Bishop Hill would like us all to stop talking about relative poverty. Can we agree to call it inequality (which is what it is) and reserve the word poverty for absolute poverty?
Cato@Liberty bemoans the short termism of the press. The day the Stern Review came out they wanted instant quotes on a 700 page report (which was not released under embargo). Now, when sensible and serious people like William Nordhaus have read and digested it, no one is interested in what they have to say. Which is not flattering, by the way.
James Annan, a climate scientist himself, is also unimpressed with portions of the Stern Review. Odd for it to be getting criticism from this angle, isn’t it?
Cicero’s Songs gets rather jolted by Ken Loach on the Today Programme:
What made me sit upright was the comment that housing shortages are caused by the free market. Furthermore, Loach explicitly said that the problem was that the economy was no longer being planned. He suggested that British industry needed to return to a planned model too.
Longrider on the rather alarming idea from a Mr. Toulmin that there should be a voluntary code of conduct for bloggers. Alarming in two senses, as the suggestion seems to be that the government should be responsible for it and secondly in that there already is one. It’s in the civilties of polite society.
The New Economist on a recent piece about Keynes, Friedman and Hayek. Of the three, the last might offer the best framework for going forwards.
And finally, Catesby offers advice to the Labour Party in its current situation of financial troubles:
What Labour could do with now is a new leader with experience of handling dodgy accounting, escalating expenditure in excess of income, a pensions black hole, debt being deferred into the future to a point where it cannot be paid off and an underperforming front-line.
From Adam Smith Institute
Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom
