Tim Worstall

What happens when you’ve all the money in the world, all the really smart people trying to build an economy from the top down?

Haiti.

An official from an international aid agency notes that Port-au-Prince is now overflowing with waste, yet 52 disposal trucks that have been imported to handle it are still sitting in customs.

Why hasn’t someone shot the customs officers?

I could only get through four pages of this before boiling with rage.

Less government is the solution far more often than many are willing to admit.

I know, I know, we think of it as a place where anything goes. And in one manner, that’s entirely true. You can be the surf bunny, the goth, the hippie, Christianist, you can follow whatever path you desire by and large.

But within each of those defined paths there’s a very definite pressure not to deviate. The surf bunny with the black fingernail polish would be considered very strange.

As an example:

Moreover, for better or worse, smooth straight hair has become synonymous with “professional” in America. Show up with curly hair, and you might as well show up with waist-length beads and an incense burner.

I would like to fight this, especially since it smacks so much of ethnic prejudice.  Why on earth have we defined the hair type that most Irish, Jewish, and black women have as less professional than fine straight hair that can be blow-dried in 10 minutes?  I know it’s close to my brains and all, but they’re not actually connected.

But I do not want to be a curly-haired revolutionary at the cost of my career.  As one black female journalist said to me, “You don’t want TV bookers referring to you as ‘the curly haired one’.”  I want to be “the one who can talk about taxes”.

Nonetheless, I’m experimenting.  I went curly for a Cato event last night that I normally would have straightened for.  We’ll see how far I’m willing to push beyond the straight and narrow.

I can’t think of anything which would explain this lot today other than ingestion of a goodly quantity of happy pills.

In what Ucas calls “the most competitive year ever”, remember how 20 years ago anyone who could scrape together a couple of passes found a place on some university course somewhere, with little to pay. Once students pay the whole cost, the value of that degree needs to be cashable. Creeping credentialism means anyone without a degree competes at a disadvantage with graduates for jobs that never needed a degree before.

Yes, quite. This is the point about making students aware of the cost of their education.

When everyone can get a degree at no direct personal cost then we’ll see that credentialism as everyones’ got a degree. Make people realise the true cost of a degree and we’ll see that degrees are demanded only for those times and places when a degree is necessary.

More simply, supply and demand really do work you know? If 50% of the age cohort have degrees then 50% of the jobs will demand degrees. It’s a simple filter for people doing the hiring.

It’s an odd irony, and no doubt one he feels himself, that David Willetts, author of the best book on the broken intergenerational social contract, is now responsible for making university so much harder to access. The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Stole Their Children’s Future, is a devastating critique of our “selfish giant” of a postwar generation, where 45-65s hold 52% of the wealth, and the under 45s only 13%.

Dear God Above. This is simple maths Polly.

To examine how much inequality you would get even in a perfectly equal society, I whipped up a simple Python script to compute wealth distribution in a society where every person works for the exact same salary (this should be enough equality for anybody, yes?) of which he saves the exact same amount. For a 5% annual interest rate, the five wealth quintiles controlled 2, 7, 15, 28, and 47 percent of total wealth, respectively. For 10%, these quintiles controlled 0, 4, 10, 25 and 60 percent of wealth.

Lifetime savings hypothesis and all that. People don’t start saving until they start work. They the keep saving while they work. Thus, obviously, wealth will be concentrated in the hands of those who have been saving for decades, not those who have been saving for the last 5 minutes since they first got a job.

What’s more, their children now marry into their own class more than before, due to “assortative mating”,

Indeed, but what are we going to do about it? State distribution of marriage partners next?

Since private schools spend around three times more per pupil, that’s no surprise.

You what?

The State spends, umm, £6k, £7 k per pupil, something like that isn’t it? Boarding schools might spend three times that but no day school does. That’s over the edge of the damned lies part of the statistics continuum isn’t it?

The young pay for the financiers’ calamity while my generation keeps its bus pass, winter fuel allowance and hefty state subsidy to pension contributions.

Err, no. Winter fuel and bus passes come when you retire. By definition, when you retire, you’re not making pension contributions nor enjoying tax relief on them, are you?

But I’ll agree with you there, abolish the bus passes and the winter fuel allowance. Finally Polly agrees with Christopher Fildes on something…..

At the ASI.

Minimum wage up? Check.

Teen unemployment up? Check.

Yes, we did tell you so you fools.

And then there is the impact on our own living standards. For comparisons and precedent, we need only look at Japan. Our politicians and central bankers have not learned from Japan’s crisis, which preceded our own. We are, therefore, destined to follow Japan’s disastrous record of lost decades of economic activity. As in Japan, so here: a broken banking system, crushed by the weight of unpayable debts on its balance sheet, fails to lend to businesses at affordable rates.

What?

Just as here, Japan’s politicians and central bankers exaggerated the risks of inflation, reflecting the concerns of bankers and creditors – who fear inflation will erode the value of their outstanding loans.

Hunh?

Japan, with government debt at what is it, 220% of GDP, with every culvert and ditch in the country concreted over and most with their own bullet train station, shows that not being Keynesian doesn’t work?

