Quotulatiousness

February 25, 2012

Burger King latest corporation to pull out of UK work experience program

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:14

The British government’s work experience program for unemployed would-be workers loses another employer:

The fast food giant said it had decided to cease its involvement in the Get Britain Working programme because of recent concerns expressed by the public.

The scheme has attracted growing criticism in recent weeks with opponents describing it as a form of slave labour because young people worked for nothing, while keeping their benefits.

Burger King said it had registered for the programme six weeks ago intending to take on young people for work experience at its Slough headquarters, but had not recruited anyone.

It sounds like the program was well intended — allowing people without work experience to at least have something to put down on a resumé — but fails the PR test because the corporation is seen as “getting work for nothing”. And, without a doubt, some corporations will use the program in exactly that way. Despite that, on balance it seems that the potential benefit to young entrants to the work force is greater than the actual benefit to the companies that get that “free labour”.

The value of that “free labour” may well be lower than the costs to the employer for training them: new employees with no marketable skills are not the bonanza of profit that some seem to think that they are. Some people I worked with early in my working life could be proven to be a net loss for months after hiring …

Reason.tv: Banning drugs, banning same-sex marriage, and banning fun

Filed under: Government, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:04

February 24, 2012

Argentina, like China, publishes unreliable economic statistics

Filed under: Americas, Economics, Government, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:27

The Economist has finally decided to stop using “official” economic statistics from Argentina:

Imagine a world without statistics. Governments would fumble in the dark, investors would waste money and electorates would struggle to hold their political leaders to account. This is why The Economist publishes more than 1,000 figures each week, on matters such as output, prices and jobs, from a host of countries. We cannot be sure that all these figures are trustworthy. Statistical offices vary in their technical sophistication and ability to resist political pressure. China’s numbers, for example, can be dodgy; Greece underreported its deficit, with disastrous consequences. But on the whole government statisticians arrive at their figures in good faith.

There is one glaring exception. Since 2007 Argentina’s government has published inflation figures that almost nobody believes. These show prices as having risen by between 5% and 11% a year. Independent economists, provincial statistical offices and surveys of inflation expectations have all put the rate at more than double the official number. The government has often granted unions pay rises of that order.

What seems to have started as a desire to avoid bad headlines in a country with a history of hyperinflation has led to the debasement of INDEC, once one of Latin America’s best statistical offices. Its premises are now plastered with posters supporting the president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Independent-minded staff were replaced by self-described “Cristinistas”. In an extraordinary abuse of power by a democratic government, independent economists have been forced to stop publishing their own estimates of inflation by fines and threats of prosecution. Misreported prices have cheated holders of inflation-linked bonds out of billions of dollars.

February 23, 2012

Reason.tv: Months later, still no charges in the Gibson Guitar raid

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Law, USA, Woodworking — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:36

Earlier posts on the Gibson raid here, here, here, and here.

Thomas Sowell on the “Fairness Fraud”

Filed under: Government, Media, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:49

It’s become endemic in political discourse — the “fairness” argument. Thomas Sowell explains why it’s a fraud:

During a recent Fox News Channel debate about the Obama administration’s tax policies, Democrat Bob Beckel raised the issue of “fairness.”

He pointed out that a child born to a poor woman in the Bronx enters the world with far worse prospects than a child born to an affluent couple in Connecticut.

No one can deny that. The relevant question, however, is: How does allowing politicians to take more money in taxes from successful people, to squander in ways that will improve their own reelection prospects, make anything more “fair” for others?

[. . .]

To ask whether life is fair — either here and now, or at any time or place around the world, over the past several thousand years — is to ask a question whose answer is obvious. Life has seldom been within shouting distance of fair, in the sense of even approximately equal prospects of success.

Countries whose politicians have been able to squander ever larger amounts of a nation’s resources have not only failed to make the world more fair, the concentration of more resources and power in these politicians’ hands has led to results that were often counterproductive at best, and bloodily catastrophic at worst.

More fundamentally, the question whether life is fair is very different from the question whether a given society’s rules are fair. Society’s rules can be fair in the sense of using the same standards of rewards and punishments for everyone. But that barely scratches the surface of making prospects or outcomes the same.

