Quotulatiousness

July 18, 2012

The “you didn’t build it” meme, inter-personal relations style

Filed under: Economics, Government, Humour, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:02

An amusing extension of President Obama’s “you didn’t build it” claim:

You Got Laid Last Night? That’s Nice, But . . .

somebody else made that happen. Sport.

You met this chick on the Internet, which DARPA invented, with money taken from taxpayers by the government, which printed the money after giving the concession to log national forests to produce the paper, lands stolen from the Indians by the government, aided by soldiers who were paid for with taxes paid by taxpayers through the government. The logging was opposed by ineffectual lawyers hired by environmentalist organizations which received grants from the government, who nevertheless received their legal fees from environmental agencies who still paid themselves liberal salaries underwritten by taxpayers, and which donate to liberal PACs.

The beer you plied her with was paid for with money paid to you by a corporation for whom you used to work, before you conspired to get fired to collect your 99 because you were tired of taking it from The Man, which is permitted to exist by the government, which taxes both its income and yours. On the way to meet your date, you withdrew money for the date at an ATM which charged you a $2 convenience fee, though it operates on a system paid for by taxpayers to the government. The government used taxpayer money to bail out the bank in question when its mortgage investments went bust-oh! largely because the government, in concert with government-subsidized political agencies and government lawyers, threatened the banks, who paid their executives lavishly for accepting the ridiculous loan standards demanded by the government-subsidized political agencies and government lawyers who performed their agitation on the taxpayer dime. Once again, the lawyers and the non-profit executives were well remunerated, and turned around to send some of their salaries to legislators who would vote them more grants and loans, and who were further rewarded by well-compensated positions at those institutions after they were forced to resign after scandals for which other people might have been sent to prison.

If you somehow missed the start of the “you didn’t build it” meme, try here.

H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord.

QotD: Quantitative Easing is institutionalized theft

Filed under: Economics, Government, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:56

In reality, economics is not the fiscal rocket-science you make it sound. Capitalism itself is based on good old-fashioned honesty. The money at the heart of it must be both an honest store-of-value and an efficient medium of exchange. It ceases to be so when the inherent deceits of fractional reserve banking allow trillions of false credit to be pumped into the system, thus forcing up prices (booms) which inevitably lead to over-valued commodities (busts).

What happens next is that the banks, having privatised their gains in the good times, simply socialise their losses onto the tax-payer. It’s a crime. Simple as that really.

Telegraph commentator “dionysusreturns“, responding to “Fed fiddles as America slides back into recession” by Ambrose Evans Pritchard, 2012-07-15

What is the best way to demonstrate care for the future?

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:29

According to Steven Landsburg, the answer is to cut capital taxes, and he makes a good case:

There are only three things you and I can do to make the future world a better place. First, we can consume less, leaving more resources behind. Second, we can work harder, planting trees, building factories and writing poems that will live on after we’re gone. Third, we can innovate, advancing science and technology so that our children’s children’s children can make better use of the resources they inherit.

As it happens, there’s one key policy variable that drives all three of these things, and that’s the tax rate on capital income (which includes interest, dividends, corporate income and capital gains). Capital taxes are a disincentive to save, and when people don’t save they consume instead. Capital taxes are a disincentive to work and a disincentive to innovate.

This is not a plea for lowering taxes in general, and it’s not a plea for making the tax system either more or less progressive. (If you want to soak the rich, there are plenty of things to tax besides capital.) As a matter of fact, this isn’t even a plea for lowering taxes on capital. It’s simply an observation that if your goal is to leave a better world for our descendants, then your best bet is to support lower capital taxes.

H/T to Tim Harford for the link.

July 17, 2012

FATCA “may end up killing more U.S. jobs than all the call centers in India combined”

Filed under: Economics, Government, Law, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:52

Matt Welch on the worst bit of legislation for US workers so far:

That’s a line from this commendable Wall Street Journal column by William McGurn about the oft-lamented-around-these-parts Foreign Account Tax Compliant Act of 2010, or FATCA (rimshot). While President Barack Obama keeps hitting presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney over offshoring and jobs, one of Obama’s most economically deleterious laws continues inflicting damage largely off the journalistic radar screen.

“Within the United States,” McGurn writes, “almost no American has heard of it. Save for the occasional article, it’s gone largely uncovered. And just like ObamaCare, the nastiest, job-killing aspects will not hit until after this November’s election.”

