Quotulatiousness

August 19, 2019

UBI: threat or menace?

Filed under: Economics, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At Samizdata, Samizdata Illuminatus outlines the arguments for some form of Universal Basic Income (UBI) or Negative Income Tax (NIT) and argues that it’s a terrible idea that should not be implemented anywhere:

Cartoon that appeared with Michael K. Spencer’s article “Is Universal Basic Income really a solution?” at https://medium.com/@Michael_Spencer/is-universal-basic-income-really-a-solution-c0d6d95f100e

For those that are not familiar with the term, UBI (Universal Basic Income) means, roughly, “the government should guarantee everyone some minimum level of income whether they work or not”.

The notion began simply enough. Some economists observed that there are a myriad of intersecting government programs for the poor (in many countries, dozens) which distort behaviour in horrible ways and which cost a fortune in overhead to administer. This is where the problem of UBI begins, in the hubris of the armchair philosopher. “What if”, these economists asked, “we can’t get rid of the dole entirely (even though that would be better) but we could at least make it efficient by replacing the entire morass with a single program, say a negative income tax?”

Trained to explore ideas (no matter how bad) for a living, said academic economists then vigorously explored this impossible hypothetical world in which they could not get rid of the dole but could somehow get politicians to perfectly implement their hypothetical improved alternative, and proceeded to write lots of papers about it.

Again, this academic musing was already a utopian impossibility, for in the real world, there are interests that would act to block the elimination of existing welfare schemes and insist that the new scheme be added to the current ones rather than replacing them. This sort of thing is routine, of course; originally, VAT schemes were thought of by academic economists as a less distorting replacement for income taxes but ended up added in addition.

The interest groups arrayed against replacement of existing welfare schemes range from the bureaucrats whose job it is to administer said schemes (and who for whom “efficiency” means unemployment), to the vast range of contractors employed in providing benefits of one sort or another, to the politicians who get votes and power in exchange for largesse paid for with other people’s money, to the current recipients of existing benefit schemes who will correctly reason that the notion behind “efficiency” is not to increase their benefits. There’s no advantage in replacement for any member of the existing system, and thus, it was a non-starter to begin with.

This did not, however, prevent many people from falling in love with the idea, as wouldn’t-it-be-ever-so-elegant-if-it-could-happen so often trumps this-is-reality in the minds of those saying “what if” over a pint or seven late in the evening at the pub next to the economics department offices.

Oh, and of course, a form of the negative income tax was created in the United States under the name of the “earned income tax credit”; as might have been predicted in advance, it was added to existing welfare programs rather than in any way replacing them.

From this simple yet benighted beginning as a completely unrealistic thought experiment, the idea of UBI gained traction and then, as most cancers do, developed a mutant and even more virulent cell line, one that allowed it to spread and grow in the minds not only of leftists (who are already inclined towards redistribution of all sorts) but those on the right who are inclined to view ordinary people as useless.

We are now informed that UBI is a solution to a different problem as well. We are informed, in not-so-hushed tones, that the rise of new technologies like Artificial Intelligence will soon automate away most jobs, resulting in a vast class of people who will be unemployable in any trade whatsoever, which will consequently lead to mass unemployment, and that said permanently unemployable people will starve to death if we don’t find ways to provide them with income.

We are told we thus must guarantee a minimum income for all, without regard to whether they are capable of earning a living on their own, or we’ll have riots on our hands once AI based systems become ubiquitous. They claim that we should, nay, must, promise everyone some minimal subsistence income, whether they work or not. This will provide the masses with the ability to survive, and thus society will be preserved.

August 18, 2019

The Austrian School on the causes and cures of economic recessions

Filed under: Economics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Tim Worstall responds to a Guardian article on recessions (we’re apparently due for another one, according to the writer) and suggests that the Austrian theories may be helpful to understand what’s going on:

A Mises Institute graphic of some of the key economists in the Austrian tradition (Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Hans-Hermann Hoppe.
Mises Institute via Wikimedia Commons.

As a pencil sketch – all you can do in a single article – that’s rather good. So, fine, let’s run with that. We’ve not had a normal recession for ages, one will come along soon enough and we’ve forgotten how to deal with it.

