Subsidies and Tech Deals Don’t Change the Economics of Nuclear Power

by David Kemp, Cato at Liberty, November 4, 2020.

Excerpt:

Despite the flurry of attention, nothing suggests that the underlying economics of nuclear have changed. Nuclear remains expensive, and its costs likely outweigh its benefits as a zero-carbon energy source.

A recent Washington Post editorial, drawing heavily from a Department of Energy (DOE) report on pathways to deploying new nuclear power, summarizes the optimistic view of nuclear’s prospects. But to anyone who has paid attention to the United States’ historic and recent experience with nuclear power, the editorial and report are wildly overconfident.

 

Study: Mass Deportation Could Put 28 Million People at Risk of Family Separation

by Kevin Garcia Galindo, Reason, November 5, 2024,

A working paper from the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), an economic policy think tank, examines the potential economic effects of mass deportation.

It describes two scenarios: “a low-end estimate based on President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s deportation of 1.3 million persons in 1956 under what was officially called ‘Operation Wetback’ and a high-end count based on a Pew Research Center study that estimated approximately 8.3 million workers in the US were unauthorized in 2022.”

Both would hurt the U.S. economy. The low-end scenario, involving the deportation of 1.3 million undocumented workers by 2028, would lower GDP by 1.2 percent below baseline projections. The high-end scenario, which would see 8.3 million undocumented workers deported, would reduce GDP by 7.4 percent compared to the 2028 baseline.

 

 

The Fed’s Climate Research Is Beyond Flawed

by David Barker, The Daily Economy, November 6, 2024.

The Federal Reserve is at it again, publishing bad climate research.  Last year in Econ Journal Watch, a peer reviewed academic publication, I criticized a Fed working paper about climate. The author, Fed economist Michael Kiley, never responded, though he was promised space in the journal for a reply. He published his paper in Economic Inquiry. Kiley made a few changes, but did not address my criticisms. I have written a new critique of Kiley’s updated work.

Nobel Prize-winning economist William Nordhaus has made it clear that, compared to future expected economic growth, any effect of warming temperatures would be small. Hence, climate fearmongers try hard to show that warming would reduce the rate of growth of GDP.  Kiley’s paper claims that an extra degree of temperature will lower median world GDP growth by 84 percent through the end of the century, with an even larger reduction of growth during bad times.

Kiley’s analysis gives equal weight to 124 countries, including Rwanda, where a genocide in 1994 caused GDP to fall by 64 percent in one year. Blaming the genocide on a slightly higher than average temperature in that year is ridiculous, particularly since the year’s warm weather happened after the genocide took place. Kiley’s data also includes Equatorial Guinea, where, following an oil discovery, GDP rose by 88 percent in one year!

Just Say No to NATO Expansion

by Michael Chapman, Cato at Liberty, November 6, 2024.

Excerpt:

Many Western leaders, such as President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, say NATO expansion, including membership for Ukraine, is vital to Europe’s collective security. But an ever-growing NATO—spearheaded by the United States—seems to contradict what one of its principal architects, Dwight D. Eisenhower, envisioned for the organization. Further, proposed membership for Ukraine helped trigger Russia’s 2022 invasion, a war that has reportedly killed several hundred thousand Ukrainians and cost the US taxpayers $175 billion—so far.

A wiser policy for peace, as Cato and other libertarian scholars have advocated for decades, is to abandon efforts to expand NATO, resume the withdrawal of US troops from Germany, and let Europe take the lead in its own defense.

NATO started off in 1949 primarily to counter the Soviet Union and (in 1955) the Warsaw Pact. The USSR and the pact collapsed in 1991–some 33 years ago. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and a principal architect of NATO, wrote in 1951, “If in 10 years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole project [NATO] will have failed.” Today there are about 100,000 US troops in Europe.