Posts by The Axe 737 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Nov 2011
You must be different to me. I don't find any of Tim's articles abusive in any way. This one is not either unless you don't like have your arguments debated and react by calling the person criticising you names like "neo-liberal" and then removing any comments that are critical from your blog.
And you've made the mistake of thinking only inside the employee works for a single company box. In reality there will be requirements from both sides. The employee wants certain things. The employer wants certain things. In the case of the employee they can take the job with restrictions on holiday or they can get a different job with the requirements they want. The call centre employer will get all the employees he wants who are willing to forgo flexibility on holiday. Other employers who don't have such restrictions will get the employee who wants flexibility with their holiday.
@Simon Watson, it's hard to have sympathy with people who don't have a guaranteed job and who ask high amounts to cover the times when they are looking for the next contact isn't it. Employees know that their job is relatively safe and even if they loose their job they have certain rights like redundancy and notice periods. Contractors have none of that and that's why businesses pay high rates - because they know they can get rid of them at the drop of a hat.
As for paying tax, the rule is pay as little as possible. All paying tax does is allow the state to get big and fat and it'll keep on asking for more and more. Keep the state small and lean.
What's a fair share anyway? 10% or 90%?
PS. You do know that if you're not happy with the level of tax you're paying that you can send extra amounts direct to the Tresasury. I'm sure that you'd be happy to do so otherwise I could accuse you of not paying your fair share of tax.
@Lionel Baden, initially people will die from autonomous cars. Just like loads of people died during the early years of flight. But each time lessons are learned, safety devices/procedures/practises installed, and fewer people die next time round. Flying has used this method to make it one of the safest methods of transport.
Taking the attitude that a single death with an autonomous car means that the whole tech should be shutdown immediately is anti-progress. Progress requires death to proceed. Understanding that and realizing that everything has a risk and everything has costs and everything has benefits allows use to proceed to a safe world in the future. Maybe not immediately, but it will be the long term goal.
Corps might think that hiding the odd defect is cheaper but only in monetary terms, not in goodwill. When they do this practice and no one buys their product anymore they pretty much shoot themselves in the foot with this bean counter mentality. So corps quickly learn that it is actually cheaper and better to solve the problems.
But there are millions of cars already on the road. Autonomous cars are only 5-10 years away, but like the introduction of ABS and cruise control it will take a lot longer for it to trickle down to the cheaper cars. Initially it will be the top of the range that get this tech, but cheaper cars will only get them as older cars are sold as 2nd hand.
No. It's clear evidence that Al Gore is a lying little shit and that western government energy policies don't make any difference.
Governments are increasing taxes on the poor in their countries to make the rich feel good that they are doing something, anything. But none of the actions make any difference because countries like China & India are increasing their CO2 output as developed countries shoot themselves in the foot. China won't start to cut back till 2030 and any lessening in it's annual increase in CO2 is only due to increasing efficiency as its economy booms, not due to climate control actions.
If you read any of Worstall's stuff and any economics stuff you would find that the burden of taxation always falls on individuals, never on corporations. Corporations are paper entities run by humans for the benefit of humans. They are just a contractual method of organising people. It is the people in the corporation and those who use its output (profit -> shareholders, product -> customers) who pay for the tax that the corp collects. The proportions are what economics people argue over, that employess, shareholders and customers pay the tax is not under dispute.
Do EVs need to be striking? Maybe whilst being a Greenie is an in-thing and a way of getting one up on the Jones'. But as the whole Greenie campaign gets cluttered with make it rich entrepreneurs taking advantage of stupid people with more money than sense and as the climate disaster meme breaks down when it doesn't happen for decades (remember when we were told that we wouldn't see snow every again?) businesses will start to switch to more subtle forms of Greenie branding. Plus sometimes some people just want a form of getting from A to B without design being shoved in their face.
What's this hatred of gentrification? Anything that gets rid of nasty or down market areas of a city and improves them is a good thing. If a few people think that the city's character has been lost then they are the nutty ones, everyone else is progressing forward and benefiting from a better city.
A sign of a electorate happy with their life is one where many don't bother to vote as they don't see the need to get new policiticans in to change the system. The system is working and people are happy with their lives. Not necessarily with politicians but that is also why they don't vote, it won't make any difference. LibLabCon are all the same with minor differences. There is not such a difference in policies as there used to be between Lab & Con.
We aren't living in a totalarian society where you are forced to vote, we are living in a democracy where you have the right to not care about who is running the country.
@Cliff, Its a myth that the EU stops the European countries fighting each other. If anything it makes it more likely as different countries compete to gain the advantage within a system that doesn't allow it leading to the only way to bypass it being the people themselves (not the politicians) starting the fights. Witness the protests across the EU as each country's population complains that they are being forgotten about.
"Housing is beyond belief, but many buildings are rent controlled (max ~1 per cent increase a year), which is vital to keeping this city interesting"
Rent control is what keep housing expensive. It cuts down on the supply of housing which causes prices to rise. The Apple/Google/Etc stock options does lead to a small increase in the average price but only because the rich buy really expensive homes.
Economists are virtually unanimous in concluding that rent controls are destructive. In a 1990 poll of 464 economists published in the May 1992 issue of the American Economic Review, 93 percent of U.S. respondents agreed. Quoted from http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html
The public are tiring of Climage Change so they need to be scared into believing its will happen* so that those who make money from Greenie policies (like Dale Vince of Ecotricity, who has no connection with the BBC and this story but is just an example of one of those who profit from Green policies) can carry on raking it in.
* will happen or could happen, it doesn't matter when a disaster movie is presented as science, in the mind of the public it becomes a definite, not a possibility.
