Depressing economic illiteracy on the left

Just been reading an article on the BBC website about how saying "no" to austerity is gaining ground in Europe. The comments really have to be seen to be believed, with most people blaming corruption, capitalism, "the market" and so on for the debt overhang. Once commenter rejoices that people are starting to tell their politicians to chose growth rather than choose austerity. Really? Do they think that politicians come into work and say "What shall it be then, growth or austerity? Shall we all earn more and consume more or shall we pay off debts and earn less? -- I know, let's choose austerity! -- OK then, austerity it is." The whole mindset on the left is completely infantile.

Politicians haven't "chosen" austerity at all, they've borrowed for absolutely as long as they've been able to, in order to finance consumption which they euphemistically rename "investment in people", and now that they can't borrow -- either at liveable rates of interest or, in some cases, at all -- the path of austerity is forced upon them. At this point, of course, leftists always decry the evil influence of "moneylenders" (i.e., investors, pension funds, etc.), saying that, of course the country could achieve growth "if only" the moneylenders would do what they are supposed to do and, well, just keep on lending us money. That way it becomes somebody else's fault if we can't do what we want to because we haven't got the money: in the case of the international markets, it's "moneylenders", in the case of the Eurozone, it's Germany. What a convenient excuse!

Let me try to paraphrase the arguments that are being made:

"Life on Earth is a bit grimy and hard work, so we've decided to decamp en masse and go to live in Heaven instead.

"The window's open, let's all jump out together and zoom off up to Heaven then.

"Oh noes! Something is wrong! We seem to be going down, not up!

"This is unfortunate and completely unforeseen. If we continue to go down, as we are now, at an ever increasing pace, innocent people could get hurt, and it will all be the fault of the force of gravity. It really would be so much more convenient if only we could float upwards instead, but this cursed force of gravity won't let us."

Combine this with the natural tendency on the left to see agency where there is only the working out of cause and effect, and you have the essence of the "international financiers won't let us be free" theory so ably displayed by Occupy Wall St. and its clones.

Spain, Argentina, Repsol and YPF

I wonder if now would be a good time to talk to the Spanish about recognising Britain's claim to the Falklands?

Another poor article on Spiked

Spiked is a bit of a curate's egg, supposedly sourcing articles from all over the spectrum, and publishing them without fear or favour and so on. In reality, the articles vary from hard-left and unaware that any other viewpoint exists, to a soggy just-right-of-centre semi-dryness, and the quality varies from fairly interesting to quite dull.

Too much is poor. To wit, Who benefits from housing handouts? by one Neil Davenport. Where to begin? Well a summary, I suppose: private landlords have always wanted to charge "whatever they liked for a shoddy room or flat", rent control stopped them [cheers], Thatcher's right-to-buy scheme destroyed the unity of the proletariat by taking them out of their poverty and allowing them to start accumulating capital [boos], and, most fantastically of all "with a monopoly on living space ... landlords have been able to massively increase rent prices over the past 20 years".

Say what? The average house price in the UK in Q3 1992 (a little late to represent the introduction of right-to-buy, but never mind) was some fifty-four thousand pounds (source: Nationwide). The average house price in the UK in Q3 2011 was some one hundred and sixty-six thousand pounds, over three times as much. I've left the numbers unadjusted for inflation in both cases, since presumably that was part of Mr Davenport's point; at least, he doesn't mention if he's adjusted "massively increase" for inflation. Even so, even if you use inflation adjusted house prices, prices now are still twice what they were in 1992. A fairer comparison also might be with 2011 and 1980, say, when house prices were a mere twenty three thousand pounds, so that house prices in nominal terms have actually gone up a "massive" seven and a bit times.

The point of that is that, in this country at least, private landlords must take their costs, the costs of their housing stock, from the market. Which, also in this country at least, they do not dominate. House prices here are dominated by the owner-occupier market, and the price of investment residential property tags along in lock-step since it is, in all respects, exactly the same stock, at least as far as private landlords are concerned. It would be much more informative if Mr Davenport were to look at the return on capital in the residential rental market over the period 1990 (say) to 2011; but that, alas, he does not do — probably because those numbers are hard to get and, in any case, irrelevant to having a good old, if terminally unenlightening, bash at the capitalists.

Antal Fekete on the Gold Standard

A most interesting article, giving me lots to chew over.

