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Tim Worstall

Well, the title’s correct at least

There is a NEETs crisis – but it is being deliberately created by the government

Sure, higher min wage, no firing of dullards, more taxes on employing someone, too many degrees and not enough training, hte nationalisation of apprenticeships. Sure, all being deliberately created.

The analysis following that title somewhat fails of course:

The fact is that the entire foundation of UK macroeconomic policy rests on the belief that some unemployment is necessary for inflation to be controlled. Neoliberal economists call this the NAIRU, the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment. Behind the technical language is a very simple proposition. The economy must always contain a pool of people who cannot find work.

Cretin. The point of Nairu is that changes to the microeconomic structure of the economy – wages, taxes on emplyment, ease of hiring and firing, all that sort of stuff – change what the Nairu is. If you’ve a high Nairu then you’ve a stultifying micro-set of rules. The answer is to change those rules.

Entirely possible to have a Nairu at the 2% or so that is really zero unemployment – gotta give people time to change jobs etc – but that does mean having a red in tooth and claw free market employment market.

The first victims are usually young people. They have the least experience. They are the newest to the labour market. They are the easiest to exclude. They have little chance of complaining because they are, economically, just about the weakest group in society, and, when many have few dependents, they are also considered the easiest group to sideline. When economic opportunities contract, they are pushed aside first. The NEETS issue is then deliberately constructed. It exists as a policy choice.

So, vicious free markets to aid the young!

Snigger

A former CIA official with a top-secret security clearance has been accused of stealing 303 gold bars worth more than $40m (£29.7m) and stashing them at his home.

Well, OK, crooks everywhere. Obviously.

Between November 2025 and March this year, Mr Rush allegedly made several requests to the US government to receive the bars, each weighing one kilogram, for “work-related expenses”, then kept them at his home.

So a spy can just say “I need a gold bar or three for work” then?

The New York Times reported that he was a former senior CIA executive, though it is not clear what role Mr Rush held while at the organisation.

The FBI also noted that Rush appeared to have lied to his employers for two years about his education and military background.

They say Mr Rush had falsely claimed to be a navy pilot and graduate of Clemson University in South Carolina and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, according to The Associated Press.

Instead, he enlisted in the navy in 1997 and served in the US navy reserve from 2004 until 2015, when he was honourably discharged as a lieutenant. He also did not attend either college, the outlet discovered.

And, also, they don’t check CVs?

These are the spies on our side, right?

Owen and economics

That is surely the US calculation: that Cubans will be so exhausted by an intolerable, externally imposed economic nightmare that they will acquiesce to anything that promises to end it.

Anything, anything, but admitting that socialism doesn’t work….

So Polly, what’s the plan?

Alan Milburn is right, a young generation has been betrayed. Forget Tony Blair: we must attend to this
Polly Toynbee

OK:

The diagnosis is dire. Alan Milburn has published the first part of his forensic report on the lives and chances of young people, their fate after leaving school or college, the inadequacy of their health, education and pastoral care, and the reluctance of employers to hire them. This is a “moral crisis”, he says. There are now more than a million young people not in work, education or training (Neets), and Milburn expects that number to rise to 1.25 million without radical change. The government needs a “big idea”, he tells me. This should be it, “the spine, the purpose”.

So, a disaster. What should we do?

The right will find little comfort here. Did the raised employers’ national insurance, the increase in the minimum wage and the extra working rights cause the lack of entry-level jobs for the young? “Bullshit,” Milburn says bluntly. “This didn’t start two years ago. It’s not the cause of the crisis.”

So, no, we’re not going to undo the bad things that have made it worse. Govt never admits to error, eh?

Sigh.

The modern media is fun

The Irish singer-songwriter CMAT has responded to ongoing abuse she has received about her body and her weight following an appearance last week at BBC’s Radio 1 Big Weekend.

The things that get reported upon.

CMAT pointed out to “well-meaning” commenters that her body size was not a choice: “I am not being defiant. I am not choosing to look like this or weigh this much as some kind of punk rock act of liberty. I simply have a body, one that I would of course like to change in order to fit in and avoid all of this abuse, but I have had extreme difficulty in doing so. I don’t get a say in whether or not I want to be brave, I simply have to sit here and take it.”

She said that though she was grateful for her success, it is “increasingly becoming tarnished by the fact that I would be allowed to enjoy it so much more if I was thin”.

The Guardian – you know, national newspaper – is running a story on how big girl says it’s unfair how she gets called a big girl.

Ho Hum.

Twat

The inequality caused by technological innovation is not a given.

Technological innovation reduces inequality, not produces it.

Half the species gets free telecoms from Zucks. Telecoms inequality is thereby reduced. Amazon has knocked 2 to 4% off the US price level. Given that consumption is income constrained at the bottom but not at the top this reduces consumption inequality, not increases it. That first great technologiocal change, spinning, weaving and knitting with machines meant stockings went for being for queens to something the factory girl had a change of. Stocking inequality fell.