February 22, 2012

“Mr. Toews encapsulated both the intellectual bankruptcy of the post-9/11 security/freedom equation and the capricious, self-indulgent doltishness that sometimes infects the Conservative government’s policymaking”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:19

Chris Selley in the National Post on the disappointing moment at the start of the fight against C-30, the Canadian government’s internet bill that would eviscerate what little privacy protection still exists:

The most disappointing moment in the otherwise heartening backlash against the Protecting Children from Online Predators Act came right at the beginning, immediately after Public Safety Minister Vic Toews issued his immortal Question Period ultimatum. Mr. Toews was defending a law that would, among other things, allow government agents to march into your Internet service provider, without a warrant, and “examine any document, information or thing.” In this regard, he said Liberal MP Francis Scarpaleggia, and by extension all Canadians, “can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.”

He deserved — Canadian democracy deserved — nothing less than a humiliating, well-crafted, immediate putdown. He didn’t even get a “for shame.”

[. . .]

In a dozen words, Mr. Toews encapsulated both the intellectual bankruptcy of the post-9/11 security/freedom equation and the capricious, self-indulgent doltishness that sometimes infects the Conservative government’s policymaking. Any high school student should be able to identify and debunk the fallacy Mr. Toews was employing; to defend the intrinsic value of freedom and privacy; to articulate the dangers of handing governments excessive and unnecessary powers.

[. . .]

So, I think Mr. Toews’ comment sealed the deal. In the light of day, the War on Terror-era “you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists” argument is cringe-inducing; sub in criminals for terrorists and it’s laughable. More importantly, though, I suspect Mr. Toews finally confirmed a certain suspicion among many Canadians: When the government tells you it needs to limit your privacy or freedom, what it probably means is that it wants to limit your privacy and freedom and thinks you won’t put up a fight. It’s delightful to see this government proved wrong.

February 21, 2012

First it was the “he-cession”: now it’s the “she-cession” in Ontario

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:47

Frances Woolley in the Globe & Mail Economy Lab says that the next phase of Ontario’s recovery from the 2008 recession will disproportionally fall on women:

Men were hit hard by the 2008-9 economic downturn, with losses of construction jobs (98 per cent male), transport jobs (90 per cent male), and manufacturing jobs (70 per cent male). Male unemployment rose so quickly that people began to talk about a “he-cession.”

Three years on, a tenuous “he-covery” seems to be under way – male unemployment rates fell last year, and the percentage of men with jobs rose.

Now it’s the ladies’ turn. Ontario’s Drummond Report calls for deep cuts to financial, administrative and secretarial jobs throughout the public service. Strictly speaking, the report recommends cutting costs; automating, streamlining and consolidating the delivery of services. Yet administrative costs equal administrative jobs — jobs that are, 8 times out of 10, held by women.

The bulk of Ontario government spending goes to MUSH — Municipalities, Universities, Schools and Hospitals. Overall spending cannot be reduced substantially without making cuts in these areas. There are about 280,000 teachers and professors in Ontario, and 65 per cent of them are female. The Drummond report recommends larger class sizes for elementary and secondary school teachers, and “flexible” teaching loads for university professors. Yet more students per teacher mean fewer teaching jobs. Just as a downturn in the construction sector leads to male unemployment, a downturn in the teaching sector leads to female unemployment.

Death on the railways

Filed under: Economics, Government, India, Railways — Tags: — Nicholas @ 11:37

I didn’t realize the extent of the problem in India, as reported in the Guardian:

About 15,000 people are killed each year while crossing the tracks on India’s mammoth railway network, according to a government safety panel that recommended more bridges and overpasses should be built as a matter of urgency.

Most of the deaths occur at unmanned railroad crossings, the panel said in a report. About 6,000 people die on Mumbai’s crowded suburban rail network alone, it said.

Another 1,000 people die when they fall from crowded coaches, when trains collide or coaches derail.

[. . .]

The committee blamed railway authorities for the “grim picture”, saying there were lax safety standards and poor management.

