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Ragging on Ritchie

This is interesting

Secondly, it really is time he gave up on growth anyway, for two reasons. One is that most people know that the benefits of growth only go to the wealthy.

It’s also insane but it is interesting.

The average British bod doesn’t have a higher standard of living than in 1700? All the growth since then – when per capita growth really took off – has only gone to the rich?

Or 1850, when Spud’s career path as a bean counter would have given him Bob Cratchit’s living standard?

Sigh

GSK launched a rare £2bn share buyback and raised its growth targets on the back of strong sales of speciality medicines, including cancer and HIV drugs,

As I argue in the video, curing diseases provides no benefit to a drug company. Creating drugs that have to be taken for life to manage a disease – which continues to afflict the sufferer – does, however, provide a massive boost to their profitability. I think GSK proves the point.

In my opinion, big pharma really does not want to cure people.

Bloke with a gay twin, a wife cured of cancer, insists that HIV and cancer drugs just show that pharma companies are profiteering bastards.

Right.

Amazin’, Eh? Jus’ amazin’

The UK average house price hits a record high as clear indication of the housing crisis we have

When prices are showing the point Spud wants to make then prices are a good indication. When they’re not then….

Firstly, a shortage of supply is not the problem in the housing market. A shortage of affordable supply is.

Matey, what is it that makes supply affordable? More of it mebbe?

Third, looking more broadly, there is a housing crisis, whatever the price of properties for sale, but it is in the rental sector, where the situation is getting increasingly desperate.

And what is the government doing about this? Precisely nothing, as far as I can work out.

Well, actually, hte government is intent on reducing the supply of rental housing by making ever more onerous the contractual terms…..

Aha, aha, aha.

Jesu Christe on a friggin’ pogo stick:

Contrary to the assumptions of the neoliberal economists who, no doubt, promoted these tariffs,

Tariffs are neoliberal now, are they?

Dear God the man’s a loon.

Anyone can get elected – as long as they’re a member of The Party of course

Anyone can become an MP. No training is required, and then they set the rules for everyone else. That’s absurd. All prospective parliamentarians and councillors should have to take an exam to prove their competence.

Sigh.

Most of them have no idea about economics at all, even though the biggest political concern of most people in the UK is about economics. They don’t even know what money is, where it comes from, how the government creates it, how it expends it, and why tax exists to help control the economy as a whole and not to fund government spending.

When it comes to interest rates, which are one of the big concerns of most households in the country, they know they’ve abandoned responsibility for this to the Bank of England and therefore don’t worry themselves about what it is they should know.

And, as for inflation, most of them are deeply ignorant as to its causes and why it invariably passes if, as was the case in the recent bout of inflation, it was created by a source outside the UK.

These people are then deeply unable to appraise the problems that this country faces because they have no training in them.

Of course it’ll be Spud writing the exam. Which is the problem with any scheme like this. Those who define the knowledge necessary then take control of the political system.

It’s also remarkably historically ignorant. We’ve been though this before. John Wilkes. The only qualification for the Commons is that enough voters say you get to go there. That’s it, there is no more. You can be a convict locked in a jail cell and still get elected. As has, in fact, happened.

Because it’s democracy, see?

How gloriously Spud

Is the future uninsurable? It’s a question that Ann Pettifor asked on her Substack recently, and Ann and I have been friends and Green New Deal colleagues for a long time and I think the question is a good one.

What she’s referring to is the current crisis in Los Angeles, where there are still four fires raging, and what we know is that very large numbers of properties in that city are now uninsurable.

Not uninsurable in the slightest. Insteads the state insurance commissioner – an elected post – will not allow insurance companies to price the risk properly. Therefore they won’t offer policies.

You can buy life insurance on a bloke due to be executed in an hour’s time. You might find the price is pretty high…..

As to the UK and flooding risk. Don’t build on flood plains would be a good start. But of course we’ve had government control of whjo may build what where for 80 years now so of course lots of housing hsa been put on flood plains….

There is a response available here

I care more about bats and newts – as symbols of the biosphere on which we are all dependent – than I do about destructive growth, the availability of cheap and polluting holiday flights, or the creation of new infrastructure for pharmaceutical companies that will use it to extract ever more money from the NHS and society by keeping us in perpetual states of ill health, as their profit-motivated business model requires.

