End of the Century director: ‘First, gay men have sex – then they go for wine and cheese’
Hetero gatekeeping works rather the other way around. And there are some people who say that women have no power in our society
Feb212020
Author Archives: Tim Worstall
Feb212020
This is a fun claim
Hanau attack part of pattern of white supremacist violence flowing from US
Racism. In Germany. Caused by Americans.
No domestic causes nor history of it at all.
This is also good:
While no early evidence emerged linking the alleged Hanau attacker to established extremist groups or individuals, analysts said that both the online manifesto and the nine people the gunman chose to murder made it clear that his attack was part of a ongoing pattern of white supremacist terror.
The evidence all says this is a lone nutter. Therefore it’s part of an ongoing campaign.
Whut?
Feb202020
“Only one of mine did”
Feb202020
Spot the difference
Restricting immigration will mean:
This policy has a range of potential outcomes. Presuming the lost jobs are not filled as the policy begins to impact, as surely it will, then there will be significant short staffing in agriculture, food processing, catering, tourist industries, the NHS, care facilities, building and other sectors. These sectors will not be able to deliver their services. The knock on effect will not being significant increases in wages when there isn’t capacity to either reduce margins or increase prices significantly; the consequence will be corporate failures. Businesses facing inevitable losses will close before that point is reached. And the job losses will then reach the sectors of the economy traditionally staffed by UK domiciled staff.
Raising the minimum wage will mean:
This policy has a range of potential outcomes. Presuming the lost jobs are not filled as the policy begins to impact, as surely it will, then there will be significant short staffing in agriculture, food processing, catering, tourist industries, the NHS, care facilities, building and other sectors. These sectors will not be able to deliver their services. The knock on effect will not being significant increases in wages when there isn’t capacity to either reduce margins or increase prices significantly; the consequence will be corporate failures. Businesses facing inevitable losses will close before that point is reached. And the job losses will then reach the sectors of the economy traditionally staffed by UK domiciled staff.
Feb202020
Times Subs? Report for your beating
Bletchley Park codebreaker at the age of 20 who was on duty when the German unconditional surrender came through in 1945
OK, she was 20 in 1945.
It was summer 1943 and although her Foreign Office contact could not divulge what the job was, or its location, he was able to tell the 20-year-old that it was important war work.
Oh, she was 20 in 1943.
Tsk. I mean, Tsk.
Ailsa Maxwell, Bletchley Park codebreaker, was born on December 16, 1922. She died on February 10, 2020, aged 97
By which count?
Feb202020
We always do get our politics from pop songs, right?
Dave’s performance of his song Black at the Brit awards marked the moment that grime truly gave full-throated and undeniable voice to the politics of black Britain.
“Things can only get better” worked out so well.
All music is political
“Baby do me one more time” will be the theme track for Hillary’s parachute into the Democratic primaries?
As someone whose political education began with early American hip-hop it is affirming to see the strong emergence of black political voices in British music. Artists such as Public Enemy, KRS-One and Tupac were more important to my intellectual development than any academic text.
Bopping to it as a teenie has its merits, of course. But at some point “Dis is da sound of da police” does need to be replaced by a light scanning of Marx, Mill, Kant possibly, Smith, Hayek maybe? Or not?
Kehinde Andrews is professor of black studies at Birmingham City University.
Ah, no, not.
Feb202020
Well, we could think that eugenics is behind us, yes
This week, one old and discredited technological fix has reared its head: eugenics, the pseudoscientific belief that humans can be bred to “perfection” in the same way we breed cattle or domestic pets for particular traits. Developed by Charles Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, in the 19th century, it was promoted by politicians and intellectuals in Britain, before becoming the justification for millions of involuntary sterilisations globally, mainly of the poor and disabled, and the Nazis’ devastating programme of “racial hygiene” that culminated in the Holocaust.
One might think that such a morally and scientifically vacuous ideology would be behind us by now,
Leave aside whatever opinions you might have over the moral worth of abortion. Think about it just for a moment. The current system states that a foetus (gob of meiotic cells, human being, whatever) with an extra chromosome 21 may – and in many places should – be killed at a much later stage of development than one not so blessed with genetic abundance.