However, we can take this idea a little further too. Off into the wild spaces of Austrian theory. There a recession happens because of the built up malinvestment across the economy. Essentially, when it’s too easy to finance stuff then too much bad stuff gets financed. We need the regular recession to flick off the froth and get back to a more sensible allocation of capital.

My own view is that there is no one correct macroeconomic theory but that all of them contain elements of the truth. The trick is to work out which theory to apply to which happenstance. Reorganising the Soviet economy wasn’t going to be done by a bit of Keynesian demand management, there was a century of misallocation to chew through. Getting out of 2008 was different because it was the financial system that had fallen over, we didn’t just have that cyclical decline in business investment. Etc. Austrians can – perish the thought, eh? – be a little too fervent in the insistence that all recessions are about misallocation that must be purged.

But note the underlying thing we can pick up from Davies here. We’ve been staving off that normal recession for decades through that management. Perhaps it’s not all that good an idea to continually do that? He really does say that the Crash stemmed from those attempts to stave off after all. Thus, in a sense, we could argue that we’re going to get the recessionary horrors come what may. Even Keynesian demand management might not be the correct solution if it just gives us once in a generation collapses rather than more regular downturns?

That is, perhaps the Austrians are at least in part right? We need the regular purges for fear of something worse?

QotD: “Hitting back” at protectionist policies

Filed under: Business, Economics, Government, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

You buy lawn-care services from company XYZ located on the other side of town. Your neighbor, Mr. Stump, takes it upon himself to hold you up at gunpoint to the tune of $25 each time you buy services from XYZ rather than from Stump’s teenage son. You are less powerful than Stump and, not being suicidal, you pay the “tariff” that he officiously demands. But Stump is a magnanimous fellow, and so he agrees to a deal with XYZ: Stump drops his tariffs on your purchases from XYZ in return for XYZ agreeing to raise the price it charges you by $15.

But soon a trade dispute erupts. Stump discovers – correctly, we can assume – that XYZ is charging you less for its lawn-care services than Stump agreed is acceptable for you to be charged and that XYZ agreed in the trade deal to charge. Stump, being a master negotiator, threatens to reimpose the $25 tariff on you unless and until XYZ raises the price it charges you to at least the level that Stump has divined is acceptable and that is enshrined in the terms of the trade agreement between him and XYZ. Alas, XYZ gives in and agrees to raise the price it charges you. Stump then boasts that, by not letting XYZ get away with breaking its word in the trade deal, he is not only protecting the neighborhood from dangerously low prices but is also upholding the sacred rule of law and the sanctity of contractual agreements.

Of course, in reality, Stump’s presumptuous exercise of the power to rob you impose a tariff on you whenever you engage in commerce that he finds objectionable is a wrong inflicted on you and on your trading partner, XYZ. The fact that the practicalities of the situation result in your and XYZ going along with the “deal” to entice Stump to stop robbing you each time you buy XYZ’s services does not ethically oblige you to stick to the terms of the deal if you can, in secret, get better terms from XYZ. When Stump threatens to reimpose on you the $25 tariff, he harms you. That is, when in response to Stump’s threat to reimpose the tariff XYZ agrees to abide by the terms of its trade agreement with Stump and raise the price that it charges you, you are made worse off, not better off.

Stump’s enforcement of this agreement, in short, does not protect you from further victimization in the future; instead, that enforcement is itself an act of victimizing you. Successful enforcement of this agreement assures you a future less prosperous than it would be were Stump instead to ignore XYZ’s “violation” of the deal.

Note: we can all agree that, between the two options (1) $25 tariff and (2) no tariff but an enforced price-hike, under the trade agreement, of $15, that the second option is better for you than the first option. It is in this limited sense that trade agreements in reality are beneficial. But there’s a third option: (3) Stump does not interfere with your commerce and you pay whatever price you negotiate with XYZ without that price being artificially affected by Stump’s interference. This third option is, for you, the best of the three – and it’s the only fully ethical one of the bunch. (So when Dan Griswold, myself, and other free-traders defend trade agreements, we do so with the realistic recognition that option (3) is politically infeasible. Given this unfortunate infeasibility of option (3), we endorse option (2) over option (1).)

Don Boudreaux, “Strict Enforcement of an Impoverishing Deal Assures Continuing Impoverishment”, Café Hayek, 2017-07-07.

