Podcasts about noel johnson

Ian and Nathan travel to a deserted London to tackle conspiracy, traitors and feeble monsters. Invasion of the Dinosaurs (1974). Written by Malcolm Hulke. Directed by Paddy Russell. Starring Jon Peetwee. Elizabeth Sladen and Noel Johnson

I hope you'll enjoy episode 3 of this 5-part series on the most requested topic from my listeners – The Code Talkers. Meet scholar and Anthropologist, Dr. William Meadows, Professor at Missouri State University who shares about the groundbreaking research detailed in his book, “The First Code Talkers, Native American Communicators of World War I”. Get ready to experience a mix of oral history, individual soldiers' accounts and newspapers, truly bringing these heroes' stories to life. In episode 3 you'll hear about: • More about the Choctaw Code Talkers • Was code talking actually classified as secret after the war and were the code talkers sworn to secrecy about their code talking? • Choctaws, Benjamin Colbert, Victor Brown, Louis Gooding, Albert Billy, Noel Johnson, • A deep dive into Joseph Oklahombi – his significant and heroic contributions in battle, the many misconceptions around his actions during the war, and his famous “panther cry” • We discuss Judy Allen's book, Joseph Oklahombi and The Panther War Cry which can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/5hf3tuty Yakoke to the brave Native American men and women who have served our country and all our Veterans! And many thanks to Dr. Meadows for sharing his research with us. Native ChocTalk Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/nativechoctalkpodcast All Podcast Episodes: https://nativechoctalk.com/podcasts/

On October the 15th, 2021, the PSNI launch a raid an apartment in Ballymena, as part of a wider operation against drug in the town. The man who lived there was 61-year-old Noel Johnson. Moments later, he was dead. Once an acquaintance of Liam Neeson, this Catholic from Loyalist Harryville had been known as the ‘cocaine king' of Ballymena. Ciarán Dunbar is joined by John Laverty, who knew Noel Johnston well. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on “Tuesday Night Detectives” presented by Vintage Classic Radio, we invite listeners to a night steeped in suspense and shadowed corners. Our evening begins with the tantalizing tale from "Murder by Experts" in the episode titled "Three's a Crowd." Originally aired on May 22nd, 1950, this story takes us through the twisted lanes of love and jealousy. When a love triangle turns deadly, it's up to the sharp-witted and seasoned protagonist, played by the engaging John Dickson Carr, to untangle the web of deceit. The full cast, featuring the talents of Bret Morrison and Marilyn Erskine, brings this intricate narrative to life, ensuring listeners are hanging on every word. The mystery deepens with back-to-back episodes of “Dick Barton - Special Agent”. In Episodes 3 and 4 of "Dick Barton and The Secret Weapon", our eponymous hero, portrayed by the steadfast Noel Johnson, faces perilous odds. With the aid of his loyal companions Jock and Snowey, voiced by Alex McCrindle and John Mann respectively, they tackle a menacing plot that could spell disaster on a national scale. Each actor infuses their character with a unique blend of bravery and cunning, making for a riveting listen. Join us as we resurrect these captivating stories from the golden age of radio drama. From the heart-racing thrills of "Murder by Experts" to the edge-of-your-seat excitement in "Dick Barton", this is an evening of auditory delight not to be missed. Tune into "Tuesday Night Detectives" and immerse yourself in the intrigue and danger of times gone by.

It's seldom that counterfeiters end up killing police. Sadly this occurred in 1902 when a 'Coiner' (old Australian slang) murdered two police officers - one in NSW and one in Victoria. In the first case the coiner had an accomplice. Danny Webster and Noel Johnson's article 'The Coiner Killers' is a remembrance piece in the September 2023 edition of the APJ. Danny joins host Jason Byrnes, to talk about the strange and tragic tale.APJ Editor Simon Bouda also appears to talk about the wide range of interesting articles in the latest edition - including the so-called Collar Bomber case of 2011, developments in a new intelligence sharing system administered by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, Cold Case Homicide investigations in Western Australia, and an update on the Museum of Australian Policing.National Police Remembrance Day (NPRD) is 29 September - ceremonies will be held on the day around Australia, all are invited to attend.Host: Jason Byrnes APMGuests: Danny Webster and Simon Bouda AM

Noel Johnson: The Bride Coming of Christ [1:55:14] Click here for: High quality (2 GB) Click here for: Low quality (738.94 MB) 4848

