After his first week of blogging back in 2002 John Quiggin observed that blogging "technology seems ideally suited for individuals and small groups, with no obvious way of scaling it up to corporate level."
Maybe he's changed his mind. This week Quiggin suggests that The Australian makes more sense if you think of it as a right wing group blog than as a newspaper:
Looking at the Oz now, it’s easy to imagine it as a rightwing group blog that started up in the Triassic era of blogging (say 2002). Lines weren’t drawn so sharply then, so the contributors included some a bit more leftish or just less ideological than the group as a whole. Over time, some have been pushed out, and the others have been forced to demonstrate group solidarity on appropriate occasions, such as attack from the left.
By now however, a tribalist mode of groupthink has taken over the blog. Its members spend a lot of time reassuring each other that, in spite of all contrary evidence, they are right about everything. Even when they are demonstrably wrong on some particular point, they are still right in a way their opponents can never be. Conversely, no matter how bogus the argument, if it’s on the right side it has to be backed all the way.
It wasn't always this way . Michael Stutchbury writes: "yours truly commissioned Quiggin (along with The Weekend Australian's Christopher Pearson) to write a column in The Australian Financial Review in the mid-1990s." As for Christopher Pearson, it's hard to imagine him writing for the Fin now.
That's just nonsense from JQ. The Oz has the most balanced op-ed in the land. Seriously.
Seriously Pedro if you believe that you are as delusional as the journalists who write for the Oz.
Manne's essay and his respoonse to Paul Kelly in The Monthly deconstruct beautifully the groupthink that applies on the Oz. The more they respond the sillier they look.
I think Pedro might have been kidding.
The Oz isn't a newspaper so much as a neoliberal propoganda organ. Don't know why people pay any attention to it (although it does run at a loss, so perhaps they don't...)
"Don’t know why people pay any attention to it (although it does run at a loss, so perhaps they don’t…)"
Most people don't -- http://www.roymorgan.com/news/press-releases/2010/1205/ , and I would think a lot of that is preaching to the converted.
Do people take bloggers seriously now? I mean News is killing Fairfax.
"I mean News is killing Fairfax."
Really? On the most recent circulation figures (duplicated for some years) all print newspapers are continuing to experience slowly falling circulation. However The Australian is at 129,985 weekdays while the SMH is at 209,500 and The Age is at 190,600. In other words the combined Fairfax broadsheet circulation is almost three times that of the Oz. Of course Murdoch also has lots of single city tabloids with larger circulations than any of the broadsheets, but you can't make any comparisons in that segment because Fairfax simply don't publish any general news tabloids.
"Do people take bloggers seriously now?"
Well, if you consider John Quiggin, Paul Krugman, and those types bloggers, yes.
No, not kidding. The Oz carries much more left opinion as a proportion of the op-ed pages than the SMH carries from the right.
"Well, if you consider John Quiggin, Paul Krugman, and those types bloggers, yes."
That's what's lacking though, open minds.
The bleating about the media is over the top.
The Australian, that has published the well known 'neo-liberal' (whatever that means) Phillip Adams for years, supported Kevin Rudd for PM and has written numerous of op eds in favour of a C02 tax is not a right wing blog. How many right wing blogs give Tim Flannery multiple page spreads?
Compare this to The Wall Street journal and Fox News.
The Age, that publishes the well known Marxist Chris Berg and has columns by the far left Peter Costello and Amanda Vanstone is not an organ of international socialism.
Various Left Wing Bloggers have been attacking the Australian for years and the Australia will write back. What do they expect? It also seems to be good for readers. It's surprising The Age hasn't learnt and written something attacking Catallaxy. Mind you they do like to have a go at the IPA and CIS so perhaps they do that instead.
Similarly over Catallaxy there is regular attacks on The Guardian on the Yarra.
But who knows, maybe they'll get their wish and Australia will be left with Metro style free newspapers and nothing else.
I certainly don't have time to do a careful analysis of your claim pedro, but it certainly doesn't accord with my subjective perceptions. If we simply take today's online Oz and SMH as prima facie representative examples, here's what we get:
The Australian
Mumble - Curse of better prime minister - Another fortnight, another terrible Newspoll for the Labor Party. (no identifiable ideological slant)
Jack The Insider - The real hunger in Australia's food industry - The big hat loomed into view outside parliament and Bob Katter didn't disappoint. (no identifiable ideological slant)
Dennis Shanahan - Compromise gives Gillard a bounce - THE latest Newspoll survey can fairly be seen as a referendum on political styles. (you couldn't call Shanahan a lefty or even a centrist, but this column/blog is about as balanced as he gets).
Patrick Smith - Suns, Giants can sidestep grubbiness - sports column so not relevant
Nikki Savva - Abbott must say no to Malaysia - HIS political and moral instincts are aligned on the issue of stopping the boats, says Niki Savva. (her standard pro-Coalition schtick masquerading as sensible/moderate leftism)
Judith Sloan - AWA system saw real wage rises - UNIONS object to individual contracts because it erodes their power base. (nakedly right wing, pro-Coalition advocacy)
In summary - not a single left-leaning or centrist voice
Sydney Morning Herald
Gerard Henderson - Comedy or not, the producers are green (Hendo's usual oen-eyed right wing spiel
Peter Hartcher - Following the US into fifth domain of warfare (no identifiable idelogical slant)
Heather Ridout - Ensuring manufacturers get a fair go (pitch by manufacturing industry shill for neo-protectionism - but no identifiable party political slant)
Jacqueline Maley - Squabbles nasty and brutish (pox on both houses shallow analysis of asylum seeker debate - no identifiable ideological/partisan slant).
Roy Billing - Keep home-grown stars ((pitch by arts industry shill for neo-protectionism - but no identifiable party political slant)
In summary - not a single left-leaning or centrist voice.
Paul Sheehan, Gerard Henderson, Peter Costello, Ross Cameron, Amanda Vanstone just some of the right wing types infesting my SMH.
Phillip Adams about the only person I can think of in The Oz who is predictably Liberal. Left wing opinion pieces in the Oz token at best, eventually it seems all their columnist & journalists succumb to the groupthink, Peter van Onsolen and Christian Kerr 2 examples.
Really Ken? You don't see 2 articles pushing for protectionism of uncompetitive Australian industries as at all aligned with the Labor party?
"protectionism of uncompetitive Australian industries" is a National Party speciality.
Yobbo
What makes you imagine that industry protectionism is a uniquely or even predominantly Labor predisposition? In fact, as rog points out, the National Party has always been almost a synonym for protectionism and similarly with substantial parts of the Libs. It was the Hawke-Keating Labor government which mostly dismantled Australia's protectionist structures, after Fraser had squibbed the job following Whitlam's correct but precipitate tariff cuts in the 1970s.
Of course the ALP still has a substantial cheer squad/pressure group for neo-protectionism (some more populist and/or stupid union leaders) as does the contemporary Coalition (still the Nats plus some wet or just plain stupid Libs). You can't blame industry spivs like Ridout or Billing for opportunistically making a case for renewed protectionist measures at a time when they no doubt assess that Gillard might just be weak and desperate enough to throw them a bone in the hope of reducing political pressure and/or assessing that Abbott currently seems prepared to say just about anything that he thinks might hasten Gillard's demise. There's currently no sign that either party will fall for re-embracing protectionism and hopefully it will stay that way. Hence my assessment that neither article exhibits a partisan slant. That you think otherwise really does no more than confirm your own partisan position.
Because it's predominantly unions who push for it, and that's who runs the Labor party.
Also the fact that it's Labor party policy, and it's not Liberal Policy.
Let's be serious, you are just trying to claim that the lefty papers have no bias by claiming that run of the mill lefty causes are in fact "centrist". Yet, at the same time you nominate a standard right-wing by Judith Sloan (labor market flexibility) as blatant shilling for the liberal party.
In summation, one of the most dishonest comments I've ever seen.
I'm pretty sure van Onselen is a former Liberal staffer and I think still currently active. The fact that he appears as a relative moderate in the Oz context, is significant.
Yobbo needs to check with his minders.
I'm not so sure about the editorial, but the Oz is clearly to the right of the libs in the op-eds.
But so what?
Yobbo is being silly as regards protectionism - the AIG is at least as loud a voice as the AMWU in these matters, and views on the matter cut across the party line. But it would probably be reasonable to count support for the arts as a (very soft) left position.
So, the SMH has one hardline rightwinger and one soft left, while the Oz is rightwing all the way until Phillip Adams shows up once a week. That sounds about right, with the observation that the ABC is now somewhere between the centre and the right.
The SMH is largely soft left with a few exceptions. The Oz has a regular spread from old fashioned left through to genuine right. I'd call Paul Kelly NSW right, while Onsolen is liberal wet. The Oz certainly has more Right opinion than the SMH, but that is not group think. The even have a guy who thinks Rudd the greater FM ever!
If you take AGW as a good proxy for the divide then you regularly see a wide range of views about all aspects of the debate.
It's probably easier to imagine group think when you don't really listen to what your perceived opponents have to say.
John Q, if the ABC is now center-right then the centre is somewhere left of the Fabians. Perhaps we are all predisposed to see ourselves sitting in the centre and judge all opinion from that standpoint.
Pedro @ 21. Your last sentence is spot on. I could not agree more.
On looking at the Roy Morgan circulation figures, I was struck by the fact that TV Week had a greater circulation than the Weekend Australian. Since, I guess the W-A has a TV listing (I don't buy it, so this is a surmise), I suspect that Australian residents are consciously choosing NOT to look at the content of the Australian newspaper or its opinions.
Perhaps the Oz could note that, drop its opinion writers and get into celebrities.
Pedro @ 21; Marks @ 22 - I wouldn't consider myself a centrist, rather a realist/pragmatist social democrat a la the Northern European model (in the words of that Trotskyist PJ O'Rourke: "good socialism"). I view the historical record pointing to this position as leading to more resilient economies and better social outcomes.
So I'm unashamedly (moderate, non-ideological) left. In this context, I think it's noteworthy that I very rarely come across anything in the mainstream media that out-lefts me.
"while the Oz is rightwing all the way until Phillip Adams shows up once a week"
I'd hardly characterise George Megalogenis, Mike Steketee and Emma Jane as "right wing" but that aside, I think the Oz Op Ed is often a stimulating read. I don't agree with everything I read in it but I cleave to the old-fashioned notion that you form your own opinion about what you read rather than insist that everything conform to your own world view.
It's kind of ironic that people who bang on about the Oz or the ABC being 'biased' (interestingly both Left and Right do this in the latter case) are apparently unaffected by it personally. I assume their concerns aren't at all about tedious ideological pugilism and more for really stupid people incapable of exercising the sophisticated analytical discretion that informs their own impeccable judgment.
Fairfax too runs some decent Op Ed but they're way big on 'lifestyle' content and if you've read one funky, 'Hip Chicks are from Venus, Metrosexual Guys are from Mars' piece, you've read 'em all, pretty much.
(Though I'm usually with Gittins in the SMH.)
@24 This was pretty much my point. The Oz used to be a lot more diverse, and there are still a few people from that era hanging on, but that's also true of a lot of rightwing blogs.
On "It’s kind of ironic that people who bang on about the Oz or the ABC being ‘biased’ are apparently unaffected by it personally." WTF - I am regularly defamed by the Oz, and, oddly enough, I take it personally. If you find it odd that I this defamation doesn't lead me to agree with the Oz, I don't think you understand human nature very well.
As regards your finding the Oz editorials "stimulating", you must admit that you've long been a sucker for this style of reality-defying provocation. Back in the dark ages of blogging you were describing Steve Milloy, probably the hackiest hack ever to walk upright, as "always excellent".
Argung about op-ed columnists utterly misses the point. I don't object to the fact that the Oz has more rightwingers there than the Fairfax papers (though I think Yobbo et al are silly to claim otherwise).
What pisses me off is two things:
- the Murdochracy imposes this ideological orthodoxy across all its media. Not a single Murdoch publication worldwide, for example, opposed the Iraq fiasco. But even this would be OK if they didn't have 70% of newspaper circulation in Australia.
- their NEWS coverage is slanted. They don't generally lie (that's left to the op-eds), but gee they spin. It's mainly about what they choose to be news - if it puts "lefties" (including the current government) in a bad light, it is front page news. If it puts "freedom lovers" in a bad light, it gets buried. And they fiddle with the lede in stories too - if, for example, this government reaches a deal with a noisy vested interest, that's "Gillard buckles to pressure", whereas you know if Abbott got the same deal it would be "Abbott strikes bold bargain".
The second is the reason I don't give them my dollar, because it means that reading the Oz is simply not a good way to find out what is going on in the world.
For me the critical point is that the Murdoch press have consistently presented untruths and lies as the truth.
"If you find it odd that I this defamation doesn’t lead me to agree with the Oz, I don’t think you understand human nature very well."
No, I don't find it odd at all - and your personal experience of being written about wasn't the point I was making. Most readers aren't the individual subject of commentary.
You have an extraordinary memory, John. Who is Steve Milloy?
Additionally to the comment from DD I would say that while they omit any news good for the ALP and similarly omit news that is bad for the coalition, the total potential newsworthy column inches goes down, and there is a lot of repetition.
In other words, the Australian actually is 'news' poor in terms of volume. The y make up this volume by repeating the bad ALP good coalition shtick. The problem for them is that people actually do get it. So, if being read by a coalition supporter, surely it must get boring reading the same thing over and over, and for an ALP supporter, it merely serves to reinforce the opinion of bias. In neither case is that likely to increase the desire to purchase more chip wrappers.
Geoff - John is referring to a comment you made in 2003:
John Quiggin wrote a post in reply:
cigarette smoke is good for you
guns don’t kill people, gun laws kill people
Global warming is a myth
Darwinism is an atheistic fraud
Ken Parish responded in the comments.
@27: "the Murdochracy imposes this ideological orthodoxy across all its media. Not a single Murdoch publication worldwide, for example, opposed the Iraq fiasco. But even this would be OK if they didn’t have 70% of newspaper circulation in Australia."
Well, nope. It was wrong to cheerlead Iraq because it was an illegal war, based on false premises (as was clear from day one to anyone who bothered to read, say, Scott Ritter, or bothered to listen to what Hans Blix was saying), that was clearly going to incur more in the way of costs than benefits for the supposed "liberated" (aof course, by now it should be clear to everyone that it's seriously damaged US strategic interests as well; so it was a stupid idea regardless of whether you're into PNAC or not).
