No. No! NO! (for @davechiv1)

Far be it from me to want to cause dissent with the ranks of libertarianism, but I have to pick a fight with this:

States are motivated less by values and ideals, and more by a narrow set of objectives and interests.

Really, this is where the argument fails, in a nutshell. The implicit assumption here is that the objectives and interests of the state are the objectives and interests of the people that the state leeches off. But this is inherently wrong, because if that were the case, there would be no such thing as libertarianism or anarchism.

There are some more basic fallacies here:

Once you acknowledge what motivates a country’s actions, international relations become comparatively predictable. It is a zero sum game of medium to long term power and influence

To paraphrase Maggie, there is no such thing as a country. What motivates the state that defines the foreign policy is different to the wants of the people that are subjugated by the state.

Furthermore, I would contest that interaction is always a zero sum game. It may be that there are narrow markets of influence where there is a zero sum game to be played, but I am not even sure of that.

Influence and intervention takes many forms. The British government has excellent ties to the government of Saudi Arabia. As a result of this, the Saudi government places orders with British companies to manufacture military equipment, as well as legacy contracts for spare parts and maintenance. Does this relationship sometimes get too close? Probably. But do British jobs depend on it? Absolutely.

Ah, the good old British job. You could quite reasonably argue that we should have a massive state surveillance system because it keeps people in jobs. We should have patrolled curfews because it keeps people in jobs and crimes off the street. We should be encouraging repressive regimes to brutally repress their citizens using our weapons and technology, because it keeps British people in jobs.

The British job, damn, isn't that a wonderful thing? More important than anything else in the world!

Another example is foodstuffs. Successive British governments, via a variety of means (both fair and foul) have secured trade agreements with African states. Our farmers are free to export subsided food to Africa, but African food sold here face tariffs, making it more expensive. So British farmer benefit from a secure market at home, and a valuable market overseas. Is this practice fair? No. Do British jobs and companies depend on it? Absolutely.

This is a facepalm-level Economics 101 failure: British farmers benefit, but what about the rest of us? There are roughly 500,000 farmers and farmworkers and 60,000,000 people in Britain. So the farmers "benefit" but 120 times as many people (many of them desperately poor) pay over the odds for food that could be cheaper if the British government wasn't working "in the national interest".

I'm sorry, there may be arguments in favour of an interventionist foreign policy, but nothing in this blogpost stands up to even basic scrutiny.

A race to the bottom

I see that everyone is licking their lips that there will now only be one examining board when Gove manages to get back to O-levels. Or something.

And inevitably, there has been criticism of "the market". One particularly hurtful phrase was "there has been a race to the bottom". "The free market has failed us yet again."

I did wonder how competition could lead to this, surely any competition is good, right?

Well, yes it is, but it really does matter who the customer is.

Why, if competition is so good, are the train companies so expensive and so utterly useless? Why, if competition is so good, are examination boards in a race to the bottom? Why is the NHS generally such an unpleasant, bureaucratic experience when you're sick?

In all the cases above, you are not the customer. You are the stock in trade.

Train companies are effectively granted a monopoly over a line, so there is no real competition. Their objective is maximise revenue from a government-decreed monopoly.

Examination boards are there to make the government look good, to make education look successful, to tick government boxes. If we were the customers, they wouldn't be interested in any of those things, they'd be trading on their brand like Oxford or Cambridge, they'd have no interest whatsoever in being in a race to the bottom, because nobody would want to take their exams.

And of course, in the saintly (monopoly) NHS, the patient is the last thing on the mind of those who are in charge, who have to juggle arbitrary government funding with the infinite demand that comes with a "free" service. I suspect that the Lansley reforms (if they ever get enacted, of course!) will lead to a similar disaster where trusts compete with each other for government money by fucking over the long-suffering taxpayer and patient.

Competition only helps the customer. In none of these cases are we the customer, we're just the people who pay for stuff.

There's a big difference between the two.

The minimum wage

There is an excellent, concise and complete deconstruction of the nonsense that is the minimum wage here.



Instinctively, even lefties know that the minimum wage is a crock of shit, because no-one is calling for a national minimum wage of £1000 per hour, which would make us all "rich".

