Timmy elsewhere
At the ASI.
What is fair taxation rather depends upon who is doing the defining: the taxers or the taxed.
Tim Worstall
Err, Willy laddie?
If there were any last doubts they were dispelled by the record $1.5bn fine paid by the Swiss bank UBS for \”pervasive\” and \”epic\” efforts to manipulate the benchmark rate of interest – Libor – at which the world\’s great banks lend to each other.
By deinfition the manipulation meant that Libor wasn\’t the rate at which the world\’s great banks were lending to each other. Without manipulation it would have been.
What makes your head reel is the size of this global market. World GDP is around $70tn. The market in interest rate derivatives is worth $310tn. The idea that this has grown to such a scale because of the demands of the real economy better to manage risk is absurd.
You stupid, stupid, man. That\’s outstanding nominal, not net.
The centre-left thinktank IPPR reports that people with identical skills earn on average 20% more in financial services than in other industries, with the premium rising the higher the seniority. That wage premium does not come from virtuous hard work or enterprise. It comes from how finance is structured to deliver excessive profit.
Erm, actually, we tend to think that people earn higher wages in businesses and fields with higher productivity….
It\’s really not that difficult love
Mothers born in 1958 who had children by the age of 40 could expect to earn 32% less than a father born in the same year. Mothers born in 1970 could expect to earn 26% less than the average father by their late 30s.
What the IPPR work also reveals is a surprising \”fatherhood pay bonus\” among men. Fathers born in 1958 could expect to earn 16% more by the age of 40 than childless men. Fathers born in 1970 reap an even higher reward. They earn 19% more than non-dads.
Why should this be so? Academic evidence suggests that fathers earn more because they are compensating for a partner who works less once children arrive. Fathers may also stick at jobs because of their parental responsibility and are rewarded for their loyalty.
It\’s because we\’re mammals m\’dear.
Those titty things that feed the babbies for the first couple of years might be a clue. That rich ugly men get to shag babes might be another.
It just ain\’t complicated.
Blimey, what a vast and ginormous number!
Consumers are deserting major high-street banks in unprecedented numbers after a slew of revelations about unethical behaviour, according to data from the Move Your Money campaign.
Credit unions – small, usually locally based savings groups – have attracted almost 20,000 new accounts in the past six months, according to Move Your Money, while ethical banks Triodos, Ecology and the Charity Bank have all reported a jump in customers.
Building societies saw 78,000 customers sign up for savings accounts in the third quarter alone after Barclays was implicated in the Libor-fixing scandal, which has spread to engulf several other banks.
A hundred thousand!
There are, what, 50 million accounts in the country? That\’s on the low side I would have thought myself, adding deposit, savings, current etc.
Why, a whole 0.2% of the accounts have moved!
What a victory for the lefties, eh?
BTW, yes indeed, you should indeed move your accounts if the banks\’ behaviour pisses you off. Consumer choice is indeed how this whole market based thing works. My pointing and laughing is at the \”unprecedented numbers\” claims.
BBC attacked for obeying the law
In a letter to Labour MP David Winnick, a member of the home affairs select committee, who has been pursuing the issue, the acting director general, Tim Davie, attached an email sent to staff by his chief financial officer, Zarin Patel, explaining its plans to reform the way it pays stars.
The email added: \”We will begin implementing these changes immediately. However, because there is no legal basis for terminating contracts early, moving individuals with existing contracts from service companies to BBC staff or self-employed individuals will take place as their contracts expire.\”
Winnick said he believed there was no excuse for the prevarication and the contracts should be immediately renegotiated: \”No information is given as to when these contracts will end, so it does appear that this will continue for quite a considerable time.
\”Almost certainly, in most cases, if not all, the 804 people would be considered to be employees of the BBC in the sense that they appear regularly all the year round presenting and appearing on programmes and I cannot understand how it can possibly be justified that … these people would pay a level of tax less than my constituents, whose average salary is just under £23,000.
Quite apart from the fact that Winnick seems to be innumerate – there is no way that his constituents on £23k are paying either more tax or a higher rate of tax – look at what he\’s saying.
You must unilaterally rip up contracts, break the law in fact, to do what I insist you must.
To which the correct answer is \”fuck off you toad\”.
Oh most amusing, really, most amusing
Researchers have discovered that copper and alloys made from the metal, including brass, can prevent antibiotic resistance in bacteria from spreading.
Plastic and stainless steel surfaces, which are now widely used in hospitals and public settings, allow bacteria to survive and spread when people touch them.
Silver\’s even better of course but I don\’t think we\’ll be kitting out with that.
But isn\’t this just great? All that modernity, all that ripping out of the old and replacement with futuristic design actually kills people?
