Quotulatiousness

December 12, 2016

Vikings beat Jaguars 25-16 to keep playoff hopes (barely) alive

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:07

I knew I wasn’t going to be able to watch Sunday’s game even if it was broadcast in the Toronto area, as I’d promised to head down to Burlington to bring my mother to our place for the holidays. This means my Twitter feed was completely empty of my traditional game-related tweets on Sunday afternoon (you’re welcome, guys).

After dropping two games to the Detroit Lions, the Vikings are looking at a wildcard rather than the NFC North title to get them into the post-season. Even getting the wildcard pretty much requires the Vikings to win all of their remaining games (and still will likely need some help), which will be a challenge with an offensive line consisting of a hay bale, a regional champion mannequin challenge player, a scarecrow, a mime with a nasty makeup-related skin condition, and young Bobby McFarlane (the backup right tackle at Our Lady of Hopeless Causes High School in Mankato, MN). Honestly, it’s a genuine miracle that Sam Bradford is still alive at this point in the season … and keeping him alive for the last quarter of the season will be a double miracle.

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Siege of Przemyśl – Summary I THE GREAT WAR Special

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, Russia, WW1 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Published on 11 Dec 2016

This is the prologue of our episodes filmed at Przemyśl. Indy summarises all the events relevant to the two Sieges of Przemyśl and the battles in the region. In the next instalment we will dive into the details of the fort design and explore the live of the soldiers in the forts.

Refuting Piketty’s call for revolution, again

Filed under: Economics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tim Worstall points out that Thomas Piketty has mis-diagnosed the “problem” of rising capital:

The report shows that there were 13 OECD countries in which assets in funded pensions represented more than 50% of GDP in 2015, up from 10 in the early 2000s. Over the same period, the number of OECD countries where assets in funded private pension arrangements represent more than 100% of GDP increased from 4 to 7 countries.

We’re living longer lives these days, we’re working for fewer decades of them and thus people are rationally saving for their expected golden years. Thus capital as a percentage of GDP rises – not to produce inheritances, but to produces incomes in retirement. And rises by potentially at least more than 100% of GDP.

We can’t see that this is a problem and we most certainly cannot see that this is an argument for greater taxation of capital. Quite the reverse in fact, people saving for their old age should be encouraged, not specifically taxed.

So much for the most recent French call for revolution then, eh?

QotD: Don’t mess with the market

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Please note that this is nothing to do with a debate about capitalism or socialism: they are descriptions of who owns the productive assets in a society. It’s also nothing at all to do with whatever the correct level of taxation, state provision or anything about what redistribution should be in a society. It’s purely a point about how you try to achieve the goals that you’ve set yourself.

It’s entirely possible to alter or ameliorate the outcomes of market process. But the temptation to direct those market processes is where the problems come in. Take Venezuela: as I’ve repeatedly said there’s nothing immoral or necessarily undesirable about increasing the incomes of the poor or of reducing inequality. It’s just that the method that one uses to do this has to be taking money from richer people and then giving it to poorer people. Not, as they have done, attempting to do a whole series of price fixing. This was something that New Labour, under Blair and Brown, largely did get. Allow the economy to hum along and tax it to then pay for the results that you want.

Miliband was arguing the other way. That we should be doing that price fixing, that interference directly into the market, in order to achieve our goals. And that is the Venezuelan mistake.

We do in fact have in front of us an example of what most leftists consider to be a generally desirable outcome: the Nordics. They’re high tax, high redistribution states, oh yes they are. But they’re also, underneath that, markedly more classically liberal than either the UK or the US. That’s what makes the places tick. They don’t have minimum wages for example, let alone price fixing for energy. As Scott Sumner has pointed out Denmark might be the most classically liberal economy on the planet.

The real lesson I think the left needs to learn is that markets work. You can change the outcome through tax and redistribution if you wish: but don’t mess with the workings of the market itself.

Tim Worstall, “Under Miliband Britain Would Have Become Like Venezuela”, Forbes, 2015-05-09.

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