Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Da Geezer]

``Resentment of Brussels'' is a great cover. European pols can point at Brussels all they want, but the fact remains that no population in Europe is hitting the replacement rate in terms of fertility.

I've been trying to get at this for two days now. Youth unemployment is one of the biggest problems in several of the EU countries, particularly the larger economies. Why then are they encouraging immigration from foreign countries? If the demographics are so bad, why are healthy 20-30-year-old citizens having trouble finding work?

Parenthetically, we are now seeing the results of the great scare of the 1980s: overpopulation. The Population Bomb, although now proven wrong in every significant respect, caused me to have only one child, and I suspect it caused many to have fewer children. It also began the false narrative of "scarcity" which affected the world substantially in the "age of oil". You young fellas ought to take prediction through "models" with a grain of salt.

[Da Geezer]

Bottom line here is that we're in uncharted waters -- the kind of adventure I would rather avoid, no matter how ideologically appealing, because of unintended consequences.

Yup. And I view this as a great opportunity for the Brits. Our disagreement speaks to the difference we have in our personal makeups. I am a risk taker. I'd be focusing on the very high-end residential market in London, because, five years from now, I believe London will look particularly good to rich folk escaping from regimes that are trying to achieve "fairness".

BTW: I said two weeks ago that the vote on Brexit didn't matter because the elites would figure out a way to override it if it didn't go their way. Remember, after the October Revolution, Lenin called a vote for the Duma to be held in order to affirm his power. The Bolsheviks were creamed by about 2-1. Lenin then dissolved the Duma.

And Hillary posted, either today or yesterday, that Trump should be ashamed for thinking about profit when he mentioned that the pound at 1.35 would increase bookings as opposed to the pound at 1.50. All so predictable.

[hack]

No model would ever talk to me anyways, so I married my wife instead. Plus I don't like stick figures.

There are fast food/minimum-wage service jobs, but that's not what most of those college-educated people are looking for. I contract with a company that cycles European millenials in and out of a shitty job, which is designed for high turnover knowing what an inexhaustible supply of able kids there are who will take it. There's also construction jobs, but in those cases there a fair amount of illegals.

I really don't know, because Europe hasn't interested me in the past as it does now, but it looks on the surface like the combination of lost manufacturing without having a workforce able to mature beyond a unionized/non-entrepreneurial approach. The latter, combined with a sudden glut of VC funds, has somewhat cushioned the US.

[hack]

Yup. And I view this as a great opportunity for the Brits. Our disagreement speaks to the difference we have in our personal makeups. I am a risk taker. I'd be focusing on the very high-end residential market in London, because, five years from now, I believe London will look particularly good to rich folk escaping from regimes that are trying to achieve "fairness".


From what you've said in the past, yes -- you should get yourself over there and scoop up some fire-sale assets. It's hard to imagine London won't always be London, although they're doing their best to put that narrative at risk. The hard details of financial-sector regulation put its position at risk as the 1B capital of global finance. Now out of the EU, Britain can no longer moderate what Brussels does, but still has a great need to service EU clients with products registered in London. The compliance burden will now be much greater. But as for real estate, I saw a stunning report a few years ago on the world's top real estate markets. New York is the only one in the West anchored to a hard and quantifiable economic narrative. London and Paris were on the list for soft factors. The rest were Pacific Rim cities, where manufacturing lives now.

But, in the end, YOU may be a risk taker but the mass of people are not. People have different talents in life. There are entrepreneurs out there but also some process-oriented people who are needed to bring to life the visions of the risk takers. Spreadsheet jockeys and storytellers and shift workers, etc. -- you have all types out there, and you don't govern just to the benefit of one of them. That kind of politics gets you in trouble, which is where the UK is. If things move as they have, this will be an opportunity for the minority of people with both the capital and the vision to capitalize, and it will be a punishment for the rest.

As it is, it looks like Cameron's decision not to invoke Article 50, but to leave it to the next guy instead, means that the next leader of the Tories arrives in an office with a bomb ticking away. Britain is going to have a cooling off period here, and we'll see what happens.

