Blog Review 784

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Yes, we do indeed have an opportunity to point to our politicians and laugh once again. As will be the ghost of Bastiat.

Ol' Adam gets a mention over here. Slightly odd choice of quote though, what happened to the "propensity to truck and barter"?

It's always immensely satisfying to read a bit of Polly bashing.

An interesting point perhaps showing that Ricardian Equivalence doesn't in fact equate.

Will wonders never cease? A churchman who grasps economic points?

Well, why didn't economists spot what was happening?

And finally, arrogant, abstruse, over-technical, long, unsnappy, demanding, confusing, complicated, excessively lengthy, long-winded, but don't worry, that's Just Willem.

Cutting the fat

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David Cameron has decided to drop his pledge to match the government's spending plans for 2010/11. Good call. By committing the Party to Labour’s big spending approach to government, Cameron’s policy looked almost as ridiculous as that of Gordon Brown. In following the Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives now have a cohesive and sensible intellectual position with which to attack the UK's failing government.

Cameron rightly demands public spending to be cut to tie in with tax cuts. He stated: "Gordon Brown is talking about borrowing an extra £30 billion. That’s a £30 billion Borrowing Bombshell – and let me tell you what it would mean. An eight per cent rise in income tax. Or a six per cent rise in VAT. Spending priorities shifting from new schools to educate our children and more police officers to keep our streets safe to servicing the growing interest on our debt. Gordon Brown knows that borrowing today means higher taxes tomorrow. If he doesn’t tell you that, he is deliberately misleading you."

Mr Cameron is quite right that “Labour's economic mismanagement makes it vital for the long-term health of our economy that we set a new path for restraining the growth of spending". Restraining the growth of government spending is surely a euphemism for cutting government waste. The Conservative Party should call for a national debate on the waste and role of government. They do not even need to argue for anything too extreme. For example, I would be very surprised if the vast majority of this country failed to agree with the £101 billion pounds of government waste identified by Matthew Elliott and Lee Rotherham in The Bumper Book of Government Waste.

To any right thinking person, Gordon Brown’s economic policies must surely look ridiculous against those of the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives (it's not that either of their plans are perfect, mind you, just that the government's are fast becoming other-worldly). By the 2010 election, parliament, the media and the public at large should be discussing the need to expunge the scourge of government waste. For this to happen it is essential that Conservative Party does not shy away from confrontation, but goes on the attack. We will see.

Marriage - a match made in the Commons

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The recent interim study announcements by The Centre of Social Justice regarding marriage and how it could be further ‘strengthened’ are, I'm afraid, a little naive. Eliminating the tax and benefits systems' bias against committed relationships is one thing, but actively using state power to promote them is quite another.

Ever since marriage was institutionalized, it has been a menage a trois: the couple and the government. The government, whichever party happens to be in power, lures the couple into a painful triangular relationship with the come-to-bed-eyes of tax breaks, credits, allowances or benefits as the lubricant. It's time for this hideous, political lover to be kicked from the matrimonial bed.

First of all, the state offers little in the way of incentives that the perfect partner offers. Giving such primacy to policy is unrealistic. At the same time, we need to realize that marriage cannot solve all of society's ills. The desperately sorry cases of Baby P (at the hands of a psychotic/powerful individual) or Shannon Matthews (within a disparate ‘family’ directed by greed) do not show that but for a lack of marriage then it wouldn’t happen. These cases merely offer a commentary on the moral and intellectual shortcomings of a minority of individuals – a group which, sadly, exists in every society. When people are that far from being able to function rationally and sympathetically towards others it matters not one iota what the politicians do with legislation that surrounds marriage. Political force is exists to step in and protect when all else fails, to combat and rectify the actions of this minority – but it can't achieve everything.

One positive intention of the CSJ's report, however, is to promote the case for pre-nuptial agreements to be made legally binding. Quite right – this is the basis of what marriage primarily is: a partnership contract between two individuals, acting rationally in their own interests. It is not for the politician to influence that decision through benefits, assistance or forcing couples to remain together. This action retards us all a little more and undermines relationships to the detriment society.

He's probably right...

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If those who govern us were left unchecked, we would be facing 90-day detention without trial for everything from letting road-tax discs run out to putting the rubbish out on the wrong day.

Sathnam Sanghera in The Times

Blog Review 783

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A shocking new discovery in the field of health care. Really, why didn't anyone think of this before?

A revealing case of do as I say rather than do as I do.

Not everything is looking rosy over in the Obama camp. Too many lawyers for a start, always a bad sign.

Netsmith has some experience of Russia and this explanation of the situation seems spot on.

More on the perils of bailouts.

And why we shouldn't be bailing out the auto companies.

And finally, Brown explains the economy.