On October the 15th, 2021, the PSNI launch a raid an apartment in Ballymena, as part of a wider operation against drug in the town. The man who lived there was 61-year-old Noel Johnson. Moments later, he was dead. Once an acquaintance of Liam Neeson, this Catholic from Loyalist Harryville had been known as the ‘cocaine king' of Ballymena. Ciarán Dunbar is joined by John Laverty, who knew Noel Johnston well. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to Ideas Untrapped. My guest today is Vincent Geloso who is a professor of economics at George Mason University. He studies economic history, political economy, and the measurement of living standards. In today's episode, we discuss the differences between democracies and dictatorships, and their relative performance in socioeconomic development. The allure of authoritarian governance has grown tremendously due to the economic success of countries like China, Korea, and Singapore - which managed to escape crippling national poverty traps. The contestable nature of democracies and the difficulty many democratic countries have to continue on a path of growth seems to many people as evidence that a benevolent dictatorship is what many countries need. Vincent challenges this notion and explains many seemingly high-performing dictatorships are so because their control of state resources allows them direct investments towards singular objectives - (such as winning Olympic medals or reducing infant mortality) but at the same time, come with a flip side of unseen costs due to their lack of rights and economic freedom. He argues that the benefits of dictatorships are not as great as they may seem and that liberal democracies are better able to decentralize decision-making and handle complex multi-variate problems. He concludes that while democracies may not always be successful in achieving certain objectives, the constraints they place on political power and rulers mean that people are better off in terms of economic freedom, rights, and other measures of welfare.TRANSCRIPTTobi;You made the point that dictatorships usually optimise, not your words, but they optimise for univariate factors as opposed to multiple factors, which you get in democracy. So, a dictatorship can be extremely high performing on some metric because they can use the top-down power to allocate resources for that particular goal. Can you shed a bit more light on that? How does that mechanism work in reality?Vincent;Yeah, I think a great image people are used to is the USSR, and they're thinking about two things the USSR did quite well: putting people in space before the United States and winning medals at Olympics. Now, the regime really wanted to do those two things. [That is], win a considerable number of medals in [the] Olympics and win the space race. Both of them were meant to showcase the regime's tremendous ability. It was a propaganda ploy, but since it was a single objective and they had immense means at their disposal, i. e. the means that coercion allows them, they could reach those targets really well. And it's easy to see the Russians putting Sputnik first in space, the Russians putting Laika first in space. We can see them winning medals. It's easy to see. The part that is harder to see, the unseen, is the fact that Russians were not enjoying rapidly rising living standards, they were not enjoying improvements in medical care that was commensurate with their level of income, they were not enjoying high-quality education. You can pile all the unseens of the ability of the USSR as a dictatorship to allocate so much resources to two issues, [which] meant that it came with a flip side, which is that these resources were not available for people to allocate them in ways that they thought was more valuable. So, the virtue of a liberal democracy, unlike a dictatorship, is that a liberal democracy has multiple sets of preferences to deal with. And in a liberal democracy, it's not just the fact that we vote, but also that people have certain rights that are enshrined and which are not the object of political conversation. I cannot seize your property, and it's not okay for people to vote with me to seize your property. And in these societies, the idea is that under a liberal democracy, you are better able to decentralize decision-making, and people can find ways to deal with the multiple trade-offs much better. Whereas a dictatorship can just decide, I care about this. I am king, I am president, I am first secretary of the party, I decide this and we'll do this regardless of how much you value other things that I value less than you do.Tobi;Two things that I want you to shed more light on. Depending on who you talk to or what they are criticizing, people usually selectively pick their dictatorships. If someone is criticizing, say, for example, capitalism, they always point to the Cuban health care system in contrast to the American health care system. How the American system is so terrible, and how capitalism makes everything worse because of the profit motive. And how we can do better by being more like Cuba.  On the other end of that particular spectrum, if you're talking about economic development, critics of democracy like to point to China. China is not a democracy. And look at all the economic growth they've had in the last 40 years, one of the largest reductions in human poverty we've ever seen in history. I mean, from these two examples, what are the shortcomings of these arguments?Vincent; Let's do Cuba first, then we can do China. So, the Cuban example is really good for the case I'm making. Because the case I'm making is essentially that the good comes with the bad and you can't remove them. So, people will generally say with Cuba, “yes, we know they don't have political rights, they don't have economic freedom, but they do have high-quality health care.” And by this they don't mean actually health care, they mean low infant mortality or high life expectancy at birth. My reply is, it's because they don't have all these other rights and all these other options [that] they can have infant mortality that is so low. That's because the regime involves a gigantic amount of resources to the production of healthcare. Cuba spends more than 10% of its GDP on health care. Only countries that are seven or ten times richer than Cuba spend as much as a proportion of GDP on health care. 1% of their population are doctors. In the United States, it is a third of that, 0.3% of the population are doctors. So, it's a gigantic proportion. But then when you scratch a bit behind, doctors are, for example, members of the army. They are part of the military force. The regime employs them as the first line of supervision. So, the doctors are also meant to report back what the population says on the ground. So, they're basically listening posts for the dictatorship. And in the process, yeah, they provide some health care, but they're providing some health care as a byproduct of providing surveillance.The other part is that they're using health care here to promote the regime abroad. And that has one really important effect. One of those is that doctors have targets they must meet, otherwise they're penalized. And when I mean targets, I mean targets for infant mortality. [If] they don't meet those targets, the result is they get punished. And so what do you think doctors do? They will alter their behaviour to avoid punishment. So in some situations, they will reclassify what we call early neonatal death. So, babies who die immediately after exiting the womb to seven days after birth, they will reclassify many of those as late fetal deaths. And late fetal deaths are in-utero deaths or delivery of a dead baby so that the baby exits the womb dead. Now, if a mortality rate starts with early neonatal death [and] not late fetal ones, so if you can reclassify one into the other, you're going to deflate the number total. And the reason why we can detect this is that the sources of both types of mortality are the same,[they] are very similar, so that when you compare them across countries, you generally find the same ratio of one to the other. Generally, it hovers between four to one and six to one. Cuba has a ratio of twelve to 17 to one, which is a clear sign of data manipulation. And it's not because the regime does it out of, like, direct intent. They're not trying to do it directly. It'd be too easy to detect. But by changing people's incentives, doctors' incentives, in that case, that's what they end up with.There are also other things that doctors are allowed to do in Cuba. One of them is that patients do not have the right to refuse treatment. Neither do they have the right to privacy, which means that doctors can use heavy-handed methods to make sure that they meet their targets. So in Cuba, you have stuff like casa de mata nidad, where mothers who have at-risk pregnancies or at-risk behaviour during pregnancy will be forcibly incarcerated during their pregnancy. There are multiple cases of documented, pressured abortions or literally coerced abortions. So not just pressured, but coerced. Like, the level is that the person wants to keep the infant, the doctor forces an abortion to be made. Sometimes, it is made without the mother's knowledge until it is too late to anything being done. So you end up with basically the infant mortality rate, yes, being low, but yes, being low because of data manipulation and changes in behaviour so that the number doesn't mean the same thing as it does in rich countries. And now the part that's really important in all I'm saying is [that] what people call the benefits for Cuba is relatively small. My point is that, yeah, maybe they could be able to do it. But the problem is that the measures that allow this to happen, to have a low infant mortality rate are also the measures that make Cubans immensely poor. The fact that the regime can deploy such force, use doctors in such a way, employ such extreme measures, it's the reason why Cubans