What?

While Keynes is largely defined (by his enemies) as a fiscal activist, he was first and foremost a monetary economist. In other words, he believed that if governments and central bankers would only fix the money system – by lowering rates of interest for all borrowers (not just the banks); by injecting QE into productive, socially useful projects; and by restructuring the banking system – the rest of the economy could be helped to recover.

Bollocks: Keynes is famous for pointing out that the projects didn’t have to be socially useful or productive. There just had to be projects.

My word, here really is a surprise.

Man with cushy academic job complains about being made accountable to his customers.

Reading these stories of being at Summerhill I realise just how truly libertarian the place is.

Do as you please, as long as you’re not buggering it up for anyone else.

Even so, I got a book flung at me for talking in class by our inspirational English teacher, an ex-army man. “You don’t have to come,” he said, “but if you do, you must not spoil it for others.”

I’m sure there are certain libertarians who would be unhappy to be compared to the hippies (even if 1920s style hippies) at Summerhill and it would, of course, give the screaming abdabs to the hippies to be told that they were libertarians.

But it really does strike me that that’s what they’re running there, a libertarian society in microcosm.

What’s really sad about the observation is of course that those who advocate such teaching methods (which have certainly migrated into parts of the standard primary school these days, play directed teaching etc) are exactly those who are adamant that it’s entirely impossible for the larger society to be run on the same grounds.

Do as you please as long as you’re not buggering it up for anyone else.

She has presented a wealth of studies that show men want to get laid more within their relationship, that celibacy is far more common among women, that masturbation and use of erotic material are far more common among men, that men are more unfaithful and more frustrated, report more sexual desire, across a whole range of countries. The only thing I think might complicate her conclusion – that men are randier than women, and why won’t we all just accept it – is that this area is culturally quite freighted. There are certain expectations, going back centuries, of male sexuality being rampant and ungovernable, and equal and opposite expectations of female sexuality. This might – call me crazy – impact upon the way that men and women report, express and prosecute their sexual desire.

It’s quite alarming really.

X says “people are like this”. Y responds “but only because people have been like that for centuries”.

Well, yes Miss Y, but turn your mind to the possibility that people have been like this for centuries because people are like this.

You know, it’s simply not true that all of our ancestors were entire dunderheads awaiting Andrea Dworkin to tell them how it really is.

On Friday, the earl contacted The Daily Telegraph to distance himself from his barrister’s comments and insisted he was by no means “down and out”.

In fact, he added, he was “merely down to my last stately home”.

The Earl of Cardigan.

Army warns David Cameron on cuts to servicemen’s school fees
David Cameron has been warned that the Army will be hit by a damaging wave of resignations if ministers make fresh cuts in allowances for the school fees of servicemen’s children.

Now, it’s certainly possible to claim that this is just horrible. Service kiddies getting sent to public schools on the taxpayers’ money! Bastards!

However. That’s not actually what it is.

The Ministry of Defence spends almost £180 million a year on the education allowance, which is intended to help military families keep their children in the same school while their parents move around the world to different postings. The allowance is sometimes derided as an officers’ perk, but all members of the Armed Forces are eligible for the scheme.

About half of the 5,500 claimants come from “other ranks”. Changes announced last year will cut the cost of the allowance by almost 20 per cent over four years.

It’s an allowance that sends children to boarding schools. This is what gives the families the flexibility to move around the world.

At larger bases (at least they used to) the forces (usually the RAF I think?) run primary schools using the English syllabi. I went to one in Naples for example. But when we’re all starting to think about GCSEs and A levels, continuity of schooling is important. You will note, for example, that not every school follows the same syllabus…..

So, boarding schools. And there are a couple of State ones out there. But no where near enough to cater to the number of children desiring such education.

Now, whether the MoD pays for kids to go to a private boarding school, or sets up publicly funded boarding schools, or finances secondary schools at bases (not a bad idea actually, I’d bet the results would be damn good) where families are sent to doesn’t matter all that much in the scheme of things. But one of those three must be done and which is the cheapest? In the latter cases, pay entirely for the necessary infrastructure? Or in the former, be able to hang off the infrastructure already there?

Well quite. So why all this fuss?

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: “We are determined that the Continuity of Education Allowance should go only to those who really need it. These changes are aimed at saving £28 million a year.

“We must make sure that all allowances are fair and appropriate.”

Well, you  see, among civil servants, the Diplomatic Corps get an even sweeter deal: they get all boarding school fees paid, not just a percentage like the military. So do the British Council.

But the beancounters and civilians at the MoD don’t get it. And they’ve hated that fact for decades.

Meanwhile, a report by Open Europe found that the plans by Germany and France to introduce a financial transaction tax (FTT) could raise a total €80.9bn – of which €58.3bn would come from UK-based businesses.

That is of course the statutory incidence, not the economic incidence.

But I do very much doubt that even Cameron would sign up for something quite so lopsided.

Apparently this is the cunning new way of getting you to watch video ads on this blog.

I’m told something happens if you wave the mouse over it.

