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“Cradle-to-grave employment (at least outside the public sector) has been dead since at least the end of the Cold War. Undergraduate degrees in English and Film and Sociology and Philosophy (and a thousand other subjects) have had debatable workplace utility for as long as I’ve been alive.” – Matt Welch. November 1st, 2011 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Whether the issues are terrorism, AGW, contagious diseases, the movies of Charlie Sheen (that was a joke), today’s advocates of Big Government often look to the Transnational solution. Let’s have one government! No more hiding places for bad people! As readers might recall, I have written a few times about tax havens and the importance of the freedom of people to migrate not just their physical selves, but their money. Now, depending on your point of view, tax havens are either refuges of scoundrels who refuse to pay whatever levels of tax are imposed on them by their fellows, or, in a more classical liberal vein, places for people who want to avoid double-taxation and where people can exercise their proper freedom to acquire, transmit and enjoy their private property as they see fit. This is not, I hasten to add, always a black-and-white issue. Some tax havens have been bolt-holes for crooks. And if you believe that even the smallest of governments need to tax to pay for basic services, then people who try to not pay anything for services they use by using offshore banking deserve a degree of censure. Governments could do a lot to put some of the shadier havens out of business by just reducing their own taxes, of course. It is clear, in my view however, that the current campaign against tax havens as waged by groups such as the Tax Justice Network goes way beyond this sort of legitimate concern about criminal moneys. These guys want world government. Tax competition – which is another way of saying that countries should be free to set different taxes – is something they detest. And now the Tax Justice Network argues that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which is basically a club of rich nations (staff there pay no tax, by the way), is ineffective, because the tax treaties signed by various countries using OECD standards don’t allow revenue departments to automatically seize information from other countries in a hunt for tax “cheats”. Oh no, the OECD is a toothless tiger, and what is needed is a fiercer animal: the United Nations! Yes, the same UN that, let’s not forget, did a splendid job in the Balkans during the 1990s, and which has prevented many a massacre in Africa, and which, as we know, was so fierce in its imposition of arms controls and sanctions vs the government of the late, unlamented Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Forgive my sarcasm, but if there is anything more deluded than the oppressive idea of putting tax policy in the hands of an unaccountable body with such members as Russia and Iran, never mind good old Britain and the US, it is the idea that such a body could possibly be relied upon to deal fairly, impartially and thoroughly with the always-sensitive issue of tax. Meanwhile, other people, such as Wendy McElroy, are waking up to my recent concerns about US foreign over-reach on the issue of tax. November 1st, 2011 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard weighs in the Daily Telegraph with thoughts about Greece, southern Europe and the fact that so many countries, such as Italy, Portugal and Greece, cannot cope with the euro. The logic of this, the article seems to imply, is that these nations should revert to their previous national currencies. For reasons that some regulars at this blog will recall, I think this idea of reverting to purely national currencies is simplistic, and not just because the practical logistics of switching back to pesetas, liras or drachmas will be painful (for example, there is the issue of repaying euro-denominated debt). A national fiat currency, such as the old Italian lira, is still a form of state-issued monopoly money, liable to be abused and printed in vast amounts. Evans-Pritchard talks about the need for affected nations to be able to devalue their currencies so as to boost exports. But if you devalue – ie, print more of it – your currency, then the price of imported goods soars. Greece, for instance, imports a lot of things and is not a major exporter of goods or services, apart from some agriculture and so on. Devaluation may be good for Greece’s important tourist trade, but not so great in terms of keeping a check on inflation. Detlev Schlichter, champion of what he calls “inelastic money”, has scorned the idea that reverting to national fiat moneys represents a step forward for the debt-laden countries of southern Europe. Here are two paragraphs:
These countries’ appalling fiscal problems would not be altered one jot by the quick fix of switching one transnational form of fiat money in exchange for a national form of fiat money. What these countries need is honest money that retains its value over time. I get the impression that were Greece, for example, linked to the old Gold Standard of the pre-First World War variety (which worked relatively well for its constituent members until the war destroyed it), Mr Evans-Pritchard would be objecting to that also. But the problems of these countries cannot be resolved by nation-state fiat funny money. Mr Evans-Pritchard, for example, suggests that the “PIIGS” countries need the equivalent of a 40 per cent devaluation against, say, Germany and France. Under a gold standard and a regime of small governments and flexible labour markets, no such a drastic shift would occur. Real wages in certain uncompetitive sectors would decline, and wages in more competitive ones would rise. Take the case of Greece: under a stable monetary system, Greece’s tourist industry would be able to compete splendidly so long as its costs were controlled. And this leads to the core of the issue: flexible rates of exchange between different fiat money systems appeal to those who don’t want to undertake the more painstaking route of curbing government, encouraging free markets in labour, etc. Devaluation will always appeal as an easy way out. Schlichter has more thoughts on the recent attempts by EU states to shore up the euro. Update: Of course, I can imagine some defenders of devaluation arguing that this reduces the real incomes of people in a country, which makes that nation more competitive, hence achieving the same sort of result as a decline real wages under the conditions of a fully flexible labour market. The problem is that the former approach makes no distinction between sectors or businesses. Also, the history of post-war Europe does not suggest that devaluation is much of a cure for deep-seated economic ills. The decline in the value of sterling in 1967 did not arrest Britain’s relative decline; when West Germany had a strong deutschemark in the 1970s, it was economically strong. True, the fall of sterling from the exchange rate mechanism in 1992 coincided with an improvement, but then again, the UK’s fiscal position was in relatively good shape and the UK labour market did not have some of the burdens of today. October 31st, 2011 | 53 comments - (Comments are closed)