It said local managers were not given adequate power to make crucial decisions and that safety regulations were also breached because of severe manpower shortages.

It does seem odd that one of the world’s most populous countries — once known for chronic over-staffing of government and government-owned organizations — has “manpower shortages” in this critical area.

The real problem with forcing employers’ insurance to pay for contraception

Filed under: Government, Health, Liberty, Religion, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:29

At the Adam Smith Institute blog, Tom Clougherty discusses the biggest problem with the current American debate over contraceptives and insurance coverage:

Now, I’m no Rick Santorum. I’m a fan of contraception. But there’s so much wrong with this story that it’s hard to know where to start. Should the government really compel you to buy a service from a private company? It’s probably better than the government nicking your money and providing that service themselves, but for a libertarian it still rankles. Then there’s the insensitivity to deeply-held religious conviction, which not only exposes the ‘liberal’ left’s inability to tolerate social mores that differ from their own, but also highlights the way big government inevitably tramples on diversity and choice with its one-size-fits-all monomania. And then there’s the idiot-economics which suggests that you can force a company to provide a service without anyone having to pay for it. In this case, assuming insurance companies can’t find a way of covertly passing on the cost of contraceptive cover to church-affiliated employers, then everyone else with insurance ends up footing the bills through higher premiums.

But perhaps the biggest problem is the one explained by Sheldon Richman in this Freeman article: contraception has nothing whatsoever to do with insurance.

    Insurance arose as a way for individuals to pool their risk of some low-probability/high-cost misfortune befalling them. It shouldn’t be necessary to point this out, but coming of child-bearing age and choosing to use contraception is not an insurable event. It’s a volitional act. It may have good consequences for the person taking the action and society at large, but it is still a volitional act. It makes no sense to talk about insuring against the eventuality that a particular person will use contraception.

Greece: “now officially a ward of the international community”

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Government, Greece — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:40

Felix Salmon on the dire Greek financial future:

Greece is now officially a ward of the international community. It has no real independence when it comes to fiscal policy any more, and if everything goes according to plan, it’s not going to have any independence for many, many years to come. Here, for instance, is a little of the official Eurogroup statement:

    We therefore invite the Commission to significantly strengthen its Task Force for Greece, in particular through an enhanced and permanent presence on the ground in Greece… The Eurogroup also welcomes the stronger on site-monitoring capacity by the Commission to work in close and continuous cooperation with the Greek government in order to assist the Troika in assessing the conformity of measures that will be taken by the Greek government, thereby ensuring the timely and full implementation of the programme. The Eurogroup also welcomes Greece’s intention to put in place a mechanism that allows better tracing and monitoring of the official borrowing and internally-generated funds destined to service Greece’s debt by, under monitoring of the troika, paying an amount corresponding to the coming quarter’s debt service directly to a segregated account of Greece’s paying agent.

The problem, of course, is that all the observers and “segregated accounts” in the world can’t turn Greece’s economy around when it’s burdened with an overvalued currency and has no ability to implement any kind of stimulus. Quite the opposite: in order to get this deal done, Greece had to find yet another €325 million in “structural expenditure reductions”, and promise a huge amount of front-loaded austerity to boot.

February 19, 2012

Building a football stadium: corporate welfare at its most grotesque

Filed under: Football, Government, Media, Politics, Sports — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:07

Patrick Reusse writes for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He’s a sports columnist, so his job — to some degree anyway — depends on the local professional sports teams (the Vikings, the Twins, the Wild, and the Timberwolves) sticking around and being competitive. Part of the sticking around these days is finding a new home for the Minnesota Vikings, who are at the end of their 30-year lease on the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis. Reusse is critical of those who don’t want their tax money going into the pockets of billionaire owner Zygi Wilf:

We so easily could be another decayed downtown, if not for the corporations, and the law firms and the accounting firms, and the retailers that remain committed to being in the city, when everything could be cheaper and more convenient by joining the sprawl in Maple Grove or Eden Prairie or Eagan.

Last month, Sandra Colvin Roy, another of the dedicated lefties on the Minneapolis City Council, announced opposition to the plan for a new Vikings stadium in downtown Minneapolis without a citywide referendum (that she knows would fail).

