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In the old days, quitting smoking was apparently a miserable affair. So miserable, in fact, that even when faced with the prospect of ‘quit smoking or die’, too many smokers tragically fell into the latter category. Read more

The trouble isn’t so much the things we don’t know, as the old aphorism goes, but rather the things we know that aren’t so. Simply not knowing things can often be fixed. Read more

The Tax Working Group’s high-level advice is absolutely correct: The government should simplify the alcohol excise structure, put tobacco excise increases on hold, and not proceed with any sugar taxes until it figures out what it is trying to achieve. This sound advice relies on a rather reasonable summary of the issues produced by the Tax Working Group’s secretariat. Read more

In the media they say if it bleeds it leads. That may be so, but last Friday I took the unusual step of writing a column about some good news. Read more

Something of enormous global significance has just occurred but it has slipped past almost without notice. According to a report just released by the Brookings Institute, for the first time in history a majority of humanity is no longer poor or vulnerable to falling into poverty. Read more

It is a sure sign I am getting old. At age 43, I am still working and I do not think it is a problem. Read more

It had to take an evolutionary psychologist and a lawyer to dissect (some of) the craziness of modern society and polity. Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff’s new book The Coddling of the American Mind is required reading for anyone wishing to understand 21st century politics, not just in the US but globally. Read more

I recently read an article that distressed me so deeply I feel it needed a trigger warning. The article reported that millennials are more likely to support socialism. Read more