The entire aim of having trade is so that we can go buy those lovely things made by foreigners. We only export so as to be able to swap something for those foreign made goods. Thus tariffs are a bad idea to begin with — why should we tax ourselves for gaining access to the very point of our having trade in the first place? Sadly all too many don’t grasp this point. Too many of them being in the current Trump Administration.
Over and above the general point that we don’t want to limit trade nor imports there’s another worry with tariffs and trade wars. Which is what the International Monetary Fund is complaining about. The imposition of more tariffs is a disruption to that global economy. One that is going to reduce growth, the very thing we all desire.
Tim Worstall, “IMF Says The U.S. And China Trade Tariffs Are A Major Risk To World Growth”, Seeking Alpha, 2019-06-07.
July 9, 2019
QotD: Tariffs
July 8, 2019
Bench heights and planing technique | Paul Sellers
Paul Sellers
Published on 11 Jan 2014Do you need a low bench height to bear down on your work when planing? Or should a sharp plane pull itself to task? See what Paul Sellers thinks.
We posted this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8FLl…) video the day before this one but we had a comment saying that the same would not be possible with the board level. Hopefully this will show that that is not the case.
To find out more about Paul Sellers and the projects he is involved with go to http://paulsellers.com
Bitcoin and its successors lack one thing that Libra has
Andrew Coyne on cryptocurrencies:
“Bitcoin – from WSJ”by MarkGregory007 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Sign of the times: the convenience store in my block of mid-town Toronto has installed, in addition to the usual fare of milk, cigarettes and magazines, an ATM dispensing bitcoins. Customers insert their debit cards and buy bitcoin, which they can then use to … to …
To do what, exactly, that they could not do with regular money? Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency — there are now dozens of competitors — has always struck me as a solution in search of a problem. Its chief selling point, the anonymity made possible by its system of ultra-encrypted peer-to-peer transactions, unmediated by the banking system and beyond reach of the regulators, would seem of most appeal to two groups: crooks and cranks.
Oh, and a third: speculators. The price of cryptocurrencies has tended to fluctuate wildly — having fallen to a third of its peak against the U.S. dollar last year, Bitcoin has tripled in value so far in 2019. Cryptocurrencies are unlikely to achieve widespread use as mediums of exchange so long as they fail to fulfil one of money’s other primary functions, as stores of value.
The Wild West reputation the privately issued currencies have acquired — one of the most popular, Dogecoin, was invented by a 26-year-old Australian in 2013 as a joke — will be one of the early hurdles confronting Facebook’s recent entry into the field. The company hopes its 2.4 billion users will soon be buying goods and services from each other with Libra, as the proposed digital currency is called, wherever on earth either party may happen to be.
And yet Libra differs from Bitcoin and its ilk in several important ways. One, while it makes use of the same blockchain encryption technology as Bitcoin to ensure the security of payments, it is not based on the same anarchic premise.
In contrast to Bitcoin’s unsupervised, massively distributed, “permissionless” network, Libra will operate, at least initially, via Facebook’s Messenger and WhatsApp platforms, which are very much subject to its control. The company, and the others it has recruited as partners — names like Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal — are likewise highly visible targets of regulatory oversight, and indeed have signalled they intend to work with national banking regulators.
Dicing an Onion by Chef Jean Pierre
ChefJeanPierre
Published on 5 Jan 2012Do you struggle trying to dice an onion? Chef Jean Pierre shows you the easiest way to dice an onion without shedding a tear.
QotD: Orwell on capitalism versus socialism
Orwell’s press card portrait, 1943
No one can question the dirtiness of international politics from 1870 onwards: it does not follow that it would have been a good thing to allow the German army to rule Europe. It is just possible that some rather sordid transactions are going on behind the scenes now, and that current propaganda “against Nazism” (cf. “against Prussian militarism”) will look pretty thin in 1970, but Europe will certainly be a better place if Hitler and his followers are removed from it. Between them these two books sum up our present predicament. Capitalism leads to dole queues, the scramble for markets, and war. Collectivism leads to concentration camps, leader worship, and war. There is no way out of this unless a planned economy can somehow be combined with the freedom of the intellect, which can only happen if the concept of right and wrong is restored to politics.
Both of these writers are aware of this, more or less; but since they can show no practicable way of bringing it about the combined effect of their books is a depressing one.
George Orwell, “The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek / The Mirror of the Past by K. Zilliacus”, Observer, 1944-04-09.
July 7, 2019
Joan of Arc – The Mad King – Extra History – #1
Extra Credits
Published on 6 Jul 2019Before we can really get into Joan of Arc’s life, we have to get a bit into the civil war between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs. Time for some royal family drama with King Charles VI’s madness and Queen Isabeau’s friend Louis.
Follow us on Instagram: http://bit.ly/ECisonInstagram
Join us on Patreon! http://bit.ly/EHPatreon
Does this sound like your gym?
Instapundit linked to this older Sean Kelly article about the “Planet Fitness” chain of health clubs. According to him, it’s even less pretty than you might have thought:
“Planet Fitness”by JeepersMedia is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Here’s what you need to know…
- Planet Fitness: The gym for people who don’t really want to get in shape, owned by people who really can’t afford for the members to be there.
- A survey of over 20 different Planet Fitness locations in 12 different states revealed that they provide no nutritional guidance. They do however supply candy and pizza.
- Planet Fitness seems to promise that health and fitness will ultimately be comfortable and not involve any real effort.
- Planet Fitness is a big, purple-colored adult daycare marketed to people afraid to go to an actual gym.
- Many Planet Fitness members do want to make progress of course, but the gym’s own rules and operating guidelines seem to dissuade this.
Do the Brits hate the French?! – WW2 – 045 – July 6 1940
World War Two
Published on 6 Jul 2019The repercussions of the fall of France are not yet seen in full. But this week Britain makes it clear it isn’t about to give up, even if it will mean some really hard decisions.
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tvFollow WW2 day by day on Instagram @World_war_two_realtime https://www.instagram.com/world_war_t…
Join our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/D6D2aYN.
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sourcesWritten and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Produced and Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Research by: Indy Neidell
Post production director: Wieke Kapteijns
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Map animations: EastoryColorisations by Daniel Weiss, Norman Stewart and Julius Jääskeläinen https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/
Eastory’s channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEly…
Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.Sources:
WM: H 4610, A 3589
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
Jacques Mulard
Colorization of Göring by Klimbim
Romanian National ArchivesA TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
Cancelling student loans would be a really, really bad economic move
Art Carden explains why cancelling outstanding student loan debt — despite its huge popularity on the campaign trail — would be a very bad idea:
University College, University of Toronto, 31 July, 2008.
Photo by “SurlyDuff” via Wikimedia Commons.
It’s one of the rules of electoral success: advocate policies that concentrate the benefits on an easy-to-identify interest group (preferably one that is sympathetic in the public eye) and disperse the costs onto the entire electorate. It’s how we get Coke sweetened with corn syrup rather than actual sugar. It’s also how we get proposals to cancel student loans. As my AIER colleague Will Luther points out, the fact that two of the Democratic frontrunners have made debt cancellation such an important part of their campaigns suggests that the issue is going to be with us for a while.
But would it be a good idea to cancel student debt? And importantly, how does even the prospect of canceled student debt affect people’s incentives?
Regressive Tax
First, let’s consider the quality of the policy. A lot of commentators are pointing out that it’s fundamentally regressive, meaning that we’re basically taxing the poor to pay the rich. As economist Alexander William Salter puts it in the Dallas Morning News, it’s
a transfer of wealth to those with relatively high levels of expected lifetime income, at the expense of those with relatively lower levels of expected lifetime income.
The idea might have some merit, but it will make wealth and income inequality worse rather than better.
Even saying that the idea might have some merit is perhaps too charitable. In 2011, economist Justin Wolfers called it the “Worst. Idea. Ever.” in a Freakonomics post. Why? First, there’s the distributional effect. If we’re going to have policies that transfer wealth from one group to another, it doesn’t make much sense to transfer wealth from taxpayers generally to high-income college graduates. As Will Luther and so many others have pointed out, a college degree brings spectacular financial returns. As a group, college graduates aren’t “needy” by any reasonable definition.
Granatbuchse GrB-39 Antitank Rifle
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 29 Aug 2015http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
Hammer price: $13,000
Like most countries, Germany had a standard-issue antitank rifle when World War II began — the Panzerbuchse 39. It fired an 8 x 94mm cartridge with a small very high velocity armor-piercing bullet. And like the other AT rifles from the 1930s, the PzB-39 became obsolete quickly as tank armor improved during the war. However, while most countries simply scrapped their antitank rifles, the Germans opted instead to convert the guns into dedicated grenade launchers.
Because the PzB-39 was already designed for a very high pressure cartridge, it was ideally suited to handle the stresses of firing large anti-tank grenades. Rather than relying on simple kinetic energy to penetrate, the grenades could use shaped charge technology to be vastly more effective than AP bullets.
In converting the PzB-39 into the GrB-39, the barrels were cut down, grenade launching cups attached to the muzzles, new sights designed for grenade use, bipods lengthened, and the folding stocks were fixed in place. Most of the PzB-39 rifles in service were subject to these modifications, and the resulting GrB-39 guns were able to be reasonably effective through the end of the war.
QotD: Speaking for the dead
Ask the men and women who stood on top of the Trade Center. Ask them and they will tell you: pass this amendment.
Unlike Congressman Cunningham, I wouldn’t presume to speak for those who died atop the World Trade Center. For one thing, citizens of more than 50 foreign countries, from Argentina to Zimbabwe, were killed on 9/11. Of the remainder, maybe some would be in favor of a flag-burning amendment; and maybe some would think that criminalizing disrespect for national symbols is unworthy of a free society. And maybe others would roll their eyes and say that, granted it’s been clear since about October 2001 that the Federal legislature has nothing useful to contribute to the war on terror and its hacks and poseurs prefer to busy themselves with a lot of irrelevant grandstanding with a side order of fries, they could at least quit dragging us into it.
And maybe a few would feel as many of my correspondents did last week about the ridiculous complaints of “desecration” of the Koran by US guards at Guantanamo – that, in the words of one reader, “it’s not possible to ‘torture’ an inanimate object”.
That alone is a perfectly good reason to object to a law forbidding the “desecration” of the flag. For my own part, I believe that, if someone wishes to burn a flag, he should be free to do so. In the same way, if Democrat Senators want to make speeches comparing the US military to Nazis and the Khmer Rouge, they should be free to do so. It’s always useful to know what people really believe.
Mark Steyn, “The Advantage of Knowing What People Really Think”, SteynOnline, 2017-06-14 (originally published in The Chicago Sun-Times, 2005-06-26).
July 6, 2019
JourneyQuest Four – Now on Kickstarter!
Zombie Orpheus Entertainment
Published on 5 Jul 2019Campaign ends July 12, 2019. Pledge at http://kck.st/2EEFIY3
Missing new ZOE content? Watch for free on our new platform: http://thefantasy.network
New shows include….
• The Gamers: The Shadow Menace
• Strowlers (Three new episodes!)
• JourneyQuest Season 3.5
• Demon Hunters: Slice of Life
• And more!Want to share your thoughts? Join us on Discord (https://discordapp.com/invite/fhPckP7)
Putting global worker pay into perspective
Tim Worstall explains why the headline-friendly numbers in a recent ILO report are nothing to be surprised at:
“Nearly half of all global pay is scooped up by only 10% of workers, according to the International Labour Organization, while the lowest-paid 50% receive only 6.4%.
“The lowest-paid 20% – about 650 million workers – get less than 1% of total pay, a figure that has barely moved in 13 years, ILO analysis found. It used labour income figures from 189 countries between 2004 and 2017, the latest available data.
“A worker in the top 10% receives $7,445 a month (£5,866), while a worker in the bottom 10% gets only $22. The average pay of the bottom half of the world’s workers is $198 a month.”
[…]
The explanation? To be in the top 10% of the global pay distribution you need to be making around and about minimum wage in one of the rich countries. Via another calculation route, perhaps median income in those rich countries. No, that £5,800 is the average of all the top 10%.
Note that this is in USD. About £2,000 a month puts you in the second decile, that’s about UK median income of 24,000 a year.
And as it happens about 20% of the people around the world are in one of the already rich countries. So, above median in a rich country and we’re there. Our definition of rich here not quite extending as far as all of the OECD countries even. Western Europe – plus offshoots like Oz and NZ, North America, Japan, S. Korea and, well, there’s not much else. Sure, it’s not exactly 10% of the people there but it’s not hugely off either.
So, what is it that these places have in common? They’ve been largely free market, largely capitalist, economies for more than a few decades. The most recent arrival, S. Korea, only just managing that few decades. It is also true that nowhere that hasn’t been such is in that listing. It’s even true that nowhere that is such hasn’t made it – not that we’d go to the wall for that last insistence although it’s difficult to think of places that breach that condition.
History Summarized: Hong Kong
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published on 5 Jul 2019Sometimes small corners of the map can have outsized effects on the surrounding world. Hong Kong is undoubtedly one of History’s greatest examples of big things coming from small beginnings. If you’re curious about Hong Kong’s current political situation, there’s no better place to start than at the beginning.
LEARN MORE about Hong Kong’s current events:
China is Erasing its border with HK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQyxG…
HK’s huge protests, explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_Rdn…Further Historical Reading:
A Modern History of China — Steve Tsang https://www.amazon.com/Modern-History…PATREON: https://www.Patreon.com/OSP
