms must be developed or evolved that facilitate trade. This is the classic ‘lemons problem’ in economics; how does anyone know that the person they are trading with is any good? The same problem applies to academic research; how can anyone know that any piece of work is competent and high quality research? The mechanism that has evolved in academic circles is the peer-review process. Academic freedom combined with the peer-review process is an evolved mechanism that ensures that research produces, over time, scientific results are more likely to be correct with error and falsehood being eliminated. Read more »

We often hear that we should give the planet the benefit of the doubt, and that we should, as Malcolm Turnbull said:

… given the basic common sense of taking out insurance for the sake of all humanity, why is it that we are seeing this surge in climate change denial?

That is, warmists ask us to suspend our doubt, and take action “against climate change” and to view this as a form of insurance.

This is like joining a religion and being pious as an insurance policy just in case there is a God that will punish you if you continue to deny His existence. This is Pascal’s Wager named because Blaise Pascal reasoned that a person should wager that God exists because he or she has everything to gain from doing so but nothing to lose.

But this is not the case in respect of climate change policy where action imposes significant costs. Read more »

Looks like the government is going for broke on the CPRS business. Penny Wong has just given a speech that denies the allegations and defies the allegators (I think Merton Miller first said that).

Red herrings and arguments at the fringes of the debate cannot dismiss the fact that that the world is warming, nor is it justification to ignore the range of scientific work on climate change.

A question all of us should consider is what will happen in 20 years.

In 20 years time, can we seriously look our children and grand children in the eye and say we sat on our hands because of a computer hacker?

To the best of my knowledge Wong doesn’t have any children, so that final sentence must be placed into the Clive Hamilton basket of weirdness. Read more »

Phil Jones February 15, 2010

I don’t think we should be taking much notice of what’s on blogs because they seem to be hijacking the peer-review process

Phil Jones March 31, 2004

Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised, but you never know with GRL.

George Graham Vest, a US Senator in the 19th century, delivered the following speech in a Court circa 1855. It remains as true today.

Gentlemen of the Jury: The best friend a man has in the world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter that he has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and our good name may become traitors to their faith. The money that a man has, he may lose. It flies away from him, perhaps when he needs it most. A man’s reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill-considered action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees to do us honor when success is with us, may be the first to throw the stone of malice when failure settles its cloud upon our heads. Read more »

We are often very critical of David Gruen here at Catallaxy, so I thought I’d link to a comment he made that I totally agree with. Read more »

Senator Scott Ryan (Lib, Vic) asked some tough questions about internet filtering at Senate estimates the other day. It turns out our glorious leaders have internet filtering up and running in Parliament House. Read more »

The story of the Trojan war is one of the great epics of the world. The Trojan Paris (son of King Priam) takes Helen who is married to Menelaus, king of Sparta. Whether Helen went willingly or was abducted is not clear from the sources. But the King of Mycenae, Agamemnon, leads the Greek forces to Troy to answer Paris’ insult.

The city of Troy is besieged for 10 years to no avail.

Then the Greeks hit on a stratagem and construct a wooden horse which they fill with warriors, including Achilles, and leave it outside the gates of Troy.

Despite the warnings of Cassandra – cursed by  Apollo to speak the truth but for no one to take any notice – the Trojans open their gates, drag the horse inside as it is wonderful and as they fall asleep, the Greek warriors exit the horse and slaughter all the men and enslave the women (Agamemnon takes Cassandra as his concubine and is killed by his wife Clytemnestra on his return to Mycenae). Read more »

This will be interesting to watch.

Colin Brierley, 63, of Windaroo in the Gold Coast hinterland, says he suffered a massive electrical shock just a week after he had foil insulation installed in his home.He says the jolt of power went through his knee and exited his head, and he wound up in an induced coma in a Brisbane hospital.

Mr Brierley’s lawyers say he’s the first to take legal action against the Government, alleging its management of its rebate scheme has been neglectful.

Shine Lawyers, the firm representing the Windaroo man, has not revealed how much compensation is being sought. But the case will be lodged in the Supreme Court in Brisbane later today.

Mr Brierley says his doctors are amazed he survived the shock on October 6 last year, just a week after he had the foil put into his roof.