McGurn points out that FATCA was the revenue-generating side of the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act of 2010 (HIRE! God, I hate these people….) — “a jobs bill dominated by tax breaks designed to get businesses to hire unemployed Americans.” So once again, government is “paying” for the economically dubious and morally spurious act of granting targeted tax breaks to favored corporations by screwing over the middle class.

JourneyQuest S2E2: City of the Dead

Filed under: Gaming, Humour — Tags: — Nicholas @ 09:25

Ending supply management

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Economics, Food, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:00

In the Globe and Mail Economy Lab, David Bond explores equitable ways to compensate farmers who will lose out if-and-when the federal government abandons the supply management system:

The quota was originally given out for free, therefore farmers or their direct successors still in the business would receive nothing for their original allocation and then 90 per cent of whatever they paid at the time they acquired additional amounts of quota.

Why only 90 per cent? Well having quota allowed the holders to earn returns on their investment well in excess of the returns that could have been earned in alternative forms of farming. Having enjoyed for more than 40 years these superior returns thanks to their ability to persuade government to protect them from competition it’s time they “enjoyed” some of the costs they foisted upon Canadian consumers.

While the potential beneficiaries of this compensation may complain of shoddy treatment they evidenced little sympathy on the costs they passed on to the consumers much less the harmful impact they had on potential exports of other agricultural and non-agricultural exports because government refused to modify supply management during trade negotiations.

The declaration of dependence

Filed under: Liberty, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:51

President Obama goes the extra mile to portray every successful person as being just a pawn in the hands of vast, impersonal forces of destiny:

Look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

The “Leader of the Free World”, folks! Let’s give him a hand! (Applause.)

Elizabeth Warren may have said it first in this election campaign, but nobody will top Barack Obama’s reworking of her theme.

(more…)

How the Nanny State undermines family life for parents and children

Filed under: Britain, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:13

Jennie Bristow at sp!ked:

… Bailey’s diagnosis of the dangers inherent in eroding parental authority was absolutely spot on. By attempting to ‘nationalise’ childrearing, whether by providing classes to instruct parents in officially approved childrearing methods or by using schools to inculcate children in a heightened awareness of the failings of their mothers and fathers, in recent decades, government parenting policy has stripped parents of their directly authoritative role.

Instead of being the boss of their own homes, parents are situated as mediators in the relationship between the child and the state, and told that their primary responsibility is not to do right by their child but to show that they are doing the right thing according to the current parenting orthodoxy. The effect of this, as Bailey suggested last year, is to disorient both parents and children, as both question the basis for parental authority.

Was this what caused the riots last summer? Not on its own. The behaviour of those young people engaged in the mayhem was profoundly shocking – but so, too, was the response of the adult population, from the middle classes cowering in their living rooms and boasting about that in the press, to the failure of the police to intervene decisively. What underpinned the chaos was the open collapse of adult authority, and this should have provided a wake-up call to our society about the need to grow up and take responsibility for the younger generations.

But the problem of parental authority forms an important part of the generalised crisis of adulthood, and it is worth reflecting on the relationship between the two.

July 16, 2012

Toronto edges cautiously toward allowing wider range of “street food”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Cancon, Food, Government, Health — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:14

Matt Gurney in the National Post on Toronto’s inch-by-glacial-inch move toward allowing a bit more variety in the foods street vendors can sell:

Last week, Toronto City Council approved hot dog vendors to sell an expanded variety of foods. The expanded list is still far from expansive. Veggie sticks, fruit salads and bagels with individually packaged butters are about the extent of the street food revolution in Toronto. Even these baby steps are progress, though — they follow the total failure of Toronto’s A La Cart program, which tried to expand the city’s food options to include more “ethnic” fare. The program, which should go down in history as the most botched effort the city has ever made, is Prosecution Exhibit A for those who believe that governments only exist to screw up things that really aren’t all that complicated.

But the city’s concern about street food, though overwrought and frankly embarrassing, at least comes from an honest place — concerns about spoiled food or improper preparation hurting public health. But Toronto has always missed the point. The public is protected when governments monitor outcomes and harshly punish failures, not seek to control process. Health inspections are an entirely reasonable part of the government’s job, with street food as much as any industry. And it seems that Toronto, while fretting about what food vendors might be doing wrong, hasn’t exactly been doing a bang-up job of its own responsibilities.