also don't have property rights, don't have strong economic freedom, don't have the liberty to trade with others. Which means that on other dimensions, their lives are worse off. That means that, for example, their incomes are lower than they could be. They have higher maternal mortality. So, mothers die to [a] greater proportion in labour than in other countries or post-labour. There are lower rates of access to clean water than in equally poor countries in Latin America. There are lower levels of geographic mobility within the country, there are lower levels of nutrition because, for example, there are still ration services. So that means that, yes, they have certain amount of calories, but they don't have that much diversity in terms of what they're allowed or are able to eat without resorting to the black market. Pile these on. These are all dimensions of life that Cubans get to not enjoy because the regime has so much power to do that one thing relatively well. Let's assume it's relatively well, but the answer is, well, would you want to make that trade-off? And most people would probably, if given the choice, would not make the choice of having this. So, those who are saying, “look at how great it is,” are being fooled by the nature of what dictatorships are. Dictatorships can solve simple problems really well, but complex multivariate problems, they are not able to do it in any meaningful way.The other part that is going to be of also importance is when you look at Cuba, before we move on to China, the other part about Cuba that's worth pointing out is, I was assuming in my previous answer that the regime was actually doing relatively well. Even without considering all the criticism, it still looks like it has a low infant mortality rate. But when you actually look at the history of Cuba, Cuba was exceptional in terms of low infant mortality. Before the Castros took over, Cuba already had a very low level of infant mortality even for a poor country. And so with a friend of mine, a coauthor, Jamie Bologna Pavlik, we used an econometric method to see if Cuba has an infant mortality rate that is as low as it would have been had it not been for the revolution. So, ergo, we're trying to find what is the effect of the revolution on infant mortality and we're trying to use other Latin American countries to predict Cuba's health performance. And what we find is that in the first year of the regime's, infant mortality actually went up, so it increased relative to other Latin American countries, but it gradually reverted back to what would be the long-run trend. So that Cuba is no more exceptional today in terms of infant mortality than it was in 1959. That is actually a very depressing statement because it's saying that the regime wasn't even able to make the country more exceptional. So even if it's able to achieve that mission quite well, it's not clear how well they've done it. At the very least, they haven't made things worse in the very long run, they only made things worse in the short run. So when you're doing, like, kind of, a ledger of goods and bads of the regime, all the bad trade-offs I mentioned: lower incomes, higher mortality rates for mothers and maternity, lower rates of access to clean water, lower rates of access to diverse food sources, lower rates of geographic mobility - pile these on, keep piling them on, that's the cost. What I'm saying is what they call the benefits, they're not even as big as it's disclaimed. The benefits are relatively small.And now with regards to China…Tobi;Yeah.Vincent;The Chinese case is even worse for people because they have a similar story with GDP. So, in China, a regional bureaucrats have to meet certain targets of economic growth. Now, these same bureaucrats are in charge of producing the data that says whether or not there is economic growth. You can see why there is a who guards the guardian's problem here? The person who guards the guardian is apparently one of the guardians. So you could expect some kind of bad behaviour. And there is an economist, Luis Martinez, out of the University of Chicago. What he did is he say, well, we have one measure that we know is a good reflector of economic growth and it is artificial light intensity at night. Largely because the richer a country is, the more light there will be at night time. And so if you have like 1% growth in income, in real numbers, you should have some form of commensurate increase in light intensity during night time. If the two deviates, it's a sign that the GDP numbers are false, that they're misleading. Because if they deviate, the true number, the always true number will be the light intensity at nighttime. So, when Martinez used the nighttime light to compare GDP in Chinese regions overall and the actual GDP, he found that you can cut the growth rate of China by, maybe, two-fifths, so it is 40% slower than it actually is. So, China is not even as impressive as it is. And the thing is now think about the pandemic, think about how extreme the measures that China deployed to restrain this has been, no liberal democracy would have been able to do that, no free society would have tolerated forcibly walling people into their houses. And there are massive downsides to the communist regime in China. Like, yes, the regime is free to do whatever it wants, but it also means that it can put Uyghur Muslims into concentration camps. It also means that it can wall people into their houses when they do not comply with public health order. It also means that people are under the social credit system where they are being largely surveilled on a daily basis. It also means that the government can allocate massive resources to the act of conquering Taiwan or flexing muscles towards Japan. All things that when you think about it, is that really an improvement in welfare? Obviously, you can say that, oh yeah, they're doing X or Y things really well but here are all the bad things that come with this. And those bad things are on net much worse than the good things.Tobi;Now, you keep emphasizing liberal democracy and I want to get at the nuance here because I've seen several results. Either it is from Chile and other countries that say unequivocally that democracies are better for growth than dictatorships, even in the case of Chile, despite all the reforms of Pinochet regime. But what I want to get at is, what exactly about democracies make them better? Because, for example, we can think of Nigeria and Nigeria as a democracy. We've had uninterrupted election cycles for over two decades now, but there's still very weak rule of law. Successive governments still rely on extracting oil rents, basically. And, the degree to which people enjoy rights vary depending on who is in power or their mood on any particular day. And, of course, Nigeria is a democracy. So is it liberal democracy? Is that the key factor?Vincent;So, think about it this way.Tobi;Yeah.Vincent;Think about it this way. Inside the big box of liberal democracy, there is for sure democracy. But the part that makes the box liberal democracy is not only the smaller babushkadal inside that box which is a democracy one, it is the other constraints that we put on the exercise of political power. The true definition of a liberal democracy, at least in my opinion, is that not only are people allowed to vote, but they are restraints on what we can vote on. So, for example, if it's not legitimate for me to steal from you, it is no more legitimate for me to vote with two other people to steal from you. The act of democracy should warrant some acts that are outside the realm of political decision-making. There are also constraints that exist on rulers, so it's not just that there are some rights that are not subject to conversation. There could be also incentives that prevent rulers from abusing the powers they have. That would mean, for example, checks and balances, where there are different chambers that will compete with each other, different regional powers of government that will compete with each other for jurisdiction, and so they will keep each other in balance. It could also be some form of external constraint, because a liberal democracy can also rely on external constraints upon political actors. It could be the fact that people can leave the country, the fact that taxpayers can migrate to another country, puts pressure on politicians to not abuse them. People can move their capital out of the country, [this] creates a pressure on politicians to not try to steal from them, because people will just remove all the productive capital and the ruler will be left with very little to exploit as a result, regardless of whether or not the ruler is elected or not. So the way to think about this is liberal democracy is, you want to have a system where there are rules, incentives, constraints that make it so that we are not betting on a man or a woman, for that matter, being the correct man and woman for the moment. We care about a set of incentives, constraints, and rules that will make sure that even the worst human being possible will feel compelled or compulsed [sic] to do the right thing. So, that's like the old Milton Friedman thing, it's like “I don't want the right man. I want to have a system that makes sure that even the most horrible person on earth is forced to do the right thing.” That's what a liberal democracy is.Now, it is a broad definition that I've provided. It is not narrow in any way. It is not specific, largely because I don't think it can be what works. It's not everywhere the same. The general family to which this belongs is universal. But the way it can work is not the same everywhere. A homogeneous, small, Sweden probably doesn't need as much level of, say, breakdown of provincial versus federal powers. Whereas, from what I understand, Nigeria is a somewhat multinational country, multiethnic country with multiple groups east and west from what I understand the divide is in Nigeria. There, it might be good to have a division inside the country where things that are most homogeneous, you leave to the federal government, to the highest level of power. Then the things that you can delegate to the local level, [it is] better to do it that way. Countries that are incredibly heterogeneous maybe need even more federalism. What is optimal for one place won't work elsewhere. So I couldn't take Belgian institutions and then just dump them in Nigeria. Same as I couldn't just say, well, let's take Swedish institutions and dump them into Canada. But what makes generally Sweden work better in terms of institutions than Nigeria, for example, is the fact that Sweden does fit in that general box of liberal democracy. There are clear constraints, there are restrictions, there are constitutions that are well respected, there's a strong rule of law, and politicians are compelled to not fall prey to their own baser instincts.Tobi;  A couple of months ago, I had Mark Koyama on the show.Vincent; Great guy. He's a colleague of mine.Tobi;Yeah. So, we were talking about state capacity. We're talking about his book with Noel Johnson. So I did bring up your paper on state capacity, [in] which, basically, one description that stuck with me is that you never really find a poor, but highly capable state in history…Vincent;You mean backwards. A rich society with an incapable state?  