The fact that the Murdochracy (murder-ocracy?) cheerled this fiasco and has not offered so much as a hint of a mea culpa suggests to me that the organisational culture is completely sociopathic, systematically untrustworthy, has the memory of a goldfish, and - importantly for a news organisation! - has very limited interest in either specific or wholistic conceptions of the truth.
The phone hacking scandal, while a sideshow in comparison, bears this analysis out.
Why they have the circulation and influence they do is beyond me.
Ah! Thanks Don. I do remember now. Yep, I recall JQ greatly overestimated my enthusiasm for gun laws, creationism, the mythos of climate science and quite possibly, AIDS denialism, at the time....Still, I don't recall ever mentioning 'Steve Milloy' again. A salutary lesson, clearly :)
The original proposition was that the Oz op-ed pages are an exercise in right wing group-think and mutual reinforcement.
I reckoned that the Oz has a wider variety of views put in those pages than any other paper that matters. I'm happy to agree that there is more support for the coalition in the Oz than in the other main papers, but I don't see how that supports the original claim. As a person who thinks the current govt crap, I don't find that support hard to understand. Still, the opposition leader is pretty hopeless and, sure enough, he gets a regular bagging from some of the regular commentators.
There either is or is not a wide variety of views on those pages. Ken P looked at yesterdays pages and found annecdotal evidence for the claim. I you look today you'll see a wide range of views about various stuff and bugger all tribalism.
I do recall Possum having fun with the 'facts emanating out of the OZ, Tim Lambert shows up their fight with science quite regularly, LP had an article showing how it lied shamefaced about the BER report.
Who could forget just after the last election when the Independents wanted Treasury to examine each party's poicies.
The OZ went around looking for someone to get stuck into Treasury. Unfortunately they only ended up with Sinclair Davidson and were red faced when Treasury showed up what anyone who understands fiscal policy already knew their costings were a complete lie.
Did they criticize the Opposition for this?
Noooooooooooo
Oh yea. Possum was the dude theorizing the risk of fire reduces if you start a massive program to stick insulation into old homes by people that don't know what they are doing and where old wires are exposed.
That's the best example of investigative journalism I've seen in a while, Homer.
The opposition could have ended up with you walking the corridors of power, hey homes? That would have been a sure winner.
---------------
Let's say that everything people have said here is true... The "Murderocacy" lies all the time, they spin, they stick opinion on the front page instead of news (a mortal sin Uncle Bob keeps repeating). Lets say they do all that. So what?
Yep, the BER's another great example. If you only read the Oz, you'd think it had been a disaster. In fact it admirably achieved its primary objective - geographically broad-based fiscal stimulus with the express aim of keeping community economies across Australia ticking over, and at the end of it, a whole bunch of schools infrastructure that wouldn't have otherwise been built.
Was there waste and mismanagement? Sure. Does that outweigh the program's success? Most definitely not by the very longest of shots. Yet the Oz can't write "BER" without prefixing "botched". I think their keyboards must be broken.
JC@36: soooo... they are not a "news source" as such, ie. people shouldn't assign any influence to them on matters of public interest or indeed factual record.
Yeah JC your ignorance is typical.
fires fell by almost a tenth. Statistics was always beyond you mind you almost anything is as you show.
Yeah you can wrote on a postage stamp sinker's knowledge of fiscal policy. Afterall this is the joker who laughingly said the last budget was expansionary and there has been no fiscal consolidation.
say no more
Dan:
How about this novel concept? How about you read what you like and other people read what they want?
If I wish to read Da Murderocracy's Oz I should feel perfectly free to do so. If you want to read Portnoy's Complaint, feel free to do, as it isn't banned.
Again, so what?
-------
Homes,
Your best best is to steer clear of economics, as you know it's not your strongest attribute. But you know that.
My concern is that it seems to be exerting a corrosive influence on policy and political discourse in this country.
I know smart conservatives. I work with them. I have no problem with people getting their information from a variety of sources - heck, I've read some very fine writing by conservatives.
But when the policy agenda and political life is debased by special interests masquerading as news... I guess I just can't help pointing out the fact that shit stinks.
yes Dan, i can understand all your concerns about the Murderocracy's Oz. But you still haven't answered my question. So what?
Frankly I don't care what you read, so why do you care what I read. In fact what business is it of yours anyway?
I've already answered your question, and it's, uh, not actually about you. I'd implore you to think bigger, but I have my banging-my-head-against-a-brick-wall class on now.
economics,
yeah JC the US and Germany are booming just as you predicted.
you sure like to wear a lot of egg all over your face.
Sorry Dan, but you haven't answered my question. All I see is a bunch of complaints by you without a response to, "so what" even if every single one of your whines is correct.
So if you choose not to answer that's fine.
Homes
Are you kidding me, Germany had a great 12 months to about March/Aril this year. It's exports were booming and their economy the envy of Europe. I bought the ETF EWH at around 23.50, put the other toe in the water at 25 and released the whole lot in the low 28's. it was a decent turn and stop complaining. So stop being greedy: you ought to do better.
If you're a contrarion, which of course your not, buy 1/3 of another new position right here in the 18's.
You have to be flexible Homer, a rather novel experience for you.
Ah, the old "I'll make you point out the tediously obvious till you weep from boredom" gambit. I'll have one more bite of this astonishingly dull cherry.
Let me propose a counterfactual, as I can see you're struggling:
"It presents no threat to the Australian public interest, or to the quality of political discourse and decision-making in this country, that a nationally-distributed broadsheet, underwritten by a multibillion dollar international corporation, systematically takes an irresponsible, retrogressive, ideological stance."
If you're still baffled by my straightforward analysis, you've probably got a fairly good claim on that Least Imaginative Person Ever award. Or someone's paying you.
Just to further prove that the idiot known as JC is an idiot the idiot asks "so what?" and expects an answer.
Finally we're getting somewhere. Instead of wheeling the children you're coming out with the old public interest chestnut. I was wondering where that went.
Well here's my counter factual to yours.
I think the same thing about The Age or even worse, as it's become a mouthpiece for the Greens.
What are you going to do about it, Dan? You wanna close down "Murdocracy's" Oz if it refuses to comply with your public interest desires of what a newspaper looks like?
Perhaps you ought to try and do what I do. I don't buy The Age or even the Fin Review as I don't want Fairfax to get any of my money. It's called choice and works quite well. I suppose you consider that a novel idea right?
Stick to your own reading material and I'll stick to mine.
a) You, uh, don't know the definition of counterfactual.
b) What I am going to do about it is mention as often as possible what a partisan heap of shit it is (see above). And, uh, needless to say, I don't buy it.
c) I live in Sydney so my knowledge of the Age is limited, but I've gotta tell you - SMH ain't no mouthpiece for the Greens.
d) Yes, you're quite right, I have never heard of choice before. Thank you for making me aware of this "novel" concept. (Are you setting out to come across as an idiot?)
Funny because now it appears you don't. At least you're remaining quiet about the public interest chestnut, so we can thank God for small mercies.
Well done. I don't mind what you think of it, as I along with other readers don't frankly care. I guessed you don't buy it, but it does appear as though you read it, otherwise you wouldn't be so angry about the paper's partisanship. And I agree with you, incidentally it certainly is partisan in its op-eds (or just a little less in the op-eds than he two Fairfax city mastheads)
Oh, didn't Glover write a piece recently that AGW sceptics should be tattooed? He didn't mention a numerical system this time like some others before him. Perhaps a star on the lapel would do the trick and it wouldn't be as messy as a tattoo. What are your thoughts Dan: Tattoo or a gold star?
Well you didn't seem to. Frankly it was very difficult to get past your whining and not disclosing what you wanted done about it. Finally you put the "public interest" chestnut in the fire and it's more than clear what you want done.
You do realize Dan that both sides can play that game unless of course you wish to banish elections, or assume there will be an Alliance government for eternity.
a) Huh? Never mind.
b) Not so much angry as contemptuous :P Part of my job is to pay attention to it (our office has a subscription).
c) Didn't see the piece. Struggle to imagine it was meant seriously. Godwin?
d) I like democracy. I don't like propaganda and will call it where I see it. Again, not rocket science.
You don't think there should be a policy response to climate change!?
Well do I mind. you presented a totalitarian argument and you shouldn't be allowed to dismiss it that easily. You can stick your public interest crap you know where. There's been 400 years of free press in the Anglo-sphere and it shouldn't be given up without a fight or a serious threat to reprisal. This isn't Venezuela son and most people didn't think we voted in Hugo Chavez.
So you do read it for free, but then again, as I said who cares. I couldn't care less what you read and would expect the same from you, or at the very least don't try to use public interest nonsense to curtail my freedom to read what I want.
Ask Glover if it meant it seriously. You didn't answer my question if you preferred Glover's tattoo or a nice gold star.... a shiny one.
Godwin? For Glover? Dunno. I always thought Godwin was an easy escape for people peddling fascist or totalitarian ways. But if you want to associate Gowdwin with Glover go right ahead.
Yes I agree. However we part ways when you drag "public interest" out of the sewer.
You think there should be a policy for wearing a helmet driving a car? Your strange question is irrelevant to the thread.
You've gone off the deep end mate. I can practically see the flecks of saliva from here. Bye.
Nope Dan, you have by letting a silly newspaper get to you... that you transparently start squealing for "public interest" solutions, which is nothing new really, as it would simply be an adaptation of what Huggy Chavez did to media he disagrees with.
JC@52: "you presented a totalitarian argument and you shouldn’t be allowed to"
Lordy the irony it burns.
And a case study in unconscious - one must presume - projection.
Argument (sic) Fail.
So JC is part of a totalitarian Government is he...oh the lefty cliches...it kills kittens!
Stop lying Homer. You moonbeam.
Ken. CAB? Fuggedaboutit. News is destroying Fairfax as a business.
I didn't argue for the things that you're claiming I argued for. I think the silly newspaper (you're right about that bit) should be *ignored*, not banned.
In short, you've made a straw man argument. Congrats! Sure showed me.
As for Fairfax: what with Comrades Sheehan and Henderson banging the drum for the Greens week-in, week-out, it's a wonder a worker's paradise hasn't yet come to pass.
Oh: and Godwin *obviously* referred to you. You're either big on playing dumb, or dumb.
Bullshit. It took a while to finally admit that diabolical "public interest" excuse. But we finally got there in the end.
Pity you didn't make that argument before your public interest nonsense. I don't believe you. It looks you can't stop reading it either... for free though. LOl
No i didn't. You're embarrassed.
Again so what? They can hire whomever they want and when they want as I don't give a toss. If you're making some argument that Fairfax is less of this more of that I don't give a shit. Unlike you I have no use for the fascist term of public interest in how a newspaper fashions itself. The Age for instance can be as Green as it wants. I don't care and don't read it.
Nice trick, "Dan"
lol... why would it refer to me, you twit. Glover said sceptics should be tattooed. As you seem to agree with him so I suggested if a shiny gold star would be less... you know.. less intrusive. lol.
Dan is actually my name.
(The JC I'm most aware of is a pre-Marxian Communist.)
I can promise you I'm not embarrassed; I think I've held up really well against a bunch of forcefully presented - albeit uttery irrelevant and debunked - cant. In any event, it's really poor form to subscribe intentionality to someone else, and (again) lousy debating.
Re: Godwin - I wasn't trying to trick you (if you tripped up, that's because you're not very clever) - it's simply that, as a person who's ethnically Jewish, when someone suggesting that I might want to pin gold stars, I start to get a little... uneasy. In fact it disgusts me.
In any event, everything you've said bears out John Q's original analysis. No matter how moderate my position actually is, or how much evidence I present in my favour, you're just projecting your fears onto me.
In short, you're acting like a religious fundamentalist and I can see you're uninterested in anything approaching meaningful dialogue.
Did I? So you didn't suggest anything about "public interest"? You do realize that "public interest" is a fascist concept right? It took a while to drag that out of you though, which is why I think you're embarrassed.
Interesting. You're disgusted with me and not with Glover who wrote about the "novel" concept of tattooing sceptics.
The reason I suggested you should use gold stars is because you were doing all you could in the earlier comment to excuse Glover and I thought, what the heck, it would be less intrusive than tattoos, seeing you went all out with Glover instead on condemning him.
You also had the temerity of trying to paint me with that brush for merely pointing out what he said (the Godwin crap) That's the trick Dan. That is what's disgusting.
That's what your moderate SMH was publishing!
Your position is not moderate and no amount of excusing yourself would make it so. Using the "public interest" schtick is fascistic pure and simple. You could of course describe it as moderate if you think Huggy Chavez methods is controlling the press is okay, but you're not pulling the wool over anyone's eyes.
Really. I'll repeat my "fundamentalist" point earlier that you seem to have so much trouble getting your head around. You read what you like and I'll do the same. Don't encroach on my reading sources and you can always be sure I wouldn't with yours.
You seem to have difficulty leaving people alone without meddling in what newspapers they choose to read.
"Public Interest"... Lol.
You are an idiot.Glover was making a joke which would have been obvious to anyone.
Yes Homer, just like you often argue how minorities in pre-1936 Germany were treated really nicely.... with respect and dignity.
Trust you to be excusing this as a joke with your... ummm pedigree.
Richard Glover in the "moderate" SMH :
Here's Sydney "Architect" also on sceptics in the "moderate" SMH:
Even Elizabeth Farrelly:
More bile from noted Sydney architect and moderate SMH columnist:
writes:
Take Alan Jones. Though it pains me to say it, he is forcing me to change my mind. Not on climate change, or cycling, or the right to public protest, all of which he opposes, but on censorship.
You are still an iodiot and Glover still was making a joke but not as big as you are.
you do lie well just like Marky
@61. Yes, there's no such thing as the public interest, which is why the welfare state has been such a disaster for absolutely everyone.
Social democracy and the identification of special interests! The gateway drugs for widespread state repression.
(Normally I wouldn't feel the need to add the postscript "Note sarcasm" to these sorts of posts - but since you seem to have all the emotional intelligence and grasp of nuance of a month-old buffalo carcass: Note sarcasm. Did you you think Swift's modest proposal was meant in seriousness too?)
