by David Kemp, Cato at FreedomNovember 4, 2020.
Extract:
Despite the much attention, there is nothing to indicate that the underlying economics of nuclear energy have changed. Nuclear energy remains expensive and its costs likely outweigh its benefits as a carbon-free energy source.
A recent one WashingtonPost editorialheavily drawn from a Department of Energy (DOE) report on pathways for the deployment of new nuclear energy, summarizes the optimistic view of nuclear energy’s prospects. But for anyone who has paid attention to the United States’ historical and recent experiences with nuclear power, the editorial and report are wildly overconfident.
by Kevin García Galindo, RodeNovember 5, 2024,
A working paper from the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), an economic policy think tank, examines the potential economic consequences of mass deportation.
It describes two scenarios: “a low estimate based on President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s deportation of 1.3 million people in 1956 under what was officially called ‘Operation Wetback’ and a high estimate based on a Pew Research Center study that it is estimated that approximately 8.3 million U.S. workers were unauthorized in 2022.”
Both would hurt the U.S. economy. The low-end scenario, with 1.3 million undocumented workers deported by 2028, would reduce GDP by 1.2 percent below baseline projections. The highest scenario, which would see 8.3 million undocumented workers deported, would reduce GDP by 7.4 percent compared to the 2028 base case.
by David Barker, The everyday economyNovember 6, 2024.
The Federal Reserve is at it again publishing bad climate research. In last year Econ Journal watcha peer-reviewed academic publication, I criticized a Fed working paper on climate. The author, Fed economist Michael Kiley, never responded, although he was promised space in the magazine for an answer. He published his article in Economic research. Kiley made a few changes, but didn’t address my criticism. I have written a new critique of Kiley’s updated work.
Nobel laureate William Nordhaus has made it clear that, compared to future expected economic growth, any effect of global warming would be small. That’s why climate scare mongers are doing their utmost to show that warming would reduce GDP growth. Kiley’s article claims that an extra degree of temperature will reduce average global GDP growth by 84 percent by the end of the century, with an even greater drop in growth in bad times.
Kiley’s analysis gives equal weight to 124 countries, including Rwanda, where a 1994 genocide caused GDP to fall 64 percent in one year. It is ridiculous to blame the genocide on a slightly higher than average temperature that year, especially since that year’s warm weather occurred after the genocide took place. Kiley’s data also includes Equatorial Guinea, where GDP rose 88 percent in one year after an oil discovery!
by Michael Chapman, Cato at FreedomNovember 6, 2024.
Extract:
Many Western leaders, such as President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, say NATO expansion, including Ukraine’s membership, is crucial for Europe’s collective security. But an ever-expanding NATO – led by the United States – appears to contradict what one of its chief architects, Dwight D. Eisenhower, envisioned for the organization. Further suggested membership for Ukraine helped spark the 2022 Russian invasion, a war that has reportedly killed several hundred thousand Ukrainians and cost American taxpayers $175 billion to date.
A wiser peace policy, as Cato and other libertarian scholars have advocated for decades, is stop efforts to expand NATOresumes the withdrawal of American troops from Germany and lets Europe take the lead in its own defense.
NATO began in 1949 mainly as a counterweight to the Soviet Union and (in 1955) to the Warsaw Pact. The USSR and the pact collapsed in 1991, some 33 years ago. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and one of NATO’s chief architects, wrote in 1951: “If in ten years all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States , than this entire project [NATO] will have failed.” There are currently approximately 100,000 American troops in Europe.