The latest edition of The Onion has some invaluable advice on avoiding being “irresponsible” when it comes to drinking booze this Christmas.
God, I love that publication.
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“Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy”. Groucho Marx (the Marx who actually had intelligent things to say about money). December 19th, 2006 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Reason magazine’s Brian Doherty (he of Burning Man fame) has written a nice piece looking at the controversial role the late Milton Friedman played in advising economic reforms to the government of the late, and not-very-lamented, Augusto Pinochet of Chile.
I agree with pretty much every word of Doherty’s analysis, and his punchline is good:
Those leftists who nitpick at the late economist for his role in advising the Chilean regime have only the tiniest of legitimate reasons for bashing Friedman, I think. Considering that he was a man who made the case for abolishing the draft, decriminalising drugs, promoting school choice and so forth, his credentials as a pro-liberty guy were pretty much impeccable. December 19th, 2006 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Progressive taxes do not redistribute income. They redistribute taxpayers.” George Gilder, one of the early evangelists for “supply-side” economics, which is a fancy way of saying that he thinks people respond to incentives, considered a wild-eyed idea by some people. December 18th, 2006 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
The only way to view the present, imploding Labour government as it fights over the cash-for-peerages issue, is like a bunch of street rats at each others’ throats. This story in the Sunday Telegraph states that Tony Blair is willing to let one of his top cronies and fund-raisers, Lord Levy, take the hit for the scandal. In many ways, what strikes me as so distinctive about this government and its ministers is that the big bust-ups, the big fights, were not on issues of principle. At least the Tories, for all their manifest faults, fell out over things like the euro and the Maastricht Treaty, which were serious, major issues. But then the Tories were once a grown-up party, with grown-up people in it like Margaret Thatcher, Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson. Say what you like about these personages, but their rows were over issues of major substance. It seems an awfully long time ago. December 17th, 2006 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
I had the pleasure of meeting U.S. blogger Stephen Green, of the excellently entitled Vodkapundit, a few months ago at a party in London. Stephen has been ill, lost a lot of weight, and I must say I got quite concerned when he stopped posting. He now explains what has been going on. It looks as if the fella is going to be all right, which is terrific news for him and his wife and child. Feel free to nip over to his site and give him your best wishes. I am looking forward to the Colorado Scribe posting up more of those cocktail recipes again. Mine’s a gin and tonic. December 17th, 2006 | Comments are closed
Considering that investment bankers at places like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are paid the sort of money that sounds like a respectable cricket score, economics writer Arnold Kling asks the question: why is the supply of people to do this job not rising in response to a very juicy lump of money? It is a good question to ask. For the sort of money on offer, even a maths dunce like your humble scribe might want to learn to do the job and start figuring out the the clever-dick arts of hedge funds, credit derivatives and leveraged buyouts. So why is the supply not rising? I think some of this may be caused by a lack of talented folk coming out of our education system, but that cannot really explain it over the long-term. It may be that getting the level of experience to do these jobs is quite high, raising the scarcity and hence the massive rewards. Of course when these guys get fired for failing to perform, this rarely bothers people who get upset about the big salaries. These guys have a rather, er, different take on the matter. December 16th, 2006 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
I am just about to go out to nail some final Christmas shopping but if anyone is feeling all warm and generous, they can always buy me one of these. I promise I will send a very fulsome thankyou card. “Stunning” does not even come close to describing how magnificent the new Aston Martin is. No wonder the makers of the Bond movies keep going back to the marque. Isn’t rampant capitalism just great? December 16th, 2006 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
P.J. O’ Rourke has a book on Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. This looks like the ideal Christmas gift to give someone who might be undecided politically, has an open mind and can be moved by the wisdom of a man who persuades with wit rather than the blunderbuss of masses of statistics or over-preachy bromides. I must say I really enjoyed O’Rourke’s little gem “Eat the Rich”, which is still available and which came out a few years ago. He may have veered away from the uber-hilarious form of books like Parliament of Whores, Republican Party Reptile or the Batchelor Home Companion, but it is good to see that O’Rourke is still writing and making people think and laugh at the same time. His is a special and all-too-rare talent. December 14th, 2006 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
