Smurf in a nutshell

MMT is safe and efective.

Maybe he’s been binge watching ‘The Wire’ (or the excellent ‘We Own This city’ which I ‘d also recommend)

The collapse of a bridge in Baltimore after a ship collided with it is a tragedy for those who lost their lives as a result. It will be massively disruptive for millions in the area. No doubt, insurance litigation will last for many years. But two things immediately stand out to me.

One was just how flimsy the structure appeared to be compared to the ship and that the odds against its surviving impact seemed so incredibly low as a result.

Baltimore has pursued almost all the fashionable policies and fads Murphy has advocated ad nauseam and as a result is a virtual wasteland with sever crime, endemic drug use and urban deprivation – It raised taxes on those that could pay, printed money and issued it without regard to ability to pay or economic productivity. It was a model of MMT by any stretch of the imagination.

The claim is that the bridge was up to standard when it was built, although the design looks very old, but the reality is that ship technology has moved on massively since then. 290-metre mega container ships were not docking in Baltimore in the seventies.

See above passim. Is there nothing this man is not an expert on?

So lesson one is obvious, and is that infrastructure cannot be allowed to stand still when all around it changes. If it dies the severe disruption that is going to be experienced in the Baltimore area, and beyond, now is going to happen.

Hold oo – you’re in favour of Net Zero – under the FIRES document there won’t be any shipping whatsoever for at least a decade. That’s something the government is permitting to die – deliberately. All the jobs provided in the Leisure and shipbuilding and ancilalry industries – all gone. All sacrificed on the vanity of this fast bastard and those of a similar ilk. Still, at least if there’s no ships the bridge would still be standing, right?

And before anyone gets complacent, the biggest message from this is on climate change. The world is moving on. Our infrastructure is not. Unless we catch up with the rate of change going in right now – and it would seem that it is rapid – then we are going to get very heavily caught out. Flooding is one very obvious risk, but it is not the only one.

It’s certainly a risk as there’ll be no boats for us to escape under Net Zero and even if there are there won’t be fuel to operate them – great work.

The second lesson should get as glaringly obvious, but to most current era politicians will not be. It is that state investment is vital to well-being. This is not just in infrastructure of course, but that matters a lot.

Right now we have both the Tories and Labour obsessing about how they can increase savings ratios in this country, which they think to be vital to increases in investment.

There’s no link between savings and investment – apparently also this has been established beyond peradventure and anyone who demurs ‘opposes democracy’ – who knew?

So, we end up with the farce of the ‘British ISA’. The aim of this is not to increase investment. It is to increase the price of shares in British companies, which is something entirely different.

Actually agree with him here albeit for different reasons

And underpinning this is something even more worrying, which is the very obvious lack of understanding amongst politicians that share capital no longer funds any investment of any consequence: that is funded by credit. in other words, they are promoting the misdirection of funds in precisely the opposite direction from that which is needed. We need public infrastructure investment. We will get private speculative activity.

Crossrail was inconsequential? PFI hospitals? Not saying they’re exemplary – but real they are. I use the former almost every day and have had occasion to need the latter recently.

This is not to say that savings are not important. I recognise that they are. However, unless the association between savings and investment is re-created, their only real function is twofold. One is to withdraw money from active use within the economy, which slows growth.

So apparently you don’t need to save anything – if you have a boiler breakdown or your car needs fixing – to hell with it. That’s not ‘active use’. Might have been Grikath who’d question if he was suitable for a role as a janitor at Sheffield – he isn’t

The other is to increase economic volatility in financial markets, which has consequences for instability. In other words, as used currently, savings undermine the government’s economic goal of growth and increase financial risk. As outcomes go, these are a long way from being smart.

Anyone (the Great Chernny D) care to translate. Is he advocating total state control of all trades on UK Markets.

They are, of course, solutions to this problem. I have already proposed, time and again, how tax relief on both ISAs and pensions should be reformed to massively increase the funds available to the UK government for vital infrastructure investment. in my estimate more than £100 billion a year could be made available to fund state investment if this were to be done, which is at present way in excess of the capacity of the economy to spend on such activity. This means that changes to these reliefs could be undertaken gradually, giving the savings market time to adjust, with beneficial outcomes still being achieved.

I know I’d be delighted if my ISA money was Invested according to the dictates of people like Murphy – but of course this ‘qualified accountant’ presumes that that £100 billion will continue to be there ad nauseam.

My point is fairly straightforward. All the money that is required to undertake all the capital investment that our economy can sustain for the maintenance of critical infrastructure that increases the stability of our society is currently available if only we change the rules on saving, and simultaneously end the paranoid obsession that grips economists and politicians alike whenever the size of the government balance sheet is enlarged by funds being deposited with it to finance the growth in its assets, that then benefit society at large.