Technological change *reduces* inequality, not increases it.

Obviously not

The UK will get no special treatment in its future economic relationship with the EU, European ministers have said, in a further blow to Keir Starmer’s hopes of negotiating a single market for goods.

You do not, at the beginning of a negotiation, say “We’ll give you lots of prezzies”. Rather, you insist that they are gouged out of you, one by one, during the negotiations.

Obviously.

Surely even lawyers and politicians know this?

Ah….

Seems a bit extreme:

Patagonia has launched a trademark lawsuit against an environmentalist drag queen named Pattie Gonia, who has accused the outdoor clothing company of “trying to erase an activist”.

Wyn Wiley, who performs as Pattie Gonia, has accumulated millions of followers online for their environmental activism, raising almost $4m for non-profits so far. Last year they raised $1m while hiking 100 miles in full drag from Point Reyes national seashore to San Francisco.

Patagonia, which takes its name from an enormous geographical region spanning Argentina and Chile, filed its trademark infringement lawsuit against Wiley on 21 January. The suit was filed to the federal court in Los Angeles.

I mean, really?

Ah:

The company, which is suing Wiley for a “nominal” $1 in damages plus legal fees, said that it took action after Wiley filed a trademark application in September to use the brand Pattie Gonia to sell clothing and promote environmental activism, which it claims would “irreparably harm” its brand.

Ah, no, that makes perfect sense. You do actually have to defend a trademark. Otherwise it fails. Pattie Gonia condoms, grape jelly or vacuum cleaners wouldn’t be a problem. But outdoor clothes, obviously, sue!

Britain used to have a lawyer writing to the newspapers. “Dear sir, I note you used then word bic, it is in fact, Bic, the trademark of…..yours etc, A Lawyer” on exactly the same basis. A trademark must be protected…..

Erm, no

Sting, who wrote the music for the show and will star in a run at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in September, said the closure of the shipyards began an era when the north of England was failed by successive governments.

“Britain’s wealth was created in the coalfields and the steel towns and the mill towns and the shipyards,” he said. “All of those skill sets were thrown on the scrapheap … for Thatcher’s dream of a service economy.”

Manufacturing output is, of course, up since then. Also, every rich country lost its coal, steel and shipbuilding, so it wasn’t Maggie there either.

But, you know, the bass player, eh?

So I’ve decided Jack the Sparrow is indeed male

Put him down on the desk to let him have a look around – and he’s decided he can fly. My office is up in the “sotao” (loft/attic, but not wholly) and he flies down the stairs and down there it’s pretty open plan. Cannot find him so do something else for an hour. Come back, can see him, get him.

Capture!

At which point he just wants feeding. Run away, hide, when caught demand my lunch. Yep, male.

Hah! Whaddatheyknow?

Ministers should press ahead with a ban on zero-hours contracts, campaigners say, despite claims by business leaders that it would deter hiring and lock more young people out of the labour market.

The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) and the union umbrella organisation the TUC were among eight signatories to a letter to the department of business and trade calling on the government to “ignore the noise” from businesses, which want zero-hours contracts to remain.

I mean, really? Why would anyone listen to actual businesses about how a change in hte law would affect hiring by actually businesses? Pfft, ludicrous, eh?

But this is what the true complaint is about

Europe’s rules are not necessarily constraints, but at their best, they are instruments of power. They shift the burden of collective choices away from individuals and on to the companies best placed to bear them. That is why those companies so often oppose them and why, once the rules exist, they usually comply.

The bottle cap is still attached to the bottle in Europe. The question is whether Europe retains the will to be itself – a political project that uses rules to protect its people and shape global markets – or whether, in the name of competitiveness, it surrenders that power to exactly the interests that want that power gone.

The use of bureaucracy to impose those rules to insist upon those – bureaucratically decided – collective choices. For no one rational thinks that it is actual democracy informing EU rule making. And, anyway, collective choices are best made by people individually deciding they’d like to make that choice – the more who do the more collective it is. The bureaucracy imposing the choice of the bureaucracy is not, in any useful sense, a choice, is it?

No, I don’t believe it

The main drivers of antibiotic resistance are still the misuse and overuse of antibiotics, which are used to treat infections. But the research suggested the problem is being worsened by climate change.

“The accumulated evidence suggests that climate change is an accelerating force behind the global spread of antimicrobial resistance,” the study authors wrote.

“Our findings provide supporting evidence that rising temperatures and altered precipitation patterns non-linearly amplify the abundance and dissemination of antimicrobial resistance genes in bacterial pathogens such as salmonella.

“These findings reinforce the idea that climate change alters microbial ecological stability and accelerates resistance evolution across human, animal, and environmental reservoirs.