Hard though it is to imagine, other cities — even other Canadian cities — somehow manage to have all sorts of tasty treats for sale by food trucks, carts, and temporary kiosks without civilization crumbling.

Mitt Romney and the NAACP

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:46

Steve Chapman provides a bit of rare praise for Mitt Romney after his speech to the NAACP:

It may have been a bit surprising when the NAACP held its national convention and Mitt Romney showed up. Romney, as comedian Reggie Brown put it, is “what people who hate white people think of when they think of white people.” He’s likely to do about as well among black voters as he is among Wiccans.

But there he was, taking precious campaign time in a vain and even humiliating search for votes. Naive folly or an excess of ambition on his part? Not quite.

Candidates normally put a high priority on assuring enthusiastic receptions and supportive audiences. Campaign managers typically prefer to avoid the risk of making the boss look unpopular. Sometimes, however, that risk is not a bug but a feature.

[. . .]

By presenting himself to the nation’s premier civil rights group, Romney signaled his aversion to bigotry without embracing any policies favored by the Congressional Black Caucus. With a college-educated suburban woman who dislikes Rush Limbaugh, say, the gesture could only help his cause.

But things may have worked out even better than that. By condemning Obamacare, Romney offered doubters a rare sighting of the Romney backbone. By reaping a chorus of boos, he strengthened his standing among hard-line conservatives who regard the NAACP as anathema. It was political jiu-jitsu, turning a weakness to his advantage.

While Romney was confronting his foes, Obama was avoiding his friends. Though he has spoken at past conventions, including last year’s, the president sent Joe Biden in his stead. Press secretary Jay Carney cited scheduling conflicts and said cryptically that his boss was busy working to help “all Americans.”

The nation’s most prominent black group convenes, and a brother can’t be bothered? Maybe this is what actor Morgan Freeman was getting at the other day when he volunteered, “He’s not America’s first black president; he’s America’s first mixed-race president.”

If this forecast is accurate, we’ll all be nostalgic for global warming

Filed under: Britain, Environment — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:05

In his Telegraph column on the current weather in Britain (and what it may or may not do to the Olympic schedule), Boris Johnson shares a long range weather forecast that is chilling — literally:

I have just been on the blower to my old chum, Piers Corbyn, the world’s foremost meteorological soothsayer, and he sounds like Jeremiah with an ingrown toenail. This is the same Corbyn, with a first-class degree in physics, who decisively beat the Met Office in 2010 and accurately forecast the cold and snowy winter — and I am afraid he has been bearish about this summer from sometime in February or March.

According to Piers and his team at Weather Action, we all underestimate the role of the sun. This is set to be just about the wettest July on record, he says, and that is mainly because of things taking place in the nuclear fireball millions of miles away from earth. “Sometime too bright the eye of heaven shines,” says the Poet, and often is his gold complexion dimmed. This is one of the dim moments. The old boy is suffering from some kind of solar acne, called “coronal holes”, and on July 12 he apparently emitted a colossal flare — a cosmic spurt of X-rays and other charged particles; and, by a process that we (or at least I) do not fully understand — perhaps because rain droplets form more easily when there are charged particles around — this distemper in the celestial orb is helping to cause the current inundations.

For the sake of completeness, and so that no one can later accuse me of concealing the bad news (what did he know about the weather, and when did he know it?), I should say that Piers has a general thesis that the current phase of grim weather — cold, snowy winters and wet summers — is just the prelude to something yet more bracing. We are heading, he says, for a mini Ice Age. These wet Julys and frosty Januaries are part of the opening drum roll of a cold period that will set in over the next decades.

Some say it will be upon us by 2045, some say by 2030. Looking at the pattern of the last few years, Piers Corbyn now thinks it could be sooner than that. He does not say that sabretooth tigers will roam the streets of Newcastle. He does not say that the Thames will freeze at London Bridge and that we will have fairs on the ice — unlikely, given how fast the river flows these days. But he does believe that it will get nippier, and that we will see the kind of cold period last experienced in the late 17th century and early 18th century.

Aggressive target for India’s space program: Mars

Filed under: India, Space — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:53

In The Register, Phil Muncaster reports on what is rumoured to be the next stage of India’s space program:

Not to be outdone by China in the space race, India is set to flex its muscles on the world stage, planning a mission to Mars late next year.

K Radhakrishnan, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), told reporters on Saturday that there will be a definitive announcement on the scientific research-based project by the government soon.

“A lot of studies have been done on the possible mission to Mars. We have come to the last phase of approvals,” he said, according to Times of India.