It\’s almost as fun as the dicovery that the wooden chopping boards, which they made illegal, contain natural antibiotics which the plastic chopping boards, which they made compulsory, do not.
The Man from Whitehall really does not know best. And given that, can we hang them all from the Christmas tree please? It would usher in such a jolly New Year.
And the National Trust can kiss my hairy, freckled, English arse
The National Trust has joined the ranks of groups concerned by the Government’s support for fracking,
They\’re not a different group.
Peter Nixon, director of conservation at the National Trust, said: “We have a presumption against fracking because of the threats it poses to the countryside and because at the end of the day it is a fossil fuel that will do nothing to arrest climate change.”
They\’re the same middle class tosspots that make up the Greens, Greenpeace, FoE, WWF and all the rest.
Life just wouldn\’t be worth living without knowing that the peasantry are huddled against the cold in the dark hovels they cannot afford to heat or light now, would it?
Timmy elsewhere
We don\’t want to equalise capital gains tax and income tax until we abolish corporation tax.
Yes, I know, incidence of corporation tax. But all the lefties say that\’s on the shareholders, don\’t they?
Travelling Timmy
So I successfully got up at 4.45 am to catch hte 5.30 bus to Barcelona airport to catch the 7 am flighht to Lisbon to get to Oriente for the 10.20 train to Messines Alte arriving at 13.05 which is only a 10 minute walk from home.
Which is quite a long time for a trip that started out at 1.30 pm in Usti nad Labem yesterday.
Not really helped by the fact that the only road I know from Usti to Prague airport is the back way, possibly not the right route in the middle of winter in a tiny little rental car. Not up there, in the snow.
But hey ho, crossing Europe just before Christmas is never easy, all the major and direct routes get filled up early.
On the other hand, we do seem to now have our mini-mine and the money to exploit it so that\’s all to the good. Which, err, now means I get to make this rather complicated trip once a month for the forseeable. Hopefully not on the 7 am out of Barcelona each time though.
Public health in The Guardian
Pubic hair has a job to do – stop shaving and leave it alone
I must say that the list of comments arguing that it\’s all a matter of personal choice and to hell with any health implications is nice though. Wish T\’G\’s readers were like that over smoking and drinking….
Given that there are indeed health implications of shaving (and increase in MRSA for example, so the Good Lady Doctor tells us) why aren\’t those same commenters calling for shaving to be banned because it costs the NHS money?
Now this is absolutely fascinating
And we\’re not being told the half of it.
Hundreds of homeless people with mental illness, addiction and debt problems are being left to cope without vital support services after a leading charity was forced into insolvency by its pensions liabilities.
We get told about all those being left without services: a tragic tale indeed. What we don\’t really get told is what actually happened about the pensions.
Experts said charities at high risk of going bust included those dependent on public funding, or which have inherited expensive pensions liabilities after taking over the running of public sector services, including social care, leisure centre facilities, housing and academy schools.
Does anyone know what this really means?
But after a write-down in the value of its assets, it found itself with a £17m pension liability. It presented a solution to the Pensions Trust, which operated its pension scheme, that it said would have allowed it to meet its obligations while continuing as a going concern, but this was rejected, pushing it into administration.
There\’s a much bigger financial story behind this I\’m sure. Why is it that a charity is facing such huge pensions liabilities?
A number of possibilities occur off the top of my head.
1) They were promising themselves too high a pension all along.
2) By taking on staff \”outsourced\” from the public sector they had to take on public sector pension liabilities.
3) Brown\’s rules in how pensions must be accounted for have made previously viable promises unviable.
I have a feeling, reading between the lines, that it was 2. But that in itself is an interesting story: for it rather calls into question those public sector pensions themselves, doesn\’t it?
So, anyone know more detail?
The nutters at NEF: Jobs are a cost you sodding fools!
But surely this is a recipe for disaster, reducing demand even further in economies already critically short of it. Not necessarily, retort Simms and Potts; indeed, it could bring jobs. Homes and commercial buildings, for example, already have to be made much more energy-efficient, a very labour-intensive process, as is recycling. Improving and increasing public transport, making cycle lanes, and urban farming would also create jobs and wealth.
“Embracing a new materialism could have profoundly positive effects,” they insist. There would be “huge growth in services that will boost the number of plumbers, electricians, builders, farmers, carpenters, and engineers as much as upholsterers, seamstresses, sports coaches and storytellers”.
As usual they\’ve got this entirely the wrong way around. They\’re saying that the creation of jobs, the expenditure of more human labour, is a good thing. When, of course, anyone with an IQ greater than a carrot knows that this is nonsense.
Expending more human labour is a cost of a lifestyle, not a benefit of it.
