The Pin Factory Blog

In these modern times we have access to designer clothes, stylish jewellery, make up and a host of other potions and lotions. We can even go under the knife to have bits of us either chopped off, sucked out or augmented. All of this is to make us feel better about ourselves, ultimately making us happier. The fact that we can do this shouldn't mean we all have to – we are all different, after all – and as we have so much to choose from we can select what we feel we need.

Whilst many are happy with what they have and the way that their bodies develop with the ravages of time, others seek to fight time and enlist the skilled help of others to stave off depressing feelings about themselves. Surgery which might once have had a purely medical purpose is now being used simply as a cosmetic enhancement to make people look (and in most cases feel) younger, prettier, or more feminine or masculine.

The fact that some women choose to undergo cosmetic surgery for themselves has of course riled the feminists (and others) who believe that it is an abuse and subjugation to a male dominated society. Far from it. It is nothing more than women choosing to empower themselves by altering their body into a shape that is more acceptable, not to wider society, but to themselves.

To those of a hardline feminist ideology women's bodies are not their own, they are all part of one global female collective, a rejection of the individual and a hatred of the truly empowered woman of the 21st century. That women have this power over their own bodies should be celebrated. This freedom shouldn't be criticized, it should be used as a weapon against those who oppress.

An excellent piece reminding us what the whole thing is really about:

They say “the Devil is in the details.” Sometimes, so is God.
Statists, Socialists, right-wing paternalists - all those who think of
humanity in terms of classes, races and masses - need constantly to be
confronted with such stories and images. They claim to love humanity;
everything they do is for “Society” or “the greater good.”  These are
the merest of abstractions. A good human loves and cares for other
humans around him; for actual, individual specimens with all their
faults and weaknesses, not classes or masses.

Next time you hear an appealing abstraction weighed against the
interests of an individual or a family, please picture a man making
barbed wire to imprison his uncle or my neat little secretary typing a
death list. They served abstractions too.

There are other reasons to support this liberal capitalism thing too. The more of it you have, the longer people live. 

Contrary to the rumours, the very fact that people can opt out of its rat race is one more reason to support it. 

Further, despite the experiments, looking at what people actually do shows that they do prefer the higher living standards, with the inequity. Migration does tend to be from poor countries to rich.

Iain Dale announces that he has Type II diabetes. Our wishes for his continued good health. Perhaps worth remembering that a century ago this diagnosis was close to a death sentence: now it's a chronic, manageable, disease. We continue to advance.

Well, we'll continue to advance if this attitude can be driven out of politics. They serve us, not the other way around. 

And finally, about as good a description of this year's Presidential election as you're going to get. 

On Wednesday, three youths were convicted of murder after kicking and beating a man to death outside his own home. His sin? Telling them off for vandalism.

Peter Fahy, Cheshire's Chief Constable, blamed Britain's drink culture and called for a 'crackdown' on cheap alcohol. Apparently, supermarkets and off-licences are to blame for selling booze too cheaply. He even claimed that some of the youths involved in the attack were "reasonably decent people who drink too much and do something stupid and attack someone".

Rubbish. These youths did not kick a man "like a football" as his daughter watched because they were drunk. They did it because they are ignorant, savage, brutal people without a shred of respect for anyone else.

Blaming supermarket prices is absurd. The vast majority of people enjoy inexpensive alcohol responsibly. Most of us drink more than we should from time to time, but it doesn't end in violence. In any case, alcohol is already more expensive and more strictly controlled in Britain than in many other European countries.

'Drink culture' is a handy excuse for the social ills that plague many communities in Britain, but it is not the real reason. It is the welfare state that has promoted family breakdown and eroded personal responsibility. It is politically-correct, target-driven policing that has abandoned our streets to violence and thuggery. And it is the rotten state school system that has left so many young people without any aspiration beyond the bottom of a beer bottle.

Ultimately though, it is the abandonment of parental responsibility that is most appalling and pernicious. And without real change, that threatens to become a vicious intergenerational circle – which will not easily be broken in the years to come.

Little Johnny was sitting on a park bench munching on one chocolate bar after another. After the sixth one an elderly man sitting on the bench across from him  said, "Son, you know eating all those sweets isn't good for you. It will give you acne, rot your teeth and make you fat."
Little Johnny replied, "My grandfather lived to be 107 years old."
The man asked, "And did your grandfather eat six chocolate bars at a time?"
"No," replied Little Johnny, "but he knew how to mind his own business!"

11. "The stock market is just a casino."

People back stocks and shares like they bet on roulette numbers and sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. This is why some call it a casino, but the reality is different. Firstly, the outcome of a roulette wheel is random. The outcome of the stock market is not. It is influenced by many factors, including the state of world politics, investor psychology, actions of banks and governments, accidents of nature, human actions, and global economic trends, to name but a few. Skilled investors might read trends and work out which ones count, and calculate which stocks are likely to rise, which to fall. This is not true in a casino.

There is a more serious difference. The stock market helps to finance business and industry. When a firm issues stock, people buy it in the hope of gaining dividends from its profits, and of seeing the value of their investment increase as the company prospers. The shareholders are co-owners of the company, and their fate is bound in with its own. If it makes money, so do they. When people buy stock from others and drive up the price, they do so because they think it is or will be worth more than the share price suggests. When a firm's shares rise in this way, the nominal value of the company increases accordingly, and it becomes easier, and usually cheaper, for it to obtain finance for development and expansion.