Whatever we might call this, a slaughter of the innocents, just common and garden good sense, this is quite clearly eugenics and it’s a common, even cornerstone, part of our current society.
That is, we’ve not really left it behind, have we?
Feb202020
This is interesting
A detail that could be rather important:
It is already offering so little in trade talks that the differential cost of the WTO option is trivial.
If the benefits of “a deal” are trivial then so had the costs better be or the correct answer is bugger you mateys, isn’t it?
Feb202020
Ain’t that the truth
“Overall there is huge amounts of ambition and support for this. I would caveat that by saying it is relatively easy to engage intellectually and socially with these ideas but it is more difficult when it comes to us having to make a decision which might mean changing certain behaviour. Some students and members of the public are less supportive when they see what being net zero energy actually means for their everyday lives.
“A lot of them can be naive. They don’t fully appreciate the changes this will bring to their lives.”
All too few are grasping the costs which those against climate change are trying to impose….
Feb192020
Nope, it wasn’t just a typo then
Tom Parker says:
February 19 2020 at 11:15 am
‘ I really cannot see the price of labour rising significantly though: in sectors such as care and hospitality margins are already very small and there is strong price inelasticity ‘
Strong price inelasticity means that demand doesn’t change much in response to a change in price. Surely therefore there is ample room for wages to rise without affecting demand.
Reply
Richard Murphy says:
February 19 2020 at 11:23 am
How does that work when businesses are on tight margins Tom?Reply
Nick Carroll says:
February 19 2020 at 11:51 am
RichardTom Parker is right about the definition – if demand is price-inelastic, it doesn’t change much in response to a change in price.
The sectors that you mention are highly competitive, hence the low margins. Demand may well still be price-inelastic at the sector level, if the whole sector experiences higher wage costs – probably true for care, and perhaps for hospitality as well.
Do note that Richard Murphy was employed to teach economics at a British university just recently.
Feb192020
Lord God the man’s an idiot
Why won’t the government disclose the cost of climate change
Well, because they don’t want to admit that the costs of stopping it will be higher than the benefits of doing so?
I wonder why?
What are they worried about?
In the meantime, I will go with £1 trillion….nothing suggests it is less to me, based on all the estimates I have seen.
That’s for the UK alone of course.
According to the Review, without action, the overall costs of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global gross domestic product (GDP) each year, now and forever. Including a wider range of risks and impacts could increase this to 20% of GDP or more, also indefinitely. Stern believes that 5–6 degrees of temperature increase is “a real possibility.”[4]
The Review proposes that one percent of global GDP per annum is required to be invested to avoid the worst effects of climate change. In June 2008, Stern increased the estimate for the annual cost of achieving stabilisation between 500 and 550 ppm CO2e to 2% of GDP to account for faster than expected climate change.
UK GDP is around £2 trillion at present. So Ritchie thinks that we should spend 50% of GDP to avoid a future 5% loss of GDP. Which, starting a few decades out and then discounting to the present is more or less than 50% of GDP?
This being Stern’s argument about why we don’t use planning, instead we use market forces as pushed by a carbon tax. For the latter is a more efficient method therefore we’ll solve more climate change that way.
Feb192020
Verification process
Feb192020
Capitalist Oppression returns to Cuba
However, while most hosts were excited by Airbnb entering the market, they didn’t anticipate that, as hosts, they would often be expected to go beyond their traditional role of simply providing accommodations to their guests. In some cases, being a host required emotionally demanding labor, such as coping with exhaustion while “putting on a smile.” The costs of emotional labor stemming from the growth of access to platforms such as Airbnb affected not only Cuban hosts but also non-hosts impacted by the neighborhood changes.
Although Airbnb doesn’t acknowledge or address the emotional labor imposed onto Cubans, they have certainly capitalized on such labor by advertising the authentic experience. That’s a way to attract more customers and provide a unique experience at the exploitation of others.
