Well, yes….
I too was once a benefits cheat …
The truth about benefits scroungers is that they come in all shapes and sizes
Why we should be surprised at this I\’m not sure. Don\’t most people assume that benefits cheats have a heroin addict in the family?
This is cruel of me I know
But is this really going to help all that much?
And Eve Ensler, author of “The Vagina Monologues,” is working with Unicef to build a City of Joy here to train women — some of them shattered by war — to transform their communities. City of Joy will teach legal rights, self-defense and skills for economic empowerment, and a team of female construction workers is helping build it right now.
Economic empowerment where there is no economy? Legal rights where there is no law?
Timmy Elsewhere
Letter in the Telegraph:
Robin Hood was anti-tax
SIR – Bill Nighy (Comment, February 10) supports a “Robin Hood tax” on financial transactions. Transaction taxes are almost always paid, in the end, by consumers – not, as their advocates suppose, by the professionals in the markets.
Robin Hood is supposed to have made a career out of liberating taxes unjustly levied by the Sheriff of Nottingham and returning them to the poor they had been extorted from. To invoke his memory for a plan to tax the public more heavily in order to give politicians more to spray around the world is a little odd.
Tim Worstall
Messines, Portugal
Apologies, that last crack nicked from someone in the comments here: Brian maybe?
Peak Oil!
Leggett again, thought I\’d have a look at the actual report.
Taskforce member companies
Arup, Foster and Partners, Scottish and Southern Energy, Solarcentury, Stagecoach Group, Virgin Group.
Hmm, two architects, one generator, a solar panel installer, a bus company and the Bearded One.
This is where we go for our expertise on global oil supply and demand?
Ho hum….
Daily Mail questions to which the answer is no: Part XVI
Will the first bird you see on Valentine\’s Day reveal your future husband?
The Marmot Review on health inequalities
Hmm.
These serious health inequalities do not arise
by chance, and they cannot be attributed simply to
genetic makeup, ‘bad’, unhealthy behaviour, or difficulties
in access to medical care, important as those
factors may be. Social and economic differences in
health status reflect, and are caused by, social and
economic inequalities in society.
I agree, I\’ve only skimmed the summary, but I see no reference at all to the counter proposition. Even to reject it. That ill people become poor because they are ill rather than that poor people become ill because they are poor.
I don\’t claim that this is the be all and end all of the subject: I would claim that it does in fact happen though.
And not to consider it seems, well, umm, something of a failure in the review actually.
In fact, if I were the Minister receiving such a report I would be shouting at people, demanding to know why they hadn\’t at least considered this, if only to reject it as an explanation.
Leggett again
They warn of an oil crunch: an unexpected crash in global production such that supply can no longer meet demand, even if China and India throttle back.
This isn\’t possible.
There is only the balance of supply and demand \”at a price\”. Supply of oil cannot meet the demand for it at $5 a barrel. That\’s why oil is whatever it is today….$80 a barrel? Something like that.
If lots more people want to use more oil then the price will rise further. If supply is more constrained in the future then the price will rise. Supply and demand will always, when prices are allowed their play in a market system, balance. For prices adjust to make it so.
Ritchie Elsewhere!
From his Forbes column:
Secondly, and more importantly, the idea of discounting the future is fundamentally subversive.
Net present value is subversive now, is it?
Then:
Wherever there’s been mark-to-market or fair value accounting, executives in the financial world have used this technique to book profit and pay the bonuses made for themselves.
Sorry, NPV, mark to market and fair value accounting are all synonymous are they? Instead of being rather at odds with each other?
For example, your NPV might tell you that your holdings of option ARM mortgages are just fine and dandy. But the market might tell you that they\’re near worthless.
Which is correct in the long term is moot for this point: to claim that both valuation processes are exactly the same thing is absurd.
I have a feeling that what he\’s done is take the theoretical (and obviously true) point that the value of something today is the value of all future returns to it discounted at the appropriate interest rate and assume that prices in markets are exactly this.
Entirely missing out his hero Keynes\’ points about animal spirits.
How did he get a column there?
Ritchie stops blogging!
Thus it ain\’t a blog anymore, it\’s a website.
Ho hum.
This did amuse me though:
It is increasingly, and unfortunately, clear that the vast majority of those who do seek to comment come from way beyond the fringes of political electoral credibility and seek only to harm and undermine society. It is not my duty or desire to assist them.
I am one of those who seek to comment on his pieces, as you know. Indeed, there are constant (well, some) references to myself and my views on his blog.
But this beyond the fringes of electoral credibility bit….hasn\’t anyone told him that I stood as a candidate for UKIP at the last national election we had? You know, UKIP, the party that came second? Beating the Labour Party into third place? Lib Dems to fourth?
That sort of beyond the fringes of electoral credibility?
* His post was brought to my attention in an email headed \”You made Ritchie cry\”. Dib dib dib, I\’ll try and think up another good deed to perform tomorrow.
More Robin Hood Tax
So, how do I go about setting up a little pressure group/think tank to argue the case against this Robin Hood Tax? It\’s lunatic on the very face of it.
There are extremely strong arguments against it.
How do I organise a whip round of the banks and hedge funds (trivial amounts each: £10k, £20 k each perhaps) to run a campaign against this stupidity?
On the Robin Hood Tax
You know, looking at the list of supporters, there\’s only one who even pretends to have any knowledge of economics.
That\’s the new economics foundation.
It\’s going to be a complete disaster, isn\’t it?
Oh, here\’s a lovely little point.
Although 0.05% is a tiny tax, $400 billion is a substantial amount.