This is bloody clever:
I came across this story while browsing through the weekly magazine, The Business (which has been re-launched from its previous format of a Sunday newspaper). The story says that the cement’s amazing properties were discovered quite by accident and emerged from nanotechnology research undertaken by an EU-funded project (good grief, something positive via the EU, Ed). The Business article says that the photocatalytic cement building materials can get rid of up to 80 percent of air pollution. The applications of the new kinds of materials technologies coming out from the worlds of nanotech and beyond are legion. I particularly like the idea that concrete, which normally turns a sort of gunky, greyish colour in Britain’s damp climate, could stay a more pristine colour thanks to stuff like this. One of the reasons why so much modern architecture is so crap is not just the basic shapes of the buildings but the materials they are composed of. I wonder whether it gets rid of grafitti, though. (Update: another story on the subject) December 14th, 2006 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
One of the reasons why I like the idea of a “flat tax” is that, by sweeping away all the existing loopholes, it removes a whole group of people who have a vested interest in pushing for special treatement from the Inland Revenue and instead creates a simpler system that is far easier to run, less distortive of economic activity. As a libertarian, of course, my main aim is to see the overall burden come down rather than be flatter; the flatness of the tax code is not, ultimately, as important as its weight. One of the groups that have managed to chisel a tax break out of finance minister Gordon Brown is the domestic film industry. Apparently, the End of Civilisation As We Know It may possibly be arriving soon if we no longer make movies in England. It is all tosh, of course. Many British actors, directors, producers, technicians and photographers work all over the world, very successfully too. While financed with U.S. money and so forth, many of the biggest hits in recent years have had strong British themes, such as the Harry Potter series, and even the latest James Bond movie. Boris Johnson has a nice article demonstrating the absurdity of trying to define what is a “British” film for the purposes of qualifying for tax treatment. Just get rid of these loopholes and focus on cutting taxes across the board, Boris. And please do inform your statist-minded Tory leader, David Cameron, about that aim. December 14th, 2006 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
The other day I wrote about the charms of Suffolk, that county in East Anglia in which I was brought up. A place famous for gentle, flattish countryside, nice buildings, coastal scenery, fine beer and a once-very-good football team (Ipswich Town FC won the FA Cup in 1978 and the European UEFA Cup in 1981 in the glory years when the team was managed by Sir Bobby Robson). Alas, Ipswich is now likely to be known some time for very different, appalling reasons. Now is not the time to really go into much analysis of the crimes themselves. My heart goes out to the friends and families of the victims and like most people, I hope the piece of scum that carried out these killings is quickly brought to justice. While I have my doubts about using the death penalty in a world when so much of our Common Law has been damaged by stupid governments, it is hard not to feel sympathy for despatching such a lowlife rather than leaving him – I assume it is a he – to rot in jail for years at the taxpayer’s expense. The victims in this case are described as prostitutes. Blogger Tim Worstall has thoughts about the nexus of drug use and prostitution and, being the pro-liberty guy he is, reckons that the women who ply this trade would be safer if prostitution was legalised. I agree (I had quite a joust with an authortarian if probably well-meaning chap by the name of Martin on Tim’s comment thread). I think that a person who sells his or her sexual favours for cash is entitled to do so with consenting adults and it is no business of the state to say otherwise. The harms that people usually associate with prostitution stem from the fact that it is often illegal and thus controlled by organised criminals, many of them drug-pushers as well. Legalising it, and taking prostitution out of a legal twilight zone is not a cure-all for the ills some people associate with it, but it would reduce problems, I think, such as sexually transmitted diseases, and perhaps reduce the sort of horrors that we have seen in the Ipswich area. Of course, if this monster strikes again and this time attacks someone from a very different set of circumstances, then the debate will shift. This terrible saga also prompts me to wonder what could and should be done to encourage people to learn and practice self defence, but that is a whole topic in itself and I don’t have the time right now to explore it, but I am sure that commenters will want to think about it. I’d be interested to know if there are comparable recent incidents from other parts of the world and what happened subsequently. Send in any examples. Perceptive article on the local area by Times columnist Libby Purves. (Update: fixed silly typo in original). December 13th, 2006 | 37 comments - (Comments are closed)
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