Jones et al 1998:

..we can only concur with Hughes and Diaz (1994) that there is little evidence for the ‘Medieval Warm Period’, although it is variably quoted as occurring between 900 and 1200…From the few reconstructions used prior to 1500 there is little evidence for the ‘Medieval Warm Period’.

Jones and Mann 2003:

To the extent that a ‘Medieval’ interval of moderately warmer conditions can be defined from about AD 800–1400, any hemispheric warmth during that interval is dwarfed in magnitude by late 20th century
warmth.

Jones & Mann 2004:

Our assessment affirms the conclusion that late 20th century warmth is unprecedented at hemispheric and, likely, global scales.?

BBC interview 2010: Read more »

Phil Jones in a BBC interview.

B – Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

It would have been nice for him to have told us the exact significance level but he says ‘yes’ to the question no statistically-significant global warming since 1995. No cooling either.

C – Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?

No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009. The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant. Read more »

There is an excellent expose of carbon trading and offsets (particularly offsets under the United Nation’s Clean Development Mechanism) by Mark Schapiro in the Review section of the Financial Review of Friday 12 February 2010 (no link sorry).

I liked this: Read more »

George Soros has put some $50 million (probably small change from the floor of his car) into an Institute for New Economics

The Institute and conference were born when a group led by George Soros came together at the Bedford Summit to discuss the crisis in 2008. Concerns over a history of poor economic guidance revealed the need for continued conversations and a new forum. The conference will gather the world’s brightest economists and leaders to provoke innovative thinking and positive change.

The first big event is a conference at Cambridge (England) in April.

The invitation-only inaugural Conference is a landmark achievement reflecting the organization’s extraordinary commitment and dedication to invigorating the conversation around economic theory, method, and policy and to fostering the development of original and innovative contributions to economic thinking. Read more »

Legal Eagle has an interesting post on Peter Garrett.

I confess that I’ve never really held much brief for celebrity politicians. Of course, I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, so I try to cast my prejudice aside. But I can’t help thinking that if you’re a performer or an actor or a musician, you might not have had much experience actually running things. You don’t have to implement your ideas or make them work.

Another thing about celebrity politicians is that you inevitably end up feeling very disappointed in them. It’s easy to admire someone when they just have to put in a good performance, and they don’t have to make difficult decisions or let you down. However, the nature of being a politician is that you have to compromise, and make hard decisions which may end up hurting people in one way or another. You can’t be popular with everyone in politics. Read more »

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The Keynes vs Hayek rap. I like the bit where Hayek finds the General Principles in the drawer in his hotel room.

A nice series of recent posts from Organisations and Markets. BTW this site and its authors polled very well in a recent survey on the credibility and/or popularity of economics blogs

Calls for industry policy in the US.

The transformation of many Israeli kibbutzim into partially privatized, profit-seeking, professionally managed entities that act in capital, product, and factor markets just like private firms.

Problems with cap and trade schemes in Europe.

Happy Schumpeter day!

Missouri Economics Conference (meet Peter Klein).

From Conservative Teacher, an aid for students, the declaration of independence set to music, maybe a bit long but worth a look. Read more »

Tony Makin has kept up a consistent argument against the stimulus package on a mainstream macro-economic basis. He is at it again today in the Australian.

Fiscal stimulus is invariably justified by the depression economics of John Maynard Keynes. As a theory, simple Keynesianism focuses exclusively on the short term, emphasises aggregate spending as the source of economic growth, and largely ignores the future consequences of unproductive public spending and the fiscal deficits that result. This is in keeping with Keynes’s own comment that “in the long run we are all dead”. While that comment is undeniably true, what it fails to recognise is that the vast majority of us can in our lifetimes expect to suffer the consequences of the public debt legacy that Keynesian activism bequeaths, through higher taxes, higher interest rates and higher inflation. Read more »

It’s going to be a long year. So far it looks like the Liberals will run on law and order. Okay. Law and order is a problem; the number of Indian-bashings is a big problem and the police chief doesn’t seem to be taking the problem seriously, nor has the government. But you’d think the liberals might also want to mention Myki and public transport and the need to an independent anti-corruption commission and an inquiry into why Melbourne is running out of water and so on. Maybe we’re still going to hear about those issues. Read more »

ALP Workplace Health and Safety Election Platform November 2007

All workers have the right to a safe and healthy workplace. Every family has the right to expect their loved ones will return home safely at the end of the working day.