Feb192020
The place is too clean, the water drinkable!
Momen: Coronavirus-infected Bangladeshi in critical state in Singapore
And another thing about Singapore……
Feb192020
Well done Snippa, well done
I really cannot see the price of labour rising significantly though: in sectors such as care and hospitality margins are already very small and there is strong price inelasticity – meaning that capacity to pass on wage increases will be very low.
Inelastic with respect to price means demand doesn’t change much with a change in price. Therefore it is easier to raise prices without a significant reduction in demand.
A recent professor of economics in the British university system manages to get matters 180 degrees, entirely and wholly, wrong.
Feb192020
Well, yes, but
Perhaps it’s Piketty’s mild manner that disconcerts; or perhaps it’s the matter-of-fact way that he points out that the most prosperous period in US history – 1950-70 – coincided with a top marginal rate of inheritance tax of 80% and of income tax that was even higher.
No one actually paid it. Which does sorta argue the other way, doesn’t it?
As societies distribute income, wealth and education more widely, so they become more prosperous.
OK, fun theory. So, we’ll have to measure the distribution of the output of that education then, won’t we? The human capital that results? And what is it that is not included in any of the calculations of the wealth distribution? Human capital…..
Evidence on these postwar regimes confirms that very high marginal tax rates are both reasonable and effective. But they had a lurking weakness, which Piketty views as fatal: they accommodated highly unequal access to education. Not only is educational equality the biggest factor in economic development (more so than property rights, he argues), the sharp division between graduates and non-graduates produced political schisms that, by the 1990s, had left the working class electorally homeless.
So, yes, human capital is important then. Better start measuring the distribution then, yes?
Feb192020
There seems an obvious answer here
Rodger and Minassian brought mainstream attention to incel culture; most people who follow the news have heard of incels. Far fewer people know that a woman coined the term. Even fewer realise there are thousands of women who identify as incels, or “femcels”. While male incel culture has been exhaustively analysed, femcels have largely been ignored. (There have been a handful of articles about the phenomenon, the latest of which appeared in Mel magazine.)
We could introduce the one set to the other. If only we could think of a way to do this.
Feb192020
Complete and total idiocy
Washington has taken a major step toward becoming the first US state to restrict companies looking to extract, bottle and sell local water supplies.
On Monday night the state senate passed a bill that would ban new permits for water bottling operations. SB 6278 states “any use of water for the commercial production of bottled water is deemed to be detrimental to the public welfare and the public interest” and would apply retroactively to new permits filed after 1 January 2019.
The move was hailed by water campaigners, who declared it a breakthrough moment in the fight against the privatization of such a valuable public asset.
What sodding value? Washington State gets 38.15 inches of rain a year. There’s so much water it quite literally falls from the damn skies. For free.
Feb192020
Meghan’s Lament
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex face being banned from using their self-anointed ‘Sussex Royal’ label after stepping down as senior royals, it emerged last night.
It is no longer appropriate for the couple, who have relocated to North America with their son Archie, to continue using the term ‘royal’ in their branding, the Queen and senior officials are expected to conclude.
Those carefully laid plans seem to be unravelling.
As I’ve said before I’m not sure that they understood quite how much actual cash is needed to live as they did before. It’s not just the £60,000 a year for Frogmore Cottage. They laid off 15 staff – how much do 15 staff cost a year then if they want to replicate that outside? And so on.
I think their earning capacity won’t replace the physical lifestyle they gave up. Sure, they might not care, independence and all that having a value. Although that’s not quite what I think is motivating La Dame.
I have significant suspicion that the end game is going to be talks about how ‘coz I is black I’m no longer royal and while there’s definitely a market for that it’s not hugely high paying I would have thought.
Feb182020
What horrors!
We do not live in an ideal world, however, but one in which profit and consumerism are rampant.
A world in which the proles get what they want, when they want it, and people benefit from providing it to them.
No wonder the Guardian’s against it all. What point in being elite if it doesn’t mean anything any more?