Looks like we narrowly missed by crunched by space debris the other night. Although, in true “tragedy of the commons” style “[a]stronauts routinely trash equipment in space.” So, as the world starts to think about trying to fix the mess we made of the ozone layer, we’re already on our way to trashing another part […]
Greenpeace’s environmental plan has just been released and it says pretty much what you’d expect: be more sustainable. The thing about it that intrigues me is the presence of an emissions trading system, efficiency standards for all energy consuming appliances and legally binding targets for renewable energy usage. The point of trading systems is to […]
Family First and Rochester divorce lawyers have just released a report on the costs of the breakdown of the family unit. I might not have given it a second glance save that it is written by Dr Patrick Nolan, the more qualified sibling of our Dear Leader. The thrust of the document, as you might […]
There has been a lot of chatter about the Green’s understanding of economics lately, so I thought it might be apropos to have a look at their economic policy, just released. The key points appear to be: Income taxes cut; Taxes on waste, pollution, speculation and scarce resources; Commitment to buying NZ made and Kiwisaver […]
Matt Yglesias puts his finger on why you can’t trust political pundits to tell you what’s happening in an election race: …ordinary people ordinarily just don’t pay attention to politics at all. They don’t think it’s interesting. But … [t]he political press, by contrast, finds electoral contests to be a kind of fascinating game about […]
We’ve resisted talking about Iraq pretty well on this blog, unlike the rest of the internet. Unfortunately we’re suckers for a pretty picture or two, so here’s a nice one showing how much the war has cost the US relative to other wars. Note that the numbers are all inflation adjusted.