The proposed Mars mission will apparently be focussed on the Red Planet’s origins and evolution, its climate and geography and whether life can be sustained there.

We’ll grant this petition, but only one condition…

Filed under: Britain, Europe, France, History, Humour — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:48

A French petition calls for the return of the British Crown Jewels to Angers, in compensation for the execution of the last Plantagenet pretender to the throne in 1499:

Angers, in the Loire valley, was the capital of Anjou province and the geographical base of the Plantagenets, who ruled England from 1154 until 1485, providing some of the most celebrated monarchs in British history, including Richard the Lionheart and Henry V.

But when Edward Plantagenet, the Earl of Warwick, was executed for treason in the Tower of London in 1499, the house’s legitimate male line came to an end. “As redress for the execution of Edward, Angers today demands that the Crown Jewels of England be transferred to Angers,” reads a petition posted on the city’s official website.

Recalling 25-year-old Edward’s “unfair and horrible death” at the hands of henchmen working for Henry VII, England’s first Tudor king, the city believes it is owed an apology and 513 years’ worth of compensation.

Tim Worstall explains the one condition under which Her Majesty should accept the French claim:

Happily stick the Crown Jewels in Angers.

Immediately after the union of the Angevin Empire with the United Kingdom.

We’ll have the Duchy of Normandy back too if you don’t mind. And Brittany (they are Bretons after all).

Francois Hollande can keep the Ile de France, the bit we didn’t have back then.

This time around let’s do European integration properly eh?

July 15, 2012

What’s a waste of $180 million among politicians?

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:09

Rex Murphy explains just why Ontarians are so justifiably cynical about politics and politicians:

Add all these up and I think we have a good notion of why politics are so little regarded, why so many politicians are abused or scorned and why public life holds so little invitation for those of delicate moral scruple, or a functioning conscience.

But now I’d like to add one particular item to that list: the Dalton McGuinty campaign’s decision to cancel an already-in-progress, contract-guaranteed gas-fired electricity plant outside Mississauga, Ont. It was cancelled, according to the current Ontario Energy Minister’s own words, by the Liberal campaign during the last election. (Everyone who is either sentient or not an absolute Liberal partisan — and pardon the redundancy — realizes that happened because opposition to the plant threatened a Liberal seat or two in the election.)

The cost of that “campaign” choice is now acknowledged to be $180-million.

Now if even a million of the amount had gone into some private pocket, or a bank account of someone close to the Ontario Liberals, the scandal would be nuclear. But because the money is merely wasted — because the whole $180-million just got thrown away, effectively doled out just for partisan advantage — people don’t quite reach white-hot anger.

But something else may be going on. People’s contempt for actions of this sort may be so deep that for a while it remains unspoken. Arrogance and self-interest on this level leaves most normal people speechless. They resign themselves to the sleaziness and corruption of the game. They learn to quietly despise politics. At that point, in a democracy, all are losers. And make no error: It was the Ontario Liberals this time, but once in power, every party, from the Tories to the Greens, is capable of acting in the same way.

Individual data points are less important than trends

Filed under: Environment, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:06

Remember the summer of 2001? It was a media feeding frenzy on the highly appropriate topic of sharks: shark attacks in US coastal waters were the third-most reported news item. But the media was calling attention to a “trend” of increasing shark attacks that didn’t actually exist. 2001 was actually a lower than average year for shark attacks. Warren Mayer explains the similarities between 2001’s “Summer of the Shark” and 2012’s heat wave:

This summer we have been absolutely bombarded with stories about the summer heat wave in the United States. The constant drumbeat of this coverage is being jumped on by many as evidence of catastrophic man-made global warming.

[. . .]

Trend, you say? Doesn’t a 100-year high temperature in and of itself imply warming? Certainly not. I believe this will prove to be an exaggeration, but for a moment let’s assume that this heat wave has created the hottest June in 100 years for half the Continental US. That seems pretty extreme, right? But the Continental US is about 2.5% of the world’s land mass. Just by math, in a stochastic system with a stable mean, a land area of this size somewhere should have a 100-year high month about five times a year! One data point about one small patch of the Earth having a hot month tells us nothing about trends.

[. . .]

What the Summer of the Shark needed, and what this summer’s US heatwave needs, is a little context. Specifically, if we are going to talk about supposed “trends”, then we should look at the data series in question over time. So let’s do so.

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