“Urgent integration of climate change-mitigation policies, particularly those aligned with the Paris agreement – with enhanced antimicrobial stewardship and One Health surveillance – is essential to curtail the future burden of antimicrobial resistance.”

Sure, sure, it could even be true but I still don’t believe it. It’s just so damn convenient as a result for a certain mindset that I’m not going to believe it. Call me biased, prejudiced, etc, but there it is.

Georgie Porgie

Three astonishing things are happening simultaneously. One is the government’s utterly baffling failure to communicate with us on this existential issue. Where are the public information videos? Where are the televised emergency briefings on climate breakdown, like the emergency briefings on Covid-19?

Up the propaganda, Comrades!

This is the reasonable demand of the National Emergency Briefing campaign, whose film is now being shown in more than 1,000 cinemas and other venues in the UK: a remarkable achievement. Why are scientists, activists and journalists – faint voices in the storm – being left to explain this defining issue and the societal transformation we need? The great majority accept a call for action only when it comes from government. When it tells us “this is our national purpose and we want you to be part of it”, people tend to heed the call.

Quite literally too.

Should be a Two Minute Hate every day.

Honey chile…….

For more than two years, John “Jay” Morris, a Louisiana state senator, helped pave the way for Meta to build one of the world’s largest datacenters, called Hyperion, in Richland Parish.

The Republican attorney lobbied a utility regulator for a key approval. He cosponsored two bills that enabled the land deal between Meta and the state. And he voted “yea” on two additional bills that provided the trillion-dollar tech company with tax breaks worth an estimated $3.3bn.

Now, a Floodlight investigation has found that while Morris used his political position to advance the project, he and his business partners were buying and selling the land around it over the past 15 months.

Now, let me explain to you how Louisiana state politics works……

Very funny

Bloke writes careful, competent, book about the real differences between men and women.

To be clear, when Stewart-Williams argues that there are innate differences between men and women, he is quick to add that this doesn’t imply that one sex is better than the other, that we have a moral imperative to uphold or enforce sex differences, or that they are completely fixed. What he does believe is that if you give people freedom to choose their jobs and lifestyle, men and women tend to gravitate in different directions. Men tend to prefer working with things, women with people, for instance. Men are more motivated by status, women by relationships. Various studies add weight to Stewart-Williams’s claim by finding that many sex differences – from occupational preference to personality traits – are more pronounced in more gender-equal countries.

Very grudging, the Lassie is.

So, she’s got to find something to disagree with:

Stewart-Williams believes an underacknowledged contributor to women’s under-representation in Stem, or in leadership roles more generally, is innate differences in professional ambition and interests. Which I suppose is a more convenient response to the problem of unequal representation than trying to understand how offices, research institutions and leadership roles would be structured if women hadn’t been excluded for much of human history. (I note for example that men’s apparently weaker verbal abilities haven’t held them back in literature.) It’s important to understand the role that nature plays in making us who we are and shaping relations between the sexes – but it’s a small part of a big, complicated story.

Phew! She manages to find something to disagree with!

Path dependence and real world constraints

Whatever is true about where we’d like to be we are here right now, and here includes a number of decisions made in the past:

The Japanese government has pledged to suspend an 8% sales tax on food but says it is being thwarted by an unexpected opponent – uncooperative cash registers.

According to the devices’ manufacturers, the systems at big retail chains that process everything from cash to cardless transactions were never designed to calculate a tax rate of zero and so they require a major overhaul that could take up to a year.

The software just never was designed for a 0% tax rate. So, it would have to be programmed in – not a trivial operation across the whole netweok. This is Japan, so, yes, I do believe the explanation.

This is a specific of the more general – what we can do now is constrained by what people did back then.

Fun, eh?

Jack, the sparrow, adventure

So, the little sparrow who got blown out of his nest. Or, as I think happened, the nest came down, one of the parents died, and he (?? how to tell with birds? Is it something only lady birds need to worry about?) ended up, with a sibling, huddled by our front door for 5 hours.

To keep them away from the neighbourhood cats I stuck ’em in a spare room in the outbuildings and put some food down. And found they’re too young to eat on their own. One died.

So, in Jack comes, sits in an old cat carrier basket by my desk, when he chirps he wants feeding. Cat biccies soaked in water. Kitten kibble, really. Perhaps two pieces, two and a half – by the half – and he’ll gawp for that and then stop. Won’t take more. I get the general impression he thinks the long handled teaspoon is actually the food, whether he gets the kibble is more luck than anything.

Anyway:

As you can see, I’m not good at these photo things. But to give you an idea I have small hands – Trump Disease no doubt – so that is still a small, small, sparrow.

And, well? Dunno. Why bother? Dunno. Actually, I do. I’ve never done this before so why not?