JC: It's called satire and hyperbole. Are you autistic or something!?
Homer,
Your misgivings about Germany are terminally embarrassing.
"Until 1938, nothing of note happened to German Jewry"
Whatever Homer. I'm not interested in a "debate" with you, but to associate your name with the filth you post at catallaxy so hopefully no one takes your warped ideas seriously and their minds are left unmolested.
Glover was joking? Maybe, but really he wishes the other side of the debate would disappear because he can't hack it. It's not as dangerous like what Farrelly said (which is illiberal, anti western, anti intellectual, anti democratic and wicked) but it is merely churlish.
Yes! Anything other than radical individualism combined turning a blind eye to the deleterious effects of willful ignorance, vested interests and races to the bottom is wrong! evil! fascistic!
Is the quality of debate on this site always so godawful? If so, I might just go back to debating undergraduate libertarians on FB, who despite their off-the-planet politics at least aspire to a level of intellectual engagement and understanding rather than simple smear.
NOW the irony burns.
Okay Danny. Why don't you write away to the Government requesting that your common law and legislated individual rights be taken away?
Admit it, you want to control what Bolt says because you either derive a financial or psychic benefit from the more absurd cases of the guilt industry.
Homer, I'm not the best spell check, as I'm too lazy to proof read most times. But can I suggest that if you call someone an idiot, you should at least make sure its spelt correctly.
What's so funny about ABC identity Glover's comment in the moderate SHM. For that matter what's so funny about noted the Sydney Architect's bile in the same moderate broadsheet?
Dan:
Interesting trick again. You're quite happy - quick in fact- to dismiss (ABC identity and (moderate) SMH columnist) Glover as amusing. However when I suggested the comment wasn't amusing... and if you thought shiny gold stars were less intrusive than tattoos you said you were disgusted.
Tell me Dan, can you touch the back of your neck with your small toe without a problem?
And yes, applying the term "public interest" to newspapers is fascist and as Dot said...
It's all those things and more.
It's a really cold day in hell when I thought I'd see someone referring to a newspaper that favors tattooing and censorship described as moderate. But there you go.
This is my point: it's not one or the other, it's about finding a balance. I love my freedoms and property rights, I love living in a society that makes sure that people's basic needs are addressed, I think it's important that we look after the planet for our kids and grandkids, and I don't want these things trampled by Big Capital and its inevitable and increasing short-term focus. Like I say: moderate left.
Why is that so hard for you guys to grasp?
"a newspaper that favors tattooing and censorship"
Do you seriously believe this!? You kook.
I'm happy to grant Glover was in poor taste - but then, given his usual tenor, I can only assume he *meant* to be. You genuinely think that if he was making the laws, it'd be compulsory tattoos for people who don't understand science or the precautionary principle?
Oh, come onnnnn.
For Heaven's sake: how old are you people!? I've seen more political realism and nous, and understanding of competing goods from high schoolers.
Nothing at all. It's not hard for me to grasp those desires at all. I disagree with them and consider most of your desires muddle headed and silly. But you have a right to express them and vote for representatives that would enact or safeguard those things.
However we're not talking about the rights and wrongs of the welfare state in this thread. Despite you raising it, it was never the point of this discussion.
The discussion centred on your comments pertaining to "public interest" and the knock on effects in terms of what you believe are newpapers responsibility to this "public interest". I believe your demand is a fascist one. It's as dot said..."illiberal, anti western, anti intellectual, anti democratic and wicked".
Forget what ABC identity Glover said for a moment and ponder what noted Sydney architect wants to see happen. This is published in what you describe as a moderate newspaper, right?
Fairfax and even the ABC have remained unnervingly silent over mad uncle Bob's demands that newspapers be registered ( that was an English law done away with 400 years ago by the way) and wants to dictate what should go on the front page of a newspaper. An Inquiry has been called at his behest.
Do I seriously believe it? I'm not so sure everyone at Fairfax supports tattooing, but I'm really uncertain about the question of censorship.
Let me make an outside bet. I think the vast majority of Fairfax and ABC journalists actually do support censorship. You do too Dan, which is why you think these things are moderate.
There's tomorrow's headline right there: "Elizabeth Farrelly uses humour, hyperbole and polemic to skewer people who are either profoundly and destructively self-interested or not very clever. Page 3: Pope Catholic. Page 4: Bears shit in woods"
I happen to love Farrelly's mouthy, arch, take-no-prisoners approach to hypocrisy, mediocrity, mendacity, and (again) the race to the bottom.
Although I am deeply - nay, implacably - opposed to her idea of Sydney being a more interesting and enlightened place to live, architecturally and otherwise, than it presently is.
Note sarcasm.
JC@75: Since I have explicitly said I *don't* support media censorship (I'm quite libertarian on these matters, despite the ludicrous tarring you've been attempting), I'm genuinely vexed at your continual attempts to ascribe to me a position which I disavow.
NewsCorp is a systematically unreliable source of information. If that's where you get your news from, you're likely to be badly (factually) misinformed about important issues. I'm going to keep telling people that. I'm not tipping of the Stasi or something. End of story.
Marky you were caught dead to rights LYING.go away and lie with the dogs.
yes Dan he is autistic and projects all the time
Yes, she's a must read. A towering intellect and beacon of freedom through censorship.
Tell me Dan... you were disgusted with my add on to Glover's comments about tattooing. You found my gold suggestion a little too forward and out there. Do you perhaps find the idea of tattooing far less intrusive than a shiny star because a person can hide the tattoo. Is that it?
So then you can of course explain your "public interest" rant as how it specifically relates to newspapers.
"I disagree with them and consider most of your desires muddle headed and silly."
Yes, those Swedes. They can't think clearly from the cold! If they could, they'd follow the US to great economic success and marvellous social outcomes.
Oh no, not Sweden again. What is it with Sweden any time these discussions are brought up?
Dan, lets focus on the point of the thread and leave Sweden to the Swedes. See comment 79 and focus on " public interest".
I don't particularly think it needs further explaining, because it's clear to anyone with a mental age of greater than eight what I'm talking about.
The Australian is running an ideological agenda, backed by national distribution and underwritten by a multi-billion dollar transnational. *They are acting in a way that, as I see the *historical evidence* as demonstrating, points to short-term-ism and lousy decision-making, economically and otherwise*. I think they use their *commercial reach* in ways that are harmful to Australians individually and collectively.
*However*, (to fricking reiterate), I don't think the solution is censorship, because I do recognise that a free press is an important pillar of a robust democracy. *But* I do think News Ltd's BS needs to be called, and hopefully they'll get it together to produce better-quality, more balanced journalism.
I really don't know how to make this any more obvious.
I think people mention Sweden because they're way into the "muddle-headed and silly" stuff and kicking laissez-faire's arse on its own terms, not to mention being frankly a nicer place to live than the grossly inequitable US.
As I understand it, essentially the thrust of your argument from a big-picture perspective (I've had to put this together myself, since you're either coy or inarticulate on these matters) is that if The Australian was a rag filled with fiction, people wouldn't buy it, and it wouldn't have any influence.
My point is: it *is* a rag filled with fiction, demonstrably so, and yet it still has a surprising amount of influence. People actually pay attention to it, make decisions on the basis of it, despite the fact that over and over it has proved itself not to be very credible at all.
I should note that is does attract some very fine journalism (Megalogenis springs to mind).
Well to be honest, you're not making it obvious. "Called" by whom eggsactly?
The US is a nice place to live Dan. I think you may be getting the wrong message from your moderate sources.
What makes you think the US is laissez-faire anyway? It's anything but for the most part.
What does that even mean? Enlighten me.
I think you are very, very wrong here.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/looking-ahead-rather-than-elsewhere/2005/10/13/1128796647484.html
From back in 2004:
Whoops. Did not mean to quote myself about u/e and tax rates...
No, my argument isn't that at all. You're wrong again and seem to have difficulty with basic comprehension. I actually agreed with you in that Murderocracy's Oz is right wing partisan and suggested more to the right than the liberal party as they attack the Libs from the right at times (which I quite enjoy seeing as they deserve it at).
My argument is that you seem to want to intrude in what I prefer to read by bringing out the "public interest" schtick.
Okay. I can can live with your opinion.
I agree. If only they had more journalists like GeorgeM they would be just like the SMH and you'd be happy.
Oh for Heaven's sake - how much spoonfeeding do you need? "Called" by whichever citizens are in a position to call it. Me, on this thread, to take one innocuous instance amongst many. My workmates around the water cooler. John Quiggin. Robert Manne. My mate Duncan. Whoever, whenever.
I like the US and have relatives there, but there is crushing poverty in a way there isn't in other (formerly?) rich countries. You're right that it's not exactly laissez-faire; as Galbraith put it, it's really the capitalist version of the planned economy. I do note however that as it's become more deregulated, the middle class has hollowed out. (JQ's book has the relevant figures if you're not aware of them already.)
Dot: I commend this wonderful book to you, as Holloway describes competing goods beautifully in it: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Godless-Morality-Richard-Holloway/dp/1841955787
Essentially, sometimes - usually - when we have to make a difficult decision, it's because good things are in conflict. If they weren't, if we were just choosing between good and bad, it'd be simple to agree on matters ethical. Freedom vs responsibility is a classic and broad example.
As for Sweden: Okay. Australia then.
JC: If "intrude" means telling you it's a lousy news source: guilty as charged. In fact the very topic of the thread represents such an "intrusion".
Dan
You do realize that the US is, I think, around 30th on the economic freedom list, while we were around 6 or 7th (I think). I can't be bothered to look it up but that's what I recall.
If you think the US is a beacon of economic freedom I would suggest you're gravely mistaken. They talk the talk but don't walk the walk, or t least haven't since Bush (including him, not since then).
I don't see what responsibility Murderocracy's Oz has other than to it's shareholders and readers. It doesn't requite any social license to operate unless mad uncle Bob gets his way.
Seen our productivity for the last decade or so. It's freaking diabolical. If it wasn't for the commodity boom disguising it all, we'd be screwed and lying on the mat.
Except we don't. Free speech trumps giving the ALP a free pass.
I think it is amazing and outrageous that Dan ignores a 20-25% real unemployment rate and talks up the "success" of Sweden. Really.
I'm not ignoring it, if you *need* an opinion on it from me, I'd say it's a damn good thing they have a generous welfare state.
Keep aiming low dude.
JC: I wonder if the construction of that economic freedom index takes inequality into account - do you know?
Dude.
Keep aiming low. Palestine gets good HDI rankings.
The only thing that matters is absolute poverty and until the left accepts that they don't care about the poor, but envy and rapacious-HSU-style-pillagery.
So neither of you guys thinks the Oz had a responsibility of any sort to get its facts straight in the leadup to Iraq?
Yes, but so to would Joe Biden. Also the Lancet for their absurd death toll.
If I'm envious of *anyone* or don't care about the poor, it's news to me. Thank you for your remarkable insight, Dr Freud. Same time next week?
Given the fact the Government is likely to fall over charges being laid for the taking of secret commissions, what is it exactly in recent times you'd like the Oz to retract?
Can't recall, Dan.
I think you're a little too hung up with the inequality schtick though.
At the moment that honestly is the last of the US problems. There's no freaking growth, unemployment is rising and firms aren't hiring despite having $2 trillion in cash holdings. I think we need to be worried more about absolute poverty than say comparing Steve Jobs to an average office worker.
If that economic pie doesn't begin to grow you can ransack all the rich people's belonging you like, but there will be more people than you can poke a stick at.
You're not serious if you think relative poverty is a problem. All that matters is absolute poverty.
Seems like you can't handle the shock of the news.
At least the Lancet - *if* it's wrong - is erring on the side that gives human life the benefit of the doubt.
As for Joe Biden and US Congress generally: hopeless, hopeless.
I'm sure they said a lot of things about Iraq. What would like them to take back eggsactly?
As far "responsibility".... no. They have no responsibility to anyone.
Re: absolute vs relative poverty - glad to see that you guys are in favour of the first world greatly increasing its foreign aid budget and nation-building efforts! And to think I mistook you for bloodless capitalists.
JC: "We were dreadfully, tragically wrong, and you'd be nuts to trust us on anything important ever again" would suit me just fine.
I'll be happy if at the end of this discussion you eschew relative poverty as a valid concept for the rest of your life.
Not very likely. Obviously I'm concerned about absolute poverty. But the notion that a rich country shouldn't recognise real disadvantage is silly. Happy to have a debate about what to *do* about it, but arbitrarily deciding it's out of bounds is at odds with, well, lived reality and possibility.
Real disadvantage is caused by absolute poverty, not by Guillame de Beaurichesse owning more stuff than you.
Give it up. Relative poverty is a bogus concept.
That's about Iraq, yea?
Well you're not going to get that. I suppose that because you're so hung up about Iraq, you must hate, absolutely hate what's going on with Libya at the present time and Western powers interfering, right?
I know this is hard for folk of your stripe to get your head around, but *I am more than content with my level of material wellbeing, and possible improvements in it aren't what motivate me*. There, I said it.
As for someone being deeply disadvantaged without fulfilling the definition of absolute poverty - well, we may have to agree to disagree. I believe in poor people, in fact I even saw one once.
All that matters is absolute poverty. By definition, there are always going to be "disadvantaged" people if you think relative poverty is a valid indicator, no matter how wealthy they are.
JC: not sure, haven't been paying close attention. It doesn't look like we plan to occupy the place, and the change of management was initially endogenous, right? Heck, I don't even think that exogenously-driven regime change is necessarily always a bad thing. It's just that, if you have any basic command of pragmatism, logic or risk management, Iraq was clearly a stinker of a prospect from day one.
Never came into my mind Dan. I don't know why you'd think that.
Dan, lets back track here. You mentioned that the US has a relative poverty problem. I made the point that is the least of the US list of problems, as they are now starting to grow absolute poverty levels. It's their most serious concerns and the economy appears to be double dipping now.
Dot: well, unless you apply stricter criteria of what constitutes what someone might reasonably expect in at least a well-off society. So it's still a "threshold" idea; just a more specific one.
And inequality does lead to some lousy outcomes (the proliferation of unsustainable private debt is one - but that really is another thread.)
JC: no, that was a response to Dot.