Imagine, as in the Friedman story, we desire to have a ditch. We\’ll not use machines but instead wallahs with shovels. In order to create jobs you see. But why have shovels? Why not create even more jobs by using teaspoons?
Quite, it becomes ridiculous.
And we can go further. Imagine that we have 100 people able to work. We have two possible technology/labour intersections. In one we use 10 people to perform our ditch creating task. In the other 100.
Nef is saying that the second makes us richer. When obviously the opposite is true. For if we only use 10 to produce the ditch then the other 90 can go do something else. Change nappies, tell stories, sup a pint, smile at the little kiddies or hunt for the cure to cancer.
The second option obviously makes us richer by the number of dry babies smiled at. We do not want to increase the amount of human labouir used to perform a task. We want to reduce it.
For jobs are a cost of a scheme, not a benefit, you ignorant, ignorant, sodding fools.
Timmy elsewhere
At the ASI.
Hasn\’t that Washington Consensus done well in Africa? Second best growth rate in the world as a result of not doing stupid things.
Misunderstanding in wage benefits
The aim is to remove the burden from the taxpayer of tax credits and housing benefit as subsidies to employers who don’t pay their staff enough to live on. If an employer can’t afford to pay their staff properly then they don’t have a viable business.
…
Out with subsidies! Nobody earning a “wage” should receive benefits – this can only work if employers pay what the job is worth. And for the record “no” jobs in marginal businesses are not worthwhile
This is getting the idea of in work benefits entirely arse about tit.
What someone gets paid for going to work is determined by those market processes. The supply of labour with those skills and the demand for labour with those skills.
It is indeed possible to construct models where this does not hold: monopsonist employers for example. But that\’s not a condition that holds in the UK at present. We really do not have one or two employers who are able to dictate wage rates. We have millions of employers who really are not colluding on the wages they offer.
In the absence of that workers are being offered the wages their labour is worth as determined by the market.
Now, as it happens, as a society we\’ve decided that for some people those wages \”aren\’t enough\”. Through some combination of morals, squeamishness, charitable impulse, whatever, we\’ve decided that trying to bring up a family on £6 an hour just isn\’t on. Therefore we\’ve set up a system whereby these people get an addition to their wages. Maybe this addition is too much and maybe it\’s not enough.
Two examples as to why we do this. Clearly, we don\’t expect someone with severe disabilities to pay their own way through life. That Down\’s Syndrome (serious case, not minor), quadriplegic, chronically ill person. They\’re just not going to earn the wages they need so we all chip in to help them.
Or say the family with many children: their wages are set by how valuable their work is in hte market. Their spending requirements by the size of their brood. We don\’t say that the employer should pay more to the man or woman with 6 children than to the couple with none. Thus it is us, as the society, that chips in to pay those higher costs, not the employer.
And that\’s the point of in work benefits. It isn\’t a subsidy to the employer. It\’s a subsidy to the employees. Your labour isn\’t worth what we think it ought to be. Thus, here, have some of our money.
We can test this quite simply. All those who think that in work benefits are a subsidy to employers. Obviously, if this were so, then cutting off such subsidies would lead to employers raising wages. Thus we should simply stop paying in work benefits and wages would rise.
Does anyone advocate this? No, they don\’t: they advocate that wages must be forced up first (that Living Wage) and this will reduce in work benefits. So the actual campaign itself is agreeing: these are not subsidies to employers. They are to employees.
As to jobs in marginal businesses not being worthwhile. Well, if the wages are raised and the business goes bust then, erm, there aren\’t any jobs at all and those who previously were getting £6 an hour will now be getting £0. I tend to think that\’s some value myself.
“It is not an offence known to the laws of England to tell a police officer to fuck off”
I do hope, very much, that that is true.
I certainly believe that directing an Anglo-Saxonism at men and women who have heard if often enough (and in my limited experience of drinking with coppers before one nicked my girlfriend they say it often enough) might be offensive but it\’s not an offence.
But could those of you who know much more law than me confirm this? Most especially, is this an actual treaceable quote (through bailli perhaps) that can be pointed to?
Did an actual judge actually say this? Recordedly?
These people are absolutely fucking insane about the Living Wage
They\’ve not actually published this over at Liberal Conspiracy, at least not yet. But it\’s in the RSS feed.
And Dear God this is the most outrageous stupidity:
The analysis from the Resolution Foundation and the IPPR think tanks to be published early in the new year is the most detailed examination of the potential impact of the living wage on the public finances yet.
The living wage is a pay level calculated as the minimum hourly rate for a basic but acceptable standard of living and currently set at £7.45 outside London and £8.55 in the capital.
The new analysis suggests that its introduction nationally would add around £6.5 billion to the gross annual earnings of the country’s employees.
