Liberty Alone

From the Environmental Audit Committee

Biofuels are not green, they lead to pollution and environmental damage across the board. It is possible that this may improve, but right now they are a bad idea.

That’s not counting the human costs of increased food prices, something which is already causing lots of concern and shortages in Mexico (thanks to politicians trying to get the votes of American farmers).

Of course, the National Farmers Union is all for biofuels. Then again they would be, its good for their members, who wouldn’t engage in a bit of rent seeking? And the subsidies on offer, how wonderful.
Never mind the poor or environmental damage (and the green movement never seems to be that concerned about the poor either).

Johan Norberg points out this excellent news:

The number of people in extreme poverty (under $1 a day) has fallen below 1 billion for the first time. Between 1999 and 2004 74,000 people a day rose out of extreme poverty.
Given the high population growth in most areas of poverty this is fantastic.

The numbers living on under $2 a day is falling too, albeit at a slower rate.

Poverty reduction is proceeding at a faster rate than ever before, largely due to the liberalisation of the Chinese and Indian economies. If Africa can stabilise and liberalise then we can look forward to ever increasing prosperity across the world. I doubt poverty will be eradicated in my lifetime (there are too many anti-development movements out there for a start), but the levels of poverty should continue to fall (prompting redefinition of the term poverty no doubt).

The 2007 Index has been published and it is generally good news.
Economic freedom has fallen slightly, but is still the second highest ever, but a new system is being used to measure which include labour freedom for the first time which may affect the results.
The UK comes in at number 6 and Ireland at number 7 at the tail end of the ‘free’ countries and the highest ranked in Europe (Hong Kong keeps the top spot again with its near neighbours Australia, Singapore and New Zealand all doing very well).

Over the world, the general trend is still towards greater freedom and the regions are increasing at about the same rate. There is increased wealth and a decrease in poverty and inequality across the globe. This is the achievement of poverty reduction ever,

There is more evidence that increased economic freedom increases wealth whatever your starting point, and that globalisation is not harming the world’s poor as many claim.

There is a need to be cautious - the new US congress is much more protectionist and illiberal on economic terms and the Doha round is deadlocked over the CAP and other farm subsidies. There is still a possibility of a reversal in the trend towards freedom, but overall I am cautiously optimistic.