August 16, 2019

The CO2-reduced future the elites want for the rest of us

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Europe, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Arthur Chrenkoff outlines the self-imposed hardship of a new Swedish MEP as he struggles to make his 24-hour weekly commute between Stockholm and Strasbourg (because he’s pretending that there are no flights between those two locations) and explains that it’s emblematic of the kind of future “our” leaders want all of us peasants to be living in the future:

Greta Thunberg at the EU Parliament, 16 April, 2019.
European Parliament photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Listen, I’m all for it; if people want to go back in time as a result of their own free choice that’s wonderful. At least these martyrs for Gaia are putting their money where their mouth is – on train as opposed to plane tickets. They are not being hypocrites, unlike the two hundred celebrities who came on 114 private jets and numerous superyachts to Google’s climate change summit in Sicily the other week. Even St Greta herself, the teenage idiot savant of the green movement, will be eschewing plane travel and going to the UN Climate Action Summit in New York in September on a zero-emission yacht. Want to suffer 24-hour Strasbourg-Stockholm regular commutes or a few weeks at sea between Europe and America so as not to sin again the planet, knock yourself out. My problem starts as soon as the environmental flagellanti decide it’s not enough that simply they care and want to start imposing their totalitarian solutions on everyone else.

[…]

This indeed seems to be the vision of an ecommunist utopia now increasingly on offer from its vocal and influential supporters:

  • As Thunberg herself declares in her musical collaboration with the Brit pop band The 1975 released last month (all proceeds to the pests of Extinction Rebellion who have a tendency to glue themselves to busy intersections): it’s “time to rebel” and for “civil disobedience” … “We have to acknowledge that the older generations have failed, all political movements in their current form have failed, but Homo sapiens have not yet failed … Now is not the time for speaking politely. Now is the time to speak clearly.”
  • David Runciman, politics professor at Cambridge University: “If electoral democracy is inadequate to the task of addressing climate change, and the task is the most urgent one humanity faces, then other kinds of politics are urgently needed … Channeling more energy into these other forms of democracy — into citizens’ assemblies and civil disobedience, rather than elections and party-building — will change our politics drastically. But it may be the only way to ensure our planet does not change beyond recognition.”
  • Greenpeace: “We’re not advocating that everyone adopt a ‘meatless’ diet tomorrow. But we all must develop “meat consciousness” and reduce the level of meat in our diets. Shifting to more plant-based foods is essential to combatting climate change, soil, air and water pollution, ocean dead zones, and myriad other problems caused by industrial livestock production.” Sentiments echoed this week by UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
  • And don’t even mention Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal.

This is the future according to eco-warriors: anti-democratic, anti-growth and prosperity, with your options on everything from how (and if) you travel to what you eat restricted by your moral betters.

As my more favourite Scandinavian, Bjorn Lomborg, wrote recently:

    This year, the world will spend $US162 billion ($230bn) subsidising renewable energy, propping up inefficient industries and supporting middle-class homeowners to erect solar panels, according to the International Energy Agency. In addition, the Paris Agreement on climate change will cost the world from $US1 trillion to $US2 trillion a year by 2030. Astonishingly, neither of these hugely expensive policies will have any measurable impact on temperatures by the end of the century …

    Global warming is a real, man-made problem — but it is just one of many challenges facing humanity. We shouldn’t base our policy decisions on Hollywood movies or on scare scenarios but on the facts. According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, even if we did absolutely nothing to respond to global warming, the total impact by the 2070s will be the equivalent to a 0.2 per cent to 2 per cent loss in average income. That’s a challenge that requires our attention — but it’s far from the end of the world …

    Despite costing a fortune, the Paris Agreement will have virtually no impact on global temperatures. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has estimated that even if every country makes every single carbon cut suggested in the Paris treaty to the fullest extent, CO2 emissions would be cut by only 1 per cent of what would be needed to keep temperature rises under 2C. Incurring an annual $US1 trillion cost while failing to rein in temperature rises is a very poor idea.

August 12, 2019

Australia’s government broadband fiasco might be a useful lesson for Senator Warren

Filed under: Australia, Business, Economics, Government, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the race for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination, Senator Elizabeth Warren recently proposed a government-provided broadband rollout across the United States to compete with or supplant the existing private ISPs. Arthur Chrenkoff suggests that looking at Australia’s experience with a very similar plan might encourage her to abandon her proposal after a brief airing on the campaign trail:

Senator Elizabeth Warren speaking at the Iowa Democrats Hall of Fame Celebration in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on 9 June, 2019.
Photo by Lorie Shaull via Wikimedia Commons.