[. . .]

And yet it’s not only Roy and her lefty colleagues who offer a roadblock to Minneapolis coming up with its stadium share. There are righties in the Legislature with equally mysterious thoughts on the city’s entertainment tax.

“You know who pays for this?” Rep. Sarah Anderson of Plymouth said. “The citizens in my district, my constituents that decide to go to Minneapolis, maybe go out to a restaurant for the night.”

Some way, we have wound up with politicians who would put the cleaver to a great asset for the state’s largest city, and then offer the silliest of explanations, like 1) several score of people sleeping outside on government property, and 2) a few guys from Plymouth who would rather not pay an extra 3 percent for a Dewars and water at the Seville.

What stands in the way of a stronger heartbeat for downtown Minneapolis are the collections of the nearsighted that we have elected.

As you’ll know if you’ve read the blog for any length of time, I’m a big fan of the Minnesota Vikings, despite never having lived there or even visited the state. I’d be very upset if they became the L.A. Vikings. But I also totally sympathize with Minnesotans who don’t want their taxes being used to give corporate welfare to the billionaire owner of the football club. Pouring money into facilities for professional sports teams is one of the very worst ways to use tax dollars, as the lads at Reason.tv explain:

And from an article last year at Hit & Run:

To put it bluntly, regardless of how much money the state treasury might be rolling in, a public stadium is not a good use of money. Indeed, sports economists Dennis Coates and Brad Humphries estimate the presence of a major-league franchise reduces overall GDP by about $40 per resident in a given metro area.

The Vikes’ ownership has graciously offered to put up $400 million and the state is looking at ponying up $300 million, which means county and local taxpayers (read: suckers) would be on the hook for the remaining $400 million. So generous of the owners, don’t you think? Needless to say, the team would get all naming rights and a host of other related goodies.

[. . .]

Here’s a real surprise: Almost 75 percent of local residents don’t think public money should be used for a new stadium but the folks literally invested in the team and the building of the stadium are all for it!

Tim Worstall on the dilemma facing the social housing authorities

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Cancon, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:45

I don’t know what the actual situation is in Britain, but here in Ontario the responsibility for public housing is a regional or municipal responsibility. There’s no automatic mechanism for planners in one area to anticipate the need for additional housing, so apartments, townhouses and other subsidized accommodations are informally “swapped” between city, town, and regional governments. Would-be tenants are able to refuse being moved from one municipality to another (if you’re in Oakville, but the offered housing is in Pickering, for example).

I suspect, based on Tim Worstall’s thought experiment here, that the British system does not work quite the same way:

What’s the first thing that rational planner is going to do? Note that there’s a number of people living in London without the means to afford housing in London. And no particular economic reason for living in London either. She’s also going to note that’s there’s great swathes of housing up North which is indeed affordable. And given that there’s no particular economic reason for those in London to be in London why shouldn’t they be on benefits up North in the much cheaper housing?

This will be, after all, greatly to the benefit of society even if a bit tough on the personal liberty side. But then that’s what planning of all these things is about, doing what is best for society, yes?

So you can see the amusement: the Statists, the planners, those who insist that society is more important than the desires of any mere individual, are in something of a bind. The current reforms to the housing market are producing exactly what a rational planner would produce. The poor are sent off to be poor in cheap housing, individual desires be damned.

February 18, 2012

Even hardcore pro-Tory cheerleaders hate the new Internet bill

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:27

The Sun chain of newspapers is without a doubt the most pro-Conservative media voice in Canada. When even they are calling Bill C-30 “seriously flawed”, you’ve got to hope that the government will give up:

The legislation, Bill C-30, tabled this week as the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act, had virtually no safeguards to protect law-abiding Canadians, including the media, from being spied upon by police, bureaucrats, CSIS — even the competition bureau.

Until Prime Minister Stephen Harper punted the bill straight to committee for a badly-needed overhaul, his government appeared unconcerned about its own inconsistency.

Earlier this week, for example, the long-gun registry was finally put down, killed by the Harper majority for one reason and one reason alone.

