The Australian Sex Version of Great Moments in Government Stupidy

Australia is perhaps my favorite country. In part this is because there have been some good economic reforms, such as personal retirement accounts. But there’s more to life than public policy, and I like Australia because the people are so outgoing and friendly. Though sometimes their outgoing friendliness, so to speak, creates opportunities for really [...]

Read Full Post »

Australia vs. the United States: Two Charts that Tell You Everything You Need to Know about Social Security Reform

There are two serious problems with America’s Social Security system. Almost everyone knows about the first problem, which is that the system is bankrupt, with huge unfunded liabilities of about $30 trillion. The other crisis is that the system gives workers a lousy level of retirement income compared to the amount of taxes they pay [...]

Read Full Post »

Australia’s Shameful Stifling of Free Speech and Political Dissent

I haven’t written much on the global-warming debate, other than to warn about how agenda-driven government funding is corrupting scientific inquiry and to mock nutjob extremists who assert climate change will cause catastrophes ranging from genocide to AIDS. But I feel compelled to address the issue today because of a despicable move by the Australian [...]

Read Full Post »

Crikey, Australia’s a Good Role Model

Welcome Instapundit readers. Notwithstanding my next-to-last paragraph full of caveats, some people are saying I’m too soft on the Aussies. This previous post should disabuse people of that notion. ==================================================================== The Economist magazine has a couple of good articles about Australia’s increasingly enviable economic status. Here’s a blurb from the first article, which outlines the [...]

Read Full Post »

Should We Blame Obama, Rangel, and Baucus if People Die to Escape the Death Tax?

The death tax is a punitive levy that discourages saving and investment and causes substantial economic inefficiency. But it’s also an immoral tax that seizes assets from grieving families solely because someone dies. The good news is that this odious tax no longer exists. It disappeared on January 1, 2010, thanks to the 2001 tax cut legislation. [...]

Read Full Post »

Australia: A Great Country with a Bad Government

 I’m finally back in Washington after a week in Australia for the Mont Pelerin Society general meeting. Aussies are great people, but their government is just as misguided as the one we’re burdened with here in America. A friend took this pic of me on a visit to Manly Beach. You may notice a similarity [...]

Read Full Post »

Greetings from Australia

Blogging will be at irregular hours for the next week. I am in Sydney for the Mont Pelerin Society conference. The MPS was founded in 1947 by Friedrich Hayek, “…to facilitate an exchange of ideas between like-minded scholars in the hope of strengthening the principles and practice of a free society and to study the workings, virtues, [...]

Read Full Post »

Crocodile Dundee vs Australia’s Tax Police

Here’s a Reuters story about the Australian Tax Office harassing Paul Hogan, better known to Americans as Crocodile Dundee, because of a tax dispute. The grinches at the tax office took advantage of Hogan’s return for his mother’s funeral to hold him hostage, refusing to let him leave the country until he coughs up some cash. [...]

Read Full Post »

The Deadly Impact of the Death Tax

Australia got rid of its death tax in 1979. A couple of Aussie academics investigated whether the elimination of the tax had any impact on death rates. They found the ultimate example of supply-side economics, as reported in the abstract of their study. In 1979, Australia abolished federal inheritance taxes. Using daily deaths data, we [...]

Read Full Post »

When Billionaires Attack!

Here’s a cheerful story I saw linked on Drudge, which shows that sometimes rich people are not guilt-ridden statists and instead stand shoulder to shoulder with ordinary people to fight bad government policy. In Australia, the leftist government wants to impose a class-warfare tax on the mining industry, but the scheme is backfiring as opponents [...]

Read Full Post »