Category Archives: Politics – international

Australia or Sweden: which has had the better 2020?

Posted on April 14, 2021 by Paul Frijters

Compared to the trends on January 2020, has Australia or Sweden lost more wellbeing in 2020? And which has seen the greater damage to expected future wellbeing years for after 2020? The Table below summarizes the answers to this. For … Continue reading →

Posted in Coronavirus crisis, Cultural Critique, Death and taxes, Ethics, Health, Life, Politics - international, Science | 39 Comments

A World Anti-Hysteria Organisation?

Posted on March 17, 2021 by Paul Frijters

The essential governance problem in March 2020 in Western countries was the overwhelming demand of the vast majority of the population to do something dramatic in response to their fear. There was a clamour to be ‘led to safety’ by … Continue reading →

Posted in Coronavirus crisis, Democracy, Health, Information, Innovation, IT and Internet, Metablogging, Politics - international, Science, Society, Terror | 27 Comments

What experiments on cult behaviour tell us about lockdown beliefs

Posted on March 10, 2021 by Paul Frijters

With a recent publication in Nature that reported lockdowns have no effect on covid-cases or covid-deaths, there are now over 30 studies that fail to find any covid-reducing benefits of lockdowns. Worse, across countries and time, more severe lockdowns are … Continue reading →

Posted in Coronavirus crisis, Death and taxes, Health, Medical, Politics - international, Politics - national, Religion, Science, Society, Terror | 62 Comments

Your new barons. When and how did the super-rich escaped taxation?

Posted on March 3, 2021 by Paul Frijters

Together with Benno Torgler and Katharina Gangl, I published a piece recently on how to tax the powerful and sophisticated. Our substantive argument on what one should do becomes relatively simple once you understand what happened in the world of Western … Continue reading →

Posted in Democracy, History, Law, Politics - international, Politics - national, regulation, Society | 31 Comments

Two more interesting articles on covid mass hysteria

Posted on February 25, 2021 by Paul Frijters

Guess which crackpot started his article on covid in that notorious right-wing publication ‘The Guardian’ with the sentence “The virus has been used as a pretext in many countries to crush dissent, criminalise freedoms and silence reporting”? It’s that obvious … Continue reading →

Posted in Coronavirus crisis, Democracy, Health, History, Inequality, Political theory, Politics - international, Science, Social Policy | 23 Comments

What to expect during a cold war with China?

Posted on February 17, 2021 by Paul Frijters

In 2005 I did my first economic projections of the major powers (published in a textbook) and concluded from the trends then that China would have a larger economy in purchasing power terms than the US in 2017, which is … Continue reading →

Posted in Democracy, History, Philosophy, Politics - international, Society | 15 Comments

Are the covid lights going on in the States?

Posted on January 26, 2021 by Paul Frijters

An important rule in politics is that you adopt the best policies and slogans of your opponent only after you have destroyed that opponent. Till that moment you pretend he is the devil, but afterwards you re-label his best ideas … Continue reading →

Posted in Coronavirus crisis, Cultural Critique, Death and taxes, Democracy, Economics and public policy, Geeky Musings, Health, Humour, Politics - international, Social, Social Policy | 30 Comments