“One curious and unintended consequence of the aeroplane ban [on smoking] was that airlines began to save money by changing the air in the cabin less frequently. Traditionally, this was done every two minutes and old air was never recirculated, but with no tobacco smoke to draw attention to the quality of air, the carriers reduced air changes to once every twenty minutes. This led to a musty aroma on board and, according to a report in The Lancet, contributed to the appearance of Deep Vein Thrombosis, a disease unknown in airline passengers until the 1990s.” Page 163 of Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A history of anti-smoking. By Christopher Snowdon. Entirely selfishly, I am delighted that I travel in a smoke-free airline industry, although it is a shame that this change came about through the coercion of the state and not in reaction to consumer choice via a market. After all, there are many irritations involved in flying that might be amenable to a market solution, if it was available, such as screaming young children or patronising and idiotic flight attendants. October 28th, 2011 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
“What is certain is that the EU does not resemble a prosperity club that Britain should work more closely with.” Fraser Nelson, Spectator. October 27th, 2011 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
“The ideal French response might have involved close-formation shrugging, smoking in a pointed manner, farting in the Kiwis’ general direction or perhaps setting fire to a sheep and laying it on the 10-metre line, but the ridiculous namby-pambyisation of modern rugby forbids such incendiary techniques.” Alan Tyers, writing about the recent match between France and New Zealand. I don’t see why the French should not be able to treat the Haka with contempt. If a bunch of guys with tattoos did a war dance in front of me, sticking their tongues out and generally carrying on, the correct response, surely, is a look of utter contempt, married with a suitably powerful array of rude gestures, farting, belching and, in extremis, a fully automatic weapon with the safety catch taken off. Just imagine if the French rugby captain said: “Now try this for size, you noisy fuckers!”. Sport, how we love it. October 26th, 2011 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
Pages 76 to 76 of Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Anti-Smoking, by Christopher Snowdon. October 26th, 2011 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
Last night, when flicking through the TV channels, I watched the “documentary” film-maker, Michael Moore, talk about his own views on the Occupy Wall Street/wherever people. And he adopted that seductively reasonable tone of voice, although the general effect is spoilt by that annoying baseball cap he insists on wearing (who is he trying to fool, exactly?). The questions from the Channel Four interviewer were fairly softball stuff. At no point did the interviewer say something like: “So, given what you have said about greedy bankers and corporations, can we take it that you oppose the multi-billion bailouts of Wall Street banks, Mr Moore?” I suspect that some of the OWS might indeed think that bailouts for banks are wrong, although if they follow their views through to a logical conclusion, it leads to laissez-faire, not the socialist nonsense of the film-maker from Flint. We need to keep making this point. October 25th, 2011 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
This is priceless. It is a Friday, and it is good to have a laugh, even of a dark sort. Halloween’s on the way:
A letter from “Antony Black”, of Dundee, published in the 22 October print edition of the Spectator, page 30. I love the way that this man likens skeptical views on Man-made global warming, and resistence to things like giant windmills, to the appeasement of a proven thug. It is worth quoting people like this man, not because it will have the slightest effect in changing their views, which constitute religious belief in its mix of fervour, self-righteousness and faux-rationality, but because it is important to show how such seemingly articulate people can believe such tosh, and get it printed in what is a relatively respectable publication. James Delingpole, the British journalist, has a good take on the sort of folk that form part of the Climate Change alarmist crowd. October 21st, 2011 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
This is interesting:
A point for we pro-market zealots to remember is that defending the market is not the same as defending all of the stuff that gets bought or sold in a market. The freedom to produce and sell products and services is emphatically not the same as saying that all of these things are splendid. Some are mediocre. Some are bloody awful, like rap music, in my opinion. Musical taste is, in any event, notoriously subjective. (I even know of friends who hate music, period). But it is interesting how even a lefty magazine such as Prospect points out that how the profit motive can have its own benign effect on a genre as aggressive as rap. You can tell that capitalism is weaving its magic when people start moaning that a certain once-rebellious arts and music genre has lost its “edge” (ie, it is no longer downright nasty). October 17th, 2011 | 43 comments - (Comments are closed)
The conventional word that it employed to describe tyranny is ‘systematic’. The true essence of a dictatorship is in fact not its regularity but the unpredictability and caprice; those who live under it must never be able to relax, must never be quite sure they have followed the rules correctly or not. Thus, the ruled can always be found to be in the wrong. – Hitch-22: A memoir. By Christopher Hitchens, page 51. This is probably the best autobiography I have ever read. In the passage above, he’s referring to his life in an English public (ie, private) school. October 17th, 2011 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
Here is a website that I have come across about the late, very great John Barry, the composer best known for all those superb James Bond tunes, as well as films such as Out of Africa. He was never nominated for an Oscar for any of his 007 tunes. As Mark Steyn has observed, a classic case of snobbery at work. October 14th, 2011 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
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