Blatant economic protectionism

Via the Institute for Justice.

Sorry mate, we're full

Things really have come to a pretty pass when banks don't want to take your money:

U.S. regulators have asked some banks to take more deposits from large investors even if it’s unprofitable, and lenders in return are seeking relief on insurance premiums and leverage ratios, according to six people with knowledge of the talks.

Deposits are flooding into the biggest U.S. banks as customers seek shelter from Europe’s debt crisis and falling stock prices. That forces lenders to raise capital for a growing balance sheet and saddles them with the higher deposit insurance payments. With short-term interest rates so low, it’s hard for financial firms to reinvest the new money profitably.

Regulators have asked banks to take the deposits anyway, three people said, with one lender accepting $100 billion. The regulators want lenders to take the deposits because it improves the stability of the financial system, according to one of the people, who said U.S. banks are viewed as places of strength.

Some of the largest ones have talked with regulators about softening rules for ratios that measure capital and assets, according to the people, who declined to be identified because talks are private. At least one asked for a waiver on paying higher premiums to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which is less likely to be granted, one of the people said.

A couple of things leap out of that story to me, first and foremost that the EU's banks are so fucked that the US banks look like a good bet.

Just think about that for a moment. The US economy is fucked, with fucked topping and still the money is pouring in from Europe, because Europe is even worse!

Secondly, my inevitable observation that regulation is proving to be an expensive bolting of the stable door, long after the horse has fucked off. Banks, who rode the wave of economic bubblery created by lunatic governments are now being taxed (because the deposit insurance is no such fucking thing, of course, it's just another Ponzi scheme) and taking in masses of money is so expensive and (government-mandated) interest rates are so low that they actually cannot afford deposits of large amounts of money.

Thirdly, this shows exactly why the EU's much-hyped "Tobin Tax" is doomed to failure, and worse yet, will actually probably fuck the entire financial industry beyond repair. It's true that masses of money are shifted around the markets in search of short-term gains, but often those gains are not significant amounts of money. If shifting a billion pounds from one account to another for a couple of days will cost you a fiver for your time and nett you a couple of grand, you'd probably do it (or have a clerk do it). But if you have to pay a grand to get two, is it still worth the effort?

I can see these escalating costs of "insurance", etc., totally destroying the movement of capital in search of gains, which means that the people who want that capital enough to get the gains, are not going to get them.

This will not end well.

Why Tory economic policy is doomed to fail

It's a conundrum for everyone who cries out that a smaller government inevitably leads to economic growth.

Hence, libertarians and "small-c conservatives" are all calling for cuts, yet despite all the evidence of cuts being trumpeted left, right and centre, economic growth is flaccid, limp and in desperate need of economic Viagra.

The cuts are smoke and mirrors. Inflation is kicking in, services are being cut, especially at the frontline, and yet growth isn't happening. "Progressives" and tribal Labour supporters are jeering that this is proof that government spending is vital.

But the truth is that we're not seeing the whole truth.

The previous government spent money it didn't have like a drunken sailor in port for the first time in 18 months. Banks were bailed out, vanity projects were finances, PFI skullduggery was rampant.

And when governments do cut spending, they always cut at the frontline first, because that way it hurts people the most so they start screaming for services to be reinstated.

In a business, you cut the frontline as late as possible, because those are the people bringing the money in. It's always possible to make managers manage more people or combine functions so that you can get shot of people in the back office.

But the motivations are different in the two cases. Businesses want to make a profit and retain customers. Governments want to build empires and fuck people around.

So while there may be small cuts happening in government service provision, there aren't cuts in taxes from the savings made. And because there are no cuts in taxes, it's impossible for individual spending to make up for the cuts in government spending.

Taxes are still sky-high, and that's because of the massive debt. The debt isn't even being attacked, all that the government is trying to do is clear the deficit, which is the gap between current income and expenditure. When they've done this, they will still be left with the legacy of debt that needs to be paid off. But at least then they'll be able to start paying off historical debt.