It was rightly deemed to be an intrusion into the privacy of law-abiding Canadians.

This leaves Bill C-30 indefensible in its present form.

Requiring telecommunications providers to hand over personal information — without a warrant — to law-enforcement agencies opens the door to incredible abuses, and not just by Big Brother.

“This is going to be like the Fort Knox of information that the hackers and the real bad guys will want to go after,” said Ann Cavoukian, Ontario’s privacy commissioner.

The bill also includes a lovely little gag order provision that prevents your ISP from telling you when your information has been turned over to “inspectors” under the bill (and that doesn’t limit itself to the police: anyone could be appointed as an inspector by the ministry).

Rex Murphy: The Drummond report should have been released before the Ontario election

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:48

In the National Post, Rex Murphy expresses his displeasure that the Drummond report was not available for discussion during the last Ontario election campaign:

With the exception of the writings of the prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah at their bleakest, flavoured with a touch of H.P. Lovecraft on the days when that lightless mind was wrestling with a migraine, the recent meditations of Don Drummond on Ontario’s fiscal situation set the standard for prose that vibrates with gloom and foreboding.

The prophet Drummond is aware of this. He tried to prepare Ontario for the grim messages he was sending. At the press conference announcing his 529-page diagnosis of Ontario’s fiscal morbidity, he produced a remarkable understatement about his report and the 320 recommendations of cuts, freezes and cancellations that so enliven its bristling pages. Said Mr. Drummond (perhaps hiding a bitter smile): “This will strike many as a profoundly gloomy message.” Those listening to Mr. Drummond recalled P.G. Wodehouse: “I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”

The Drummond report is scathing, frightening, a grim portrait, an indictment of Ontario’s fiscal management during the last eight years of McGuinty government. It is everything columnists in this paper have said and more. The Drummond analysis offers what we may call a spectrograph of Ontario’s perilous financial situation. It is also a devastatingly chilly portrait of imminent decline, should the government of this once dynamic, productive and industrious province fail to follow the prescription — 320 deep, demanding and painful recommendations that Mr. Drummond so vigorously recommends.

[. . .]

Politicians worry about cynicism and apathy among the electorate. Bringing out this report after sending the voters to the polls will reinforce the cynicism and bake the apathy. And why not? I have no doubt that Tory leader Tim Hudak or the NDP’s Andrea Horwath would have found a way, or been only too obliging, to see the report after the election, as well.

There should be an election do-over. Of course there will not be. Because to call an election now, and contest one on the real state of the economy, would be an unparalleled action of real candour and public valour. It would be asking Ontarians to vote on the reality of their government, not the spin of the parties. What politician would dare set so dangerous a precedent as that?

Of course, given how badly Tim Hudak and the Progressive Conservatives fought the last election, they’d still manage to fumble, flail, and falter just enough to let Mr. McGuinty keep his job. One can only imagine that the gods (along with the rest of Canada) hate Ontario and want to see more suffering.

“Somewhere in the near-eternal labyrinth of the Drummond report there must be evidence that the McGuinty’s Liberal government did something right over the last decade. If there is, I haven’t found it yet.”

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

Terence Corcoran brings the gloom on the Ontario government’s most likely response to the Drummond report:

Ontario, get ready for The Big McGuinty. The 562-page report from the government-appointed Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services, chaired by economist Don Drummond, has all the makings of a diversionary shell game in which everybody is directed to follow the pea of spending cuts while the real game is something else.

With attention now focused on carving Mr. Drummond’s 362 recommended slices off the great Ontario spending bologna, the real bait-and-switch objective, The Big McGuinty of this giant exercise in fiscal self-flagellation, is something else altogether: tax increases.

Does anybody seriously think the Liberal government of the Rev. Dalton McGuinty, after a decade of installing feel-good spending increases and extravagant policy schemes, is suddenly going to roll it all back and reverse a decade of ideological commitment to government intervention and liberal spending programs?

The Drummond report would require policy-backtracking on a vast scale. Somewhere in the near-eternal labyrinth of the Drummond report there must be evidence that the McGuinty’s Liberal government did something right over the last decade. If there is, I haven’t found it yet.

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