Immigration and the economy
Putting together the information from these articles from the Christain Science Monitor and the Washington Post, (found via Greg Mankiw’s blog) once more emphasis the enormous economic benefits of immigration. It also demolishes the arguments of those “concerned” about immigration, in Britain as well as the US. (more…)
Silliest blog post
This has got to be one of the silliest statements ever made on any of the blogs I read regularly. (more…)
So much for free speech
at 8:14 am on Tuesday, 10 April 2007
I do not normally blog on American politics, but this deserves attention. A former professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton, who has also been a US Marine colonel and who has been injured in action and decorated, is on a terrorist watch list. This is apparently that he has publicly criticised George Bush. This is not an isolated incident. (more…)
Free market hypocrisy
This change of heart on the benefits of outsourcing is, to me, just another example of both the hypocrisy of many supposed free markets advocates. Everyone seems to favour free markets, but as Adam Smith himself pointed out, no one wants free markets to apply to themselves. Everyone wants free markets their own way. (more…)
Corruption: a simple test
Given the reluctance of governments to investigate bribes paid to foreign governments, I want to suggest some simple tests for those who want to know if a particular company pays bribes. (more…)
Pointless EU bureaucracy
at 8:45 am on Thursday, 15 February 2007
I was going to write about why people are irrational, but the sheer stupidity of the EU bureaucracy. (more…)
What happend to increasing leisure?
Thirty or forty years ago widely expected that as technological advances made labour more productive, working hours would shorten and the biggest problem, at least in develop countries, would be educating people to enjoy leisure instead of working. This has clearly not happened, so what went wrong? (more…)
Socialised is bad?
The logic of open access to research is simple: if taxpayers pay for research, taxpayers should be able to see it without also paying (very expensive) subscriptions to academic journals. Similarly, non-profit organisations like the Welcome Foundation want the research they fund to be used by as many people as possible. (more…)
Ignore terrorism
at 6:30 am on Tuesday, 9 August 2005
I have lived in two cities (London and Colombo) which have been heavily targeted by terrorists. Bombs twice went off somewhere I was going to. I have once been close enough to see serious injuries. I have always regarded it as a duty to to simply carry on with life as normal, and I still regard this is the best way to deal with terrorism.
Terrorism is a means by which small groups with limited resources can cause serious disruption and gain wide publicity. As their aim is to disrupt our lives, we can best defeat them by not allowing our lives to be disrupted. (more…)
