May 06, 2026

Two Bets On The Future Of Wind Energy: Who Is Right?

May 06, 2026/ Francis Menton

Two articles from the New York Times in the past couple of days describe the widening divergence between the approaches taken by the U.S. and China on the subject of wind energy. I apologize that these pieces are behind the Times’s paywall, but remember that I subscribe there so that you don’t have to.
On Monday (May 4) the article was about the status of wind energy development in the U.S., with the headline “More Than 150 Wind Projects Stall as Pentagon Delays Reviews.”‍ ‍Tuesday’s (May 5) piece covered the same subject in China, headline “China’s Big Bet on Wind Power Is Paying Off.”‍ ‍
These articles once again illustrate the extent to which the U.S. and its people are uniquely blessed in the world.

April 20, 2026

Could There Be Any Idea More Ignorant Than Government-Run Grocery Stores?

April 20, 2026/ Francis Menton

When I consider our new Mayor Mamdani and his legions of committed followers, the thought I can’t get away from is “How is it possible to be this ignorant?”
Right now here in New York, Mamdani is moving forward with his plan to open a chain of government-owned grocery stores, at least one for each of our five boroughs.
The underlying concept is that groceries have become too expensive for low income people to buy, undoubtedly due to evil capitalists siphoning off vast profits somewhere in the system. In the latest iteration of his proposal, Mamdani has said that the government stores will sell “basic” products like bread, milk and eggs at “guaranteed cheaper” prices.

April 17, 2026

April 17, 2026/ Francis Menton

Here in New York, our new Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani ran on a platform of “taxing the rich.”
But that leaves a question to which the answer up to now has not been completely clear: Does Mamdani advocate taxing the rich because he thinks it is good tax policy, or does he advocate taxing the rich as a way to take revenge and punish a group he thinks of as predators and oppressors?
Currently the New York Legislature and Governor are in the midst of their annual budget negotiations, in which one of the issues is whether Mamdani will be granted any of his “tax the rich” wishes. Word so far had been that the Governor has resisted those wishes, particularly the wish to increase the rates of income tax on high earners.
However, on tax day (April 15) news emerged that there is some kind of an agreement on one piece of Mamdani’s tax agenda, namely a proposal to impose a special tax or fee of some kind on expensive New York properties used by non-residents as second homes or “pieds-à-terre.”

July 15, 2025

July 15, 2025/ Francis Menton

Javier Milei (pictured above) was elected President of Argentina in October 2023, and took office in December of that year. He promised large cuts to government spending, bureaucracy, and regulation as the means to revive a long moribund Argentine economy crippled by government over-spending, over-regulation, excess unionism, and corporate cronyism.
But would Milei’s program work?
I last wrote about Milei’s implementation of his program in this post in November 2024. That post reported that Milei had succeeded in putting through substantial cuts in government spending and bureaucracy, but that the economy had experienced a recession during his first year in office in 2024. Likely much of that reported recession was not real, reflecting instead the removal from the GDP accounts of wasteful government spending that perversely had been counted as an addition to the economy. But would the economy then revive in 2025 as a result of the new program?

July 03, 2025

July 03, 2025/ Francis Menton

Writing in the Wall Street Journal on June 30 (July 1 in the print edition), editorialist Matthew Hennessey advocates that “Capitalism Needs Champions.”
Reacting to the victory of avowed socialist Zohran Mamdani in New York City’s mayoral primary, Hennessey says that the electoral result indicates that the defenders of capitalism are doing a poor job, and need to step up their game:
Let Zohran Mamdani’s victory in last week’s Democratic mayoral primary in New York serve as your periodic reminder that capitalism is in dire need of able defenders. Socialism has more cheerleaders than it deserves, considering its record of consistent failure. Markets need champions too. This is always true, especially now. . . . [T]he problem isn’t capitalism. The problem is complacency.
I don’t disagree. But there’s another problem for defenders of what its enemies call “capitalism.” The problem is that capitalism is not an “ism.”

June 30, 2025

June 30, 2025/ Francis Menton

Last week I invited readers to get a good laugh out of New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s plan to avert impending energy disaster by green-lighting one nuclear power plant that optimistically might solve 5% of the problem when it is ready to operate in the 2050s.
Now this week brings an even superior farce: A video clip has emerged of our settler-colonialist Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani calling for “seizing the means of production.”
Mamdani’s victory in last week’s Democratic primary has led researchers to dredge up a treasure trove of his old tweets and video clips, each one more ridiculous than the next. An excellent roundup can be found here at Legal Insurrection.
Some choice examples include: “VioIence is an artificial construct"; “Under capitalism, housing is a commodity from which landlords & developers extract huge profits while our communities suffer eviction, foreclosure & displacement.”; “We need to dramatically curtail the power & presence of the NYPD.”; and “[A] statue of Columbus remains in Astoria, in defiance of the values of humanity, empathy & justice that we stand for.”
But my favorite is a clip from a speech Mamdani gave at a Democratic Socialists of America conference in 2021.