And the other side of the government spending issue is that government spending isn't actually going down. By the time the Tories get kicked out of power again, government will have spent more every year than even that insane Scottish spendthrift maniac could spunk out in his desperate attempts to buy votes. It's just being spent on paying for debt.

So if the currently fuckwit Lib Dem and "Red Tory" hold on taxing the people who actually work to death, while spunking money out on their pointless vanity projects continues, the best that we can hope for is that some miniscule growth will happen and that somehow Gideon will pay off some of the debt so that the next lot of delusional cuntwanks can start the whole "pissing other people's money away" lark again.

Personally, I can't wait. I'm fucking off to Lichtenstein.

The horror that is the free market

Imagine, just for a moment, a world without a government to protect us, to compensate us when Shit Happens (we will come back to this in a moment, I'm sure).

In such a world, there would be no statutory regulation, no minimum wage, no closed shop unions, no vested interests that exist precisely because government enables it.

In this appalling world, markets would be truly free. And a free market is an interesting thing. People speak about the "free market" (which absolutely does not and cannot exist in a world which contains statutory regulations) as though it's some sort of evil monster that can "fail".

Such thoughts fundamentally and profoundly misunderstand what a free market is. A free market is merely the recording of prices for the exchange of goods and services when there are no legislated barriers to entry from either the supplier's side or the consumer's side.

It has no power, it is merely the recording of the price agreed when two parties freely agree to trade.

Let's assume (in the world without government) that you are walking along a beach on a hot, sunny day and you come across a lemonade stand. You have no idea how the lemonade is made, but you're hot and thirsty and the vendor wants a pound for a glass of cool lemonade. You buy it and drink it. He has a pound in his pocket, you are refreshed, both parties have gained from the transaction, both parties are happier than they were before.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the absolute horror of the free market in action. The thing that socialists blame for the collapse of the world's economy.

Of course, it gets more complicated. I think I can make a better lemonade for the same money or even less. So the next sunny day, I make up a batch of lemonade and I go set up a stall next to him. I want to get customers to buy my lemonade (which I think is better) and so I sell it for 99p, or 95p or whatever. I still make a decent profit at this price, and because my lemonade is nicer, I sell out quickly and the other vendor is forced to either bugger off, or lower his price to 90p. He's still making a profit, and although my lemonade is better, he grabs back more market share. If I don't sell out my batch of lemonade, I am forced to cut my price so that my price is the same as or better than his, or so that the price difference is so small in my favour that people don't mind paying the difference for my lemonade and I sell out.

At the end of this round of horse trading, we stabilise at about 80p per glass for him and 81p per glass for me, because it costs us 50p to make it and neither of us is prepared to do it for less than 30p per glass profit. Someone else comes along and decides, he's prepared to do it for 25p per glass profit, or he has a source for cheaper ingredients and so the battle starts all over again.

At no point in this bloodthirsty, violent struggle has any of us lost out -- we are all still trading voluntarily, and more importantly, the people who walk on the beach are having their wants met for a lower and lower price. Everybody is still happy. At some point, one or more of the vendors may fold, or may go off somewhere else and the whole dynamic will change again. But everybody is still buying what they want for a price they're prepared to pay and the vendors are all still making enough money for it to be worth it for them.

After a while, a devious vendor appears. He starts casting aspersions on existing vendors, claiming that their lemonade made him ill. Or maybe it's true, who knows? We certainly don't! Anyway, he creates "The Guild of Lemonade Vendors", which mandates basic requirements for GLV-approved lemonade, which also means they can charge a higher price.

Customers can now choose from existing lemonades or lemonades that are pricier, may not taste as nice, but are "certified" as good. Vendors can choose to join the Guild (which will probably mean paying something which increases their costs and reduces their margin), create their own "Society of Lemonade Vendors" or remain unaligned and trade on their existing customer base and reputation.

Eventually, this horrific, brutal struggle to deprive the consumer of their hard-earned money will reach moments of stasis, where no-one sees any benefit in entering the market, but then everything will change again. The price of lemons (in itself a free market) could collapse, leading to cheaper lemonade for all or it could rise sharply, making lemonade more expensive.

