Celebrity Names

Fun Online Polls: Exploding pavements & Carnivorous animals

The responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

How many pavement explosions have there been in London in the last three years?

None - 20%
1 to 10 - 21%
11 to 100 - 20%
147 - 38%

Very well done 38% of you, that was the correct answer!
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I don't really like analogies when discussing social or economic issues, as they only help us so far.

But I like to see the productive economy as herbivores (turning plants into animals) and rent seekers/rent collectors as carnivores or parasites (reducing the number of animals).

Carnivores need herbivores but herbivores don't need carnivores. The productive economy doesn't need landlords, bankers, regulators and quangocrats. By analogy, if all the lions disappeared from the savannah, we'd end up with more animals. If all the giraffes disappeared from the savannah, then the lions would die out and we'd end up with no animals. If the productive sector shut down, from whom would landlords collect rent, from whom would the bankers collect interest, who would the regulators regulate and from whom would the government collect the taxes to pay for quangocrats?

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll: is it possible to have an eco-system where all the animals are carnivores?

Answers here or use the widget in the sidebar.

"Women Still Do A Lot More Housework Than Men, Study Finds"

From HuffPost:

The poll for BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour suggests that women spend an average of 11-and-a-half hours doing housework by their own estimation, while men complete just six...

Reminds of something I've meant to post for ages. My wife had to go abroad for a week a couple of years ago, so I had to take over all the housework.

After dropping her off at the airport, the kids and I did the big weekly shop, and for the next week I got up a bit earlier and sorted out breakfast, made sure they'd packed the correct stuff for school and took them to school. After I came home from work, I bunged in some laundry, made sure they did their homework while I cooked, we sat down for dinner together, then I folded the previous day's laundry and hung up the wet stuff, did the washing up. At the weekend I even whizzed round with the vacuum cleaner and gave the kitchen and bathrooms floors a bit of a wipe.

I suppose I was lucky, my boss was happy for me to clock off a bit earlier on the days when I hadn't arranged that some other parents pick them up from school and nothing went disatrously wrong like a Tube strike or one of them being taken ill etc.

And at nine in the evening was proper clocking off time. Kids cleaned their teeth and went to bed with a book, good night kiss, job done and I could sit back and relax for a couple of hours. Despite I had never done this before, I didn't find it particularly difficult. In a way it's less stressful and more rewarding than paid employment because you are in charge and you get a sense of achievement and a nice warm glow at the end of the day (not just an alcohol induced one).

So after a lifetime of sort of respecting women for doing most of the housework (in exchange for working shorter hours in paid employment, natch), it struck me that perhaps they do protest too much, there's less to it than you think.

Here's the punchline: I was picking up the little lass from school and got chatting to one of her friend's Dads and he said that his Mrs was also away for a few days and that he'd had to step into the breach for the first time. And he was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly it all went as well.

Rather Pointless

From the BBC

A 63-year-old woman who was accused of targeting internet abuse at the family of Madeleine McCann has been found dead in a hotel.

Brenda Leyland, from Burton Overy, Leicestershire, was accused of being one of the so-called "trolls" directing abusive messages at the McCanns.

Her body was found days after she was confronted outside her home by a Sky News reporter.

Madeleine McCann disappeared while on holiday In Portugal in 2007.

You can read and speculate all you like about what happened to Madeleine McCann. The bottom line is that nothing is going to happen until either she, or some evidence turns up or someone goes to the police that knows something.

End of another financial scam?

Merryn Somerset Webb in her blog, cites another case of a bank being forced by the courts to give up an attempt to charge a customer several hundred pounds for running up an "unauthorised" overdraft and wonders why they still try it on like this. As she points out, the moment the bank honours the debit, they are authorising the overdraft. They could just say no. It's hard to resist the conclusion that it is just another scam to get customers to pay for "free" banking.

it would surely be better to refuse payments beyond an agreed limit, and instead send an instant text to the account holder saying something along the lines of “We have had a request for a payment that would take your overdraft beyond the agreed limit. If the payment is urgent please contact us immediately to discuss your options.” she points out, but the banks still appear to yearn for the time before the coming of the internet, when everything had to be sent in the post and cheques really did take almost a week to clear, instead of electronic payments having to be artificially held up. They still don't do e-mail, so it is unlikely that they would send you a text about an exceeded overdraft limit. Why should they, when they can keep stumm, fine you and then charge you interest on the fine?

The banks may want to live in the past, but, with luck, the present might just be catching up with them.