Julia Gillard April 29, 2008

The health and safety of Australian workers is a key concern of Australian governments at all levels.
All workers have the right to a safe and healthy workplace.

Lindsay Tanner February 10, 2010

I don’t think it’s right to say we should have sat back … dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s because we were in a crisis situation

Insulation hotline 131792 after 10am AEDT Thursday.

Something of a mixed message has gotten about over the schools computer program. Rudd went to the last election with two computer promises. The first was for a tax-break that allowed some parents (from memory those who could access Family Tax Benefit Part A) to buy a tax deductable laptop (or make other computer related educational expenditure). The second policy was that every school child in the last three years of high school would have access to their own computer at school. Presumably that would be a desktop.

By most accounts Monday’s Q and A was a disaster for Rudd.

At one point, Rudd almost lost his temper with a girl all of 16 years of age, who shook her head at his answer on school laptops, telling her with a sharp look and tone in his voice: “You’re shaking your head. Can I just say that is a fact, and if you ring up principals from around the country, it’s happening.” Read more »

The concern I have over this appointment is not so much Kaiser getting the job, but why on earth does an organisation which is 100 per cent government owned have a government relations manager in the first place, let alone one being paid $450,000?

While reading the story of Niall Ferguson’s marriage break-up this leapt out at me.

As a student at Magdalen College, Oxford, he was once so penniless he bought a wedding ring on his credit card and sold it to a pawn shop to raise some cash.

While not encouraging this sort of thing, that is very smart and gets around the punitive rates that banks charge on cash advances.

The other quote that should be emphasised relates the Furguson’s mistress Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

In all the years I have known Ayaan, she’s never had a boyfriend. She’s gorgeous, but with a fatwa, it’s tricky to find guys.

Yes. One would think so.
Update: Jason is onto this already.

You know that Canberra is different when a so-called Minister in the local government, Simon Corbell, can write in the Canberra Times today that

Measures to address climate change must not only be reasonably efficient, they must also be inspiring, and they must capture public imagination and empower individuals, communities and nations to make the shift to a sustainable future.

Unfortunately no, Simon. If you really believe that action must be taken to counter AGW – no matter how futile such action would be in Canberra – then efficiency must be the relevant test. What about an inspirational project that is ineffective and costly? Wouldn’t that – once understood – damage the credibility of the Government’s response to climate change?

What about this letter from Dr Bradford Sherman of Duffy, also in today’s Canberra Times. Read more »

The relative newcomer on the block, Menzies House, has some interesting material and claims:

Founded in January 2010, Menzies House is the leading Australian blog for conservative, centre-right and libertarian thinkers and activists.

Of course we at Catallaxy claim:

Australia’s leading libertarian and centre-right blog

Perhaps we are both right: after all post-modernism allows for all opinions to be equally valid.

But what about you, dear readers, how do you rate Menzies House and Catallaxy Files? What should we do to improve the quality of this blog (now that we have a relatively settled platform following some inconvenient problems with the website).

One of the more incorrect arguments put forward over the last few years has been the notion that only scientists can evaluate science. Everybody else must just believe. But we all read novels – and you don’t have to be a best-selling author to know the difference between good writing and bad writing. More or less that analogy applies to most things. Milton Friedman told us that we don’t have to understand trigonometry to play pool or mechanics to drive a motor car and so on.

The other point to emphasise is the public choice arguments made by James Buchanan. He makes the argument that economists give advice as if they were advising an onmiscient, omnipotent dictator. That advice isn’t always appropriate in a democratic society that requires agreement and cooperation. The convergence of these two ideas is crunching the AGW lobby at the moment. Read more »

One the differences between the Rudd government CPRS and the Abbott proposal is transparency. The Abbott proposal sets up a government clearing house so it is transparent that the taxpayer will picking up the tab for running the scheme. That hasn’t been the case with the CPRS. Until today.

The Canberra Times reports

The Australian Climate Change Regulation Authority group was formed inside the Department of Climate Change in June last year, and given $81.9 million this financial year.

Departmental papers said the authority must be ready to begin work ‘’should Parliament pass the relevant legislation later in 2009”.

The Coalition and Greens have twice blocked the bills designed to create the authority: in August and December last year.

