“The past is irrevocable, but many of the factors behind its tragedies are still at work in the present, and are a danger to the future. The issues change – eugenics is not environmentalism – but the dogmatism and the ego behind the dogmatism are the same.”
Thomas Sowell Is Reality Optional?
“The spectacle of economists bringing their awesome mathematical and statistical techniques to bear on the analysis of irrelevant or misleading data can only disgust those for whom the desire to understand reality take precedence over the desire to impress their colleagues with analytic pyrotechnics.”
Robert Higgs Crisis and Leviathan
In my latest National Post column I say we seem to have lost sight of what we’re trying to do on the COVID-19 pandemic, with potentially ominous consequences.
“The fact that… we still live well cannot ease the pain of feeling that we no longer live nobly.”
John Updike, quoted by ordained minister Kevin Little of Ottawa in an Op Ed in Ottawa Citizen June 13, 2002
In my latest Loonie Politics column I deplore Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s recent insouciant refusal even to attempt to give serious answers to Pierre Poilievre’s questions about mounting national debt.
“Too large a proportion of recent ‘mathematical’ economics are mere concoctions as imprecise as the initial assumptions they rest on, which allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and unhelpful symbols.”
John Maynard Keynes The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money