But at no point does anyone stick a gun at the customer's head saying they have to buy lemonade. The customer may not have enough money on them, and the vendor may or may not be susceptible to haggling or a freebie to win over a repeat customer. It may not be warm enough that people will buy. So other "sweeteners" may be offered to get customers to buy, which may or may not work.

Shit Happens.

All the free market does is measure the prices at which people make mutually beneficial trades, completely removed from the burdens of externally-imposed constraints.

Terrifying, isn't it? And aren't people who believe in the free market heartless, unfeeling bastards?

Why we won't "run out of oil"

One of the things that baffles me the most about people is this constant fear of "peak oil" or running out of oil completely.

There are masses of oil reserves out there. The USA is apparently possessed of oil reserves that dwarf those of the Middle East. The reason they don't drill for them is that they're in a different kind of rock structure that existing drilling technology doesn't make cost-justifiable. But when the price of oil increases enough to make the investment in improving drilling technology viable, you just know they're going to be all over it. And who knows, it may even lead to cheaper oil.

But I'm fairly sure that at some point, we will actually "run out" of oil. There will be oil out there, but it simply will not be cost-effective to get it out. And then the price of oil will go so high that alternatives will demand to be investigated and found. People are working on alternatives, but with the massive amounts of oil available at cost-effective levels, there's no great incentive to make them happen.

It's not a conspiracy by "Big Oil", it's just rational behaviour. Oil is cheap enough and provides us with highly effective energy. Even if someone did find a way to make cold fusion a reality, we'd have to dick around with our infrastructure so much that it would cost us more than just carrying on with oil, at least in the medium term.

Another thing that I keep getting told is that we need to conserve oil to delay that dark and frightening day from arriving.

This is an irrational point of view. Wealth creation and human progress depends on cheap and readily available energy. The availability of cheap energy has led to a massive improvement in the quality of life all round the planet over the last 100 years.

Trying to curtail energy use simply means that progress will slow or stop and we will never get wealthier which means that we will stagnate where we are now, rather that further improving our quality of life.

That's fine for us if we take a short-term view, but it's a huge blow to those people who are behind us on the development curve. It also predicates a poor future for our children.

Increased wealth and prosperity for the generations to come will also allow them to absorb the costs of any changes to the environment or whatever much more easily than we can, in the same way that we can cope with these much more easily than the Romans or the Victorians did.

You cannot predict what the future will bring. There is no point in throttling our progress for something that may never happen. And throttling our progress might also mean that we never find the way around whatever crisis or cataclysm that may genuinely exist in our future.

While I am happy to endorse careful husbandry of resources and efficiency, the idea of crippling our progress in the name of some vague and unspecified fear of what might happen is stupid.

Monbiot: wrong as usual

*sigh* Here we go again:

The obscure adjustments the government is planning to the tax acts of 1988 and 2009 have been missed by almost everyone – and are, anyway, almost impossible to understand without expert help. But as soon as you grasp the implications, you realise that a kind of corporate coup d'etat is taking place.

Like the dismantling of the NHS and the sale of public forests, no one voted for this measure, as it wasn't in the manifestos. While Cameron insists that he occupies the centre ground of British politics, that he shares our burdens and feels our pain, he has quietly been plotting with banks and businesses to engineer the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle to the ultra-rich that this country has seen in a century.

Oh, the drama! Oh, the horror! Oh, the disgust! What could the eeeeevil Tory toff be doing now?

At the moment tax law ensures that companies based here, with branches in other countries, don't get taxed twice on the same money. They have to pay only the difference between our rate and that of the other country. If, for example, Dirty Oil plc pays 10% corporation tax on its profits in Oblivia, then shifts the money over here, it should pay a further 18% in the UK, to match our rate of 28%. But under the new proposals, companies will pay nothing at all in this country on money made by their foreign branches.

Foreign means anywhere. If these proposals go ahead, the UK will be only the second country in the world to allow money that has passed through tax havens to remain untaxed when it gets here. The other is Switzerland. The exemption applies solely to "large and medium companies": it is not available for smaller firms. The government says it expects "large financial services companies to make the greatest use of the exemption regime". The main beneficiaries, in other words, will be the banks.