But the organisation has continued to recruit staff and aims to employ about 200 people by June, ”to administer the operations of the proposed” authority. Read more »

Ronald Coase will turn 100 this year on 29 December. This video clip is a couple of months old. His mind appears to be sharp, it is clear that the infirmity of age has caught up with him.

The Ronald Coase Institute is here.
(HT: Peter Boettke)

The Coalition carbon pollution scheme was released a couple of days ago and has attracted a lot of media attention. Including the WSJ Asia (now with an annoying pay-wall on its op-ed page for the current day articles).

The political momentum behind cap and trade is melting away a whole lot faster than the Himalayan glaciers — so much so that Australia’s opposition leader has a big, new idea: Ditch the plan altogether and make the costs to taxpayers transparent.

… Mr. Abbott proposed Tuesday instead to set up a fund to pay companies that cut emissions and meet certain criteria, such as preserving jobs.

That’s still a plan for government to pick winners, as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s cap-and-trade plan would. But Mr. Abbott’s proposal has the distinct advantage of limiting and defining the cost to the taxpayer. That’s impossible to do under cap and trade, in which emitting companies buy carbon credits at fluctuating prices and then pass that cost onto consumers. Read more »

The Rudd government is claiming to have created jobs. Not saved jobs, mind you, but to have created jobs.

“In the past year we have created 112,000 jobs.

“As we look around at the rest of the world’s data, in America in the same period of time, 5.8 million jobs were lost.”

Mr Rudd was marking the first anniversary of Labor’s $42 billion stimulus program.

When you look at the ABS data and the stock on employed people between December 2008 and December 2009 there is an increase of about 114,000 people so on that basis the statement may be correct. But the problem is that the unemployment rate has increased and the numbers are in the context of the stimulus package. Read more »

The New Scientist is reporting that Michael Mann has ‘been virtually cleared of professional misconduct by an internal university enquiry.’ The Penn State report is here.

The Penn State panel investigated four allegations against Mann, summarised as follows: Read more »

In a comment to my post on the intergenerational report/, Butters wrote

you regularly claim the labour market is re-regulated but produce no evidence.
It would be nice to see some.

Labour productivity figures are not the ones to look at.
Perhaps you should read Ross Gittins before commenting again.

I replied Read more »

Daniel Pipes has a very scary op-ed in the Australian.

Obama’s attempts to “reset” his presidency will likely fail if he focuses on economics, where he is just one of many players. He needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a lightweight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations.

Such an opportunity does exist: Obama can give orders for the US military to destroy the Iranian nuclear weapon capacity.

There may well be good arguments for ‘doing something’ about Iranian nuclear capability – this is not ever a good argument. To be sure Obama needs to do something to save his presidency, but unlike Pipes I do think he should concentrate on the US economy. There are some very hard policy problems facing the US. Read more »

Contrary to my expectations the RBA did not raise interest rates this afternoon.

The Guardian is reporting that leaked emails from the University of East Anglia show some sort of cover-up.

A Guardian investigation of thousands of emails and documents apparently hacked from the University of East Anglia’s climatic research unit has found evidence that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed and that documents relating to them could not be produced.

Jones and a collaborator have been accused by a climate change sceptic and researcher of scientific fraud for attempting to suppress data that could cast doubt on a key 1990 study on the effect of cities on warming – a hotly contested issue.

Today the Guardian reveals how Jones withheld the information requested under freedom of information laws. Subsequently a senior colleague told him he feared that Jones’s collaborator, Wei-­Chyung Wang of the University at Albany, had “screwed up”. Read more »

I have a letter in the AFR today responding to an op-ed John Quiggin wrote last week. The version below may differ slightly from the published letter. I have added the links.

John Quiggin does a magnificent job of destroying a straw man in his attack on Christopher Monckton (Tepid conspiracy theory, AFR 28 January 2010). Mind you he was unable to summon the courage to debate Monckton face-to-face when invited to do so by the prestigious Brisbane Institute.

Quiggin makes the claim that the CPRS will only raise about $10 billion a year and that no ‘credible economist suggests the economic impact will be more than marginal’. This merely invites us to imagine some incredible economists who have suggested otherwise. Read more »

The website of the Federation of Parents and Citizens’ Associations of NSW (PANDC) states that it is

committed to public education

Why? Shouldn’t a parents’ organisation be expected to be “committed to education excellence” or something like that?

What’s so special about public education? Surely most parents want their children to have a good education?