Tobi; Yes, a rich society with an incapable state. Thanks for that. So, I've been trying to disentangle this state capacity thing, I know Bryan Caplan basically dismissed it as a sleight of hand. Right. So, like, how does it work and how is it a necessary ingredient for economic development, so to speak?Vincent; I am actually quite respectful of the state capacity literature in one way. So let me do like kind of a quick thing. State capacity says that you want the state to be able to do certain missions. Right, so we're not making judgments as to whether the mission is good. State capacity is about the abilities of the state. The reason why that literature has emerged since the 2000… here's a story of economic thought really briefly: in the 1950s, Samuelson and others show, ‘oh, well, there are market failures' and then a few years later there are the public choice rebuttals, where the public choice economists say, ‘well, you're kind of wrong. There are also government failures.' And the state capacity crowd tries to come in between these two and say, ‘yeah, there are market failures and there are government failures. How do we get a state to solve the market failures but not fall into government failures?' Okay, straightforward, good argument. The part that I'm sceptical of is that the argument of the state capacity crowd is that you will have a lot of rich societies that will have strong states, you will have much fewer societies that have strong states but are very poor (the USSR would be a good example of that), [and] you will have a lot of societies that are poor and have weak state. The thing is that they can't seem to explain why it is under their theory that there are no societies that are relatively weak state but rich. Even though in history we do have many examples of these and they collapse all the time.The argument that I make with my colleague, Alexander Salter, is that societies that have weak states will fall prey to predation because their neighbours with stronger state will try to capture their wealth by conquest. If they are conquered, they grow immensely poor, they are made poor. Basically, it's a terrible event for them. Or they resist, and if they resist ably, the result from resistance is that they have to build a strong state themselves to resist predation by other rulers. And so in the argument me and Alex build, it boils down to: the state is not necessary for development, but it is inevitable as an outcome. So, the task of political science, of political economy, is understanding if we are going to be stuck with one of them, how do we make it that we get the least terrible one? If it's not necessary, but it is inevitable, then how do we get to one that will maybe do some benefit, or at least, we can get the best kind possible? Well, that's where the liberal democratic answer gets into. [It] is [that] we need to find sets of constraints, rules, incentives that force the politicians to make it too costly for them to engage in predatory behaviour, in redistributive behaviour, and that they concentrate on what you could call productive behaviour. That would be like solving externalities. Like dealing with pollution or producing public goods stuff that markets have a harder time to produce. Getting into that category is the task of what liberal democracies are trying to do. That is a much harder proposition. Daron Acemoglu in his somewhat awful book, The Narrow Corridor, calls it a narrow corridor. (I don't like that book that much. I think it's a horrible piece of literature. He should have kept it at Why Nations Fail, we had everything we needed with Buchanan, and it was much better in the other version. He was a much worse version of that.) So, Parenthesis over on Daron Acemoglu, but his point is still relatively okay. There is a narrow corridor on which we evolve. That is a very narrow equilibrium that we want to stay on to, to avoid veering either into more territorial forms of government or into different types of authoritarian[ism], in a certain way. So the corridor for a liberal democracy is very, very, very, very narrow.Tobi; I like that description. The state is not necessary but inevitable. Whereas with the traditional state capacity crowd, the state is often assumed and never justified.Vincent;Actually, that's a bit unfair to them. The state capacity crowd, a lot of them are interested in state capacity as a story of the origins of states. That, I think, is a much-valued contribution. However, the issue of whether or not state capacity is linked to growth, I think this is where there's overstretching. My point is “no, there's very little reason to believe that state capacity is related to growth.” State capacity is more the direct or indirect result of growth in the past. So, either you are getting state capacity because you get conquered and you get imposed it by somebody else, or you get state capacity because you want to protect your wealth from other predators.Tobi; For the record, I'm not talking about your colleagues. There's this industrial policy school in development economics who are also big on state capacity, who think the state has to do this heavy lifting. They sort of assume the state and not justify it. But I won't let you go without asking you this final question. You recently published a paper - talking about the work of Thomas Piketty, the French economist - with Phillip Magness, I should say. What is your critique of his work? Because so far as I can tell, yes, I read the op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, [but] everybody else is sort of pretending that a critique of Piketty does not exist. And the political coalition around their research, along with [Emmanuel] Saez and [Gabriel] Zucman is moving rapidly apace, whether it is in taxation or other forms of agenda. So, what is your critique? I know there have been others in the past Matthew Rognlie, I'm not sure how to pronounce his last name.Vincent;Yeah. Our argument is actually very simple. And to be honest, I don't really care about the political conversation where, [for] the political people who are using Piketty's work, I ignore them. There may be a motivation for doing this work because it tells you the importance of his work, but the person I'm trying to talk to is Piketty himself. And the point we make in the paper is that he [not only] massively overestimates inequality in terms of levels, but he also misses times a lot of changes. In the article that me, Phil, another Phil, and John Moore published together in the Economic Journal, we find that there is a very different timeline of inequality in the United States. The most important part is that unlike Piketty and Saez, who can assign most of, and later Zucman… who can assign most of the changes in inequality to tax policy, we find that actually half the decline in inequality that happens between, say, 1917 and 1960, half of it is because of the Great Depression. And just as good economists, we should not be happy that, okay, the rich are growing poor faster than the poor, but the poor are also growing poor. That is not a decent outcome. So we're minimizing the role of fiscal policy and tax policy in doing inequality, but also the other changes that we find give a very different story of what matters in changing policy rather than being taxes, it has more to do with labour mobility within the United States. With capital mobility within the United States. So poor workers from the south, mostly black Americans, move to richer northern cities where wages are higher. Capital moves from the rich north to the poor south where workers are made more productive. So, the levelling has to do with a very standard force in economics - it's a Solow growth model - capital goes to where the returns are greatest, labour goes where the wages are greatest. Most of the convergence is explained by this, not by tax policy changes. So that's the critique we make of them. And there's a lot of other people who are joining in, Gerald Holtham, David Splinter, a lot of people are actually finding that their numbers don't make much sense and they're actually in violation of a lot of other facts of economic history, even though they're correct in the general idea that inequality fell; fell to 1960 and rose since the 1980. The problem is that all they got right is the shape, but they got wrong the timing, the levels, the extent of the changes. They got most of it wrong. They just got the general shape right. And that's no great feat.Tobi;Thank you so much for joining me.Vincent;It was a pleasure. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ideasuntrapped.com/subscribe