But that's not the end of it. While big business will be exempt from tax on its foreign branch earnings, it will, amazingly, still be able to claim the expense of funding its foreign branches against tax it pays in the UK. No other country does this. The new measures will, as we already know, accompany a rapid reduction in the official rate of corporation tax: from 28% to 24% by 2014. This, a Treasury minister has boasted, will be the lowest rate "of any major western economy". By the time this government is done, we'll be lucky if the banks and corporations pay anything at all.

Hurrah! There are a number of reasons to applaud this:

1. Companies don't actually ever "pay" tax. They simply claw it back out of money they could pay to their staff (you know, the working stiffs) or they pay their shareholders less (you know, the pensions of the working stiffs) or they gouge it out of their customers (which means that the working stiffs pay more). Companies are legal entities, not living, breathing things. Don't fucking pay attention to the legal fiction, pay attention to the employees, the shareholders and the customers. You know, actual human beings. Think about the consequences to them.

2. Lower taxes will almost certainly increase the tax take as larger corporates will look to move back onshore, or move here anew precisely because the tax regime is so competitive. And this is all apart from the Laffer Curve, which shows that when tax rates are too high (and they definitely are in the UK!) then decreasing the tax rate actually increases the tax take.

So, Cameron and Osborne should actually be applauded for taking small steps in the right direction, rather than being pilloried by economic illiterates.

And just to show how fucking stupid this twat is:

These measures will drain not only wealth but also jobs from the UK. The new legislation will create a powerful incentive to shift business out of this country and into nations with lower corporate tax rates. Any UK business that doesn't outsource its staff or funnel its earnings through a tax haven will find itself with an extra competitive disadvantage. The new rules also threaten to degrade the tax base everywhere, as companies with headquarters in other countries will demand similar measures from their own governments.

OK: so we're drastically lowering our tax rate AND offering tax-reducing measures not available anywhere else in the western world, and this is going to chase businesses away? Yes, Mr Banker, you don't want to base your business in Britain, where you will pay less tax. You don't want the prestige and convenience and facilities of the Square Mile AND lower taxes, do you?

What a fucking idiot.

I'm ambivalent about the issue of driving jobs abroad -- it may drive a handful of jobs abroad, but I suspect that most headquarter jobs will need to be in the headquarters, so more companies headquartered here will mean more, better paid jobs here.

So, overall, Monbiot is, as usual, completely fucking wrong in his economic analysis, although this won't stop lefty tossers short-stroking themselves into the Guardian's comment pages today.

The only thing that I see as wrong is that some of the perks only apply to "medium to large business", although off-shoring probably doesn't make economic sense for smaller businesses anyway. So, more corporatism from Blue Labour (there's a surprise!) but at least it's better corporatism than New Labour's.

Thoughts on legislated job security

So, there is apparently a two-year "sackers' charter" coming, whereby job security is not guaranteed before two years of employment. "The left" are up in arms about this, but as someone who has been an employer as well as an employee, I'd like to try to offer some perspectives on this.

Firstly, I feel much more at risk of being sacked in the UK than I've ever felt working in countries where there are absolutely no "protections" for employees, including a brief stint in a country where even unionisation is banned!

I'm not sure if this is an unintended consequence of employment legislation, whereby the additional cost of catering for employment law fucks up the cost/benefit relation of employing someone and actually, perversely, increases the risk of getting the sack in marginal situations, like in a recession when things are tough. Or it might be something else, or a combination.

Secondly, as has been pointed out: protecting jobs just because someone's been in them for a while, even if they're useless or become useless due to factors outside the employer's control, means that the useless person can't be shed and replaced by a more useful person. It also makes it harder for people who have no experience or skill to get a job, and forces people who have skills and experience "down the value chain" into more menial jobs than they actually deserve.

But then there's the other side of the equation: having been an employer as well, recruiting people is a) a fucking ballache, b) expensive and c) risky.

There are really very few jobs indeed where labour is a commodity. Every job, even picking fruit, requires a level of training and expertise. The degree varies from job to job, but there is always a component of it. And if you've got the knowledge and the expertise and you're good in your job and you integrate with the workplace, then I can assure you that it is very nearly as unpleasant for the employer to give you the sack as it is to be sacked.