I hadn't heard of the Real Bills theory of money before, and Prof. Fekete seems to make a most convincing argument for it. Sadly, I had found the Quantity Theory of money entirely sufficient for my own musings, and even though I'm now assured of the rightness of the Real Bills theory, I'm not exactly sure where the Quantity Theory goes wrong [ :-) ]. It looks like there's going to be a need to read and re-read on my part.

Being a cautious chap, I immediately looked up both Antal Fekete and the Real Bills theory of money on Wikipedia, only to find an enormous number of other articles that I will now have to read as well: how annoying (but, actually, pleasing).

Make your own vegetable stock

A nice little post on making vegetable stock from scraps over at The Garden of Eating. Basically: avoid brassicas, as they tend to make the stock bitter, avoid anything that's going rotten or mouldy (obviously), anything wilted is OK, highly-coloured vegetables may colour the stock (beetroot will make it red, onion skins will make it brown).

Since I associate brown coloured stock with something more flavoursome than clear, rightly or wrongly, I'll probably try adding onion skins; however if anything is going to be mouldy it's an onion skin, so minute inspection will be in order there!

Gay Marriage

I am still trying to follow the Archbishop of Westminster's argument that allowing gays to marry is a terrible violation of human rights, oops, Human Rights. Hmmm... nope, can't quite see it. Is there a missing negative there? Have all the newspapers reported it wrongly? Let's try that then: not allowing gays to marry is a terrible violation of human rights... Yes! Now it makes sense! That must be what he means.

All attempts at humour aside, the Archbishop's argument essentially seems to be that the venerable institution of marriage will be cheapened by letting in the riff-raff. Luckily, I have a proposal for him that I rather think may brighten his mood considerably!

First off, I'm afraid that the State is as intrusive now as it ever was. Marriages aren't legal unless they are processed by the state — a fact that the Catholic Church, as opposed to the Church of England, has had to accept for a long time now, since when Catholics have a church wedding, they also have to have a separate civil wedding, usually just before or just after the religious one and done on the quiet somewhere private on the church's premises. Othewise, though the couple may be married in the eyes of the Church, they aren't married in the eyes of the State, and that would be just too confusing for everybody. Now the State just isn't going to abandon its privileges in this area, I'm afraid that's not on. But the Catholic Church has a way of reconciling itself to such behaviour based on a maxim coined by its founder: "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" (quite snappy really).

So we're going to have to say goodbye to the word "marriage", sorry about that old chap, no way round it. But what we can do is invent another term — like the way we did with "Civil Partnership" — that can mean everything we used to mean by "Marriage", except with added specialness from not having to share it with anybody that doesn't deserve like want to use it (i.e., riff-raff).

Obviously the archbish is going to have his own favourite candidates for this role, but here are a few that I think might fit the biscuit. What about "Mystical Union"? That sounds super and soaraway, and quite religious doesn't it? Or, since I hear that one of the arguments was that marriage should be reserved for people who can be progenitors (except, of course that there would still have to be room for heterosexuals who can't, obviously), what about "Progenital Partnership"? No? Let's see... "Mariantur"? "Maritari Possunt"?

Actually, I would have though that the Archbishop would be cock-a-hoop about the proposal. Because it's the civil version of marriage that will be, in his view, spoiled: that is to say, the marriage that you get in a Registry Office or a Church of England church. Aha! The Church of England doesn't have a marriage that's separate from the civil one, they are the same thing, but the Catholic Church (as discussed above), already does. If that isn't enough evidence of Divine Dispensation for him, I don't know what is.

Terrifying paragraph

From Cause, Effect & the Fallacy of a Return to Normalcy, my emphasis:

Besides not actually reducing their debts, the disposable personal income figure provided by the government drones at the BEA includes government transfer payments for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment compensation, food stamps, veterans benefits, and the all- encompassing “other”. Disposable personal income in the 2nd quarter of 2008 reached $11.2 trillion. It has risen by $500 billion, to $11.7 trillion by the end of 2011. Coincidentally, government social transfers have risen by $400 billion over this same time frame, a 20% increase. Excluding government transfers, disposable personal income has risen by a dreadful 1.1%. For the benefit of the slow witted in the mainstream media, every penny of the social welfare transfers has been borrowed. Only a government bureaucrat could believe that borrowing money from the Chinese, handing it out to unemployed Americans and calling it personal income is proof of deleveraging and austerity.