Maybe Senator Warren should have a pow-wow first with IT experts from Australia, who could enlighten her about our country’s 12-years-and-counting saga of the National Broadband Network, a Labor government initiative that the -then leader of the opposition, Tony Abbott, described as “a white elephant on a massive scale” but later adopted and continued while in government.

It started in 2007 as a policy for a government-rolled out broadband network, in most areas duplicating internet services already provided by private sector providers (mainly through the existing copper wire telephony network), which would be available as an option to all Australian households. In most cases it would be achieved through wired technology (fibre to the premises, later downgraded to a cheaper fibre to the node) with a satellite connection available to the most remote areas where cabling was impractical.

I remember thinking then that the project was an absurd waste of taxpayers’ money for a service of the type that telecommunication companies would be able and willing to provide in any case. At most, there was an argument that the government could step in and provide the infrastructure in some country areas where there was no commercial case for the private providers to proceed. Call me a clairvoyant but it was pretty clear to me that “broadband for all” would take a lot longer to roll out that planned, would cost significantly more than initially budgeted, and would very likely be technologically obsolete by the time it was finished.

August 10, 2019

QotD: Progressives and spontaneous order

Filed under: Economics, Government, Liberty, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I suspect that the single biggest factor that distinguishes “Progressives” from libertarians and free-market conservatives is the simple fact that “Progressives” do not begin to grasp the reality of spontaneous order. “Progressives” seem unable to appreciate the reality that productive and complex economic and social orders not only can, but do, emerge unplanned from the countless local decisions of individuals each pursuing his or her own individual plans. Therefore, “Progressives” naturally adopt a creationist view of society and of the economy: without a conscious and visible (and well-intentioned) guiding hand, society and the economy cannot possibly work very well. Indeed, it seems that for many (most?) “Progressives,” the idea that a spontaneously ordered economy can work better than one directed consciously from above – or, indeed, that a spontaneously ordered economy can work at all – is so absurd that when “Progressives” encounter people who oppose “Progressive” schemes for regulating the economy, “Progressives” instantly and with great confidence conclude that their opponents are either stupid or, more often, evil cronies for the rich and the powerful.

Conduct an on-going experiment: whenever well-meaning “Progressives” (of which there are very many) propose this government intervention or oppose that policy of reducing government’s role in the economy, ask if these “Progressives'” stated reasons can be understood to be nothing more than a reflection of a failure to understand the power and range of spontaneous-ordering forces in private-property settings. The answer will almost always be “yes.” Very often, no further explanation for “Progressives'” policy stances is necessary.

“Progressives” simply don’t “get” spontaneous order in human society. They see a problem and leap to the only conclusion that for them is sensible – namely, that that problem’s only realistic “solution” is that it be directly addressed by government officials. Indeed, even “Progressives'” frequent misdiagnoses of the results of trade-offs as being “problems” (or “market failures”) reflect a failure to understand spontaneous-ordering processes. Many phenomena and patterns that “Progressives” assume to be problems – for example, increasing inequality of monetary incomes – are often the benign results of the countless and nuanced individual trade-offs made by individuals. For “Progressives,” though, these “outcomes” are often assumed to be the consequence of sinister designs.

Don Boudreaux, “Bonus Quotation of the Day…”, Café Hayek, 2017-06-24.

August 6, 2019

English has become what Esperanto was designed to be

Filed under: Economics, History — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

As a teen, I was quite curious about Esperanto … enough that I ended up buying several books in the language and making a few semi-serious attempts to develop fluency. I still have those books in my library, but I never actually achieved any firm grasp of Esperanto. It was the most successful of a number of attempts to create a universal second language, intended to allow people to communicate with others who did not speak their primary tongue. When I was young, I also believed that this was a way to reduce inter-cultural frictions and in at least a small way to lower the risks of war between nations. As I got older and more cynical, I realized that Douglas Adams probably had the truth of it in describing the Babel Fish from his novels:

Anatomy of the Babel Fish as explained in the BBC TV series.

The Babel fish is small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier, but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.

[…]

Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.