As for poverty: well, a plus-sized Keynesian stimulus (New Deal Redux) would dent a whole bunch of their problems, including poverty *and* unemployment. If only they hadn't been so profligate in the good times...
Dan I think you're a bigot. You can do whatever with your material want. Doesn't bother me. What I dislike is the insinuation that I want poor people worse off. This is untrue. Worse off compared to Frank Lowy is immaterial. They are better off in a more capitalistic system. Compare income potential (Aus, USA) to gravity factors and welfare (Europe).
More capitalistic places get more immigrants for a reason. People want material wealth, status or a welfare net is secondary.
Your belief set is busted. Sweden has 20-25% real unemployment, yet you say this is better for the less well off. You're condemning them to a life of idleness and those lucky enough to work to being a second rate country with limited opportunity.
But you would say okay, the artificial relative poverty index black box has better outputs!
This is the actual silly way to go about things.
More well off societies have less ethical requirements for largesse. It's just not needed.
No. Those who got wiped out in the GFC who were over-levered were solidly middle class and in the prime of their income earning years. They weren't wealthy compared to Bill Gates - but who cares.
People entering silly loan agreements for TVs and whitegoods is due to a lack of financial education and literacy.
It will never work, it cannot work in open economies.
back from when capital markets were not open:
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx
I certainly didn't intend to insinuate you want poor people worse off. To be categorical, I don't think you do want poor people worse off.
Really Dan..
And you think the capital markets, China etc would lend them the money (another $trillion?) while they're running a budget deficit of around 10% of GDP?
I don't think you should call it a Keynesian program. Not even Keynes, not even he would dare suggest a spending program considering where US finances are currently. In fact he'd be angry people were using his name to make such crazy suggestions.
No, I don't think the US has the resources to enact it.
JC: the article had nothing to do with pump-priming the economy. Those guy's thesis may be correct, or it may not be. But it's not of core relevance to whether government stimulus works.
As for the American middle class: Dot, you see fecklessness and irresponsibility, I see an attempt to compensate for stagnant or declining real wages. If there's bigotry here, you're at least as guilty as I.
I never mentioned any article, Dan.
Monetary stimulus works Fiscal stimulus didn't work in the US.
Dan@121
You don't understand. Dot and JC think poor people are worse off because they're either lazy or stupid, i.e. it's their fault. They are social darwinists of the most despicable and it must be said crude kind. In short: they're nuts, protofascists. JC is a nihilist. He's a trader, ex-Wall Street, he is wracked with guilt and self-loathing which he projects on to everyone to the left of Pinochet, his governmental hero and ideal.
Other than that, I must say: I love your work. You're a master.
JC - yeah, sorry - Dot posted the article.
Sally - thanks :)
ps. Fiscal stimulus *did* work here in Oz. Like a charm ;)
Dan, your insistence on "public interest" is spot on.
News Ltd and the Oz have brought this inquiry on themselves.
Suck it up, losers.
We didn't have Rupert Murdoch eating humble pie for nothing. He's a grub and he finally got caught out in a way that lots of people can understand and reject. And he knew that. Which is why he apologised.
Government has reacted. As it should.
The Oz is floundering, its days are numbered and that's good too for all the reasons you give.
The hilarious thing is its management's calculation that journalism - and there's increasingly little evidence of that in each day's edition - will save it. It won't on its current trajectory because in the main, the lardarse slugs that dominate the payroll are neither proficient reporters nor researchers nor - fundamentally - very literate. Just ask the 60 subs on the Oz. Before they get the boot, that is. Cost reduction has its own logic.
Oh blessed relief. A sane person.
No dude. "She" is not sane.
"She" is this dude who basically stalks JC and I
http://graemebird.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/hiv-aids-and-oxidation-therapy/#comment-37045
phil/Jinmaro/Sally/Pip (seen on Menzies House) are all the same person.
Ask FDB for more details on this lefty too loony for LP.
Well you should at least concede your views on macroeconomics are crap.
Greenspan's put created an unsustainable boom and Bush spent money he didn't have.
How is this much different from the chartalist (MMT) ultra post Keynesian stuff?
I for one, never said "fecklessness and irresponsibility". They responded to incentives, which inevitably were created by Keynesian policies.
Bullshit mate.
The WORST forecast for Australian GDP growth was -2% (IMF). The stimulus was analysed by Treasury as giving us 1% growth.
1 - -2 = +3
However, the stimulus cost about 4% of GDP, before borrowing costs.
+3 - 4 = -1
At best, it destroyed 1% of national income, IF we have "zero borrowing costs" (bullshit).
No Dan. Sally is Phil or Jimbaro(?). S/he cannot be categorized as sane in any imaginable way medically or otherwise.
This is where Sally/Phil spends a great deal of his time usually spewing venom at innocent people like for instance members of my family who I may have casually mentioned at another blog and wouldn't know what a blog is.
Sometimes Phil/sally posts comments there posing as my spouse saying the most vile disgusting things.
See and decide how sane and pleasant s/he is.
Don't be deluded in any way.
Dot: Australian Treasury say otherwise, straight-up, and I think I know who I give more credence to. Haven't you heard of multipliers?
As for Sally - well, I wouldn't have the foggiest who to believe.
As if anyone needed any further confirmation... Let the beasts speak for themselves uncontested.
Dan sezs:
"I know this is hard for folk of your stripe to get your head around, but *I am more than content with my level of material wellbeing, and possible improvements in it aren’t what motivate me*. There, I said it."
Talking about reality checks and blessed relief, thank you so much for saying this.
The idea that well-being is all about material inputs and benefits over and above subsistence is such a sad, autistic notion when coming from extraordinarily rich (comparatively) people, that it does in part account for their rage and incomprehension at people much like themselves in material benefits who challenge such a callous and exploitative notion.
Of course, as all of human history and culture attests, many if not most people who have relatively low levels of material well-being are probably for at least some proportion of their lives, for non-materialist reasons, amazed, joyful, inspired and driven to creation in not dissimilar ways to those relatively fortunate, relatively few, far richer then they, who too have lived and died on this planet.
I am using their statistics. I am correct, give credence to facts.
No. No sane person would regard Treasury the same way it was regarded 10 years ago. Their grads are not looked upon as highly as they once were.
Don't fall for this honest broker bullshit.
"Sally" hates poor people.
Haha, this has taken a major turn for the weird.
Interested to see what transpires.
Dan, I know and like you enough already to share your guffaws at the cybersight of two mightily pussy-whipped glibetarians (read protofascists).
JC is the more objectionable because he is an utter phoney. Dot is just an incoherent hysteric. JC is despised by everyone (even here) because he cares for nothing but his own personal comfort and he has been banned more than once from this site and currently all other Oz political blogs except for one whose name I cannot at the mo' recall.
Code for "I'm a frustrated unionised male nurse who read marx on a train once and I fantasise about being woman talking to men on the internet"
You've been reminded here, not by me me, but many others, you have been banned from virtually every site with the exception of Bird's. Every single one.
The one you can't "recall" is catallaxy where you have been banned and told not to show up again in any disguise because you're too mentally unwell.
Thanks for the kind thoughts and all. I'm out here as the smell since you crawled into the thread is unbearable.
And Phil, you are not a woman. You are a man, as FDB once nicely told us.
Wish people would learn the difference between protofascism and cryptofascism.
I'd wish you'd get an education, son.
Yeah, Ron Paul and John Humphreys etc are fascists, you freaking Marxist idiot.
You're so deluded you cannot be truthful.
Sorry Paul. But everyone gets the drift about JC and Dot.
And I meant "glibertarians", natch.
You are such a clown, Jinmaro. Goading Graeme Bird into utter nuttery and anti semitism.
for Dan.
A Note from the Pipes
Pan, blow your pipes and I will be
Your fern, your pool, your dream, your tree!
I heard you play, caught your swift eye,
“A pretty melody!” called I,
“Hail, Pan!” And sought to pass you by.
Now blow your pipes and I will sing
To your sure lips’ accompanying!
Wild God, who lifted me from earth,
Who taught me freedom, wisdom, mirth,
Immortalised my body’s worth,—
Blow, blow your pipes! And from afar
I’ll come—I’ll be your bird, your star,
Your wood, your nymph, your kiss, your rhyme,
And all your godlike summer-time!
- Leonora Speyer
Dot, JC: Whichever of you vampires mentioned Sweden: I checked up on it. I think you're wrong. It's certainly not a knock-down case.
One of the reasons I haven't bothered providing sources is because charlatans like you are unwilling to let the facts get in the way of ideology.
This is the thing: my outlook is based on lived reality. Deregulated economies went to pieces on the onset of the GFC. Countries that were able to undertake fiscal stimulus recovered faster, or in Australia's case, never even went into recession.
You checked on nothing. I keep on quoting facts and you keep on disputing them. The article I posted was old, admittedly. I never said otherwise.
So in 2004 the real unemployment rate was 20-25% and since a conservative Government has implemented some reforms the rate has dropped to 15-17%.
It's still absolutely dreadful.
I quoted sources (mine being the head of the biggest Swedish traude union) and you repay me like this.
Clearly it's not.
1. That's because they had a higher base to come down off.
2. Australia has one of the most unregulated finance sectors in the developed world, the US is one of the most over regulated, and badly regulated.
3. As I 've demonstrated before, at best the stimulus cost AT LEAST 1% of GDP BEFORE interest costs. We were never going into recession.
http://johnhumphreys.com.au/2010/01/19/why-the-stimulus-was-bad-policy/
John used to work at Treasury which you think is unassailable from criticism so maybe you ought to listen to him.
4. You are cherry picking, the only "deregulated" country that was hard hit was Ireland and it was not under an apporpriate macroeconomic policy framwork (EU monetary policy) for years, plus the big time corruption at Anglo-Irish.
I've tried to be reasonable with you, I've quoted sources and been parsimonious in my claims but now because of your freakish incompetence I have to put up with your churlishness. Your response is "I believe Treasury" but so do I and I use their figures!
Read the sources and chew on the candor. Suck it up and admit you were wrong.
Vampires?
All because you think poor people are better served by society aiming low and dragging others down, being envious and obsessed with the wealth of others than ever becoming wealthy themselves, despite any "inequities" that ever occur.
You're out of touch with reality. The poor don't want your help, they want to be rich.
.
Can you list these deregulated economies, Dan as I'm interested which ones you're referring to?
Really?
We experienced a gigantic exchange rate adjustment of around 40%. Additionally our terms of trade began to adjust as commodity prices and volumes began to stabilize and improve. We also had a significant monetary loosening and the banks were shored up. All these don't count? Only the BER and the insulation program kept us out of recession? Are you serious? If you believe that you must also believe in tooth fairies. Do you?
I think Sweden is an okay country. It's slipped from around 3rd wealthiest to around 20th place from what I recall since the early 70's. It's corporate tax rate is around 20%, however its personal rates are extremely high. It's businesses are solid for the most part and quite competitive, although I note no one is buying their second car-maker with any enthusiasm.
But why focus on Sweden which seems to be falling of the league stakes to around 20th. Why not countries growing at around 5 or 6% in our region?
"JC" sezs:
"I’m out here as the smell since you crawled into the thread is unbearable."
This creep, across numerous political blogs, over many years, has incessantly evoked his own personal experience and feelings of disgust for the taste, sight, smell, proximity (not sound, interestingly) of political opponents and their ideas.
Of course, in the modern era, for anyone who has read the literature, this visceral approach has no where been more exemplified and understood than in the writings of Nazis who spoke of the stench and ugliness of Jews.
You are disgusting, "Sally". You say that crap here but you are goading Graeme Bird under another sock puppet to anti semitism.
You are a disgraceful human being.
"Deregulated economies went to pieces on the onset of the GFC. Countries that were able to undertake fiscal stimulus recovered faster, or in Australia’s case, never even went into recession."
Like Germany vs the US perchance?
As a male nurse Sally, what the fuck do you know about economics?
And China, of course.
That's great "Sally". Of course, as a whining Marxist who thinks he should be paid as much as a doctor to be a nurse, your knowledge of economics is very limited. It is no wonder you run interference every time a good argument is put up against left wing, prosperity destroying economics.
China's stimulus leaked here. They also lie about their GDP figures and have cities ready for one million inhabitants that are completely vacant save for maintenance workers.
Yes, well done China for enriching Australia and creating a massive glut at home.
What a tool. China hasn't improved and Australia is rolling in it.
Right.
No wonder you have zero influence and your only role as an "economist" is to be ridiculed to ignored on obscure blogs.
While I realise most if not all of you are compulsive stoushers (so I've let this extraordinarily unproductive discussion go on), I should remind everyone that our cardinal if lightly enforced rule at Troppo is that ad hominem abuse is not allowed and civil discussion is required. Thus you can attack another's arguments robustly but not abuse them personally e.g. "fool" "tool" "whining Marxist" are verboten. I feel like I've accidentally wandered into the Monty Python 5 minute argument sketch.
Ken,
I've been polite to everyone who hasn't called me a fascist.
I've even been quite pleasant to Dan as he got invective. He could no longer defend his ideas.
"Sally": Nope you're wrong. I've laid down the empirical evidence, "honey". The stimulus at best did moderate damage and prolonged the downturn. Monetary policy was worth $36 bn of stimulus, we had a 40% devaluation, adjustment to terms of trade and China had a stimulus large focused in railway and medium to high density construction. Costello had built up a $20 bn surplus beforehand.
Praising the stimulus is fanciful pandering to the ALP and nothing more.
BTW love I have more influence than you can ever aspire to. The real me, unlike many of your alter egos.
I gave up because it was irretrievably silly. I *could* keep defending my ideas, but why bother?
No, you can't. You accused me of lying when I verified my sources etc. Give up pal. No poor person wants to be condemned to a state of affairs with 25% real unemployment. They don't want your help.
(In fact what I actually spent my evening doing is making music with four of my best friends; rehearsing for a really exciting int'l support next month and our album launch the following month. Compared to that, arguing with people who believe that it doesn't matter if a news source is not news and the poor are uninterested in maintaining the welfare state seemed pretty weak, heh.)
Are you this difficult and miserable in real life, or just on the internet?
I'm not the git who thinks the Sydney Morning Herald isn't a "news source" as some sort of lethal blow to another side of the argument.
As for John's blog he is a former Treasury economist and he is just laying down the numbers and would never juke the stats.
Hope it all goes well.
