Quotulatiousness

October 8, 2013

In defence of savings

Filed under: Books, Economics, Government, History — Tags: — Nicholas @ 10:49

Keynes notoriously thought savings were bad … that a penny saved was a penny “prevented” from working its “magic” in the economy. Gregory Bresiger explains why Keynes’ notion has become the unspoken understanding of most Americans:

Our grandparents believed in the value of thrift, but many of their grandchildren don’t.

That’s because cultural and economic values have changed dramatically over the last generations as political and media elites have convinced many Americans that saving is passé. So today, under the influence of Keynesian economists who champion government spending and high levels of consumption, thrift has been devalued.

“The growth in wealth, so far from being dependent on the abstinence [savings] of the rich, as is commonly supposed, is more likely to be impeded by it,” according to John Maynard Keynes’s The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.

“The more virtuous we are, the more determinedly thrifty, the more obstinately orthodox in our national and personal finance, the more incomes will have to fall,” he writes. “Saving,” Keynes wrote in his Treatise on Money, “is the act of the individual consumer and consists in the negative act of refraining from spending the whole of his current income on consumption.”

But saving, pace Keynes, isn’t “negative.” It is deferred consumption. “The great producing countries are the great consuming countries,” writes Benjamin Anderson in Economics and the Public Welfare. More importantly, high rates of savings will lead to higher productivity, which would benefit our children and grandchildren, classical and Austrian economists have explained.

“We are the lucky heirs of our fathers and forefathers whose saving has accumulated the capital goods with the aid of which we are working today,” wrote Ludwig von Mises in Human Action. Saving, ultimately, is consumption, writes Detley S. Schlichter in Paper Money Collapse. “By setting aside some resources for meeting financial consumption needs, we invest them.”

Nevertheless, Keynesian ideas dominate the Obama administration and mass media. Most politicians, including Republicans who often pretend to be friends of thrift and self-improvement, are tacit or overt Keynesians. That’s because politicians, whether they have studied Keynes or not, generally love the idea of cheap money. Most delight in spending taxpayer dollars. They believe this is the way elections are won.

The US Navy has its own army…

Filed under: Military, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:19

… and it’s not the US Marine Corps:

The marines are also concerned with their relationship with the U.S. Navy, which has now formed another ground combat force. To understand how this came about, you have to understand the relationship between the navy and the marines. The marines are not part of the navy, as they are often described. Both the navy and marines are part of the Department of the Navy. The Department of the Army and Department of the Air Force each have only one component while the Navy Department has two (the fleet and the marines) who are separate services that are closely intertwined. For example, the navy provides many support functions for the marines which, in the army and air force, are provided by each service. Thus navy personnel serve in marine units (wearing marine combat uniforms) as medics and other support specialists. In the army the medics are soldiers and the air force support personnel are all airmen. The use of the navy for support functions means a much higher proportion of marines are combat troops than in the navy, army or air force. This gives the marines a different attitude and outlook.

[…]

[After WW2,] the Marine Corps was no longer just a minor part of the navy, but on its way to being a fourth service. Over the next half century it basically achieved that goal. But in doing that, the navy lost control of its ground troops. Navy amphibious ships still went to sea with battalions of marines on board. But because the marines are mainly an infantry force, and the war on terror is basically an infantry scale battle, the marines spent a lot more time on land working alongside the U.S. Army.

In response to all this U.S. Navy began building a new ground combat force in 2006, staffed by 40,000 sailors. This is NECC (Navy Expeditionary Combat Command), which is capable of operating along the coast and up rivers, as well as further inland. NECC units have served in Iraq, and are ready to deploy anywhere else they are needed. The 1,200 sailors in the EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) teams are particularly sought after, because of increased use of roadside bombs and booby traps by the enemy. NECC organized three Riverine Squadrons which served in Iraq. NECC basically consists of most of the combat support units the navy has traditionally put ashore, plus some coastal and river patrol units that have usually only been organized in wartime.

This new navy organization, and the strategy that goes with it came as a surprise to many people, especially many of those in Congress who were asked to pay for it. It came as a surprise to many NECC sailors as well. The navy even called on the marines to provide infantry instructors for the few thousand sailors assigned to riverine (armed patrol boat) units. The navy already had infantry training courses for Seabees (naval construction personnel) and members of EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) teams. Now all that was combined in the Expeditionary Combat Skills (ECS) course which is conducted at a base in Mississippi.

Decoding Vikings management-speak

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:27

In the Star Tribune, Jim Souhan explains how to interpret classic management lines that have been deployed in profusion since the news of Josh Freeman’s signing became public:

Reporters and fans crave access. So when the Vikings sign a new quarterback, hold news conferences and allow interviews in their locker room, 40 reporters will show up to ask questions and fans will devour the resulting quotes.