All that aside, Douglas Todd points out that despite all of its manifold complexities, the English language is actually taking on the role that Esperanto and other artificial languages were intended to do:

I recently travelled to the home of Ludwik Zamenhof, the Russian-Polish Jew who in 1873 invented Esperanto. It was intended to become the world’s first universal language.

Hoping it would end wars, Warsaw-based Zamenhof dreamed Esperanto would encourage people to come together under a common language. He thought that kind of connection would help overcome the distrust that can be exacerbated by the globe’s multi-language Tower of Babel.

Zamenhof’s vision of a common language caught on for hundreds of thousands. I have met people in Poland, South America and elsewhere who learned Esperanto as children. But, needless to say, the cause of Esperanto is now virtually lost.

Whether we like it or not, English is on the road to become the world’s lingua franca.

It is not the world’s most spoken language — that’s Mandarin. But English is arguably the language most commonly adopted as the medium of communication between speakers whose native languages are different.

I know I’m not the only Canadian who has travelled — in my case to Indonesia, Argentina, Denmark, Spain, Poland, Brazil, Turkey, Germany and elsewhere — and witnessed a collection of multilingual speakers suddenly revert to English, even if awkwardly, as they seek a shared way to talk.

It is a thing to behold. It is humbling.

As a native English speaker, I am not proud to say I only know about 1,500 words of French that I have trouble putting together in a meaningful way. I’m intimidated by new languages, whereas many friends and family are polyglots. So, for that matter, are most Europeans, where 97 per cent of 13-year-olds now study English.

It rarely ceases to amaze me when disparate multilingual people around the world show me and others their respect (and perhaps their pity) by speaking in English. Of course, most of them also like the chance to practise the language, since they know it is a key to new vistas.

August 1, 2019

What Is Money?

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

Marginal Revolution University
Published on 18 Jul 2017

That may seem like a really simple question, but it’s actually kind of complicated. Paper bills and coins, or currency, is obviously money. But it doesn’t end there.

Technically, “money” is anything that is a widely accepted means of payment. This has changed throughout history. Once upon a time, cattle could be considered money. Or cowry shells. Today, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are being added to the mix.

Given that there’s no set definition for what makes a commodity money, there are a few measurements for the U.S. money supplies. The first, MB (or “monetary base”) measures currency and reserve deposits. This is what the Fed has the most direct control over.

Our next stop will be fractional reserve banking and the money multiplier.

QotD: Small government provides little scope for special interest lobbying

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

When a government is small, it can provide very limited benefits to special interest groups, so there is a small incentive for special interest groups to lobby the government. The successes of those that do lobby the government will cause the government to grow. This occurs because the great majority of voters and taxpayers are rationally ignorant about most government activity, making it easy to increase everybody’s taxes a small amount to provide a sizable benefit to a few. Most people do not have an incentive to investigate in detail the allocation of their tax dollars, but the special interest groups with the sizable benefit will repay the representatives with political support. Thus, special interest groups cause government growth.

The growth of government, in turn, raises the payoff available to special interest groups. With a higher payoff to special interest groups, this encourages the formation of new special interest groups to share in the payoff. A larger government can support a larger number of special interest groups. Thus, as government grows, more special interest groups form. The formation of special interest groups in turn increases the demand for special interest legislation, cause a further growth in government spending.

Randy Holcombe, An Economic Analysis of Democracy, 1985.

July 31, 2019

The quickest way to raise the real income of minimum wage earners

Filed under: Britain, Business, Economics, Government — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Tim Worstall explains how to quickly raise the living standards of everyone in Britain earning the minimum wage, without costing employers any more:

I – Tim Worstall that is – then started pointing out that the difference between this living wage and the minimum wage was the amount of tax that we – shamefully – charge to the low paid. Tax being both income tax and national insurance contributions. In fact, I rather shouted about it around the place, at the ASI, and here in The Times in 2012.

    The gross annual salary of a full-time worker on the minimum wage is £12,070.50. We could come close to lifting every low-paid worker out of poverty if we simply increased the personal tax allowance from £8,105 to that sum. Not a penny of income tax or NICs should leave their pay packet. A full-time worker, however, on the living wage would be taking home £12,410.74, after the taxman has taken a cut — that’s only £340 more. And before the Foundation uprated the living wage yesterday, the annual difference was just £8.74.