Dude - I went to his blog and checked out that post - he a) hadn't made clear where he got his figures from (I couldn't square them with any of the series in what was, at the time, the most current issue of the national accounts - and I worked at ABS for five years; believe me, I know one end of that publication from the other), and b) it looked likely that he'd added the percentages arithmetically (ie. incorrectly) - although since his referencing was incomplete, I can't say for sure.
I'm sure he's bona fide, but it's again not compelling stuff.
Thanks for the link though, he's got some interesting stuff up there.
Dan
I can't believe that you're defending the welfare state when every single bit of evidence piling up suggests the very concept is being destroyed around the world.
Governments after the 70's took the choice of borrowing to finance demands placed on them from their various constituents. They were limited in the level of tax they could slug their productive sector and so they took the easy route. They borrowed and borrowed more. That old cradle of the Welfare state which is Europe is literally crumbling before our very eyes under mountains of debts taller than the Swiss alps.
You must feel like the last of the Mohicans. Economic laws eventually catch up with you in the end.
"I can’t believe that you’re defending the welfare state when every single bit of evidence piling up suggests the very concept is being destroyed around the world."
If that was true - which I don't agree that it is - that would be the most compelling reason to defend it ;)
Money spent by governments isn't just blasted off into space. It is received as income by whoever it's being spent on. Then it's spent again. And again. And again. This is Keynes, 1936.
I agree that a lot of governments are carrying waaay too much debt, but not the ones that your model would predict. In fact there's got a very limited correlation between debt and whether countries provide a decent social safety net or not. According to your model, Australia and Norway should be bankrupt and, I dunno, Somalia or the United States should be flush.
Remember, economies aren't tangible, meaningful-in-their-own-right things. They're an abstraction for how (and how well) societies provision themselves.
Really? Defend the indefensible? Go ahead. The West, with a few exceptions is staring at a debt abyss and likely to be brought down by the mountain of debt and you see that as a compelling to defend it. How?
No it’s not. Keynes never ever said live beyond your means as the engine will always continue working. He was very careful to present a thesis of counter cyclical policy, which is fine in theory but never seems to work out like that. If you have a long term example please show me.
Keynes had (I think from memory) very little to say about a welfare state and he certainly would not be pushing shit up hill suggesting nations can borrow and all will be okay. It always has to end like that as there aren't enough taxes to support constituent demands while governments will simply borrow when they can to fulfill them.
He was actually quite prudent.
Tell that to the Greeks, Italians and in fact the Germans too who face mounting debt and a demographic layout that will end it.
Ummm Norway is imbued with per capita oil reserves that beat anyone else. It can afford to make mistakes and cover them up with the oil price where it is. Australia is also lucky that way. It wasn’t so much when commodity prices were depressed for 20 odd years before the terms of trade turned round.
But rules aren't made by glaring inaccurate exceptions.
The "what about Norway" doesn't work.
We’re not painting an abstract piece here, Dan.
Haha! That's a thigh-slapper.
I'm going to bed now - and I'm going to try and keep my promise about not posting here. It's not that I'm conceding you're correct (in fact right above you've demonstrated you don't understand multiplier effects or Keynes' contribution to the understanding of them) but rather that it's just pointless debating with someone who won't actually engage with the issues.
Anyway, I won't leave you empty-handed. Here's a thoughtful conservative taking down libertarianism: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/article/2005/mar/14/00017/
"No it’s not. Keynes never ever said live beyond your means as the engine will always continue working. He was very careful to present a thesis of counter cyclical policy...."
I'm not saying that the general theory is required reading in economics. But clearly you have not read it.
Jesus what a howler.
Keynes cannot work in an open economy.
Barro found the multiplier was statistically insignificant to zero in peacetime.
Keynes' multiplier is based on a mathematical sleight of hand - it falls to zero when the equations are properly balanced.
Yes that's true JC. Let's see if Dan thinks that this isn't a news source.
http://ipa.org.au/keynes-article/
J. M. KEYNES REVIEWS AUSTRALIA’S POSITION
Tribute to Premiers' Plan (The Melbourne Herald, 27 June 1932)
Keynes:
I sympathize intensely with the general method of approach which underlies the new proposals of the economists and under-Treasurers. I am sure the Premiers' Plan last year saved the economic structure of Australia.
Clearly JC has. Read the newspaper article as well.
No he hasn't read the general theory. Or he would have not made the wrong claim he made. You haven't read the general theory either. Now once again, the general theory is no way to get a good understanding of economics. But neither of you have read it or you would not make these wrong claims on its behalf. You can read it free online, if you don't want to misrepresent the book or the thoughts of Keynes.
"Barro found the multiplier was statistically insignificant to zero in peacetime."
No he didn't. Barro's work is meaningless, since he doesn't understand the difference between spending and GDP. Neither do you.
I agree with the thesis of this post. The Australian makes incredibly boring reading now. The great esteem that the centre-right still hold Murdoch in is bizarre and entirely misplaced. The Australian and other Murdoch papers are notable for their dimwitted approach to centre-rightism, and for the news that they leave out. And its just like the Professor would have it. Its like reading an intellectually incurious, dumbed-down, centre-right blog.
That's bullshit. It's also largely irrelevant over the long run if it were true.
Yes I have, stop being a jerk not arguing in good faith.
No no. Go and see for yourself. Barro conflates GDP with spending. Don't lie about it. Just go and see for yourself.
Well you don't understand what you read, and JC hasn't read it. Because Keynes does not say what JC has him saying. The General Theory is a utopian tract. It talks about getting rid of the rentier class. Which is ludicrous given that deficits increase interest rates. Keynes had no idea about economics.
Here is JC said:
"No it’s not. Keynes never ever said live beyond your means as the engine will always continue working. He was very careful to present a thesis of counter cyclical policy,....."
Keynes wasn't very careful about this at all. JC hasn't read the book. So stop talking nonsense. Its free online if you want to read it. You won't learn any economics from it, so don't waste your time.
Shut up, Graeme Bird. You are doing nothing here but lending credence to Keynes.
Well if you're not loopy old Graeme, please tell me:
1. Where in which paper Barro "got confused".
2. Why it matters in the long run.
3. What the multiplier actually is (I think it is effectively zero since it is mathematically based on a sleight of hand and Barro's empirics).
No you shut up. This is what you and JC do. You just talk nonsense. Barro's figures are meaningless. Since he is too stupid to tell the difference between GDP and spending. As are you. And JC has not read the General Theory, as evidence by the following statement:
"No it’s not. Keynes never ever said live beyond your means as the engine will always continue working. He was very careful to present a thesis of counter cyclical policy....."
So he hasn't read it. Now obviously if you run deficits you are going to some day have to run surpluses or default. But Keynes was not CAREFUL in the way that JC claims he was. It was up to his starry-eyed cult followers to pick up the pieces. Lets not go in for this "send out the retards" act that you and JC are famous for.
Jesus Graeme I don't care what you say you loon. You basically admit Keynes wasn't a vulgar Keynesian either but just want to slur JC and I because we were amongst the first of your victims who had to put up with your crackpot theories.
You won't even debate the issue. You are are too much of wimp to answer 1.-3.
Dan's right. This is over.
There is no use quoting Barro to shore up the wrong multiplier theory. Because Barro takes GDP as his measure for spending in the economy.
Now lets get that straight once and for all, so you can go back to your mental deficiency on OTHER topics. Lets see if you can get just one topic right. Just one little itty bitty thing right.
My God you are an idiot. It must have been years ago you were informed of the difference between spending and GDP. And you still cannot bring your tiny brain to understand this matter.
What did these poor people do to deserve the dog and pony show of yourself and philomena, Graeme?
Later dude.
Look Dan is probably a Keynesian. I'm an anti-Keynesian. But that doesn't mean I have to do what you and JC do and just say any old gibber in favor of my tribal position. There is such a thing as intellectual precision. There was no need for you to race in pretending that JC knew what he was talking about. He doesn't. He just says any old thing. He got up to first year Keynesianism as far as his formal education was concerned. Keynes himself had almost no formal education in economics and this shows through very clearly.
Firstly it is not unusual for economic illiterates to state the stimulus had no impact.
At the time the Goebbels of Catallaxy said a recession was guaranteed and that the money spent would have no impact. He then completely changed his position ,naturally, and said with a straight face since there was no recession no stimulus was necessary!
Access economics at the time said Australia was facing the greatest contraction in econmic growth since WW2.
China recovered AFTER we did. Net exports was only positive because of the huge decrease in imports not because exports surged.
commodity prices only gained strength well after the worst of the GFC was over.
monetary policy played only a small part.
Firstly there was the problem of funding for banks. Even with a government guarantee it too a long time until Banks could get funding O/S.
Thus they had to ration their lending.
I remember one LARGE Bank appointed a head of Lending in Queensland. He started his job and then within weeks was told by its Sydney HO he couldn't lend any money as they had no money to lend!
Secondly the traditional interest rate sectors reacted differently this time .Usually they all grow when rates are low but this time it was the first home buyer market that was the one that grew strongly.
Thirdly no-one who says it was monetary policy can point to when said policy when from tight to neutral to loose.
Even on the most optimistic interpretation of when monetary policy became expansionary we have the problem of the lag. monetary policy works with a longish lag yet here we have it working straight away.
No Country which got through the GFC without a recession did it by simply letting automatic stabilisers do their job and cutting rates. not Surprising when there was either a liquidity trap or monetary policy was severely impaired.
Also important here is the role of unemployment and confidence.
Having no stimulus would have meant unemployment at the very least doubling probably rising more. It takes a long time to get unemployment back down to previous low levels.
Confidence is also important and without the stimulus we would have seen much lower business and consumer confidence with commensurate effects they have.
no-one but no-one takes Barro seriously. He uses WW2 when people couldn't spend much money. In the Korean war he didn't even know taxes were raised to pay for the war.
When one tales this into account the multiplier suddenly looks the same as in most other studies
If one takes GDP to be a measure of economic activity then one has to concede that Homer is right for the medium term. If you slash spending, and encourage savings, other measures of economic activity may increase, but GDP will almost definitely plunge for the medium term. My argument is that the problem lies with making GDP a proxy for economic activity.
Now see the above paragraph. Do you see it? You can never expect Mark or JC to write a straightforward clarifying paragraph like that one. The two of them just come out full-bore, never admitting anything, never attempting to understand a damn thing, and wrecking any thread they are on.
I should add Keynes supported the plan put to the Premiers as it involved a massive devaluation and he actually preferred this to government spending however not all countries can do this at the same time. The plan also involved large expenditure on infrastructure.
given the Welfare state only came into existence AFTER WW2 it is not surprising Keynes had little to say about it.
Keynesian econmics involves roughly a balanced budget over the Business cycle where Budget surpluses in good times usually outweigh the budget deficits in bad times. Fiscal policy would only be used when there were liquidity traps which made monetary policy ( his preferred policy )mostly ineffective.
If a country had a lot of debt it will not pay it off if it is not growing indeed as Europe clearly shows austerity will make it worse.
They were wrong.
This is a lie.
Piss off Homer. You cannot get into any debate without bringing up the Nazis and disgracing yourself.
Bullshit.
Later, freaks.
they were wrong but that is what their model was saying and most models were were saying similar things. Of course the major reason they were wrong was the stimulus.
give us an example of a country that missed the effects of the GFC by simply using automatic stabilisers and monetary policy then.
The last time you asserted a lie we found out it was YOU that was lying.
I err have not mentioned Germany between the wars. forgot to take your pills again?
Swearing is no answer to Barro's woefully researched article which no-one takes seriously.
LOL
Yet it is an answer to your bullshit.
Goodbye.
The Goebbels of Catallaxy is Sinclair Davidson.
This is simply a comment on the use of propaganda he uses regularly.
An inability to understand a pretty simple economic concept involves swearing and but no answer to Barro's simple errors.
I do hope it is goodbye
Can we get Homer banned for his dissembling anti semitic claptrap?
I thought you didn't like censorship?
(Sorry - couldn't resist)
Dude,
Private property.
what about banning Marky for being unable to understand English.
Gets caught out again but no apology.
Just go away Marky. We won't miss you and your withering analysis which only involves swearing
Hey Homes, you may want to explain eggsactly what you mean by "Sydney HO", as some people elsewhere are asking if it's anything to do with Skanky Ho, the Asian Warlord's mistress you used to refer to incessantly.
No. You write unintelligible horseshit.
How about banning you for anti semitism?
You fail to accept actual analysis and make things up Homer. Fuck off you old coot.
"I should add Keynes supported the plan put to the Premiers as it involved a massive devaluation and he actually preferred this to government spending however not all countries can do this at the same time."
Very interesting point Homer.
Did the rest of you take this insight on-board? Or were you too busy reaffirming your mindless tribalism to notice?
Bird
For someone that believes in shadow government, 911 trooferisms, magic potions, untested cancer remedies, homesteading underneath a neighbors homes, moving entire national populations to the centre of continents to live in pyramids, reverse speech, you're sounding a little too authoritative and dismissive of other points of view for my liking.
Let me repeat, Keynes was more prudential than what people give him credit for. He would be aghast at the US deficit, residual debt and unfunded obligations. He would also be aghast at what's going on in Europe.
And yes I did read GT about a very very long time ago. Now if you spent less time watching You Tube vids about how the 3rd WTC tower came down with explosives, you understand what people were saying instead of what you think they are.
Marky who was caught blatantly lying resorts to more of his endless inaccurate analysis.
No-one takes Barro seriously for reasons I have already stated. Marky simply doesn't understand.
The only person here who makes things up is Marky most of the time. He just can't help himself.
His attempted anti-semitic slur fell flat as usual.
Just go away Marky.
Birdy Gibson vetoed the devaluation and infrastructure spending. At first it didn't matter as the States were still adding to spending via infrastructure anyway but eventually following the UK it did devalue from which we then gained inflation and thus real wages fell. Add this to the increase in demand and unemployment fell.
We never got to full employment however until AFTER WW2 startedhowever unless one wants to claim 9% unemployment is full employment
JC I am still laughing when you and Soony looked up Urban dictionary to find up the definition and didn't know you had to look at the site at the time of the statement in 2004.