More like the canned statement is saying that HSBC Switzerland followed Swiss law but now that countries are making agreements to cut back on secrecy Switzerland is changing its laws and HSBC Switzerland is changing too. HSBC Switzerland is not the same company as HSBC England. They might be managed by the same overarching group, but they have to follow local laws. If you say otherwise then Chinese companies might as well setup here and follow Chinese law when employing staff with Chinese H&S regs etc.
And you have no idea what you are talking about either. Keynesianism was not the saviour of the postwar slump. The war created the slump, stop the war and the economies recovered. Keynes has a point that a certain amount of state spending can counter a boom-bust but everyone who is a Keynes disciple seems to think that the state can solve all boom-busts. Keynes said a certain amount of spending can allievate the problem, but it's not a cure. Hayek is just as much a nutter as Keynes. They both have valid points. Thinking one is a god and the other the devil makes you a nutter.
PS. How does money sitting in an offshore bank account rot? Does the bank just sit on it and do nothing. Or does it loan money out to entrepeneurs and invest in business in order to get a return and pay an interest on the money banked in them?
Whilst Sony were hacked, it was probably more an inside job, than a hack by NK. As for all the brew-ha-ha about cinema goers being bombed for watching it, that sounds more like an attempt at bigging up the film because it was so crap in the first place that the only way to make any money from it was to hype it up to the rafters. What better way than to create a demand to see the film than to withdraw it for a while and then miraculously all the security problems disappear and the film is shown to a clamouring public. Except it'll still go down in the annals of movie history as a crap film.
It wasn't Amazon whose tax affairs are marked as illegal, but Luxembourg's. Amazon are just following the rules set by Lux. So we are arguing about which laws trumps which. In effect the EU is saying that they are the ultimate authority and that countries have no right to decide their own laws. Why do we bother with a UK parliament and paying 600 odd people lots of money if they can't make laws.
LVT would not make any difference to development of land. Amending the planning system would do that. LVT is a stupid tax as will tax people who have no income but lots of value in their home, e.g. pensioners. So will they have to sell their home and move to a cheaper land value property? Or will there have to be lots of exceptions - which complicates the tax system and downgrades its efficacy and efficiency.
The wrong solution to the wrong problem.
HS2 does not solve transport problems and is a centrally planned solution to a non existent problem. Technology has already made the issue mute. WiFi on trains, 3G/4G mobiles, charging points, all allow people to work on trains so it doesn't matter that the trip takes 30 minutes longer than a hypothetical HS2.
Buses do not solve transport problems either. Centrally planned (bus routes set by planners) with no regard to how people actually live and work. Buses cause just as many traffic problems as they solve. Rather than trying to use an inappropriate method to solve transport issues, the best thing that politicians and civil servants could have done is to have done nothing. Technology always progresses at rate to overtake centrally planned solutions which is hindered by bureaucracy and red tape.
It's not so much that Google cars are a better solution to buses, but that UberTaxi is just as good. Anything that adapts to how people really live and work is the best solution. Maybe that might mean more small apartments closer to workplaces or more renting so that the workforce is more mobile and not tied to overpriced houses or it could mean better traffic flow or something that no one has thought of yet.
They shouldn't aim for a minimum wage. All it will do is depress wages as bureaucracy will never be quick to increase it. If there is no minimum wage, but there are lots of jobs, then just the demand for workers will cause the companies to increase wages to keep their staff.
As for $220/month. It might not be a living wage in Singapore itself, but in Bantam it probably goes a long way for those living in the shacks on stilts. Context is everything. It's like the calls for a national minimum wage here in the UK which then has to have exceptions for London. Even inside a small country like the UK the cost of living depends on where you live. Demands for the Living Wage have caused the public sector in the North East to be a lot better off than the private sector, and the private sector cannot afford the NMW for those whose jobs aren't worth it. They'd rather overload existing staff than get another person in (along with Employers NI and other costs).
Bantam is the current location for cheap labour, just like Japan was, then China. Now Chinese wages increase by over 20% each year, so they are looking for cheap labour themselves. Bantam and Africa are the place the Chinese are looking at.
So the wages of those in Bantam are low. Now. For a short time. But given the increase in workers, and the demand for them, it won't be long before their wages increase. So rather than worry about it and think like all politicians that "something must be done", the best thing is to do nothing and let the workers go to the jobs which pay better and have better conditions. Simple market forces will cause wages to increase within a few years.
Foodbanks are a new phenomenon because they are the result of marketing by the Trussel Trust.
As for your example. The spare room subsidy (your use of the term Bedroom Tax shows your political leanings) can be alleviated by asking the council for a new home or getting the council to help from the fund that allows for exceptions. A mobile phone can be cheap, and cost next to nothing to use if they only use it when really necessary.
And how do many of your cases build up their debts? Have they spent more than they earned? I suspect a majority are in that boat. Should the tax payer support all these people who can't balance their bank accounts and get into problems or should such people be allowed to learn from their mistakes.
"written by proper journalists that often write on economic matters" Not at the Guardian, it doesn't employ any proper journalists. Just people who continue the memes of the group think of the left. Though to be honest, none of the other papers employ proper journalists either, just churnalists.
1/3 of the grid might be non-fossil on good days, on bad days, it'll be 0%. Today its only 15% as gridwatch* shows. Renewable is to variable to of any use. And to wasteful of space to be useful too. The UK currently has just over 4000 wind turbines and the spoil the countryside everywhere you look. Imagine the numbers going up to 75,000. And you can't say that solar would cut the number down as we would need both enough solar to power the whole country and enough wind to power the whole country for the days when one isn't powering.
https://carboncounter.wordpress.com/2013/01/02/how-many-wind-turbines-would-it-take-to-power-the-uk/
Me, I like to use my car when I want and not be denied its use just because there wasn't enough solar or wind power to charge it.
* http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