    There are problems. Raising the personal allowance gives everyone a tax cut — which I’ll admit doesn’t break my heart. But we could lower the amount at which the higher rates of tax kick in to make up for that lost revenue. And won’t these workers lose their right to unemployment benefit and a pension, if they don’t pay NICs? No, they qualify already, as the system treats the very low paid as if they had made NI contributions. We should go farther. The link between the full-year minimum wage and the personal allowance for tax and NI should be made explicit. Change one and the government of the day must change the other. If the minimum wage is the minimum moral amount that someone’s labour is worth, then that is what they should get, not the amount after Denis MacShane’s European wanderings have been paid for.

    Which leaves us with two competing visions of how everyone can be free of poverty pay. The Living Wage Campaign’s vision is to shout at every employer in the country until they give in. The Worstall Way is to increase the incomes of the working poor by stopping taxing them.

Federal NDP and Greens duel on climate platforms

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Environment, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Colby Cosh looks at the two most environmentally conscious federal parties’ climate change stances as we head into the next general election:

Federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh taking part in a Pride Parade in June 2017 (during the leadership campaign).
Photo via Wikimedia.

So why are our most radical, eco-aware parties so easily distracted on this front? Jagmeet Singh’s New Democrats talk tough on climate change in their “Power to Change” plan. It is maximum urgency right out of the gate in the preamble. “People across Canada are worried about the future.” True enough! They usually are! “Flooding and forest fires are threatening our homes.” Well, speak for yourself, but OK. “Polluted air and water are hitting communities hard.” Wait, polluted water…? Wasn’t this supposed to be a climate change thing? “And rising temperatures are threatening our farming and forestry industries.” Oh, good, back on track! “It’s clear there’s no time to waste.”

There is a whole load of radical measures in the NDP program, but they cannot resist this tendency to drag in grace notes of economic nationalism and other subjects at best vaguely related. They promise to “make it easier to own a zero-emission vehicle” in Canada, which might help with the Big Problem, but in mid-sentence they remember that they’re in hock to organized labour and add “and make sure those cars are made in Canada.” This means that if the price of a Tesla comes down to $500 tomorrow, you’ll still have to buy the carbon-neutral modern equivalent of a Bricklin, assuming someone can be found to try building one. Shouldn’t we be willing to buy zero-emission vehicles from Zanzibar or Antarctica if that’s the most efficient way, or the only way, to upgrade the fleet?

The document also smuggles in a promise to eliminate single-use plastic products, which take carbon from the bowels of Mother Earth and… restore it thither in landfills, with the evil molecules usefully imprisoned in polymer chains. We’ll be replacing all that plastic, presumably, with metal cutlery (from mines) and cloth bags (from forests) that have to be washed in hot water if you happen to be particular. There is no hint that this is an incongruous or irrelevant part of a climate-change plan.

So, perhaps a bit of mixed messaging there, as the NDP have to trim their sails in odd ways to keep some of their constituencies in line. How about the Green Party then?

Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May with Green candidate Christ Tindal in 2008.
Photo by Shaun Merritt via Wikimedia Commons.

The Green list of climate-change policies is much more radical and earnest in appearance; Elizabeth May’s political liquidators intend to abolish internal-combustion vehicles by 2040 (such dates are no longer sci-fi, oldies) and retrofit every single building in the country for carbon neutrality by 2030.

But what, as the University of Alberta energy economist Andrew Leach asked in a CBC editorial on Monday, is this about “ending all imports of foreign oil”? This autarkic flake out flies in the face of the Greens’ entire approach; some of the oil we produce here is (please imagine me whispering this part) somewhat carbon-intensive relative to the stuff Eastern Canada takes from elsewhere in the world. Moreover, increasing use of domestic oil even in the short term implies a pretty major program of, uh, pipeline-building.

Not to mention the new refineries. The Green Climate Change War Cabinet (a real thing they want) would permit “investment in upgraders to turn Canadian solid bitumen into gas, diesel, propane and other products for the Canadian market, providing jobs in Alberta.” By 2050, they envision shifting “all Canadian bitumen from fuel to feedstock for the petrochemical industry.” This adds up to an awful lot of subsidized high-tech construction — executed at the same time as a total retrofit of the national housing stock! — that has nothing much to do with reducing emissions per se. Although it sounds as though the Greens are, if nothing else, definitely much bigger fans of plastic than the New Democrats.