You always were a technological genius. Soony produced the quote from a blog showing I said there 5 definitions which NO-ONE disagreed at that time but still wanted to say it wasn't there.
you couldn't make it up
JC has completely changed his tune on Keynes.
when I used to say Keynesian measnt large surpluses in good times he would reort it only meant spending.
Better late than never
Trooferism hey JC? Good Lord you are an idiot. I suppose you imagine that with this babytalk you've invented an whole new type of physics? One where force, mass and acceleration don't matter. Grow up you stupid little child.
Dan is also 100% correct about the welfare state. It indubitably improved conditions for millions of people across the world. This would not have happened if matters had been left to laissez-faire economists.
As anyone who even casually follows economic news, economic theorists of the right today have no reason to gloat or claim any special knowledge about the workings of the free market system.
Too often a substantial proportion of what they offer (like Abbott and Costello like JC and dot here) is a directive to do nothing and allow matters to take their “natural” course. As if doing nothing is somehow more natural than doing something.
The theories of Friedman or Charles Murray e.g. may seem plausible until you think of say the writings and insights of someone of the calibre, experience and breadth of knowledge of George Orwell. Had Friedman and Murray been writing in the 1930s they would probably have been arguing for the status quo, for economics to take its “natural” course, i.e. for no intervention. But writers like Orwell were important because they helped bring about a shift in sensibility that combined with the experience of war effected a major change in the way the poor were regarded.
Never trust unread uncultured hicks who pronounce on matters economic. They know SFA.
Homes
I can't recall that single incident Homes, however I'll take your word for it. So tell me if we looked up the Urban D we would have found a definition which agreed with you.... that Skanky ho wasn't Skanky ho but Skanke ho an Asian warlord's mistress and that this was well know around ALP NSW right circles. Is what you're driving at?
Okay. But why you were you concerned when there is only one broad definition of what it means.
I'll say.
Have I? All I've said (above) is I would guess that Keynes would shudder at the idea of increased fiscal spending when a deficit is around 10% of GDP, debt close to 100% and contingent liabilities at $100 trillion. In fact I think he'd be angry with anyone using his name to peddle more fiscal spending in such a situation.
Homer I very much doubt I would confuse a surplus with spending. Perhaps you're Toozing again.
Ummm.
Dysfunctionality personified. P
Totally arguable. The welfare system is so poorly designed it encourages unemployment. At the cost o a lower growth rate, we get these poor unintended consequences. All it has done is provide a safety net.
Except for their training and acceptance of imperfect information - as opposed to utopian socialists implicit assumption of perfect information, eschewing of their training in spite of facts and poor empirical results.
It is more natural, and proper to let thriving businesses thrive and to let failing businesses die. Counter cyclical policy resists this and is basically a form of really misdirected and indiscriminate, prosperity destroying industry policy.
Except they are of higher calibre, experience and breadth of knowledge.
It worked in Australia and the US prolonged their depression by seven years.
You are unread and a male nurse who is poorly educated and misinformed. Yet you have the temerity to dispute Friedman etc.
Whatever dude.
William Beveridge, the bloke who wrote the groundbreaking and wildly popular report that created the welfare state in Britain is another case in point. At Oxford, he studied maths and classics where (unsurprisingly given the breadth and depth of his subsequent intellectual interests and concerns) he made it his mission to study the reasons why there was so much poverty in Britain and how it could best be addressed.
The idea of a welfare state was not his invention though.
In Germany in the 1880s Bismarck had made state provision for accident, sickness, old age and disability insurance. In 1907, Beveridge visited Germany to inspect the remnants of this compulsory social insurance for old age, disability and sickness pensions. He wrote about what he'd discovered in Germany (and similar schemes in Hungary and Austria) and by this came to attention of Winston Churchill who recruited him to the civil service where he went on to play a key role in Liberal government's 1911 legislation which introduced old-age pensions and a statutory scheme for unemployment benefits.
Ah yes what a success story. Remember this was back in the "good times".
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-512754/Britains-benefits-generation-State-handouts-way-life-million.html
This creates generational poverty. You then claim that welfare has helped millions climb out of poverty rather than be saved from destitution. really?
Your rejoinder is that you read Homer or Virgil on the bus once, and that I don't speak Latin and koine Greek and so are therefore you are correct.
It's not even argument "Sally".
Generational poverty is caused by large households or groups of people dependent on and in receipt of low wages. This has been proved over and over again.
Which welfare, particularly badly designed welfare, is a subset of.
Not really. Very low wages are often for the most onerous backbreaking dirty dangerous demanding and essential work.
It's exploitation pure and simple.
Not paid for by the state though, but by small or big business cockroaches in the context of an "oversupply" of labour.
Capitalism. Ain't it grand.
People who do backbreaking labour ARE NOT in poverty, they are the affluent, upwardly mobile the left hates, after they lost the debate that capitalism can provide more material wealth in 1989.
Dot you don't have a clue about the real world, work, labour or people.
You really are autistic. And a phoney.
Why do you insist on your misinformed rambling as authoritative, "Sally"?
The physically hardest and most dangerous work is the best paid.
Outside of finance, law or medicine the highest paid jobs are in electricity, gas, water, construction and mining.
Your arguments amount to solipsism. Give up.
Construction workers, factory labourers, many tradies outside of the mining industry, health workers, garbos, admin workers, cleaners, security guards, agricultural labourers, taxi drivers, are all low paid workers, in the main, and work in dangerous, onerous, demanding work environments for shit wages.
You don't know much do you or get out much.
Doubly poorly paid and exploitative, dangerous, onerous etc for women workers.
That's mostly bullshit.
I have a really easy, cushy, interesting job for which I am paid very nicely thank you. Haven't done shit to earn it. Born lucky. About to inherit a whole bunch as well. Happy to be taxed more.
Just sayin'.
Lots of people in your position feel that way, Dan. No shock you haven't earned it and think it's easy.
Let me ask you something though, the person giving you that money did earn it. You think s/he felt the same as you do because somewhere along the line someone did work hard.
What I *don't* think is that it's easy to be poor. My folks grew up poor but were lucky, talented, and hardworking enough to benefit from Commonwealth Scholarships.
Intergenerationally, I've been a massive beneficiary of the welfare state. I'd like if others had that opportunity :)
Most (not all) private sector activity is banal, short-term, wasteful, and frankly a bit pathetic and the market only exists with the state's institutional support anyway.
All free markets do (insofar as they exist) is free people to be trod on by a small elite.
The whole libertarian schtick rests on just acquisition anyway, which any right-thinking, fair-minded person skimming any history book can see has more holes in it than Swiss cheese.
"It's *mine*! You can't have it." The metaphysics of a terrier.
What did you ideologically-blinded lightweights think of that American Conservative article? I noticed that none of you said peep.
My thoughts: there's a fella who understands the social contract, the public good, and the real world. Not a lefty, heck no. Maybe you should have a go at thinking beyond ideological lines, like the grown-ups.
I read it Dan. Or at least I skimmed it beyond the 1/2 way mark.
I thought its typical boiler plate criticisms of Libertarians that you read all the time. Most of the criticism was stuff taken to absurdity. Furthermore most libertarians don't all present as extreme as he portrays them. The example about how to trace gas in the atmosphere so you can sue the emitter is absurd, as even say Reason magazine.. a libertarian periodical.. has suggested a cap and trade or a carbon tax at a global level may be required.
Other stuff was just baloney and misunderstanding.
However you would agree with it seeing you sorta support stuff like censorship.
I've made clear my position on censorship several times, ie. that I'm pretty darn permissive on that particular issue; far more so than that author; probably in the same ballpark as you.
Is your rhetoric so anemic as to require you to make up your opponents positions rather than respond to what they're actually saying? Is it impossible for you to imagine that some people might be *genuinely non-ideological*?
As for Reason Magazine - they're spot frickin' on. Hardly a libertarian position though, is it?
SO you think only the government offer scholarships, right? This year my kid started college at an east coast private uni in the US on where 3/4's of her tuition and board was funded through a school scholarship and other stuff. So please, don't even try and tell me the state has a monopoly on handing out money.
Her scholarship came from benefactors to their endowment and not the state.
I thought you implied your parents were reasonably well off, so seeing the welfare state here is pretty much means tested in Oz what were your the "massive benefits" you derived Dan , as I frankly don't see them?
Excuse me but that's pure drivel. Pure nonsense that doesn't deserve a decent response.
Really? Ever been to a super market Dan, Bought veggies and other stuff. Where do you think the poor shop or is it only the elite?
Nonsense.
Well actually it is in a way, if you consider the principle of user pays and that the sky is a terribly hard thing to divide. It's perhaps the best solution within that framework.
The problem of course is the tragedy of the Commons. However the Commons in this case is a very difficult thing to carve up so it becomes the optimum solution to get state involvement.
Not all libertarians think that there can't be a statist solution to some things... but very sparingly.
I think that it would be foolhardy to privatize the military for instance, as state is particularly good at training people to kill in industrial lot size if they have to. The military has been somewhat privatized in a way because we no longer have conscription.
My parents are well-off now; they grew up poor. As I made explicit for anyone able to put two and two together. Keep up, grandpa!
We don't really have a philanthropic tradition in Australia; I do admire the US one, but frankly it's not needed here. You're an Australian citizen and want a tertiary education? Have a tertiary education. The fees are nominal.
Re. what you wouldn't respond to: currency trading is pure inflation ("banal, short-term, wasteful, and frankly a bit pathetic"). And there's oodles of it. Makes supermarkets look like activity at the margins. As for the supermarket, though: we have problems with them being a duopoly here in Australia, so you've inadvertently borne out my point.
Ethicist Stephen Gardiner reckons climate change is more than just the tragedy of the commons:
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/HistoryOther/EnvironmentalHistory/?view=usa&ci=9780195379440
He's a wonderful speaker too.
In fact it was he that I borrowed "pathetic" from, in reference to his commentary that ever-increasing material "wellbeing" in the West actually seems to be making us unhappier at this point. Essentially there's a body of evidence to suggest we're trashing the planet, to the effect on making ourselves worse off even in the *short* term (never mind the disaster wheeling inexorably into view over the horizon).
Is it true that you were or are a Wall Street trader?
Did you support the bailouts?
I think they were, give or take, probably necessary under the circumstances ("too interconnected to fail", as JQ puts it), although they really put paid to that tough-guy horseshit finance people spout about self-reliance and individual responsibility; but I guess the challenge going forward is to regulate so that it's never necessary to piss away tax dollars like this again. Right?
Yes it is. It's very much needed. It comes in all different ways, money obviously, volunteer work. It would bet our volunteer work would be as impressive as anywhere else, even if money is thrown around more in the US. However money is crowded out through a number of ways, as the tax system here is not as favorable to Foundations and such like.
The fees may be nominal but the cost isn't. User should pay.
I don't understand your point.
There is competition, so we don't have just two. I count four at the top of my head if I include IGA and Aldi. Furthermore if you want more competition in that sector we should do what the competition agency suggested, which is to reduce land and real estate restrictions (zoning)
Human wants are and always be unlimited and the world isn't a bad place especially now as millions in emerging economies are joining the middle class.
Happiness studies are basically bullshit as far as I'm concerned. They are meaningless.
"I don’t understand your point." Indeed. Luckily, the majority of people do.
"Human wants are and always be unlimited" Even if you were right (and I should say that I think you're seeing the issue through a historically-specific, hyper-individualistic perspective), they won't necessarily be material. If your material wants are unlimited I really do feel and worry for you.
"Happiness studies are basically bullshit as far as I’m concerned. They are meaningless." Well, I can see how it's convenient for you to *think* they're bullshit. As someone with an honours degree in the field, I'll concede psych is not much of a science - but to say there's simply nothing there is just... wishful thinking.
Yep for about 16 years.
Yes unfortunately as I think it was true what the Fed Chairman said that if they didn't act that weekend and propose a support package the Fed wire would have literately seized up. If it did Main street would not have been able to buy food as banks would not have released funds. If they didn't release funds Supermarkets would not have been supplied as supplier banks would not have accepted credit.
Bankrupt for the large banks would have been horrendous as claims and counter claims would have say frozen assets in Germany through their court system. It would have taken ages to untangle.
No it will happen again. Always does. Banks go bust because their equity position is wafer thin compared to their assets and liabilities. So any sudden move in asset values like we had will impact on banks. Bank failure is nothing new and won't end now. US banks were even then the most over-regulated entities in the western world and still failed.
Here:
Our banking system has around 50% of its balance sheet in real estate. If real estate prices here fell by 50% they would most likely go belly up.
"US banks were even then the most over-regulated entities in the western world and still failed." Fairly crucial component missing when investment banking and retail banking are carried out by the same institutions, I'd have thought.
Do you think the Australian real estate market is overvalued? I have misgivings about the 'burbs maintaining their value, but I can't see inner cities going anywhere much (at least in Sydney and Melbourne); demand just so outstrips supply.
I wasn't saying earlier that we're going to have a real estate crash, just what could happen if we did.
People keep saying by various metrics we highly overvalued, however that's true, but we can stay overvalued for a long time. San Fran has always been expensive on a relative basis for instance . So it may not mean anything I hope.
Look if say China's current slow down turns in to something more ominous that would hit us pretty hard and if our employment rate notches up then there will be stress in the real estate markets without a doubt. I don't buy the supply imbalance argument if the economy get seriously knocked over, as that assumes those buyers will still be hanging around. The supply imbalance theory rests on the economy doing reasonably well and no shocks. I wouldn't take that bet now. Not saying it will happen but its worth keeping an eye on it as the world economy doesn't appear to be in great shape and we can't assume we won;'t get banged.
Not really. The traders weren't the people that brought the house down. It was mostly the origination departments who don't trade but were allowed to warehouse all that toxic crap.
It is basically libertarian canon. Stop criticising things you barely understand.
If you want to pay more tax, spend some money on charities etc. Some people cannot afford to pay tax and excessive taxation is a major reason why housing is so expensive in Australia.
"Yet you have the temerity to dispute Friedman etc."
Plenty of people have. Friedman's narrow and ethically unsound economic ideas have been ethically and practically outstripped by the likes of - just to mention professional economists - Nobel-prize winner Amartya Sen and the 20th century best known and most popular economist J.K. Galbraith.
You're not fit to lick their boots, balance sheet man.
Um yes the permanent income hypothesis and flexible exchange rates are ethically unsound.
