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Perspectives: Issue 530 Western Civilisation Decline – or Fall?

22 March 2012, John Mauldin

I had my nose in Niall Ferguson's newest book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, at every possible moment during my recent trip to Hong Kong and Singapore. It's powerful and very, very timely, and I strongly recommend it. To help get the word out, I asked Niall for a short, somewhat personal piece on the thinking behind the book – in other words, what moved him to write it?

Perspectives: Issue 529 Welfare Reforms Are in the Interest of Children

15 March 2012, Lindsay Mitchell

Welfare reforms the government will legislate for later this year have been typically denounced by opposition politicians and child advocates. Many have railed in particular against the idea that mothers with children as young as 1 year-old will be expected to be available for part-time work, which, incidentally, may involve as few as 12 hours per week.

Perspectives: Issue 528 Government By ‘Expert’

9 March 2012, Richard A Epstein

The modern administrative state is a behemoth incompatible with the rule of law. Over the weekend, I participated in the 31st Annual Student Symposium of the Federalist Society held at the Stanford Law School. The title of the symposium was “Bureaucracy Unbound: Can Limited Government and the Administrative State Co-Exist?”

Perspectives: Issue 527 Strategic Lessons From Asia for the West: Austerity Does Work

8 March 2012, Stephen S Roach

The austerity debate was the topic du jour at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos. With good reason. Europe is slipping back into recession just when recovery in the United States is finally getting some traction. That has undermined the case for fiscal consolidation, which is so heavily favored in Europe.

Perspectives: Issue 526 The Austerity Morass

7 March 2012, Richard A Epstein

Who has handled the economic crisis worse, the European Union or the United States? A close look at the economic woes at home and abroad raises this unedifying question: who has proved more inept at handling the current economic crisis, the European Union or the United States? To Paul Krugman, this question has an easy answer:

Article: How the Spending Cap Will Work

24 February 2012, Bryce Wilkinson

As a result of the National-Act coalition agreement, New Zealand is to have a legislated ceiling on increases in central government core Crown operational spending. The ceiling will apply to core Crown operational spending, excluding spending on natural disasters, write-downs of asset values, the unemployment benefit and the costs of serving government debt.

Perspectives: Issue 525 Europe Delays the Inevitable

24 February 2012, Deepak Lal

With the recent downgrading by Standard & Poor’s of the sovereign debt of France and Austria, and the further discounts of the debt of the Club Med countries, the euro crisis could be reaching its denouement. This could be triggered fairly soon by the impasse on the “haircut” on Greek debt, which needs to be rolled over in late March. Or this slow-motion train crash of the euro zone could go on for some time, as its politicians continue to seek various palliatives without recognising the basic design flaw in the euro.

Perspectives: Issue 524 An Ignored ‘Disparity’: Part IV

22 February 2012, Thomas Sowell

Different histories, geography, demography and cultures have left various groups, races, nations and civilizations with radically different abilities to create wealth. In centuries past, the majority population of various cities in Eastern Europe consisted of people from Western Europe -- Germans, Jews and others -- while the vast majority of the population in the surrounding countrysides were Slavs or other indigenous peoples of the region.

Perspectives: Issue 523 Elizabeth Warren’s Sloppy Progressivism

17 February 2012, Richare A Epstein

The Senate candidate needs a crash course in wealth creation. President Barack Obama is not the only high profile candidate for public office who portrays himself as the champion of the middle class. Right now, in Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, a longtime Harvard Law School professor, is projecting that same image in her determined run to displace Senator Scott Brown in next November’s election.

Perspectives: Issue 522 An Ignored ‘Disparity’: Part III

14 February 2012, Thomas Sowell

Anyone who has ever been in a Third World country, or even in a slum neighbourhood at home, is likely to wonder why there can be such dire poverty among some people, while others are prospering. Both politicians and intellectuals have tended to have simple answers to that question, even if these simple answers have been different in different eras.