Noel Johnson: Preparing for the Future [1:41:14] Click here for: High quality (1.75 GB) Click here for: Low quality (648.91 MB) 4361

Special Series on History and Urban Economics - Part I This episode is the first in a series based on a forthcoming special issue focused on Urban Economics and History, to be published in the journal Regional Science and Urban Economics. It contains a series of short conversations with multiple authors. Guests: Walker Hanlon is Associate Professor of Economics at Northwestern University and Stephan Heblich is Associate Professor and Munk Chair of Economics at the University of Toronto. Maarten Bosker is Professor of International Trade and Development at Erasmas University of Rotterdam. Noel Johnson is Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University. Treb Allen is Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College Papers Discussed in this Episode: History and Urban Economics by Walker Hanlon and Stephan Heblich City Origins by Maarten Bosker Medieval Cities Through the Lens of Urban Economics by Remie Jedwab, Noel Johnson, and Mark Koyoma Persistance and Path Dependence: A Primer by Treb Allen and Dave Donaldson What Future for History Dependence in Spatial Economics by Jeffrey Lin and Ferdinand Rauch Follow us on the web or on Twitter: @denselyspeaking, @jeffrlin, @greg_shill. Hosts: Jeff Lin and Greg Shill. Producer: Schuyler Pals. Special theme music for this series: Oleksandr Koltsov Ambience, London Street, A by InspectorJ. The views expressed on the show are those of the participants, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the Federal Reserve System, or any of the other institutions with which the hosts or guests are affiliated.