[Da Geezer]

DSL: Good post. I understand that I am about half-a-bubble off, but suppose the following:

Scotland is heavily Labour. Suppose the Tories want Scotland to leave the UK for political reasons related to party. You would then be looking at a situation analogous to CA threatening to leave the US and join Mexico if a particular political issue did not go their way. I think the Republicans would bid CA a fond farewell, and maybe throw in RI and DEL just for kicks and grins.

[hack]

But it's a potential #Texit that's now trending on twitter. Although IMO that's better labeled a #Texodus.

Anyhow, in the UK Scottish independence means the Scots take the oil income from the North Sea with them, so I'd have a hard time imagining the UK wanted to dump Scotland.

(IMO the North Sea oil story is a very interesting point in the debate between state-centric economics and pure market capitalism. Not too many times in history has a rich country suddenly struck oil, therefore creating conditions in which there was no rush to produce or overproduce to fund current operations. With the luxury of debating how to do it, it sure looks right now like Norway made the right call. Thatcher used oil revenue to beat the shit out of labour, and the UK's a bit of a mess. Norway now owns the third-biggest sovereign-wealth fund. On a per-capita basis it's the biggest. As a fraction of GDP it's on par with the UAE despite a shorter history of oil production and despite producing a third what Abu Dhabi does. It's pretty hard to argue that anyone's done better monetizing their natural resources.)

[Da Geezer]

There are fast food/minimum-wage service jobs, but that's not what most of those college-educated people are looking for. I contract with a company that cycles European millenials in and out of a shitty job, which is designed for high turnover knowing what an inexhaustible supply of able kids there are who will take it. There's also construction jobs, but in those cases there a fair amount of illegals.

Yup. Fair enough. That's not terribly unlike the US.

My theory is that as the social welfare state becomes more fully "developed", the marginal reward for taking a job is diminished. When the time (2,000 hours in most analyses) is calculated, the marginal difference between 15/hr (30,000 annually) and 13/hr (26,000 annually, the amount generally available on welfare), is near zero. Would you rather work 2,000 hours in a year for $ 4,000?

Please don't quibble with the numbers I've picked. I understand they might be incorrect, but it is the principle I'm getting at.

I believe that the millennials on both sides of the pond are so comfortable within the welfare system, that they simply have no incentive to work. That explains why youth in the US supported Bernie, and why youth in the UK supported the "Stay" campaign. They are comfortable with the status quo and see no reason to change it.

Obviously, this has far-reaching implications. I would argue that this completely rational economic decision is behind a great deal of what divides America. I personally couldn't care less about a racial (as we use it) component to illegal immigration. I care because it is my belief that many of the illegals are here to feed on the tit of big government. If doctors were fleeing France, India or Mexico in favor of the US, do you think there would be widespread concern?

The elites in the US are comfortable with the way things are, but they are relatively few. But when you add in all the folks that are getting some form of welfare, and those who are making substantially more in a government job than they could make a similar job in the private sector, then you are at a majority. That is also why having only "net tax payers" vote has so little appeal in this forum.

[lineygoblue]

DSL: Good post. I understand that I am about half-a-bubble off, but suppose the following:

Scottland is heavily Labour. Suppose the Tories want Scottland to leave the UK for political reasons related to party. You would then be looking at a situation analogous to CA threatening to leave the US and join Mexico if a particular political issue did not go their way. I think the Republicans would bid CA a fond farewell, and maybe throw in RI and DEL just for kicks and grins.

Is that all we need to do to ditch California? I say lets vote!!

[Da Geezer]

Hack: I got a kick out of your comment on modeling.

I honestly think everyone should look at their beliefs as they relate to models, particularly computer models. Models can only predict the past, because history is their only input. They cannot take into account disruptive technologies or events. That is why I keep pounding the table for you guys to read about the Julian Simon bet. The future is almost always different than the past. We've had the discussion about the human mind being the world's greatest resource. Determinism is a necessary precursor to statism, which is why so much credence is given to models.