However, the report shows that the Treasury would collect more than half of the initial financial gains from a living wage – around £3.6 billion – in the form of higher income tax payments and national insurance contributions, as well as lower spending on benefits and tax credits.
But the study also examines the extra costs to the public purse of paying a living wage to all public sector workers. It suggests that wage costs would increase by more than £1.3 billion – leaving an overall public saving of more than £2 billion.
As a start, the report will recommend, all Whitehall departments and London boroughs should pay their staff at least the living wage by April 2015 and explore the costs of paying sub-contracted staff the same rate.
The London weighting means that most public sector workers already earn at or above the London living wage, so introducing the living wage for all staff would cost relatively little in the capital but would set a precedent for others to consider following. Only six London boroughs currently are accredited living wage employers -Lewisham, Islington, Camden, Lambeth, Hounslow, and Southwark.
Five million people are paid less than the living wage, three million of whom are women. Yet more than 85 per cent have permanent contracts. More than 3 million households (13 per cent) contain at least one adult earning less than the living wage.
Fewer than 45,000 workers have achieved a living wage as a result of recent campaigns.
Just consider what they\’re saying: we can increase the wages of the poor because we tax the wages of the poor a lot! See!
Or for a longer version of their logic.
The complaint is that people don\’t get enough to live an acceptable life on their wages. But don\’t worry, raising their wages enough so that they can live an acceptable life won\’t cost much: because as you can see from our numbers we\’ll nick half of their new higher wages anyway.
Why not, you know, just stop nicking money from poor people\’s wages in the first place? As I\’ve been arguing for years now, raise the working poor up out of the tax net and the minimum wage is your damn Living Wage!
And why the fuck are you cunts so excited about the idea of taxing the poor anyway?
Ritchie on politics and democracy
What’s astonishing is their ability to win support in a democracy. That can only be explained by the corporate capture of the democratic process.
You see, it\’s impossible for anyone to vote against what Murph thinks they ought to vote for without there being such capture.
That people might simply disagree with him isn\’t possible.
Letters to Ian Fletcher
He really is a toad and deserves both of these.
Query: if the CPA benefits when non-CPAers invest in the CPA, why do you think that America suffers when non-Americans invest in America? That is, can you explain why the productivity of you and your colleagues at the CPA will rise if I make a net investment in the CPA while the productivity of you, me, and other American workers will fall if someone from Toronto or Tokyo or Timbuktu makes a net investment in America?
There is one good thing we can say about it. If Fletcher has to run an email round robin to try and raise $50k then there\’s a lot fewer fools funding him than I had thought there were. I had thought that his lot were the type to spend that on the mineral water bill.
Oh Dearie me Ms. Hargreaves
You\’re committing a Ritchiebollocks mistake here.
The average chief executive pay in FTSE 100 companies is £4.8m – 185 times the average wage. You would think they could afford to pay their own bills.
And here is another critical issue for our economy and society. Those top bosses have seen their pay treble in the past 10 years while their company share prices have stagnated. During that period average earnings have risen by 51%, barely keeping up with inflation of 45%. The fruits of our economic boom in the late 1990s and early 2000s have mostly gone to the highest paid. The share of GDP paid to those on middle to low incomes has declined.
You cannot compare FTSE 100 with UK GDP. Too many of the FTSE 100 companies are simply listed in London, not actually operating in the UK economy. Companies like ENRC or Polymetal simply don\’t have any connection with hte UK economy: other than their listing that is.
Then the fraction of BP\’s business, to take one example, that is UK based is trivial.
I would be astonished if more than 25% of the economic activity represented in the FTSE 100 were actually UK based. You seem to have entirely missed the globalisation of the capital markets. A bit odd, given that what you\’re complaining about is a result of the globalisation of the capital markets.
Yes Polly, this is why the NHS must be reformed
After two squeezed years, the new tariff hospitals receive for treatments has been announced as a 4% loss in real value.
The 212 new clinical commissioning groups launching next April and pointlessly replacing 151 primary care trusts, will get less than NHS inflation.
As you\’ve repeatedly told us, the NHS has a different inflation rate from the rest of the economy. 4% (that is, four percentage points) above the inflation rate of the rest of the economy.
That\’s why it has to be reformed: you don\’t need too many decades of that for the NHS to swallow the entire economy.
The change that we need is that we need the NHS to become more productive. Gain more treatment bang for our unit of tax money put in. This would not just reduce that NHS inflation rate, it is the very definition of reducing that NHS inflation rate.
And we know from William Baumol that such increases in productivity, such innovation (they are indeed the same thing) are promoted in market based systems, not planned ones.
Thus moving the NHS to a market based system. It\’s not about forking out profits to corporations. Not about breaking up that lovely solidarity. It\’s all about reducing that NHS specific inflation rate.