Noel Johnson: Redeemed and Restored [2:13:04] Click here for: High quality (0 B) Click here for: Low quality (852.66 MB) 4220

Noel Johnson: Learning to Rest [1:50:24] Click here for: High quality (0 B) Click here for: Low quality (707.34 MB) 4090

Today's guest is Mark Koyama, Economic Historian at George Mason University. Mark recently co-authored Persecution & Toleration: The Long Road to Religious Freedom with Noel Johnson, and in this episode, we talk to Mark about some of its big themes – state capacity, religious toleration, and political competition. We begin by hearing Mark's ideas about a key argument in his book, the connection between religious freedom and the development of liberal societies. From there, we unpack the meaning of the idea of state capacity which springboards a discussion on the relationship between strong states and the treatment of religious minorities. To flesh out some of the nuances of this idea, our discussion hones in on the treatment of Jews during the Black Death during the Holy Roman Empire. On the topic of state-building, we look at some examples of small city-states versus medium states in Europe, hearing Mark's ideas on why the latter had more lasting power. We also speak about the role of weaponry in state-building. Our conversation moves to focus on the idea of shocks to a local labor pool and how these forces affect wages and markets in different ways. Following this, Mark talks about the persecution of Christian ‘heretics' during the Reformation and the role of the printing press as well as the Ottoman Empire. We speak about the influence of the ideas of Locke and Spinoza on religious toleration and then move on to critically examine the ‘everything exists is efficient' argument as it pertains to state-building. Wrapping up, we talk to Mark about how deep roots literature accounts for state-building in Europe, the role of counterfactual thinking in economic history, and the role of data and analytic narratives in understanding history. We round off the episode with an exchange about how an understanding of economic history will make Libertarian arguments against the state less convincing. Tune in today! Key Points From This Episode: •   Mark's new book looking at how we get modern, liberal societies through the lens of religious freedom. •   Other indicators or drivers for Liberalism and why Mark sees religious freedom as a major one. •   Examples of so-called liberal states suppressing religion. •   Liberal states defined as states which place value in having religious freedom. •   Mark's definition of state capacity, another major theme in his book. •   Tracing the evolution of state capacity as a phenomenon and a term. •   The relationship between strong states and the treatment of religious minorities. •   Jewish tolerance and pogroms during the Black Death in the Holy Roman Empire. •   The role of the size of political units on the development of state capacity in Europe. •   How (the cost of) weaponry influences state-building and state capacity. •   How different types of labor shock affect wages and markets. •   Why some Christian sects were persecuted around the time of the Reformation and the printing press. •   Whether the political decentralization of the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Turks are related to the Reformation. •   The ‘deep roots' argument and how it fits in with the development of modern Europe. •   Mark's book section dealing with the ideas of Locke and Spinoza concerning religious toleration. •   Why the argument that ‘everything which exists is efficient' is not helpful for understanding state policies. •   How counterfactuals can be applied to history and which approaches are useful. •   The role of data and analytic narratives in understanding history. •   The relationship between one's understanding of economics and one's politics. •   The importance of economic history... Support this podcast

Hr.1Fire And Ice- Riley MitchellTake It- Rachael Roberts (coming up in a few weeks Radical Passenger- Grey Watson (@greyofthe80s)GeniusFoolz- DuJour (R-Tist)Deeper Meaning- Drizzy D.R.O. (Feat. Gotye)Lemon Tree- Richard DanielSoles- Shaheed and March The FifthTigers In Texas- Venture Boi (new Ep out 03.27)Panama City Blues- American Studies [Bryant Saxon of Earth Libraries and Ryan (Inkline) Howell of Nerves Baddington]Nebulous- Wray (single from the forthcoming release out April 2 on Earth Libraries)Drinks Ain’t Free- Zach AustinGo Together- GemsMake The Hills Echo- Glories (Distant After) Tell Me What You Want (I Want It)- Carver CommodoreHr.2Recurring Dream- The White Oaks (Remastered)Conversation with Noel Johnson of The White OaksHey JulieHoly Waters Rising- The White Oaks (Remastered)Life After Death- The White Oaks (Unreleased)Starin At The SunFodderThe Breath, Oh YesMy Lover’s Coming For Me- I Won’t Answer (previous Pipe And Gun/CommVess release)