There has been something of a cottage industry grown up around The Bet claiming that Ulrich could have gotten it right. When students bring that to me, I respond with the truth. I have over $ 13,000,000.00 in play money accumulated at PokerStars. I am under no illusion that I am a good poker player. I know that I would bet far differently, as would my opponents, if we were playing with real money. That is what is real as opposed to what is theoretical. Real is tougher.

[UMStan White]

" That is also why having only "net tax payers" vote has so little appeal in this forum."

No. the reason "net tax payers" as the only voters has so little appeal in this forum is because it is such a stupid ridiculous concept that has no basis in today's reality in this country. Your insistence upon wanting to debate such an idiotic concept makes me question all your posts.

[hack]

I guess where the similarities stop for me Geezer is that you cannot compare the social safety net in Europe to that of the US. Europeans -- not counting Brits -- have an extremely generous social safety net. People in the US do not. If you care about shrinking the DC-funded trough to the largest extent, then you have to address corporate welfare before anything else. And probably the defense sector first and foremost, where there isn't even the competitive environment a marketplace is supposed to provide. Without that, why not just pay out the shareholders of Raytheon and Halliburton, and keep the windfall profits in-house?

If you want to worry about people, the first thing to accept is that we are not a nation of regulator-blocked entrepreneurs. We are a nation of people who play all roles, and a healthy economy reflects that and requires the talents of more than just ``entrepreneurs'', which may or may not be a well-defined term.

[hack]

Agree wholeheartedly about modelling. We are in a data-fetish era. We suspend skepticism to an unreasonable extent way too often. I would have a much easier time escaping journalism were it not for the fact that qualitative skills aren't as valued as quantitative at the moment. The real answer is to strike the right balance of course, so as it happens I'm currently taking a modelling course. Heh.

[hack]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...george-monbiot -- we are now at the point where the ``neoliberalism is the whole problem'' story pops up often enough to come across most people's facebook feeds, and it appears the trend is moving in the direction of even more of the same. This contrasts quite starkly to the 90s and the 00s, when there was no debate at all. Kids are not going to grow up with the sense that the right knows what's best for the economy. They may, however, grow up with the sense that the right does what's best for rich people.

[Jeff Buchanan]

The entire discussion regarding the fundamental issues behind Brixit is fascinating. I'd consider myself socially progressive as it pertains to Hack's world view, among others, of a government's responsibility to address all the role players being governed. I'm definitely fiscally conservative..... don't spend more than you take in kind of thing..... and I frequently find that position at odds with my socially progressive side.

I can align with Geezer's world view in some respects. I fully agree with his position on welfare vis-a-vis the notion that too much of it is a negative incentive to work. On the other hand, too little creates a disgruntled and potentially dangerous (to the stability of the governed nation) underclass.

I am also in complete agreement with Geezer on the potential dangers of Statism as it relates to the inexorable path it takes to nearly complete control of economic and social policy. The EU is going to go down in history as a classic example of the negative aspects of Statism in my view.

I can't celebrate Brixet though for most of the same reasons both Hack and Geezer have illuminated in this discussion ....... the danger of unintended consequences. I can see how the Geeze sees this circumstance as an economic opportunity. OTH, I have to like Hack's view that only a small portion of those directly involved in this are going to benefit while a larger portion are going to be hurt. How to mitigate that is a central and unanswered question in my mid if Brixit actually goes down as those supporting it intended.

It'll be very interesting to see how all of this plays out. For a lot of different reasons, it is a watershed event in Europe that has far reaching social, economic and role's/responsibilities of government implications. Nice little experiment, actually, although I don't think I'd like to be a British Citizen right now. Way too many unknowns right around the door step for me.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Both political parties are imploding. The Leave Campaign leaders are basically admitting now that they had no plan, and saying David Cameron (who was for REMAIN) should've come up with a plan for both results. There's also a fascinating civil war brewing in the Labor Party...I think nearly a third of Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet resigned today and more resignations could be on the way. Corbyn is way to the left and there's a lot of rumors that even though most of the Labor Party was in the Remain Camp, he personally loathes the EU and he purposely tanked the Support campaign. He refused to ever appear together with David Cameron at rallies, for example.

This could be one of the greatest upheavels in British political history...might see one of the two major parties going away entirely.