The stock market resembles a town market, in that people are clamouring to buy and sell, and prices reflect the fact that some shares are popular and some less so. It thus sends signals about where investment is needed and where it can be most profitably applied. It tells people from moment to moment the state of the economy, and where they might usefully participate in it.

One of the hugely annoying things about the "debate" over the Laffer Curve is that there are still those who deny the very existence of the concept. Something which is absurd, for at the extremes it's a simple mathematical truism. At times (say, a 100% tax rate) reducing taxes will increase revenues collected. The strongest Laffer Curve argument, that reducing tax rates always increases total revenues collected (reducing a tax rate from 50% to zero say) is as similarly incorrect as the denial that reductions ever do.

The true argument is always about at which tax rate do we increase revenues, at which reduce? This argument being complicated by the fact that we have several different effects going on, depending on which tax we're talking about (effects on capital and labour taxation will be different, given different mobilities) and so on. Perhaps the most important point to make though is that cuts (or rises) in tax rates will not work in a linear manner. Amounts raised will vary dynamically.

But what is surprising in this latest working paper from the IMF is quite how low a tax rate can go and still show Laffer effects: not just a dynamic response to the lower rate, but more revenue collected both in total and as a percentage of GDP:

To illustrate the potential effects of tax rate cuts on tax revenues consider the example of Russia. Russia introduced a flat 13 percent personal income tax rate, replacing the three tiered, 12, 20 and 30 percent previous rates (as detailed in Ivanova, Keen and Klemm, 2005). The tax exempt income was also increased, further decreasing the tax burden. Considering social tax reforms enacted at the same time, tax rates were cut substantially for most taxpayers. However, personal income tax (PIT) revenues have increased significantly: 46 percent in nominal and 26 percent real terms during the next year. Even more interesting PIT revenues have increased from 2.4 percent to 2.9 percent of GDP—a more than 20 percent increase relative to GDP. PIT revenues continued to increase to 3.3 percent during the next year, representing a further 14 percent gain relative to GDP.

Yes, there really is a Laffer Curve, and its effects can be seen at much lower tax rates than those we currently tend to think they can be. It might also be worth noting that, as with the ASI's own proposals for a flat tax, the heavily increased personal allowance raised (yes, raised, not lowered) the progressivity of the tax system as a whole.

More revenue, greater progressivity and lower tax rates. Well, why does anyone oppose such a system? 

"What hope have seven quangocrats got of restraining Leviathan?"

– The Times' Camilla Cavendish on the news that the Better Regulation Commission is to be replaced by the Risk and Regulatory Advisory Council (only one member of which has a private-sector background). The whole article is well worth reading.  

It was ten years ago today : the birth of the alternative online media. Drudge got his first scoop and blogs followed soon after.

The appallingness of government funded neocon propaganda. How dare they use tax money to spout such things?

Worried about the pace of development in the poorer countries of the world? You could do worse than ask McDonald's to set up in them you know?

What should you do when the government insists that your offer to your customers is illegal? Obey the law, of course, but there's a certain joy at Amazon's response to the French government all the same. 

It is indeed something of a problem when the leading Republican candidate is this absurdly protectionist. Should proper liberals actually be thinking about voting Democratic? 

Predicating politics and policies on the idea that American incomes have been stagnant for decades has only one problem: it isn't true. 

And finally, one way bets courtesy of the Finnish Government. 

What gives motorists a thrill gives archaeologists - well, some of them - distress. The busy A303 one of the main roads from London to the Southwest of England, goes right past ancient Stonehenge (see picture). It's a magnificent view as you drive past, and I'm sure that many tourists are moved to turn off and go to the visitor centre, which is right next to the stones, and have a look round.

I think that's wonderful, but the opposing point of view says that the stones lose much of their majesty when you have nose-to-tail traffic grinding past - for this is one of the few remaining sections of the A303 that has not been made dual carriageway. Stonehenge isn't just a pile of stones in the middle of nowhere - it lies in a landscape teeming with ancient earthworks, and folk worry that any road widening, or even a diversion, would irretrievably harm that landscape.

There have been dozens of proposals. Twelve years ago a conference proposed a 4km bored tunnel; but the government baulked at the cost, proposing a cut-and-cover alternative (right out because it would destroy a huge area of the ancient landscape). I was glad: a 4km tunnel would have meant denying motorists that magnificent view - not that the state-dependent heritage bodies and professional archaeologists worried about that. Driving by is how thousands of people see Stonehenge, and we should rejoice in that; but the quango-crats can't stand it. They're only interested in getting people immersed (apart from those who see the public as just a complete nuisance).

The government came back with a 2.1km bored tunnel suggestion, which would have preserved something for the motorist to look at, while still removing the traffic right next to the stones. Now it has shelved even that idea, on cost grounds.

This is a mixed blessing. It seems to put paid to English Heritage's plans for a new visitor centre, far away from the stones, which would require people to spend several hours just to visit them. A typical producer-driven solution. The present visitor centre and car park is right beside the stones, and all the archaeology round there is pretty shot anyway, so expanding that would seem a much cheaper and easier solution, which would allow people to go right up to the stones in just a short time.

This whole saga is testimony to what happens when governments and quangos are in charge of things. No doubt we'll still be talking about it a dozen years from now. Why can't we just have a people-driven solution?

Being a minor internet celebrity, I was asked to appear on BBC Radio's 'Desert Island Disks'. They asked me which book I would like to have alongside me if I were ever marooned somewhere. I had no hesitation in replying: 'How to Build a Boat'.