Contrary to suggestions otherwise, Voltaire would have applauded the decision by Twitter and Facebook to suspend the access of Donald Trump to their platforms. Much like John Stuart Mill, the British philosopher and guru of classical liberalism, Voltaire supported criminal laws against libel, slander, incitement to violence and treason. Mill is credited with developing “the…

In his genial and occasionally subversive manner, finance journalist Alan Kohler recently shared a graph on social media that compared two periods of sharemarket gains. The graph showed that in the 30 years to 1988, 92 per cent of gains were derived from economic growth. But in the decades since then, the majority of sharemarket…

Another major election and another round of carnage for professional pollsters. Journalist Mona Chalabi spoke for many of us when she wrote: “I do not know how many times polls have to be wrong or how wrong they have to be for us to finally walk away from the dangerous seduction of predicting political outcomes”.…