Bailing out Detroit

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According to The Economist, Detroit, the heartland of the US car industry, is currently ‘running on empty’ with GM having spent nearly $15bn of their spare capital. The car manufacturers are claiming that $50bn of taxpayers money is needed in order to keep them afloat through troubled times. It may seem like a simple solution to numerous problems at once: such a large capital injection could support the worst affected firms and prevent unemployment rising within the area. But this is only considering the short-term goals, rather than the overall health of the economy. By bailing out the US car industry, the government will be sending out the wrong signals to other firms: they can run inefficient business models without facing financial repercussions. Many US commentators have argued that GM would be better off filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy and fundamentally restructuring their business, and it is hard to disagree. A federal bail out only delays the inevitable. Moreover, unemployment in Detroit is not a product of the current downturn. There has been unemployment there since the car making industry became automated. The problem of unemployment will not be solved by simply putting cash into the car producers' pockets. More sustainable, long-term solutions are needed. The inefficiencies and failings of an industry cannot be repaired by throwing money at it. Ultimately these markets need to be freed in order to allow firms to react to such problems. For example, if the role of the unions were reduced (something which seems unlikely under an Obama presidency, it has to be said), the firms' costs could be lowered allowing them to compete with foreign manufacturers in domestic markets. It is particularly instructive to note, as Michael E. Levine did in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, that thanks to the United Auto Workers' 'Jobs Bank' programme (which guarantees nearly full wages and benefits for workers who lose their jobs due to automation or plant closure) GM currently supports more retirees than workers. No wonder they are in such trouble.

Recession, regulation, and rubbish

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Well, it turns out that the UK is in for an even deeper recession than originally suspected. The CBI (Confederation of British Industry) says unemployment may rise to 2.9 million in 2010, instead of the 1.8 million previously forecast. The UK economy shrank for the first time in 16 years between July and September of this year. CBI warns this is far from over; the size of the economy could decrease by 1.7 percent in 2009, which is a staggering change from the 0.3 percent predicted in September.

CBI blames two major factors for the economic slowdown that lies ahead, which is expected to cause five quarters of negative growth. First of all, the banking crisis has diminished the accessibility of credit and credit insurance for all kinds of businesses. Secondly, the negative reports about the economy resulted in a decrease in consumer confidence, reducing the demand for products and services.  This declining consumer spending, in addition to less investment spending and significant drops in inventory, will be the largest contributors to the downturn.

Unite, the UK’s largest union, has come up with a plan to stimulate the economy by increasing public spending and instituting stricter regulation of the financial sector. But why would one want to do that when too much box-ticking regulation helped get us here in the first place? While they hassled firms and companies with nonsense procedures and stipulations, stifling innovation and impeding progress among businesses, regulators completely neglected the bigger issue of financial stability. Although some regulation will surely be needed, the economy will fair much better if companies have more say in their operations and management, and regulators get back to focusing on the big picture.

Ultimately, as long as competition and free market ventures are put on the backburner, the bad news will just keep coming.

Blog Review 782

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For those screaming about how all those toxic derivatives need to be regulated, perhaps regulated out of existence. Worth noting that they only exist because of previous regulation.

It isn't, as many seem to think, quite a certain thing yet that the Tories will win the next election.

So, if the Detroit Three (for they are no longer the Big Three car makers) do get bailed out, what is it that we actually want them to do?

Why libertarians (indeed, liberals of every stripe) should celebrate the existence of the gender pay gap.

It would appear that not much has changed in Haringey over the years.

Timeline Twins: Watching Star Wars today is like watching It's a Wonderful Life (1946) in 1977.

And finally, the 69mph bedstead.

The gender pay gap

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The Office of National Statistics has released its figures on pay for this year, something which has set off the annual bleating about the gender pay gap.

The Office for National Statistics said that the difference in earnings of women and men in full-time employment rose by 0.1% over the year. For part-timers, the gap increased to more than 36%.

As I've had occasion to mention before, that part-time pay gap is something of a fraud. For it is comparing the wages per hour earned by women working part-time with those of men working full-time, thus conflating two entirely different things. Part-timers everywhere earn less than full-timers, so this is nothing whatever to do with gender. Indeed, from the same ONS ASHE figures we can calculate that the part-time pay gap for women (ie, part-time women compared with full-time women) is 14% and that for men 27%. we are clearly therefore not dealing solely with a gender issue.

However, there's another aspect to this which interests me. From the TUC's briefing paper *on the subject we find on page 14 that (by a slightly different measure) the gender pay gap in the UK is 20%, that in Denmark 18%, in Sweden 16%. So this isn't something that can be explained by the absence of social democracy, the absence of free childcare, the absence of comprehensive union agreements, for those things do indeed exist in those places.

Indeed, it would appear that even sky high taxes, extended maternity leave, compulsory paternity leave and so on, things which are urged here and exist there, don't have that much effect either. In fact, if the average wage is some £23,000 a year then that 2% difference with Denmark is £460 a year, or under £10 a week.

Now I agree, £10 a week is indeed £10 a week, but that diminution of the gender pay gap comes as the result of a great deal of effort and expense. Is it actually worth it? Might it not be worth simply shrugging our shoulders and moving on to more tractable problems, where our efforts will have rather more of a result?

*Footnote 18 also tells us that the TUC uses mean pay to calculate the gap against the advice of the ONS. Using the median would reveal a lower gap, something which would never do.

Understanding the financial crisis

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Here is a good beginners' guide to the financial crisis, courtesy of AfricanLiberty.org:

Hat-tip to The Independent Institute.