Those nice people at Unruly Media have asked me to alert you to this new campaign for Heineken Light.

It’s all modern and stuff because not only have we got beer being advertised on TV and radio and blogs’n’ things, we’ve even got a brand new hashtag as well. #occasionallyperfect.

N’ here’s the video.

There are also times when living in Portugal isn’t quite the right place to be living. Here’s part of the original invite:

Also I’d like to invite you to the event and to private drinks beforehand. If you are interested and are in the NYC area we’ll be heading down to Soho around 6 for a few beers and then will walk across to the performance directly at around 7.45pm.

Nearly two hours of free beer.

Who did you say was playing at that gig?

Yes, you should try Heineken Light, it helps to support this blog.

I’m afraid a bond yield of 2.3% on 10 year UK government debt isn’t the market saying ‘well done you, nice deficit reduction plan you’ve got there mate’ it’s the market screaming ‘for Christ’s sake, everything is fucked and we’re terrified about vanishing growth’.

Well, yes, but bond yields of 15% and rising (Greece maybe?) or 6% (Italy, Spain) or just rising bond yields (France) are also indicators that:

it’s the market screaming ‘for Christ’s sake, everything is fucked

So, which set of problems would you prefer to have?

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One of the things that the Murph bangs on about (and his acolyte, Arnald omments upon here) is the way in which capital outflows from poor countries are much higher than the aid flows into poor countries.

It’s occured to me that this isn’t quite telling the whole story.

Outflows are of course private sector (even if the outflow is of what the governors have looted, it’s still a rpivate outflow) and the aid inflows are of course official.

So we’ve another number that we need to find: what have been private sector inflows into the same countries over the same period?

One little data point:

a review of the $4.2 billion in World Bank support to the ICT section during fiscal 2003–10. During that time, the Bank Group was the largest multilateral financier in telecommunications in Africa. (Yet that was about 1 percent of private investment in telecommunications of $400 billion between 2003 and 2009.)

If private sector outflows are 10 times official aid going in but private sector inflows are 100 times official aid going in doesn’t that mean that private sector in is 10 times greater than private sector out?

No, no, of course not, we can’t extrapolate that far from just one number like this.

But it is true that we need to look at what private sector inflows are: theory says capital should be going to where it’s most valuable which is those places where it’s scarce, ie poor countries.

So, does anyone know what the number is?

Looking perhaps at the same countries that Christian Aid uses to compile it’s ten times as much as aid is looted, what is the number for private sector capital going in?

It may not rank as the most compelling reason to curb greenhouse gases, but reducing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim.

Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth’s atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilisation growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat, the researchers explain.

The problem is that some idiots will take this seriously.

Try the logic for a moment: assume those aleins who can see what’s going on. So, we’re about to boil the planet with our emissions because ew don’t give a long term shite, yes?

We’re a problem to whom? We’re all going to be dead soon aren’t we?

There must be something to this Gov. Perry guy. He’s causing a near random spraying of allegations:

Thanks to Perry, some Texas school children must pay to ride a bus to class, and when challenged about his (proposed) budget cuts to Medicaid that would shock a state already ranked ninth in the union for the percentage of elderly living in poverty, Perry huffed that the idea that senior citizens faced being turned out on the street was nothing more than an urban legend: “I will suggest nobody disappeared.”

What on earth does Medicaid have to do with the elderly living in pocerty?

The health care program for the old is MediCare, not Medicaid: the latter is the program for the poor (a program which is then supplemented by county based programs of health care for the indigent….that lots of people have no health care insurance is true, that lots of people have no health care treatment is not, something we’re mostly not told).

In another statement of impressive audacity, he recently called for Obama to “put a moratorium on regulations across this country” that are “killing jobs all across America”.

Eliminating “all regulations” would, of course, put an end to, among other things, the safety testing of food and drugs, government oversight of transportation and even the ban of medical experiments on animal-human hybrids! A Perry regulation moratorium would add an element of risk to going to the grocery store, getting on a plane, even stepping out of the house, though it could provide lifetime employment for mad scientists and the like. It would be total anarchy: Mad Max meets Dr Moreau.

Blimey: a “moratorium” is “no new ones” not “rip up all extant ones”.

Long story but…..I’d be interested in buying a few cases of sun cream (various factors, kiddies and adults) if anyone could tell me where to get some no name but acceptable quality stuff.

I can see the Nivea’s etc all over the place in the UK for £10 a bottle…..I’m hoping that there’s some no namer out there at £1 a bottle…..any ideas?

This really is quite lovely:

I will state the obvious fact that this should not give rise to a right to preferential tax treatment – but it does. Discrimination on the basis of national origin in this way is wrong. So why does the government do it?

So, today, discrimination in taxation on the basis of national origin is wrong and naughty.

Ritchie in a report for the TUC some time ago:

First we propose that everyone who has a UK passport should be tax resident in the UK, automatically, wherever they live in the world. That means they would always have liability to pay tax in the UK on their worldwide income, gains and wealth, just as all US citizens do in the USA.

So discrimination in taxation on the basis of national origin is just fine and dandy apparently.