Religious freedom is a core value of the modern West, but how did it emerge, and why does it matter? Economic historian Mark Koyama, of George Mason University, joins me to discuss his recent book (co-authored with Noel Johnson), Persecution and Toleration: The Long Road to Religious Freedom.Check out the book here, and follow Professor Koyama on Twitter @MarkKoyama.Support this show by supporting our sponsors!Quip - Your new toothbrush starts at just $25, and at GetQuip.com/TIDES you can get your first refill pack free.Peloton - For a limited time, you can go to OnePeloton.com, and use the code TIDESPOD to get $100 off accessories with the purchase of a Tread.

A band of brothers featuring two “Crooks with Nathan Crook on gtr/vocals, Trevor Cook on drums, Jared Craig on bass, and lead singer Noel Johnson.  In fact they ALL SING!   And come with lots of stories and heart in conversation and performance.    https://www.audible.ca/pd/Radio-Records-Rockstars-Audiobook/B07JGF7PS7

Noel Johnson: Who Are We, Really? [1:54:03] Click here for: High quality (0 B) Click here for: Low quality (847.22 MB) 2853

Most liberal, Western citizens don't have significant worries nowadays about religious persecution in their own countries, but it wasn't always this way. How then did we get to this point on the long road of religious freedom? On this episode, Hayek Program scholar Mark Koyama and Mercatus affiliated scholar Noel Johnson share a conversation on their new book, 'Persecution and Toleration,' (Cambridge University Press 2019) which seeks to answer this question. Johnson and Koyama discuss their inspiration for the book and how the project came together before expounding on some of their findings. In particular, they point to the role of the contrasting governance structures of identity rules vs. general rules in shaping the process, and examine the effects of key historical events such as the Reformation. Along the way, they share some surprises they encountered in their work and offer up possible areas for further exploration by interested scholars. CC Music: Twisterium, Cool Vibes (Kevin Macleod), On the Ground (Kevin Macleod)

How did religious freedom emerge — and why did it arrive so late? In their forthcoming book, fellow Mason economists Noel Johnson and Mark Koyama argue that while most focus on the role of liberal ideas in establishing religious freedom, it was instead institutional changes — and the growth of state capacity in particular — that played the decisive role. In their conversation with Tyler, Johnson and Koyama discuss the ‘long road to religious freedom’ and more, including the link between bad weather and Jewish persecution, why China evolved into such a large political unit, whether the Black Death proves Paul Romer wrong, scapegoating, usury prohibitions in history, and the economic impact of volcanic eruptions. Transcript and links Follow Noel on Twitter Follow Mark on Twitter Follow Tyler on Twitter More CWT goodness: Facebook Twitter Instagram Email

Today 5pm-6pm EST 10pm-11pm BST 2pm-3pm PDT bombshellradio.com Bombshell Radio Allen Bell Today's Bombshell (Bombshell Radio) Repeats 5am EST #Rock #Radio #alternative #Classics #NewMusic #AllenBell #interview w/ Johnson CrookFrom the moment Toronto roots rock band Johnson Crook played together, they knew they not only had harmony in their voices, but a deep personal connection that made the idea of forming a group a foregone conclusion.What the quartet—Noel Johnson (rhythm guitars/vocals), brothers Nathan (lead guitar/mandolin/vocals) and Trevor Crook (drums/vocals) and Jared Craig (bass/vocals)—share is a love of pure, honest music stemming from their small-town backgrounds. Drawing inspiration from groups like the Eagles and the Avett Brothers, each member of Johnson Crook contributes equally, injecting their unique personalities into the overall sound built on four voices.That special chemistry is heard on their self-titled debut EP released through Coalition Records, to be followed by a full-length album later in 2017. Both encapsulate a whirlwind initial two years of live gigs and recording sessions that began almost immediately after that first encounter.Teaming with acclaimed producer Bill Bell, they began shaping a collection of songs laid down at his home studio and at Metalworks near Toronto. The first taste, the single “Minnedosa,” came out in the summer of 2016, coinciding with the band’s multiple festival appearances. Named after the Crook brothers’ Manitoba hometown, it deftly displays the group’s intention to stand apart from crowded field of contemporary country artists.Other tracks on the EP came about just as naturally. “Canada Heartbreak” was the result of Johnson and Craig taking part in VIA Rail’s Artists On Board series, written as a reflection of their journey. Another highlight, the plaintive ballad “Mr. Nobody,” was given a boost in the studio through the participation of Bell’s close friend Tom Cochrane, whose voice fit in seamlessly.Expect to see Johnson Crook in your town at some point. Every stop brings with it a story that could become a new song, and as a group founded on the principles of equality, Johnson Crook’s creative potential is limitless

Noel Johnson: The Trail of Blood [2:35:25] Click here for: High quality (0 B) Click here for: Low quality (1000.41 MB) 2705

Noel Johnson: Restoring Back to the Faith of the Fathers [1:40:29] Click here for: High quality (1.93 GB) Click here for: Low quality (721.38 MB) 2630