Shut up moonbeam.
Friedman's ideas lead to uncontrolled famine, as Sen explained.
Shut up fascist.
Why do you hate people?
Certainly the IMF have changed their rhetoric (if not their approach) in favour of an institutional rather than monetarist approach.
Either they were wrong then, or they're wrong now. (Or both.)
There's a tragic history of waste and failure suggesting the former.
Dot - re: statist solutions for climate change - that's interesting you say that, because the other libertarians I know are vehemently opposed, despite agreeing with the science (I think they are more ideologically "pure" than you and JC - bad thing - but also are still courteous and interested in where others are coming from - good things.)
The Friedmans were idiots and apologists for capitalism. They reckoned the 1929 stock market crash and ensuing depression was due to anti-semitism and mere technical mismanagement rather than anything fundamental to capitalism itself.
Whenever free market people are challenged on the virtues of the market, they always come back to retail operations.
Global finance and major economic activity is nothing like a retail operation. Even retail operations are typically just a subset of a corporation who are oligopolistic in their characteristics and deeply planning in concert with governments.
If you're serious about free markets and individual responsibility, then you're against limited liability. My other libertarian buddies were man enough to not just admit it, but *propose* it.
"...equilibrium theory describes how market relations might settle at a stable resting point if only the world were something other than it is." - Michael Hudson
I actually had to read some Friedman for my masters program a few months back. Dismal indeed. Here was my review which I posted on FB:
"Dan's course reading reviews: the chapter on prices from Milton and Rose Friedman's *Free to Choose* - an embarrassingly naive economic analysis (conveniently, completely ignoring social and environmental externalities) is made additionally dubious and feeble by ugly and transparent attempts to smuggle in regressive prescriptions (against, for example, inheritance tax) that have no relevance to the stated topic. The result is as stupid and venal as its intended readership. Zero out of five."
My mate Henry said: "I'm so glad you're reading this rubbish so that we don't have to :)"
I said: "Yeah, well, that makes one of us."
Dot at 235: "Some people cannot afford to pay tax" - that's patently absurd. It's (thankfully) a progressively incremented proportion of your income, not a fixed sum. Additionally, while I'm not a believer in Ricardian equivalence, didn't you mention Barro before?
Sally,
Some advice.
1. Stop cross dressing.
2. Stop using sock puppets.
3. Stop abusing economics.
4. Sen never said that.
5. India had a caste system, which you foolishly ignore.
6. Britain and Japan were fighting a war in the area at the time.
7. As India has become more capitalist, the chance of famines like in 1943 are less likely.
8. Stop being a cultural imperialist, if Indians want to be rich, let them.
9. It is bizzare and ugly that you call me a fascist because you blame "neoliberalism" for a famine in a wartime country with a caste system and an unfair economic system imposed on them by the British.
10. No country has had that type of famine you describe or even what Sen describes without some calamity etc.
11. Stop being a hypocrite and intellectual fraud and admit you actually defend the caste system as a form of subversion against a classless system with equal rights before the law and upward mobility.
Dan,
1. No mitigation scheme passes a rigorous or honest CBA.
2. The best policies are tax exemptions or taxes with matching tax cuts on another part of the base. International agreement will never happen.
3. Empirically the monetarists and new institutionalists are mostly correct. What makes you think looking at institutions is only a new idea? it's been around for decades.
You have to wonder at Dot's sneering at me as a "male nurse who wants to be paid doctor rates". No idea where that came from in relation to me, who he wouldn't know from Eve. But I recall that the Friedmans in "Free to Choose", I think, in their wholesale attack on the right of workers to organise in unions, specifically attacked doctors who opposed through their union the introduction of paramedics in some US states. The doctors opposed it as always because they wanted to limit entry to the profession and to protect their relative wages. In fact the number of people surviving heart attacks everywhere rose by up to 25% within a year after the introduction of paramedics.
Dot:
1. CBA is impossible without a clear sense of the what the benefits will be (not just monetarily). The Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House would you crashed and burned on this analysis too. Except this is way more important.
2. "taxes with matching tax cuts on another part of the base" - not far from what we got.
3. I know, of course - Veblen and Galbraith are my go-to guys. It's just that the monetarists (empirically correct! ha!) missed the memo until advent of the New Institutionalists (who are still seeing things from a myopic individualistic perspective).
*have, not you
Dot you have no idea what you are talking about. Everything you say is always wrong when it is not incoherent.
Sen's study of four major famines - the Great Bengal famine of 1943, the Ethiopian famine of 1972-74, the 1973 famine in Sahel and the 1974 famine in Bangladesh - produced the very important finding that in each case, in the areas most affected, there was no significant decline in the availability of food.
In fact in many of the regions where famine was occurring, food production and food production per capita, actually rose.
Now why do you think famine occurred. Hmm?
No it's not.
Withers and Powell found that 31% of housing costs was taxation or caused by supply shortages because of the disincentive effect on investment which reduces supply.
This is a recent phenomena and can be tracked well.
If I'm wrong, why is there so much "mortgage stress" and why is there a trend to put more people in each dwelling? Look at how weak savings, retail sales and motor vehicle sales are.
Taxes do more than reduce your disposable income, even if that was the only kind of tax.
No they don't. You just say they don't. They mightn't address where there are no distinct property rights.
Being anti inheritance tax isn't regressive! Do you even know what regressivity is? So what about Gini coefficients? It does not in any way burden a poor man if a rich person no longer has to structure their assets to avoid the tax or if the middle class lose their inheritance out of envy.
The practicalities of it are that the hardest working probably pay the most inheritance tax as a proportion of income.
That's actually more regressive to boot.
The Ethiopians were ruled by Marxists you fuckhead. India was at war. Stop polluting this forum with garbage you read in the Green Left Weekly.
Wow, just like Holodomor.
Marxism and medieval societies cause famines. Neoliberalism isn't to blame.
Next.
I'm sorry my history was very poor.
They ruled by a dude he thought he was Jesus.
Cults and caste systems cause poverty and starvation. Next.
Could it be that there's more than one type of famine (recession, depression, etc.), with more than one type of cause?
Hah you don't have a clue do you.
Read "Poverty and Famines" and get back to me.
Hint: Sen demonstrated how the market can make a bad situation (natural disasters) worse.
"The practicalities of it are that the hardest working probably pay the most inheritance tax as a proportion of income."
No. The hardest working are in sweatshops.
Yes I agree Dan.
Sally is not saying that though, "her" crazy theory is that "Milton Friedman wot dun it", no matter how irrelevant.
Monarchs who think they're God?
Communist regimes?
War?
Lack of infrastructure?
Imperialism?
Caste systems?
No, it was Friedman!
Seriously "Sally", bugger off. I don't agree with Dan but he's not a freaking headcase like you. Bugger of to Graeme Bird's blog and pollute there as much as you please.
Seriously dude what sweatshops in Australia, and why do you think they're working harder than white collar guys who are highly educating doing long hours or goal miners etc?
Given how you mangled everything else, fuck off.
I don't know how the philosophy of Marx - not a political program or economic system and never implemented anywhere - can cause famines.
The free market can and does cause famines. Woulda thought it. Well Sen proved it. It's one reason he won the Nobel Prize.
You're a friggin' lunatic "Sally". Sen said all of those ill effects from market mechanisms were directly related to the war effort and had underlying causes such as falling per capita income and poor infrastructure (think British imperialism being unfair).
Sen has never categorically said "free enterprise hurts people".
Your temerity and stupidity is astounding.
"."
Read the book you uncultured fascist.
Oh sweet jesus fuck off you commie troll.
You are lying. Sen never said or did that. You are using his work as some sort of spiritual and onanistic spittoon.
You're all fired up because you are a beta male nurse who doesn't paid as much as female doctors. Get a therapist.
You have never read the book you poorly educated clown. You are making glaring errors in history and in fact of what Sen did.
I am more cultured than you. Having a sexual identity crisis and reading Marx and Proudhon on the bus to work doesn't make you cultured. You cannot even keep a straight story. You have lied and misrepresented one nobel prize winning economist to discredit another you don't like.
On that note,
Good luck Dan. I'll leave "Sally" to Ken et al.
In fact if by you are referring to what was not Marxist in practice, the regimes of China, the former SU and Cuba to name the most outstanding examples, they were in fact lifted out of poverty and rural backwardness by their non-capitalist governments, rather than the other way round.
But this is ABC.
I'm one of those white collar guys. Sometimes it's a little stressful but frankly in general it's easy, stimulating, even relaxing. (Lest you get the wrong idea, I should add that I am absolutely sure I add more value to Australia's economy than I take out in wages and on-costs.)
I have a buddy who works for a big bank. Pulls long hours (though not sweatshop hours). Does very well. Spends a significant proportion of those long hours wasting time on YouTube, etc. Says that's the culture and expectation; the hours are for show.
Have a mate who works in mining. He's quite right-wing but would guffaw at the idea that he works exponentially harder than people in sweatshops and that the pay differential is seriously justifiable on those grounds.
Yes Sally, just like the Holodomor famine, the great leap forward, the woeful state of Cuban hospitals, mass emigration from the Soviet Union and Cuba, plus democratic repudiation of the iron curtain plus uprisings in Eastern Europe all through the Cold War.
This proves the superiority of laissez faire and your position is so left and mentally unhinged that Dan, Quiggin etc would not bother defend it.
Yes Dan, can you address the issues that Withers and Powell mention, the practicalities of where tax regressivity actually lies or where the sweatshops actually are?
Importantly, neither of those guys has to choose between their current job and poverty.
@268 - Cuba has better health outcomes than the US.
Dan, since unlike "." you are genuinely interested in ideas and economics (not "." sole obeisance to a form of religion, this is what Sen found in the famines he examined.
He found that what typically happened in a famine was that a natural disaster like flood or drought 1) made people *think* there should be a shortage of food and 2) and at the same time affected the ability of certain sectors, agricultural workers, peasants, labourers to earn money. Possessors of food hoard what they have and so the prices rise at the very same time large segments of the population suffer a substantial fall in income. Either the floods mean there is no work to be had on the land or the drought cause the poor to be evicted from where they are living, because they can't grow enough to earn enough to pay the rent. But the chief factor is, as he called it, a fall in "entitlement": ie they have less and less to exchange for food.
His conclusion: It is a failure of the market system, which operates on what people think is happening, or soon will happen. But, objectively, in terms of the aggregate food availability, the market is wrong. Sen's analysis was startling for sure, even counter-intuitive, but as I said it showed that the market can make a bad situation worse.
His work has helped governments understand in a practical way how famines develop and therefore might be avoided or the effects mitigated, and his empirical results highlighted important limitations of the free market philosophy and its ethical base.
Cuba has mass emigration, the US has mass immigration.
You'd rather go to hospital in Cuba? (Ignore the ads).
http://www.therealcuba.com/Page10.htm
Nah. The Castros deserve to hanged, that is all.
I don't believe you're happy to pay more taxes until you write a cheque and have the site owners verify a copy of your bank balance.
Don't make yourself a liar. Write the goddamned cheque.
Not trying to be personal but do you have children yet? Have you thought about the less well off who may tell you they can't afford to pay more taxes? Are they all lying or are they simply not as well off as you as a consequence of not being as intelligent as you?
BTW the attitude of most cheery socialists once they have children is to lower taxes.
That is not his conclusion at all! There was a shortage on per capita figures (why else would there be malnutrition to begin with?) and unemployment due to the war.
You are a dissembling fool.
Write the cheque to whom? I give to charity.
No, I don't have kids, but I note my parents' views are similar to mine - maybe a bit more radical in some areas.
"Where are the sweatshops?" Oh come onnnnnn.
I think we have demolished "." and laid his economic pretensions out clean for the vultures to finish.
Why he has such an enormous chip on his shoulders against science and reason, is any one's guess.
Any takers?
Dan @271
Yes, Cuba definitely does have better health outcomes than the US. Life expectancy anyone?
And there's been no famine or even malnutrition in Cuba since the ouster of Dot's Cuban economic forbears in the 1950s.
And slavery and racism were abolished there by the early 1960s. Of course these two evils are endemic and growing in the US (particularly its southern states) even today. So much for the civil war.
The problem with "."s economic template for the height of human aspiration, accomplishment and reach, the US, is that the "American Century" lasted barely a half century and America is steadily heading back to to its pre-WW2 economic status which of course was dire.
Well that's fantastic and you didn't have to reveal that.
There are less well of than you who cannot afford more taxation. If you are affluent enough now, you may not remember but decisions are made at the margin.
Some people cannot afford to write those cheques. There are more taxes than income tax and the tax incidence is direct and indirect.
You haven't answered the three questions I posed to you. "Oh come on" isn't an answer.
Read the Real Cuba webpage.
http://www.therealcuba.com/Page10.htm
The Cuban Government is lying about the stats. That should be obvious. Their health outcomes are not better. You are being bewildering naive here.
Oh bullshit, "Sally".
http://therealcuba.com/Page21.htm
I'd hazard a guess that the fascist-leaning "." is a visceral defender of the theocratic state of Israel which like the US is increasingly failing to deliver the standard of living and democratic freedom that its citizenry expects.
Israeli women, e.g. live in one of the most sexist and gender illiberal societies of any developed country in the world. No wonder there is mass emigration out of it.
The USA pre WWI was a very well off place. What the fuck are you talking about?
What saved the US was WW2. Armaments and Liberty war ships built cities like Detroit and Maryland and made the US economy into a contender. Ditto the Cold War and the space race. But like a premature ejaculator, the US is now looking a lot less reliable as it ages.
"Sally",
Can you stay on topic or are the HRT shots not working? I have a far more nuanced view on Israel than your little straw man.
Bordered by the truly theocratic regimes that surround it, it's a beacon of hope.
You're the kind of fuckwit who applauds a speech by Ahmadinejad.
This is false, the cost in human life obviously outweighed the benefits of higher GDP numbers on paper. You are also lying. The US really didn't recover until after WWII.
You idiot. You call me a fascist and then ramble on about vulgar military Keynesianism.
You are clearly spamming now. Toodles.
Go to Cuba, Dot. Millions have from countries like Australia, Canada and the US have done so over decades now. They see with their own eyes how people live, how they work and farm, the health care and education they receive, how healthy and happy they are relative to any other comparable country in the region and vast swathes of America.
