“California futurist Joel Kotkin anticipates the unequivocal restoration of the United States as the most dynamic country in the world. With its population increasing at a record-setting pace, he argues, the U.S. will grow younger as the rest of the world grows older.”
Worth A Look
The Coalition Talks Tough But Is Too Soft On The Big Spenders: Higher budgets for health and welfare don’t guarantee better services, argues Andrew Haldenby
“The Coalition’s leaders have not only pledged to eliminate the deficit, although that is their top priority. They have also said that they will shrink and rethink the government, so that their legacy is a stronger social fabric and a more enterprising economy.”
Milked By Taxis: Taxi permits now cost over $200,000 in Montreal; gouging customers while discouraging taxi use
“What is especially bizarre about the supply-management mentality is the idea that the onus always lies on the would-be new entrant to an industry to prove why he or she should be allowed in.”
Political Reversal Down Under: Running an explicitly conservative campaign, Australia’s Tony Abbott has denied Labor a governing majority.
As it turns out, Australians—who are, after all, much like Americans, proudly democratic, entrepreneurial and of immigrant stock—warmed to Mr. Abbott’s old-school conservatism, along with his blokey, down-to-Earth persona. It’s a lesson to which conservatives in America (Republican, tea party, or otherwise) should pay close attention.
Featured News
What Exactly Does ‘Climate Justice’ Mean?
It seems like everything is about justice these days. Recently, as I drove home from the store, I saw a sign for the elections here in New York from the local Democratic Party, promising “equity, equality, and justice for all.” Beyond the obvious concerns any sane...
We are Finding the 2800 Missing Children
The “secret graves” and “missing children” narrative had our national flag flying at half-mast for over five months after an obscure indigenous politician made the startling claim that she “knew” that 215 indigenous children had been secretly buried in the “apple...
Let Detroit Face The Music
A bailout would only buy time, allowing Detroit to make it to the next bailout, with government running the show in an increasingly distorted and regulated market. A bankruptcy process should install a permanent reorganization, with the companies (or whatever combination emerges) still part of a viable auto industry operating in a genuine market.
Go-Ahead For Urban Sprawl
The Victorian Government has all but given up on a long-standing pledge to contain Melbourne’s urban sprawl, announcing another big expansion of the metropolitan boundary for new housing. Six years after setting a “clear boundary” for the city in the Melbourne 2030 policy, the Government has succumbed to a booming population, a housing shortage and resistance to high-density development in established suburbs.
The Next Team
What would you call a group of economists who are skeptical of regulating mortgage markets, who think unemployment insurance and unions increase unemployment, who say that tax hikes retard economic growth, and who believe that the recovery from the Great Depression was a monetary phenomenon rather than the result of New Deal fiscal policy? No, it is not a right-wing cabal. It’s Team Obama.
Who Could Object To Wind Power?
The biggest problem with wind is that it doesn’t always blow. There are lots of days when Toronto’s monument to civic virtue couldn’t even power my toaster. Inconveniently, these times of low production tend to coincide with times of high demand. So no matter how many turbines you put up, you always need backup power.
Now for the Real Shock Doctrine
As we are now witnessing, Klein’s disaster capitalist complex is a mythical creation, the shock doctrine of disaster capitalism an artificial construct. Disaster capitalism never got off the ground. From Russia to Canada to Europe and the United States under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, there isn’t a country in the world that hasn’t undergone the experience of a political takeover by the left on the wave of a crisis.
Cheap, Dirty, But Maybe Healthy
If our parties are serious organizations, why don’t they ask for contributions from their members and sympathizers, like Barack Obama did? His expensive campaign was in good part financed by millions of modest private donations via the Internet.
The American Strategy of Rewarding Irresponsibility
As the economic watering hole dries up, the creatures that depend on it are beginning to look at one another differently. But for the greedy, the incompetent, and the outright stupid, it’s a new morning. A shot of redemption is at hand, courtesy of everybody else.
Dirty Oil And Journalism
Journalism hysteria, a deadly disease, has begun to infect the reports on Alberta’s oilsands with the same inflammatory bias and misleading prejudice one sees in the slanted reports on climate change and politics. The oil is not dirty, journalism just makes it seem so.
Megacity, Schmegacity – It’s Time For The Microcity!
The megacity was supposed to be more efficient and less costly, with a new arrondisement system that promised suburban-style service for everyone. But even with the best intentions, it’s just created more layers of arrondo-bureaucracy, piled atop mega-bureaucracy, piled atop blue-collar-ocracy. It’s become obvious that bigger is not more efficient. It’s slower, more bureaucratic and less friendly.