Therefore you can fuck off you misanthropic cunt.

Other responses are also available.

Well, no

In other words, Trump is seeking to sack around seven out of every eight Federal employees and somehow thinks that US government departments will continue to function despite doing so.

He’s rather hoping that many of them cease to function…..

Hmm, well, OK

Rachel Reeves thinks people want deregulation, growth and big infrastructure from government, She’s wrong. They want government that works, better jobs and lower interest rates.

And what if the second sentence is achieved by the first?

Christ he’s a fuckwit

Even more so, though, Deepseek does something else if the claims made about it – which appear to be well-founded – are true. It challenges the foundations of modern US capitalism.

US capitalism has three core ideas at its heart. The first is that ownership is king. Protecting whatever is created from replication is the first tenet that it follows. Nothing is more important to it than. Concentrating the power of ownership in the hands of a relatively few people is all US capitalism is about now.

Second, as a result, secrecy prevails. The patent lawyer is the architect of business success in these enterprises – by securing the knowledge of the organisation from attack. Massive barriers to entry for competitors are built and vigorously defended, completely contrary to the ideas of free markets.

Third, the goal is to maintain this situation for as long as possible, allowing for the maximum extraction of profit from the consumer through extortionate rents. The consequence is that US capitalism is frequently bloated with high costs, which only appear reasonable because of the extortionate fees monopolistic rent-seeking entities, protected by vast legal infrastructures, can charge.

In summary, then, big US business is inherently anti-competitive by nature, is monopolistic by choice, and is, in most cases, very likely to be grossly inefficient as a consequence, with the costs being borne by the consumer.

What Deepseek has really done is challenge this model. It is low cost. It is efficient. It has been created in an intensely competitive environment, and to win competitive advantage through widespread adoption, it has opted for an open-source model, which is the complete antithesis of what a US corporation would do. This is profoundly disruptive to the US way of doing business, and because Deepseek apparently works (although it has been so inundated with requests for accounts I have been unable to get on as yet), it is very unlikely that its strategy will fail. US capitalism has, in that case, met its nemesis, and the fact is that when doing so, that nemesis is doing exactly what economists say should happen in free markets when everyone knows it does not at the top of the US capitalist tree, which long ago rejected that idea of free markets and opted for one of exploitation instead.

The fact that this has happened a week after Trump gets to office, supported by Big Tech, cannot be ignored. Maybe the Chinese state has been waiting for this moment. However, Deepseek is not a Chinese state company. It is privately owned, albeit it complies with Chinese state requirements. The suggestion has been made that it is not too good on some questionable moments in recent Chinese history.

The point is that whatever the cause for the timing, the disruption in US capital markets has arisen for very good reasons. If China can develop efficient tech at low prices and put it into widespread use through open-source diversification while maintaining a fee base for access to more advanced searches, then the whole myth on which the next generation of US wealth extraction was being built has been shattered.

Now much of that is overegged of course. But run with it just as a model to think through the logic.

Assume it’s all true. So, what’s the solution? Free markets, right?

Markets that are free – as in possible, not as in without spondoolies – to enter. That new entrant into the market has just solved every problem Spud has identified.

So, when is Spud going to embrace free markets as the solution? He’s not, is he? Because he’s a …..

Jeez

If the interest rate falls, and the biggest bond broker in the UK – Pimco – suggested this week that they really should fall to between two and three per cent

Reader: No, they don’t.

As for the policy rate, our internal models point to a neutral interest rate of 2 to 3 per cent in the UK.

They say that – in their expectation – the policy neutral rate will be 2 to 3%. The policy neutral rate and the actual rate set by policy are not the same thing.

Sigh.

The Koenigsburg Problem

Profoundly implicit in that comment is the idea that Israel should be rewarded with Palestinian territory as the result of its genocide of many of those living there.

Holocaust Memorial Day exists to remind us that genocide is never acceptable and that those who undertake it must never be rewarded but must instead be held to account for their actions. Fascists do not take that view. I always will. This is the political divide the world is now facing again. We should not forget that.

The problem with this, as ever when talking about post-war population and political changes, is that there is no way of insisting that Gaza must be, always, Palestinian without – logically at least – arguing the Koenigsburg must again be populated by Germans and ruled from Berlin.