And people are very, very unlikely to sack you just because they can replace you with someone cheaper, because it's a fucking ballache, and even if it's not expensive or saves money, the new person is a risk. And furthermore, someone who is settled in his job and is reasonably happy is not a flight risk. Someone who has just arrived is more likely to piss off because the job isn't what they expected and then you're left swinging in the breeze.

So I don't think employment "protection" is really of any use to employees. If you want job security, do your job well, make yourself valuable and you'll be the last one standing. But don't expect an employer to look after you just because you've occupied that desk for the last 10 years.

It turns out that greed actually *is* good

In case the embed doesn't work, click here.

Monopolies and competition

I keep getting told that completely unregulated, completely free markets can't work because monopolies will form due to someone having a competitive advantage.

I don't believe this, because I've watched actual multi-national corporations go about their business. An acquired business is quite often kept running as an independent unit and if it doesn't make enough money to justify keeping it, it will very often be spun off into a separate business that can be sold off. In the worst case, it can be closed down.

Mergers have another face to their coin.

But it seems to me that, as ever, the real issue is how words are defined. If you watch even a bit of this*, you will quickly see how genuine (and universal) understanding of the crucial economic concept of competition was completely rewritten for the benefit of technocrats and bureaucrats. You can also see how completely unnatural the current understanding of what competition is and how a competitive market in the real world actually works.

Intuitively, I've always looked at competition in the Austrian way, the pre-technocratic way. It is, of course, no surprise that socialists and statists argue about the impossibility of a textbook "free market". They are quite correct, that kind of free market doesn't exist and it is, in any event, of no real benefit to the consumer. Who wants to buy identical cars at identical prices which just have a different badge on them?

Mercedes have a monopoly on making Mercedes. They don't have a monopoly on making cars. But if they come up with a new innovation, within a couple of years, that innovation would be found on the lowliest Nissan or Daewoo.

The benefit of a free and unregulated market is genuine competition for your money: differentiating on price, on features, on service, on marketing. The fact that someone can enter the market easily and compete with you is genuinely more likely to keep you honest than any number of government-decreed boxes to tick.

If you have a natural monopoly and you abuse that, someone will be annoyed enough to take you on. If you have a government-decreed monopoly, people cannot take you on. Anybody moved to a new house? Seen what a complete pain in the cunt it is to get a new phone line installed? Reason? Legally, only BT can fit your home with a landline.

Historically, even natural monopoly is kept honest by the threat of competition. The only real burden to consumers is created by monopoly by fiat. That is, monopolies created by regulation.

*I was going to say you don't need to watch the whole video. But I did anyway. It's quite good.

Making a mental note

really? I can see how inflation has shot up Mugabe style, as Dale was predicting, after last QE burst

-- Sunny Hundal, arguing for more quantitative easing

I genuinely hope I am wrong and he is right. I reckon we have a year. I don't see Mugabe-style inflation, but I reckon it's definitely going to be visible and really fucking hurt.

In other news

Markets solve a thorny issue.

People's lives are saved, healthcare spend is reduced significantly. The one country which has this market is the one country that has no significant waiting list.

But we can't entrust these things to a market. Oh, no! They're much too important.

So we'll just let people die, instead. That's a much more sensible solution.

Thoughts on VAT rising

In essence, I don't think the VAT rise was "unavoidable". As I've said ad nauseum, I can get us out of this recession without raising the overall tax burden at all.

But for all that, I remember when that towering economic genius Gordon Brown lowered VAT everybody moaned that lowering VAT by 2.5% was going to do fuck all to boost demand and so it turned out as well. Now everyone is saying that raising VAT by 2.5% is going to smash our fragile recession. I don't fucking believe that for a moment.

I don't agree with VAT. Mark Wadsworth has often and adequately pointed out, VAT is one of the worst taxes there is. But given that it's there, I don't think a VAT rise from 17.5% to 20% is going to beat the economy into a pulp any more than a fall from 17.5% to 15% boosted the economy.

End of.