Here’s the key to covering and following the NFL: Step 1: Ask the right questions. Step 2: Listen carefully to the answers. Step 3: Ignore just about everything you hear.

[…]

Frazier is as honest a man as you’ll find coaching an NFL team. He’s also a member of management, so he is much more interested in avoiding statements that could hurt him and his team than he is in being blunt.

There is no upside for Frazier in admitting the obvious: That Freeman was brought in to be the starter, that Cassel should start on Sunday, and that Ponder’s career with the Vikings is nearing an end.

[…]

With management, always judge actions, not words. The Vikings wouldn’t have signed Freeman if they believed in Ponder, or if they thought Cassel was a long-term solution. Freeman wouldn’t have signed with the Vikings, choosing them over a half-dozen other suitors, unless he was assured he will get a chance to start.

Ponder’s rib injury has enabled the Vikings’ attempts at vagueness and protected Ponder from the truth. If he were completely healthy, the Vikings would be forced to reveal more of their plans. The rib allowed the Vikings to start Cassel in London, in a move that might have saved their season. The rib allows them to pretend Ponder is relevant this week, and that there is a difficult decision to be made about the future of the quarterback position.

Update: At the Daily Norseman, Ted Glover uses all the technological tools at his disposal to provide a managementspeak-to-English translation of Leslie Frazier’s remarks:

Q: What’s the primary reason you signed Josh Freeman?

What Frazier said: We’re hoping that he’s another good football player that our personnel guys, along with myself, felt like could help our team. That was the primary reason. We’re always trying to find guys who you think can help your team win and we think he’s one of those guys.

What Frazier Meant: Well, Christian Ponder is about as popular as the bubonic plague, and we really feel that after he throws his first incompletion on Sunday, people would rather see Bane come out on the field and start blowing it up than watch Ponder anymore. And Matt Cassel is on borrowed time. He’s about three quarters of football away from remembering he’s Matt Cassel, and when that shit tsunami hits, we want to be able to throw a quarterback life jacket to the seven fans we will have left in the state of Minnesota. Hopefully, he’ll keep us afloat long enough to get my house packed up and out of the state before people realize what the hell just happened. It’s a long shot, but that’s plan A. I don’t have a plan B.

Q: Are you afraid it’s going to mix up the chemistry a little bit?

What Frazier said: No, our guys want us to do whatever it takes to win, whatever it takes to help us improve and they understand the business we’re in and we’re trying to do something to help us win, so it should help our chemistry.

What Frazier Meant: Nope. They are so desperate for anything that resembles a pulse behind center, they’d get behind Miley Cyrus if she could throw a football on a rope and hit a glass of water at 60 yards. Also, I was told there would be no chemistry involved in this Q and A. Ask another one, or a math question, and this presser is over.

Q: Can you go forward with those three quarterbacks — Ponder, Cassel and Freeman — or do you have to make a move?

What Frazier said: No, you don’t. We’ve had three guys on our roster throughout these first four weeks of the season so it wouldn’t be unusual to do that, so we don’t have to make a move.

What Frazier Meant: Well DUH, of course we have to make a move. We have a starter going to the third string, a second string guy that’s on borrowed time, and a free agent signee we’re going to give more latitude to than AA gives to Lindsay Lohan. But yeah, we could keep all three quarterbacks, because we want to watch the world burn.

Geddy Lee on old Rush videos

Filed under: Cancon, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Rolling Stone digs deep into the video archives to come up with some particularly interesting (for certain values of “interesting”) Rush videos:

Geddy Lee is the first to admit that Rush do not have a great track record when it comes to making music videos, and their track record of picking stylish haircuts and outfits also leaves a bit to be desired. A few weeks ago, he sat down with Rolling Stone to discuss Rush’s new live DVD and their future plans. Towards the end, we took out an iPad and showed him 10 Rush videos on YouTube. Sometimes, he looked a little horrified at his videos and haircuts, but he had a lot to say about all of them. Click through to see the videos and hear Geddy’s memories. At the end, we also showed him a couple of Rush tribute videos by some super-fans.

The first video is a performance of “Working Man” in St. Catharines from 1974 … with their original drummer (John Rutsey) who was replaced by Neil Peart shortly afterwards:

“I haven’t seen this, ever. It’s not a bad recording, either. John was very much a mod, very much in the Paul Weller school of dressing. Alex and I were just long-hairs pretending that we were groovy.”

And commenting on a later video:

You can see the time period in everyone’s haircuts. . . Véronique Béliveau, the French singer, was awesome. . . This was bad, but it wasn’t my worst hairdo. My worst one was the coonskin hat period. That’s when I had my hair in a ponytail and this big poufy thing on the top. That was late 1980s/ early 1990s.

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