So everything the government does is an axiomatic benefit to society – I think taxpayers money has funded his last ten projects or so – whether through charitable foundations or other sock puppets. Every single one of them is for me the equivalent of a nuclear bomb undermining the intellectual foundations of the country. And if you multiply him by literally thousands of left wing academics you see the issue. Anyone who doesn’t question the sustainability of current government expenditure should for me be detained for their own safety as well as that of the wider community.

Our society is being held back by a misunderstanding of the relationship between savings and investment and between deposit-taking and government asset creation. The false economic stories that we tell ourselves or are being told are undermining our ability to protect ourselves from harm, deliver what is good, and protect our well-being both now and in the future.

I think if we look at Zimbabwe they tried it Murphy’s way and the results were pretty disastrous.

We really do need to put an end to the economic narratives that are proving to be so destructive and to replace them with narratives intended to reinforce the meeting of need.

and then Tim came in at that point…

The collapse of a bridge in Baltimore was a disaster for all involved. If we learn the lessons that come from it, then something good might at least come from it. I can live in hope.

The lessons I draw are this

– The politicization of economic life is almost invariably disastrous
– Entrusting the state with administrative duties and infrastructure of almost any kind is a highly risky undertaking
– High taxes are ultimately ruinous
– We need to reduce the capacity of politicians to cause and create havoc and radically reduce the number of state parasites.

I’m guessing it’s proof that narratives can differ….

An even better post is ‘A better song to sing’ Tim

Ian Tresman, who is a fairly regular commentator on this blog has said this morning in a comment that:

After World War II when Britain was effectively broke, the country invested in infrastructure, replacing slums, building 4.5 million homes (which you could buy on a single salary with a 25-year fixed-rate mortgage at just 3.5%), founded the welfare state and the National Health Service.

Britain prospered. Not only did the country spend, but it invested in producing something tangible for itself and its future. Today, shareholders expect their dividends, with nothing produced or invested, and infrastructure deliberately neglected. It should be a simple lesson to learn, but greed has no moral compass.

Ian is right. That it what happened.

Sounds like history is not taught alongside ‘Political economy’ and ‘economics’ in Murphy’s world.

But let’s take ‘Ian’ (an exceptionally dim individual who lacks even PSR’s Titania Mcgrathesque flourishes)

After World War II when Britain was effectively broke, the country invested in infrastructure,

– replacing slums.

And forcing communities which had existed for decades into deeply impersonal, state owned infrastructure which is regularly being demolished now at great cost and causing huge social deprivation over the ensuing decades

building 4.5 million homes (which you could buy on a single salary with a 25-year fixed-rate mortgage at just 3.5%)

At a time when we weren’t accepting a Newcastle annually on the small boats and when the government manpower was about 1/10th of what it is now? That time? He’s a classic example of what Sir Ernst Gombrich calls ‘the amputation of the time element from the debate’

founded the welfare state and the National Health Service.

Both of which are collapsing and in the former case means we have 9 million people being paid simply to exist. In the latter case, a system so impressive it is not followed by any country in the world other than a couple of Stalinist relics.

It all collapsed in an ignominious failure in the 1970s. Just as the subsequent disasters of the Blair/ Brown years are currently engaged in a similar complete conflagration. The difference being now I see no equivalent of Thatcher to sort things out at least in part.

Britain prospered. Not only did the country spend, but it invested in producing something tangible for itself and its future.

Yes indeed – the guy worked on the Pyjama Shift under Red Robbo in Dagenham and by God I want those days back!

Today, shareholders expect their dividends, with nothing produced or invested, and infrastructure deliberately neglected. It should be a simple lesson to learn, but greed has no moral compass.

Whereas the Public sector employees who have been working from home for four years in their thousands are putting their best foot forward

The desire to seize and control other people’s money has no moral compass beyond avarice, envy and hatred. It drips from every poor of these two halfwits.

Ian is right. That it what happened.

How ironic that his latest post should be about fascism when he consistently channels arguably its greatest Marketing genius, the late Dr. Joseph Goebbels:

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

What language is that?
I cant understand a word of it and I have a degree.

One was just how flimsy the structure appeared to be compared to the ship and that the odds against its surviving impact seemed so incredibly low as a result.

Is he on crack?
That ship is massive. Let’s see…
Length approx 300m
Width approx 50m
Draught approx 12m
So displacement is 180,000 M3
So the ship weights 180,000 metric tonnes.
(I know ships aren’t cuboid, but we’re just after first order approximation here)
Assuming it’s fully loaded, and according to vessel finder it’s summer dead weight tonnage is 116851t. Let’s call it 115,000.
So we’re looking at approximately 295,000 tonnes!