Economic myths: Machines will put us all out of work

DBC Reed in the comments here:

If you replace skilled workers with easy to operate machines, you reduce the amount of dosh in circulation ("demand") and end up in a deflationary spiral as the replacement machines don't get paid and so don't maintain demand: Major Douglas.

Sooner or later you have to give people the money to buy the products of robots. And Uber is robot brain power or memory.

Quite clearly this is not true. Let's assume that somebody is clever enough to build a totally automated factory that churns out stuff at virtually zero cost. He will have to drop the price to what people are prepared to pay, i.e. a very low price indeed.

If you wind back the clock a few hundred years, most people were agricultural workers just above subsistence levels and by today's standards, in terms of material quality of life, health, life expectancy etc, we were very poor indeed. When processes become automated or people work out a cheaper substitute, there are unpleasant short term consequences for those who suddenly become unemployed, but this just results in a gradual shift from farming to manufacturing, and then from manufacturing to services.

The total value/amount of food grown in the UK is as high as it ever was, manufacturing output is as high as it ever was, it is just that the bulk of overall economic growth was down to increases in the amount of services provided (or leisure time, same thing, really). So in relative terms, agriculture and manufacturing output have fallen. Agricultural output at farm gate prices is only one or two per cent of GDP, and only one or two per cent of people work in agriculture, even though the UK is or could be self-sufficient in terms of food. If they'd realised this a few hundred years ago, the knee-jerk response would have been "Then surely we will have 98% unemployment!"

Overall unemployment rates are not materially higher now than they were a few hundred years ago, and what unemployment there is is largely down to the tax system driving a huge wedge between supply and demand. The welfare system solidifies and amplifies this.

We're all singing from the same hymn sheet here:

Bayard: "Mobile telephony, the internet and satellite-based route guidance systems were not invented to put traditional taxi drivers out of business, they were invented and someone thought to put them together to compete with established taxi-drivers. To this extent, technology is amoral. I'm not saying that's a good or desirable thing, it's just how it is.

To answer your question about purchasing power, today's poor are much richer in real terms than the poor of a hundred years ago, so if a hundred years ago there was not a problem with purchasing power, why should there be now? Again, I am not saying this is a good or desirable state of affairs either."

The Stigler: "Once you get robots making things, you reduce the price and increase the reliability of things. People need less money to buy a smartphone or a hard disk recorder.

Being rich now isn't so much about having stuff that others don't. It's more about having a Philippe Starck lemon squeezer instead of a normal one, a Mac instead of a PC, Diesel jeans instead of Tesco jeans, sitting on a warm beach in the Caribbean instead of sitting on a warm beach in the Vendee."

Lola: "The other lie that is bandied about (and to some extent what Douglas was on about) is that demand creates supply. It doesn't. It is precisely the other way about. If that was not the case then helicoptering money would be a sensible policy which it isn't because that is essentially a 'something for nothing' economics (rather like socialism). We are not the 'consumer society. We are the 'producer society'.

As regards redundant jobs, yes that is a sadness, but the beauty of human beans is that we are adaptable, have a cognitive ability and an opposable thumb. We can retrain. Robots usually cannot adapt as they are designed (by man) for a specific role, the classic division of labour. Asimov (I think) coined a phrase for people with worries like you - The Frankenstein Complex."

Tesco Price Promise

I had a Sainsury's 1p off voucher recently and while rummaging through the vouchers before I went to the supermarket, I found one from Tesco as well.

Oh, and I'm 7² years old today.

"Uber boss Travis Kalanick: I'm no bully"

From the BBC:

The boss of the rapidly-expanding taxi service Uber has told the BBC he is not bullying local taxi firms and drivers.

"There's probably some misunderstanding of who I am and how I roll," Travis Kalanick told BBC World Service technology programme Tech Tent.

His firm has been criticised for what some have described as aggressive business practices in cities around the world.

"That's just simply not the case," he said. "Anybody who says otherwise gets his fucking head kicked in."

"Drink recommended to help cut drug dependence"

From the BBC:

Alcoholic beverages formulated to reduce drug consumption among anxiety sufferers look set to be recommended to NHS patients in England and Wales.

Beer, wine and spirits should be made available to people who currently take medication to combat depression, anxiety or feelings of social inadequacy, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) said.

Costing around 50p per unit, alcoholic drinks are already widely available in Scotland. Final guidance is set to be published next month and NICE says 600,000 people would no longer require prescriptions for expensive but ineffective drugs.

Alcohol, which is also called "booze" or "a tipple", is taken orally as a fluid in the afternoon or evenings and reduces the urge to take psychopharmaceuticals. Retailers will be licensed to sell the fluid in sealed containers for consumption off their premises, and it has been observed that consumers of alcohol group together for psychosocial support.