July 30, 2019

QotD: Business versus economics

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

There often occurred to me the difference between the Professor of Economics and the business man, as judged by their financial success. The business man may not perhaps be on the same intellectual plane as the professor, but he bases his ideas on real facts and puts the whole power of his will behind their realisation. The professor, on the other hand, often has a false conception of reality and although perhaps having more ideas, is neither able nor anxious to carry them out; the fact that he has them is satisfaction enough. And so the business man has the greater financial success.

Erwin Rommel, edited by B.H. Liddell Hart in The Rommel Papers, 1953.

July 27, 2019

The US Economy is About to Crash Hard | Between 2 Wars | 1929 Part 1 of 3

Filed under: Economics, History, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published on 25 Jul 2019

In 1929 it’s been nothing but growth for the US economy for years, at least if you judge by the New York Stock Exchange. But all that glitters is not gold, and when the gilding comes off this bubble it sinks like a lead ballon.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Francis van Berkel
Produced and directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Edited by: Daniel Weiss
Sound Mix by: Iryna Dulka

Archive by: Reuters/Screenocean http://www.screenocean.com

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH

From the comments:

TimeGhost History
3 hours ago (edited)
Now… ladies and gents – this is not a video about 2019 and we are not making any political statements. We know that some of you love making parallels between the present day and historical events. Although we can learn from history, try to remember that the circumstances were very different. Others among you feel it appropriate to extend partisan conflicts backwards and make out our videos, or events in the videos as partisan statements or issues. First of all we simply don’t do that, we just relate the events and the circumstances as factually as possible with the best possible sources. Second of all it is pointless to look for the 2019 partisan left/right divide according to party lines in events that happened 90 years ago. There’s just no comparison as both reality, and political parties have gone through so much change that the members of the same party, from today and then would probably disagree so vehemently on so many points the they would not even understand each other. So please, try your best to not go off on partisan rants, as it distracts form the actual historical issues at hand

July 26, 2019

Post-Brexit, consider CANZUK

Filed under: Australia, Britain, Cancon, Economics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Tom Colsey explains why in a post-Brexit world, CANZUK might be an attractive economic alternative:

One possible option would mean the island nation would initially turn away from Europe toward certain anglophone Commonwealth nations and former colonies. I talk, of course, of the promising CANZUK proposal that would see Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom band together with voluntary agreements on multilateral free trade and movement, forming a bloc that would singularly hold the third largest nominal GDP in the world.

The Free Movement Proposal

What makes CANZUK unique is how viable and well-thought-out it is on every level. Unlike within the EU, the grouping would not be consolidated through impositional treaties laced with unpleasant footnotes delegating political power to a bureaucratic institution. Freedom of movement would assist meeting labor market demands across the countries, yet this would be prohibited to those with serious criminal records.

Everything the EU seemed to get wrong about forming unions under a liberal-internationalist pretense, CANZUK proposals seem to get right. They account for social attitudes and the dangers of becoming impositional, eroding national sovereignty. Free movement within the European Union had been widely reviled by the domestic population — and is part of the reason Britain now is set to leave. Yet the very same population overwhelmingly favor the same principle, alternatively implemented, across the CANZUK nations, polling outright majorities in favor in every region.

Perhaps a reason for this is that while the nations are extremely close culturally, they are also resoundingly similar socio-economically. Despite their distances, the states could have been separated at birth (of course, they do share the same monarch).

July 25, 2019

Monetary Policy and the Federal Reserve

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

Marginal Revolution University
Published on 11 Jul 2017

Spider-Man fans likely recall Uncle Ben advising his nephew, Peter Parker, that “With great power, comes great responsibility.”

As it turns out, that sage wisdom is also pretty applicable to the U.S. Federal Reserve System (aka the Fed). The Fed Chairperson, currently Janet Yellen, may not shoot webs out of her wrists, but she and the organization she represents have some super powers over our money supply.

The Fed also has quite a few limitations – monetary policy can only do so much. We’ve previously covered the quantity theory of money and long- and short-run economic growth. If you think back to those videos, you’ll remember that an increase in the money supply (which, in the U.S., is controlled by the Fed) only affects growth in the short-run. Even then, it’s often not smooth sailing.

In this video, we’ll give you an introduction to the function of the Fed as well as some of the problems it faces, and raise the question, “What is money?”

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress