World War Two
Published 25 Dec 2021The Soviet offensive Operation Mars is over; it has failed, but Operation Little Saturn has been such a success that the Axis are forced to cancel their own Operation, Winter Storm, which was to relieve the troops trapped in Stalingrad. They remain trapped because Adolf Hitler has now forbidden them from trying to break out. The Allies run into tough Axis defense in both Tunisia and on Guadalcanal, and a French bigwig is assassinated.
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December 26, 2021
A Red Christmas – WW2 – 174 – December 25, 1942
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Repost – The market failure of Christmas
Not to encourage miserliness and general miserability at Christmastime, but here’s a realistic take on the deadweight loss of Christmas gift-giving:
Christmas gifts under the tree.
Photo by Kelvin Kay via Wikimedia Commons.
In strict economic terms, the most efficient gift is cold, hard cash, but exchanging equivalent sums of money lacks festive spirit and so people take their chance on the high street. This is where the market fails. Buyers have sub-optimal information about your wants and less incentive than you to maximise utility. They cannot always be sure that you do not already have the gift they have in mind, nor do they know if someone else is planning to give you the same thing. And since the joy is in the giving, they might be more interested in eliciting a fleeting sense of amusement when the present is opened than in providing lasting satisfaction. This is where Billy Bass comes in.
But note the reason for this inefficient spending. Resources are misallocated because one person has to decide what someone else wants without having the knowledge or incentive to spend as carefully as they would if buying for themselves. The market failure of Christmas is therefore an example of what happens when other people spend money on our behalf. The best person to buy things for you is you. Your friends and family might make a decent stab at it. Distant bureaucrats who have never met us — and who are spending other people’s money — perhaps can’t.
So when you open your presents next week and find yourself with another garish tie or an awful bottle of perfume, consider this: If your loved ones don’t know you well enough to make spending choices for you, what chance does the government have?
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You Suck at Christmas – You Suck at Cooking (episode 28)
You Suck At Cooking
Published 23 Dec 2015A 100 percent full throttle high adrenaline speed chase through the history of christmas.
Wishing you all a great close to your year!
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QotD: Boxing Week Sales
I’ve done a few tours of duty behind a cash register. The job takes your soul, twists it like a wet chamois and runs it through the shredders they use to turn car hoods into tinfoil strips. […] When I lived out east, the relationship between cashier and customer was the same as that between a German gunner and the troops disembarking at Normandy.
James Lileks, “Backfence: Beyond new store’s hype, genuine smiles”, Minneapolis Star Tribune, 2004-08-03.
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