If you're missing MW, here's a couple of suggestions for you.
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First up, if you have never read Frank Davis, then he's well worth a look. I'd rate him as about the best writer and one of the most original thinkers in the blogosphere. He concentrates on the 'secondhand smoke' and 'global warming' scams. MW readers with a longer attention span might want to add him to their required reading list.
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Second up, those of you who like to watch politics might be interested in what the grassroots left are up to. The TUC touchstone blog is worth checking for this. Today they link to two pamphlets that give you an idea of the kind of sales pitch they will employ in the coming strikes.
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Third - for those of you (like me) who are on the lager and would rather watch something on youtube, you might fancy a chuckle at Paul Holmes who stood for the top job at Unison recently (and lost).
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And last but not least, if you like gambling/trading ideas, check out the Mad Hedge Fund Trader who is tipping Chile and reckons the time to short 30 year T Bills is nearly upon us.
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If any other MW fans have spotted anything you think readers would be interested in please link to it in the comments. Keep reading!
Friday, 6 August 2010
Spotted elsewhere...
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6 comments:
I certainly agree on Frank Davis - a very thoughtful, well-written blog that uses the smoking ban as a metaphor for more or less everything else that's wrong with the world.
You could take a look at my blog of beer-related moaning as well ;-)
Thanks C!
I liked your post on why people visit pubs less. FD alwasy blames the smoking ban, I think, however, it's more to do with this dangerous land price/consumer credit cycle that's erupted in our faces.
The big 'pubco's' (like Enterprise Inns and Punch Taverns) are basically highly geared commercial property companies if you look at their accounts.
If you believe the official OBR assumptions, commercial property will rise by 32%, unemployment will fall a lot and salaries will be 19% up by 2014/15.
If you believe that, buy Enterprise Inns shares. But be warned, the bond market is demanding over 9%+ off them for an 8 year loan!
It's less consumer spending coupled with the credit freeze/re-pricing of risk and commercial property bear market which is making the pubco's sell up.
The Touchstone pamphlet "Unfair to Middling" (on Net) by Stewart Lansley is actually pretty good,dwelling on the other side of the Homeownerist scam,that high house prices are a ploy to reconcile people to a decrease in average real wages over the last twenty years.The same idea but in an American context and Marxist terms is presented by Prof R.Wolff in "Capitalism hits the fan" (2009)for which there are several supporting video lectures on the Net.
I've said before that the danger is that if you get house prices/land values down,employers will decrease real wages because "we don't really need them".There has to be some kind of interaction between Georgism and those who defend wage levels.Not that you can expect anything from the Labour leadership election which seems like an ideas-free zone.
Cognitive dissonance must be employed to be a socialist (i.e tax wages) and want to support wages.
@ACI
I make it pretty clear in the above
that I believe in the Henry George tax on land values and in higher wages:a low rents and house price/high wage economy. Why the jibes about cognitive dissonance?
DBC, shifting taxes to land and other monopolies will not depress wages*, because there is a Pareto balance between corporate profits and wages; if wages go below the typical level, then more ambitious employees set up their own businesses and profits get diluted down and wages get bid up, and so on.
* Even if they did, headline wages would have to go down by 50% or so to make employees worse off, on a net-for-net basis, which is unlikely, and then there is a Pareto relationship between net wages and rents as well, so rents will take the rest of the strain, if any.
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