My guest for this episode is Noel Johnson of George Mason University, and if that name sounds familiar, it's because he was the coauthor on the paper I discussed with Mark Koyama last month. Noel recently released a working paper titled "The Effects of Land Redistribution: Evidence from the French Revolution." It is coauthored with Theresa Finley and Raphael Franck. The paper examines the consequences of the land auctions held by the Revolutionary government in France. The abstract reads as follows: This study exploits the confiscation and auctioning off of Church property that occurred during the French Revolution to assess the role played by transaction costs in delaying the reallocation of property rights in the aftermath of fundamental institutional reform. French districts with a greater proportion of land redistributed during the Revolution experienced higher levels of agricultural productivity in 1841 and 1852 as well as more investment in irrigation and more efficient land use. We trace these increases in productivity to an increase in land inequality associated with the Revolutionary auction process. We also show how the benefits associated with the head-start given to districts with more Church land initially, and thus greater land redistribution by auction during the Revolution, dissipated over the course of the nineteenth century as other districts gradually overcame the transaction costs associated with reallocating the property rights associated with the feudal system. What's so interesting about this particular instance of land redistribution is the fact that it was all sold to the highest bidder rather than being given to the poor. This breaks with the pattern of most attempts at land reform throughout history. People have been trying to take land away from the rich and give it to the poor since at least Tiberius Gracchus in the second century BCE. But the Revolutionary government needed money and they needed it fast. So they concocted a plan to seize and auction off all French lands owned by the Catholic Church, which comprised about 6.5 percent of the country. Land auctions take time though, and the government desperately needed funds in the short term, so they issued a monetary instrument known as the assignat that could be used in these land auctions. The land was eventually auctioned off and then traded in secondary markets, where much of it was consolidated into large estates that could employ capital-intensive agricultural practices on a large scale. The evidence suggests that these land auctions added to the productivity of the regions where they occurred. Noel argues that this occurred because the reduction in transaction costs allowed for a more efficient allocation of property rights. One could argue, however, that the Church might have simply owned more productive land to begin with, and the paper uses a series of identification strategies to show that this is not the main driver of their results. Related Links: McCloskey (1998) on the Coase theorem. Galor and Moav (2004) on the relationship between inequality and productivity in economies dependent on physical capital vs human capital. Gallica, the website where you can download a ton of digitized French archives. Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (2005) on Atlantic trade. Rachel Laudan discusses the history of potatoes and other foods on EconTalk. Photo credit: Early French banknote issue during the French Revolution (Assignat) for 400 livres, (1792), from the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution.  

My guest for this episode is Mark Koyama of George Mason University. Our topic is a recent paper titled, "States and Economic Growth: Capacity and Constraints," which Mark coauthored with Noel Johnson. Just recorded at great podcast with @GarrettPetersen on my work on state capacity (with @ndjohnson). — Mark Koyama (@MarkKoyama) May 24, 2017 As stated in the paper, "state capacity describes the ability of a state to collect taxes, enforce law and order, and provide public goods." That said, state capacity does not mean big government. A state may have the power to impose rules across its territory, but it doesn't have to use that power in a tyrannical way. Another way of saying that is to say that having a high state capacity is compatible with Adam Smith's desire for "peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice." One metric that researchers use to measure state capacity is tax revenue per capita. But as Mark is careful to point out, a state with less state capacity can still sometimes achieve a relatively high income through tax farming. This is the practice in many pre-modern states of auctioning off the right to extract tax revenues to local elites in different regions. We discuss the rise of modern nation-states in various regions, and why some states developed more state capacity than others going into the twentieth century. In particular, we discuss Europe's transition away from a feudal system ruled in a decentralized way by monarchs who held power based on their personal relationships with local lords. England's Glorious Revolution of 1688 allowed it to develop its state capacity earlier than other European nations, with a centralized tax system controlled by parliament. By contrast, continental powers like the French Ancien Régime and the Hapsburg Empire were legally and fiscally fragmented, leading them to develop their state capacity much later than England. We also discuss the development of state capacity in Asia, and why Meiji Japan was able to develop its state capacity much faster than Qing Dynasty China.  

Noel Johnson: What About Today? [2:18:50] Click here for: High quality (1.50GB) Click here for: Low quality (694MB)

Noel Johnson: What About Today?

Noel Johnson: What About Today? [2:18:50] Click here for: High quality (1.5 GB) Click here for: Low quality (694.01 MB) 2458

Noel Johnson: I And My Father Are One [1:46:03] Click here for: High quality (1.16 GB) Click here for: Low quality (529.92 MB) 900

Noel Johnson: Back to the Eden Condition [1:45:42] Click here for: High quality (1.16 GB) Click here for: Low quality (528.85 MB) 143

Noel Johnson: Becoming the Dwelling Place of God [1:33:31] Click here for: High quality (1.01GB) Click here for: Low quality (461MB)

Noel Johnson: Let This Life Be In You Click here for: High quality (1.34GB) Click here for: Low quality (622MB)

Noel Johnson: Let This Mind Be In You

Noel Johnson: Let This Mind Be In You [2:06:18] Click here for: High quality (1.35 GB) Click here for: Low quality (622.84 MB) 815

Noel Johnson: The War in Us Click here for: High quality (1.18GB) Click here for: Low quality (540MB)

Noel Johnson: The War in Us

Noel Johnson: The War in Us [1:49:38] Click here for: High quality (1.19 GB) Click here for: Low quality (540.67 MB) 838

Noel Johnson: They Without Us Cannot Be Made Perfect

They Without Us Cannot Be Made Perfect