Useful idiot. Bye.
http://www.therealcuba.com/Page10.htm
http://therealcuba.com/Page21.htm
Dot - I get my health stats from the UN, World Bank, OECD, academic journals. And given that my work duties include a significant chunk of health policy evaluation, you better believe I know that health outcomes are, embarrassingly, worse in Cuba than in the US. In fact part of my work here consists of working out what the US did wrong so Australia can avoid the same mistakes. This is not a left-wing frolic; this is a mainstream, apolitical work program justified by straight-up economic rationalism. I'm proud to be involved.
As for sweatshops: China. Malaysia. India. The Phillipines. Most especially in so-called free trade zones. You didn't really need me to tell you that, though, you're just wasting both of our time.
"." sezs
"The USA pre WWI was a very well off place. What the fuck are you talking about?"
This is what I meant about being an uncultured, illiterate, unread hick who aspires to fascism.
Read American writers of the period who have never been out of print. People like Upton Sinclair (Chicago) and John Dos Passos (New York). They'll tell you in graphic details about this well-off place. You utter ignoramus.
Just last week a group of Qld Supreme Court judges went to Cuba on an official tour. They were very impressed. Wait for their report.
Also, you didn't answer me on limited liability. Are you against it? Or are you a chickenhawk?
Well thankfully you didn't try and say there were thousands sweatshops all over Australia.
China is so dodgy we can just write it off. I have no problem with calling what they do, slavery.
Now assuming people come adn go of their own volition, what is wrong with low cost assembly type manufacture in India? Ditto for child labour (although education is far preferable). What's the alternative? Unemployment? Destitution?
The Balassa Samuelson effect means they get more bang for their buck over their. Luxury goods are overpriced but as you know, staples are cheaper.
As Stiglitz noted, you cannot ram down change from external sources. What's bad with liberalising trade though? The technological spillovers, higher wages and capital investment from FDI is a godsend. Usually trade and FDI grow together.
Thank you.
Since Israel is stuffed to the gills with and run by refuges from Europe, the US and Russia one would expect the feminist revolution to be more apparent there, in practical terms, than in other places in the region (for complex historical reasons).
But alas, this is not the case.
Now why is that, hmm?
I didn't notice it. Why be invective about it? This is a massive thread.
It's irrelevant. Directors are still personally liable. They just lift the corporate veil, don't they? if it's not legally possible where appropriate, it's too strong.
You don't really know what libertarians are. It's almost insulting you'd ask these sorts of questions. Most libertarians are for weaker intellectual property rights. Apple is a goddamn patent troll. Why would libertarians want to limit legal liabilities when strong tort law is a foundation of an alternative to an overgrown regulatory state?
The Government cheats people with it's legislated limitations of the liability of it's departments.
Time for your HRT shot, philomena.
Haha, that was a typo :P Other way around, of course. Cuba gets much better results at far lower cost.
Come on spit it out, don't leave us hanging.
Dan, there are heaps of examples of equivalent current "sweatshops" in Australia in small and big business industries ranging from food to clothing to prostitution, building contractors, cab drivers, service centres, cleaning, agricultural workers, the list goes on.
"...assuming people can come and go of their own volition..." - pretty big assumption there ;)
Bear in mind, the welfare state wasn't some deus ex machina thing the Guvverment imposed for no reason. It came out of much social pressure, including from the private sector of the time, who unlike you knew a race to the bottom when they saw it.
If I don't know what libertarianism is, apparently the other libertarians I talk to don't either. It's possible, but given they seem smarter and better-read than you...
Dan
Didn't you mean "you better believe I know that health outcomes are, embarrassingly, worse in the US than Cuba"?
That's what all the rest of the world knows full well after all.
Overheads are lower because there is no administration of private insurance. Cost per patient in the US private system is however lower. The US problems lie in over regulation and demarcation of medical practices. Nurse practitioners can do far less over there than here. Simple things like getting injections etc have a bloated labour cost component. The AMA has on the record admitted to cartel like behaviour.
Can you control for very high US immigration and undocumented workers? The US health problems are self inflicted. They are more wealthy and eat more shite. Does this mean that Cuban hospitals are actually better?
What kind of salary can a Cuban doctor expect to earn for example?
Why do you trust the Cuban stats? The Soviets lied for years about GDP for example.
Why is it any different?
Yes, it is. My bad.
That's rich coming from someone who squibs more than a pop gun.
"Sally" reckons Israel is a theocratic state with "gender inequality"
I'm sure Tehran would just love this parade down the main drag:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBWiMXEQPcg
"Does this mean that Cuban hospitals are actually better?"
Probably not. However, people who need treatment can get it without becoming bankrupt.
As for Cuban doctors' salaries - I have no idea. Who gives a toss? American doctors are paid more than Australian ones. Does that mean Australian one's are underpaid? Most doctors I know value the prestige far more than the pay (although of course that doesn't hurt, and fair enough too, it's damned important work.)
What does "squib" mean?
Women have struggled but are losing the battle for genuine equality, even formal equality because Israel is a colonial settler state in a position of constant war and readiness for war and all that entails for its citizens. This is the paramount reason why all of women's social needs have been relegated to second place and why there is growing frustration by Israeli women at the erosion of democracy and the slow progress towards women's libetation.
And of course, women's equality is not a socialist demand or aspiration but arose out of the bourgeois democratic revolutions of the 19th century and the overturning of feudal and patriarchal social relations.
It's a massive component of US healthcare, moreso with silly demarcation rules. I'll add too that since libertarians don't like strong IP laws and so are not fond of artificial extensions of patents on drugs before they are generic and cheap.
Dan, a "squib" is a brief satirical or witty writing or speech, such as a lampoon.
Oh! So US doctors are *overpaid*. Look, I'm inclined to agree, I think it's created some really perverse incentives. But if you're going there, why not say: traders/bankers/lawyers are overpaid?
Um okay so why are there openly lesbian chicks in Israel, a very famous Israeli PM and one of the most equitable militaries and the former President was prosecuted without fear or favour for sexual assault against a woman?
As you were, Donna Quixote.
make that 18-19th century - b-d revolutions.
Re: squib - guilty as charged :) When something's ludicrous, I have a word for it: ludicrous.
Uneven and combined development. The world is a lot less linear than market religious fanatic would like to think.
Traders? Free markets. They are not earning monopoly profits.
Lawyers and bankers are suspect given the barriers to entry and industry support.
No.
Isn't it interesting that both of "." examples of his understanding of women's liberation involve women's or men's sexual activity.
You are being a damp squib on your side of the bargain. If only you gambled more Dan. I'm saying you're not giving enough back to the discussion.
Don't talk to "Sally". She's an internet stalker who is goading this poor fool (as "phil") into a downward spiral of antisemitism:
http://graemebird.wordpress.com/2011/09/14/blaming-the-arabs-911-idiots-short-of-a-theory/
Actually Birdflaps/Birdlab/JC/Jason Soon/Mark Hill – *you’re* weak as piss.
You’re cowards.
Your cowardice seeps from your politics like a putrid stain.
The saving grace is that few people read your shite. And it’s hilarious that you so infrequently wonder why no women post on your blog except for one or two lemon-mouthed dipsos, bogans and intellectual lightweights.
Graeme, I salute you once again. I’m not interested in the engineering stuff (I guess some women are, bless their diverse souls) but I agree with you that responsibility for the whole event can firmly be placed at the feet of the US “shadow government”.
By: Philomena on September 14, 2011
at 9:19 am
Reply
Don't be fooled, Dan.
SQUIB, supposed to be derived from the German word schieben, to push or shove forward with a sliding movement, the name for a projected kind of firework that is flung out of a groove and breaks with a flash and a clatter. Hence, in the literary sense, a squib is a slight satirical composition put forth on an occasion; and it is intended that it should make a noise by its explosion, not by the possession of any permanent importance. Steele says, in the Taller, that "squibs are those who in the common phrase of the world are call'd libellers, lampooners and pamphleteers," showing that, at the beginning of the 18th century, the man who composed the satire, as well as the satire itself, was called a squib. Swift speaks of the rapidity with which these little literary fireworks flew about from place to place, and he himself was a proficient in the making of noisy squibs. Perhaps the best type of a squib in English literature is Gray's Candidate, which was written and circulated among the electors in 1764, when Lord Sandwich was canvassing for the office of high-steward of the university of Cambridge. Thp object of this poem was, by ridicule and defamation, to injure Lord Sandwich's prospects of success. When once the election was over the verses served no further purpose, and they have survived simply in consequence of their fluent wit and of the reputation of the great poet who composed them. (See also LAMPOON.)
Theodora encyclopaedia
Sally@313. Absolutely. This is why market economics' predictive models are so weak and institutional economics - even those new institutionalist arsehats - are closer to describing reality.
My dad once told me a story about a senior public servant who was worried that the government of the day was receiving poor quality advice from its neoclassically-trained economic experts. So, this fellow organised a conference between economists and people who work(ed) in the hard sciences - mathematicians and physicists.
At the end of the conference, the maths wonks took the economists to task, saying that the predictive power of their models was poor. The economists said, yeah, we know. But we do it this way because more accurate reflections of how economies actually work are too hard.
His (and my) point is not to demonstrate economists are stupid - but rather that the esoteric, model-based economic analysis that the market evangelists rely upon is decidedly shaky.
Don't mind "." Dan. He's a lonely old guy living in a cave in some isolated blasted heath and he's jealous of Graeme Bird and umm lusting after some dominatrix he once thought he saw or met called "Jinmaro" whom he now sees, well, every damn where.
Fantasy and Lust, ain't it a prick?
Maybe you should read about your new playmate, Dan.
Except that is yet another strawman. Market evangelists don't rely on models. Take Mises for example.
Keynes on the other hand, is an academic fraud that fails empirically.
Can you tell us your reasons why you think Coase shouldn't have received the nobel?
How about some answering some questions now. Are you afraid or incapable?
No one in their right mind would be jealous of Graeme Bird.
This is practically an admission you are in fact Jinmaro/phil.
Maybe you should read about your new playmate, Dan., @ 316.
"Can you tell us your reasons why you think Coase shouldn’t have received the nobel?"
Nope, I'd say he's a better candidate than many, but as John Ralston Saul points out, the Economics Prize was basically foisted on Nobel by their financial backers.
What was your question before that you wanted me to answer? I have to admit, I can't offer anything more than a lay answer, unless you're happy for me to get back to you.
Look, I have no idea who Sally is. If she's an anti-Semite (*not* the same as an anti-Zionist), then I take personal offence as both an ethnic Jew and an anti-racist. Beyond that than that, sense is sense; I've granted your points when I've agreed with you.
I have a movie to go to now, so I might need to speak later.
You guys sure are big on the ad homs, both of you. I've seen much more civil debates between people who are more radically different in their beliefs.
I enjoy our exchanges because they're polite yet robust. Thanks. I'll re read your responses. I'll try to ignore the trolling of "Sally".
Dan, as I'm sure you already guess, I'm not anti-semitic and have never written anything anywhere that is anti-semitic.
The site that "." mainly posts on - Cattleprosy - is otoh full of anti-semitics, islamophobics, misogynists, the full basket of nutjobs. Dot himself is full of blood lust and wants to shoot or hang or torture everything from native fauna to adult human beings.
Dan, I also LOVE John Ralston Saul. He rocks. You're a breath of fresh air. Talk soon.
Dan, "." is the most uncivil, nay abusive commenter (after JC) on any Oz political blog.
I don't really mind this because it's a measure of his desperation and marginalisation and it surely demonstrates his actual zero influence in real life with the added benefit of allowing greater intellects to demolish him in public for the edification of the silent majority.
It's mental sport.
You demented fool I've debunked every piece of crap you've put up here.
Here is "."s own account of one night post bank tellers' confest in New Orleans last month.
"Bourbon Street shone brighter than a Klieg-lit car dealership, its jangling chain of jazz, rock, and zydeco rhythms bouncing raucously from door to door. Bemused by the glare and noise, yet oddly buoyed by the six triple-shot Hurricanes I’d imbued at “Club Razoo,” I shamble onto the concourse.
Widening my stance for vertical stability and clumsily keying my digital recorder, I accost the next feminine passerby – a bounding, fresh-faced gazelle, a local barmaid:
Dot: Know ya got pretties’ eyes whole craz’ town? Jus’ full love.
Passerby: Huh?
Dot: Simp’ mos’ beautiv’ girl seen whole life!
Passerby: Uh-huh, sure. Bye!
You idiot. I know you are merely trolling but if you intent was to rile my anger, you are "successful". Take a photo, this your peak in life.
Yes I like hunting. Big fucking deal. I know where my food comes from and respect the animal more. Most Australians eat meat and support conservation efforts so what is your fucking point?
Like the majority of Australians, I would like to see the death penalty for aggravated murder, genocide, crimes against humanity, treason, piracy etc, if there was a stricter check on wrongful execution.
However, I have never, ever condoned have or will condone torture, not under any guise or justification, you colossally-fucked-in-the-head-coward.
You are the kind of mentally unhinged scum who applauds Ahmadinejad and secretly admires Nixon.
"." you torture language and logic and all auditory and sensory outputs of all readers of this blog. Just for starters. You're a member of the LDP and Shooters Party who want to hunt and fish to extinction koalas and tawny frogmouths, and crayfish in the 2% of territory currently protected as national park.
Presumably, this is the adult male version of kicking dogs down staircases, cutting off cats' paws and throwing fireworks into the nests of currawongs.
Sally@329: that's awesome! If Dot's political career doesn't take off, he should give hearty consideration to gonzo journalism. (I assume it's all made up, right, Dot? Otherwise that would be, uh, disgusting. And this is coming from a playa.)
Re: Dot@330: I'm a vegetarian. Just couldn't justify all that death and suffering for the sake of my tastebuds. Would have like to be a vegan, but hey - everyone has their threshold for hypocrisy.
iPhones: a triumph of capitalism (monopolistic IP notwithstanding.)
"You are the kind of mentally unhinged scum who applauds Ahmadinejad and secretly admires Nixon."
Again this is yet another demonstration, if any further confirmation was needed, of your chronic inability to understand people (let alone women) and where they are coming from.
Now apologise like a good boy for your obnoxiousness, suck my toes, and I might consider forgiving and forgetting your stupid, anti-women nastiness.