If alcohol receives final approval, it will be recommended by the NHS to patients in England and Wales. Northern Ireland will review this final guidance before making a decision.

Prof Carole Longson, NICE Health Technology Evaluation Centre director, said alcohol could lead to an overall improvement in people's sense of general well-being.

"Those who enter premises with an 'on-licence' have already taken the first big steps to widening their social circle and meeting some interesting strangers, which is just as good as engaging with NHS support services and taking part in therapy programmes," she said.

"We are pleased to be able to recommend the use of alcohol to support people further in their efforts to fight work-related stress. When consumed before going to bed, alcohol has been also proven to reduce sleeplessness and it has enabled millions of shyness sufferers to start meaningful, long-term relationships with members of the opposite sex. Or indeed the same sex.

"Alcohol-based treatments are cost effective for the NHS compared with psychosocial support and medication, because 'drinkers' will be required to fund their own purchases. And those of their new best mates once the evening gets going."

Killer Arguments Against LVT, Not (339)

I love it when I get an equal-and-opposite matching pair.

A traditional KLN is "But it's a tax on gardens". Which is clearly isn't. The amount of tax due depends on a plot's site premium, and that depends entirely on where it is rather what it's used for. By and large, the site premium for a flat in a city centre is as much as the site premium of a semi-detached house out in the suburbs.
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So here's the equal and opposite argument in today's Evening Standard:

40 per cent of homes targeted in Ed Miliband's £2m mansion tax are flats

Large detached homes make up only one in seven of the London “mansions” that would be targeted by Ed Miliband’s proposed annual tax on properties worth more than £2 million, new research reveals today.

Almost 40 per cent of the homes in the £2 million plus bracket are flats, while more than a third are traditional Victorian or Edwardian terraced homes. Semi-detached properties make up the remaining 12 per cent, according to the study by agents Knights Frank.

In summary: you can't tax homes with gardens because that would be a tax on gardens, and you can't tax flats because they don't have gardens? I rest my case.

And I don't know why they started calling it 'Mansion Tax' when it clearly isn't and was never intended to be. Was it the original left-wing supporters who thought this would make it easier to sell politically, or was it the cunning Homeys who invented the phrase so that ten minutes later they can turn round and say "Ah, but it will catch a lot of homes which are not mansions"??

See also: Labour inventing the term 'Bedroom Tax' to refer to a reduction in the amount of Housing Benefit certain households are entitled to. A jolly good idea in principle but will save f- all money at the cost of massive pain for those affected... as it only applies to council tenants.
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The article then runs through the usual equal and opposite fuckwit KLNs that a) those lucky home owners did nothing to earn those land values so it's unfair to put a tax on them; but b) on the other hand, those home owner made sensible investment decisions i.e. gambled on values going up, so it's unfair to put a tax on them.

Boo hoo, shroud wave, sob.
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Next:

"The government should do better to collect more taxes from large global firms who are profiting from trading in the UK."

Yes, some really large corporations take the piss a bit, but by and large their profits are taxed at very high rates already, near the top of the Laffer Curve and secondly, the tax base is not that big. Total profits of UK companies is in the region of £150 billion, taxed at 30% - 40% (corporation tax + VAT), the mount of money which 'large global firms' earn in the UK but hide from the taxman is not huge, maybe another ten per cent of that, £15 billion? So they're avoiding something like £5 billion tax?

On the other hand, the total annual site premium of UK residential land (gross rental value minus bricks and mortar cost) is in the region of £200 billion a year, currently taxed at very low rates indeed and very haphazardly at that (SDLT and IHT).

So if the government has the choice between a) hiking the tax rate on business and seeing revenues stay much the same or even fall and b) collecting a bit more from a much larger pot where there are no Laffer effects, what 'should' it do?
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Finally, it's perfectly acceptable for Tories to lie about and deliberately misinterpret Labour policies and vice versa, that's the fun of politics.

What bugs me is when Labour MPs misrepresent their own party's policies:

Glenda Jackson, who represents Hampstead and Kilburn for Labour, said: “It will impact disastrously on people who are asset rich but revenue poor, particularly pensioners, who bought their houses many years ago and through no fault of their own have seen the value rise because of the ludicrous London house prices.”

You stupid bloody cow.

Ed Balls has made it perfectly clear that Labour's general policy is to extend the ATED charge to all homes and give pensioners a roll-up and defer option.

Stick to lying about and misrepresenting Tory policies in future, would you, darling?