Well, not unless you start insisting that because it concerns The Joos then it’s different, obviously.

If relative prices change then relative employment will

Change the price of labour relative to capital and people will change the amoount of labour they use relative to capital:

Rachel Reeves’s Budget has triggered a surge in demand for robots as the Chancellor’s Budget tax raid makes employing human workers too expensive.

Another one of those proofs of neoclassical economics. Everything happens at the margin.

Or, as every bright new dawn brings us, proof that Spud is wrong.

Oh, Right

Mark one up for neoclassical economics then:

Companies are cutting jobs at the fastest pace since the global financial crisis, barring the pandemic, after Rachel Reeves announced £40bn of tax rises in the Budget, according to a closely watched survey.

Employment levels among private sector businesses fell for the fourth month in a row in January, according to the S&P Global Flash UK purchasing managers index (PMI).

Bosses said the Chancellor’s impending £25bn hike in National Insurance had prompted companies to cut back their recruitment plans.

The essential clue to the Marginalist Revolution – neoclassical economics – is that everything happens at the margin.

So, at this price of labour there’s a certain demand for labour. Now we change the price of labour. There’s a change in the demand for labour.

And?

As opposed to Spud’s insistence that all neoclassical economists are right wing because assumptions about one simple model – rationality, perfect information etc. If the real world seems to act like the model says then that’s not a disproof of the model now, is it? True, it’s not a proof of it either – it has to withstand all attempts at disproof. But it’s a reasonable enough model of the world as long as the real world continues to illustrate the model…..

Might there be a future problem here?

This toxic rag has spread filth and falsehoods into the UK media for decades. Now we know it willingly and persistently undertook illegal activity in pursuit of doing so. Those who previously denied that should be brought to account. In particular, they should be tried for perjury. Those in its senior management who lied on oath to courts or inquiries should pay the price for that, whatever their age.

In a world where truths are increasingly debased, ignored and abused by the actions of the ultra-wealthy, who are intent on building their own realities that are disconnected from the world in which we actually live, it is vital that the importance of telling the truth be upheld, and those who have not, and deliberately done so to protect themselves, should be held to account for what they have done.

When, when, will they come for Finance for the Future?

Umm, no, no he’s not

He is making it an offence for Federal employees to support policies of diversity, inclusion and equality. The message is that tolerance, decency and respect are not just not allowed – they will cost you your job and maybe a conviction.

He’s removing the Federal insistences on a specific set of DEI policies. Individuals can be – as they righteously should be – as tolerant etc as they like.

Trump is clearly seeking to unleash terror on the USA.

Uhnh Hunh. The kulaks had better watch out, eh?

This, of course, is a pathway to totalitarianism. It is the route to the oppression of all opposition. It is the road to fascism laid out before us. This is the way of terror – and fear will be gripping many Americans right now.

Yer what?

I am aware that the far right – in whose number I include most neoclassical economists now working

Now, neoliberal probably would meet his definition of far right. But neoclassical? Joe Stiglitz? Amartya Sen?

Loon

The philosophy of far-right economists – whose models take no account of human well-being

This from the man who insists that utility maximisation isn’t a thing?

How very cool indeed

The UK got some respite on Tuesday, as a syndicated offering of debt due in 2040 drew excess of £119 billion of demand. That beat the previous record for the 15-year securities originally sold in September and comes amid generally strong orderbooks for European sovereign debt.

People want to buy UK gilts. They are vastly over-subscribed. There is no crisis in government funding. The government should, instead, meet market demand. That is the only logical thing for it to do. Why can’t they see that?

So, sell the QE stock in 3…2…1…..

But, but, that will increase interest rates!

Yep, that showing that there’s not all that much demand at these prices then…..

I do just so love this whole chain of logic

The message I have this morning is a simple one. If Labour wants to prevent the far-right from doing here what Trump is doing in the USA then it has to deliver electoral reform. It is that straightforward. Anything less, and it is selling out to the far-right.

Democracy is in deep peril. We have to try to save it.

The people are so pissed off that they might elect someone I disapprove of. Therefore we must change the electoral system so they cannot.

That’s democracy, Folks!