That\’s what they expect to raise (not the £400 billion some papers are reporting).
Banking is the most profitable industry in the world, with profits of $788 billion in 2006,
They\’re seriously suggesting that 50% of the profits of the banking system can be taxed away and:
Will the tax be passed on to consumers?
The Robin Hood Tax will not impact on personal banking or on retail banking. That’s because it targets a distinct area of bank operations – high-frequency large-volume trading, undertaken by financial institutions in the ‘casino economy’. ??If you change money to go on holiday, send remittances abroad, invest in a pension fund or take out a mortgage, you will not be affected by this tiny tax.
They\’re fucking mad, aren\’t they?
Prediction about the PIIGS and the Eruo
There\’s two ways this can go really.
1) The PIIGS are hung out to dry, they default or leave the euro and the European Project grinds to a halt for a generation or two.
2) Fiscal transfers start between rich and poor EU countries. In effect, we get the economic government of Europe as well as the current political one.
Now, since 2) has always been part and parcel of the European Project as desired by some, but no one wanted to mention it (similar to how everyone agrees that those noises and smells coming from the elderly aunt at the dining table are simply stomach runbles because she\’s hungry) which do you think will happen in the moment of crisis?
Yes, quite.
Dear Ms. Klein proven wrong again: the shock leads to the increase of governmental powers and integration.
On the subject of the Bleedin\’ Obvious
The cost of a nursery place for children aged over two rose by twice the rate of inflation last year while childcare for a toddler now swallows half the gross earnings of an average parent in England working part-time, according to a report out today.
Yes?
And?
The Government\’s spent the last 13 years piling regulations and legal requirements upon the sector. What do you expect to happen when the costs of providing a service go up?
On the transactions tax
I\’m happy to play my part in the great Robin Hood Tax
A tax on transactions could turn banks from the pantomime villains of the world economy into its dashing heroes, argues Bill Nighy.
But you\’re a fucking actor. What in buggery do you know about economics? Or banking?
Nighy attended The John Fisher School, Purley, which he left with two O-levels, and took a job with a magazine as a messenger boy.
Dear Lord Almighty, we\’re taking financial advice from him?
Maybe these Toyotas really are terrible
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is responsible for car safety in the US, said it was reviewing complaints about the steering of 2009 and 2010 Corollas, which are not on sale in the UK. More than 80 complaints have been lodged about the Corolla, which claim it is prone to wandering, rather than staying in lane.
And maybe you really don\’t want the same people owning your major competitors and the regulator.
Financial professionals question…..
Any of my readers involved with AIM? Are perhaps a NOMAD?
We\’re in the throes of thinking that the time might be right to take the next step with the metals business. At present it\’s tiny, but there have been a number of political and technological* developments meaning that this might be a very good time to raise some cash and build an extraction plant.
The aim (umm, sorry) would be to get in the £8 million to £15 million range (tiny for mining, large for other industries) to build the pilot plant.
Any ideas anyone?
* China limiting rare earths exports, new technology for extracting rare earths and scandium, greater environmental concerns about mining pollution and new uses for scandium in volume.
God Bless Bob Herbert
The Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston divided American households into 10 groups based on annual household income. Then it analyzed labor conditions in each of the groups during the fourth quarter of 2009.
The highest group, with household incomes of $150,000 or more, had an unemployment rate during that quarter of 3.2 percent. The next highest, with incomes of $100,000 to 149,999, had an unemployment rate of 4 percent.
Contrast those figures with the unemployment rate of the lowest group, which had annual household incomes of $12,499 or less. The unemployment rate of that group during the fourth quarter of last year was a staggering 30.8 percent. That’s more than five points higher than the overall jobless rate at the height of the Depression.
The next lowest group, with incomes of $12,500 to $20,000, had an unemployment rate of 19.1 percent.
He\’s noticed that the unemployed tend to be poor.
You know, because they don\’t have jobs?
This is not to say that the middle class has not been hurt badly by the recession. It has been. In last year’s fourth quarter, the group with household incomes of $40,000 to $49,000 had a jobless rate of 9 percent, close to the disastrous national average. The $50,000 to $59,000 group had a 7.8 percent jobless rate, and households earning $60,000 to $75,000 had a jobless rate of 6.4 percent.
Yep, you tell \’em Bob.
Next week in the NYT….this dihydrogen monoxide sure can be tough to get a grip on.
On language teaching in schools
Umm:
At an Intelligence Squared debate last week, Professor Mary Beard gave some indications of how the teaching of languages has suffered in state education.
– Fewer than 500 state schools now offer any classical languages and much of this teaching is offered in the \’twilight\’ hours after most classes have finished.
– The government is not providing enough training of classics teachers to replace the ones who will retire.
– The numbers taking French GCSE have fallen by 100,000 since 2004.
Umm:
TEACHERS in one town are struggling to understand their pupils – because they speak 127 languages.
Kids turn up for class talking any lingo from Afrikaans and Armenian to Uzbek and Zulu.
Others chatter away in an incredible variety of tongues including Assamese, Chichewa, Kurdish, Lithuanian, four kinds of Chinese, Nahuati and even English. It means Reading, Berks – population 233,000 – has more languages than almost any town of similar size in the world.
Sorry, can somome remind me what the problem is again? We seem to have an abundance of people who can speak not English….so why does anyone want to train more?
Gordon Brown and British Industry: he hates it, you see?
Apparently Gordon is cutting down his intake of Kit-Kats, and replacing them with bananas.
Throwing honest British chocolate toilers onto the dole and subsidising instead Latin American oligarchies.
Quite disgusting, man should be shot, obviously.