Budget thoughts

Well, it was pretty inevitable that I was going to say "not nearly enough", but I do have to say I have a grudging respect for Boy George after today. You can see the limp-wristed hand of the Limp Dumbs in some of the stupider aspects (a green bank, for the fucking sake of fucking fucking fucking fuck!) but by and large, I think he did the business.

For a statist social democrat, anyway.

There's no way I would have left that room alive, but I would have ripped the beating heart out of the state and pissed all over it if I was in that position. George really didn't go nearly far enough in my opinion. There's fucking tonnes of savings he could have made and if he was going to renege on VAT he might as well have gone for broke and butt-fucked the useless NHS as well. And international aid? FUCK OFF!

And even if he did ring-fence those two, he could have easily slashed the same again off the budget. Well, I could have, anyway.

Mark my words: the NHS is going to become a flashpoint in years to come, with tales of waste, overpaid execs, jollies and all sorts of other shenanigans. George should taken those fuckers roughly up the arse.

And I really can't see why we should be giving the fucking Indians money to buy our steel industry.

Cunts.

No wonder we're so fucked

Christ, I swear I just heard a Fellow of Economics from Oxford claim that the government was constrained by how much it could cut by the predicted growth of the economy.

Jesus fucking wept. You fucking, fucking FUCKING CUNT!

Deficit busting

Via the Salted Slug and Al Jahom, this.

My take?



And I sure as fuck wouldn't stop there!

Update: Kitler in the comments pointed out that there might be 25% of people in jail that wouldn't meet with libertarian requirements for them being there. So I made that assumption and here is the result:

What fucking planet are these cunts on?

So, the thuggish Ed Bollocks has gone for broke. In the Guardian (THE FUCKING GUARDIAN, for fuck's sake!) he argues that Labour's policy of letting too many Eastern European workers into the country was wrong.

Nice bit of dog whistle politics there, Eddy: nothing wrong with Froggies, Krauts or swarthy Mediterranean types gunning for middle-class jobs, it's all those bloody Polacks and Lithuanians taking the low-paid jobs that core Labour voters might aspire to. What a fucking cunt.

I couldn't find the words in a dictionary to convey my surprise when Sunny "Bleeding Heart" Hundal actually defended this tosh. Way to go, Sunny, using weasel words about "redefining the debate" while ignoring the bigoted elephant in the room. How very fucking liberal indeed.

But even this wasn't the bit that left me fucking reeling. It was one of Sunny's commentards:

So it is not just a case of immigrant workers coming here, it is also about exporting jobs over there. The minimum wage has had considerable effects here, a minimum wage across the EU will remove many of the reasons for the migration of labour and the migration of jobs.

Jesus H. Christ on a cock-blocking fuck-cycle! The minimum wage here has left us exposed to more cost-effective labour in other countries, so rather than getting rid of it so we can compete more effectively, he wants everyone else to implement a minimum wage. So then when countries outside the EU become EVEN MORE cost effective so that jobs leave the EU completely, does he then want the rest of the world to introduce this artificial wage, which, if implemented, will simply push up the cost of living artificially, rendering the existing minimum wage useless, which will then lead him to push up the minimum wage in concert with everyone else, which will will simply push up the cost of living artificially, rendering the new minimum wage useless, which will then lead him to ...

How can some people just be so incredibly fucking DUMB?

Oil spill: guess what's to blame?

My regular reader (Hi, Mom!) will know that I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about regulation. I'd been meaning to look into the BP oil spill, but via Davy, I find a nice, clear analysis of the root cause of the problem.

Yep! It's regulation. Once again, the regulation has been drafted to benefit those being "regulated". BP may well be liable for the costs of the cleanup, but over and above that, they are only liable for $75m.

The "vicious" regulation imposed by the US government means that BP can, and allegedly did, cut corners hugely on safety measures. In a free market, they would be liable to the total value of the company, so they'd be much more careful.

The same thing really applies to the banks. Back in the bad old days, banks were liable to the full value of their assets, so they were naturally more cautious. But after years of the government "knowing better", they have also created regulations (and fucking bailouts!) that let the banks get away with, if not quite murder, then definitely manslaughter.

Do go read the whole thing, it's very good.