A bridge is designed to carry light traffic, with an individual vehicle weighing up to 40 or 50 tonnes or so. And it has to withstand crosswinds. That’s it, usually if you’re being generous it may have to withstand vehicle impacts but on the grand scheme of things these aren’t that big.
Over a quarter of a million tonnes coming in is just going to smash straight through it.
Designing a bridge that can withstand that amount of force is possible, but would be an incredible engineering challenge and crazy expensive.

The other is to increase economic volatility in financial markets, which has consequences for instability. In other words, as used currently, savings undermine the government’s economic goal of growth and increase financial risk. As outcomes go, these are a long way from being smart.

Anyone (the Great Chernny D) care to translate. Is he advocating total state control of all trades on UK Markets

Oh God. Am I becoming the Murphy translation specialist?

He’s saying the second function of saving is to increase volatility in financial markets.
Thus savings prevent the government’s preferred outcome of a growing economy and make things more risky. Which isn’t good.

(I’m just the translator)

I wondered how long it’d be before the Dali Mangled Spanner came up.
So Mr. Potato Head wants all bridges to be rebuilt to survive a direct collison from a 100,000 tonne ship does he? We knew numbers weren’t really his thing.

Although it’ll take a while to rebuild the bridge, I see no real reason why the shipping channel cannot be cleared in short order by navy divers, cutting charges and flotation bags. The ship may or may not be a crime scene, but the fallen spans are just in the way.
A weeks work, once the 2 year environmental impact statement is done.

@BiND
Not sure if you were aiming that snark at me, but no, I’m not advocating any conspiracy theory here.
No need to look any further than f*ckup.

My comment, if you read it as intended, is more about the endless paperwork and bureaucracy that will dwarf any actual response. Similar to the post-war house-building reference above.

Was the snark aimed at me?

Cos I am a mechanical engineer, so bridge design and impact loadings are well within my area…

Though it doesn’t take an expert to see fuck-off-massive ship Vs anything is going to end badly for whatever it hits unless the something is a cliff/boulder/iceberg/anything of similar mass and hardness.

Further to Chernyy Drakon’s calculations ….

That ship was travelling at about 8.7mph which is about 4m/s and gives a kinetic energy of 0.x 295,000 x (4×4) = 2,360,000 Joules which by my calculation is equivalent to 560 tonnes of TNT, on a pillar that wasn’t designed to withstand lateral forces.

Sorry BiND, 1 tonne TNT = 4.2E9 J (or a million ‘big’ calories if you prefer), so more like half a ton of TNT (the ship being 295 million kg). Still plenty to demolish a structure like a bridge.

I’m an accountant, so I’ve got no idea about bridges.

Just for funnies, can anyone illustrate what that bridge support in Boston would have to consist if in order to withstand a quarter million tonnes of fucking enormous ship?

@Goeffers
I saw a civil engineer commenting on this somewhere. He suggested that a lot had changed in the 50 years since the Baltimore bridge was built, and a modern replacement would likely be cable-stayed with a wider gap between the piers. That enable the piers to be in shallower water, where they are much harder to get at for a big ship, ‘cos it runs aground a lot earlier. There was talk of ‘deflectors’, but they seem ineffective against the really big ships and so not to be relied upon.

That said, I remember reading the book “Accidents Happen” which describes how a cyclist in Cornwall was run over by a submarine. It seems that if you power into a shallow beach, it takes a while to stop! 🙂

It seems unlikely that this could be a totally unforseeable failure, and the usual story is a long chain of oversights, short cuts and sloppy practices. People died, so in UK speak, a possible manslaughter charge, but against who, that’s the question.
Humans, sadly are fallible. But I’m sure Boskone could solve the problem with the wheel nut.

And just returning to the ‘conspiracy’ topic BiND, the SEALS are not only set up for underwater demolition (clearing harbours is one of their purposes), but they’ve also recently trained in the Baltic 🙂 /Joke

“After World War II when Britain was effectively broke, the country invested in infrastructure, replacing slums, building 4.5 million homes….founded the welfare state and the National Health Service”

Most of which was paid for with Marshall aid. Also the welfare state is usually traced back to 1911, not 1945

Would this investment for ship collisions be done after the upgrades required for electric cars, apparently a government review found a substantial number of bridges in the U.K. aren’t up to carrying the extra weight of electric cars

It’s not too difficult to protect a bridge from ship collisions. The new “Sunshine Skyway” bridge over Tampa Bay is an example. Massive concrete ‘dolphins’ protect the piers. (The old “Sunshine Skyway” bridge collapsed after it was hit by a ship).

@ZT

True, but Tampa bay is only a little over paddling depth, while I gather the water in Baltimore is quite deep, so that sort of protection would be more difficult (but certainly not impossible) – no doubt it will be built in to a new design, stabledoors and horses …