It has struck me that this Federation – purporting to represent the interests of parents – has come out strongly against the My School website launched by Julia Gillard which is probably the best reform undertaken by the Rudd Government to date.

The President of the Federation, Dianne Giblin, writes on the website:

Our concern of course is that the information will be misused, not as a source of information and celebration, but as means to construct school league tables.

Such paternalism – does she and the officers of the Federation really think that they know better than parents? Read more »

Apology must be Kevin Rudd’s favorite word. He is either making no apology for some or other policy, or apologising on behalf of the nation. Well it seems he owes Barnaby Joyce an apology.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has accused Barnaby Joyce of irresponsibility after the Opposition’s new finance spokesman suggested the United States may default on its debt and force the world into an economic meltdown.
…
Mr Rudd has demanded Opposition Leader Tony Abbott confirm or repudiate Senator Joyce’s comments.

“For someone, as the alternative finance minister of Australia, to run around the place saying America could default, Australian state governments could default, that’s not responsible economic policy,” he said.

“That’s shooting from the lip, making it up on the run, I think being very, very irresponsible about basic Australian interests.” Read more »

So another day another IPCC scandal. The ABC – our ABC – have a great headline, UN climate claims ‘based on student essay’. At this point, you got to know they’re in trouble.

So there has been a huge lapse in quality control. How could such a thing happen? Perhaps because Rajendra Pachauri has been writing ‘adult literature‘. Field work for such an effort must leave one simply too exhausted to do anything else. More saucy details here. As Anthony Watts says

Time to kick Pachy to the curb, he’s not just toast now, he’s carbonized.

The more I think about, the more I believe he deserves that Nobel Prize he got 2007.

The AGW lobby would have us believe that the opportunity costs of their proposed policies are quite low. Just yesterday in a Financial Review op-ed John Quiggin wrote

No credible economist suggests the economic impact will be more than marginal.

Clive Hamilton describes the opportunity costs of AGW in a New Matilda piece (emphasis added, the Atkin paper is here)

I have often wanted to put the following question to sceptics like Don Aitkin: What if you are wrong? What sort of moral responsibility will the sceptics have if they succeed in their aim of stopping the world from taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Read more »

Barack Obama just gave his first State of the Union address. His comments on employment and job creation were not consistent with facts in the public domain.

Because of the steps we took, there are about two million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed. 200,000 work in construction and clean energy. 300,000 are teachers and other education workers. Tens of thousands are cops, firefighters, correctional officers, and first responders. And we are on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by the end of the year.

The plan that has made all of this possible, from the tax cuts to the jobs, is the Recovery Act. That’s right – the Recovery Act, also known as the Stimulus Bill. Economists on the left and the right say that this bill has helped saved jobs and avert disaster. But you don’t have to take their word for it.

No let’s not take their word for it; let’s look at the promises and statistics. Read more »

Tyler Cowen points to a very interesting article on European economists at US universities.

One-third of the faculty of Harvard University’s economics department hails from Europe. At the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, half of the finance department’s faculty is European. And these schools aren’t alone: European economists are overrepresented at all first-tier American universities and have had a huge influence on economic thinking, doing cutting-edge research in areas ranging from modeling financial markets to assessing risk. Read more »

Rudd concedes his economic policies will increase interest rates.

“Australia was the only advanced economy in 2009 not to go into recession,” he said.

“That’s come off the back of strong action by ourselves through our national stimulus strategy, school modernisation plan and through the banks, to bring down interest rates as radically and quickly as they did.

“But obviously there’s going to be upward adjustment.”

No mention of a generation of economic reform that is more likely to have insulated the economy. But when you’re busy reregulating the economy you hardly want draw attention to little things like that. Read more »

It seems Tony Abbott has caused something of a kafuffle by advising his daughters not to engage in premarital sex. All the luvvies are out in force carrying on about how outrageous this is.* Mind you I’m sure many fathers of teenage daughters give exactly that same advice and failing that say ‘please be careful’. Of course, others might argue that Abbott is a hypocrite; afterall he speaks of his own behaviour as a young man in his recent book Battlelines. That’s life; its unfair and there do seem to be different standards for males and females. As in many of these differences the biological division of labour plays a large role.

Eric Crampton points to an interesting NBER paper (ungated version here). From the conclusion Read more »