Monthly Archives: May 2014

The selfish generation

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I have just gone through a large section of Simon Newcomb’s Principles of Political Economy published in 1886 just as I was reading The Economist and The Financial Times 2013 book of the year, When the Money Runs Out: The End of Western Affluence. The difference in substance and depth is so profound it leaves me in despair.

But I want to focus on one particular aspect of what really is a book of junk ideas and simplistic formulations. Lots of dross gets published but only one book per annum is rated the best of the year. If this is what economic journalism sees as the finest flowering of contemporary thought, there cannot be all that much economic thought in contemporary journalism.

The author is Stephen D. King who is Chief Economist for a bank, HSBC in particular. He is therefore fixated on the monetary side of economics with the actual productive side having a mere shadowy existence somewhere deep in the background. No evident consideration of value added and production, just shifts in aggregates, most of which are financial.

But let me leave all that to the side along with his smugness and self-satisfaction. No admirer of contemporary economic thought myself, his bizarrely superficial economic recommendations that rest on his support for nominal GDP targeting show him to be about as deep as anyone could be who never thinks in terms of the entrepreneur and value adding activity. That is not, however, why I have bothered to bring his book up.

You see, he blames my poor generation, we baby boomers, for our economic problems today. And while I also think of my generation as the beginning of the rot, I don’t think of things in quite the same sort of way. If anything, where I feel we baby boomers may be most at fault is producing the generations that have come after. So with this in mind, let me take you to what he has to say (all quotes taken from page 243) about our current economic problems in relation to my generation:

“The boomers’ preferences have dominated society’s choices since they first reached adulthood in the 1960s and 1970s. In their twenties and thirties they accepted higher inflation; their mortgages were, in effect, partially written off even as pensioners saw their savings destroyed.”

In 1970, as the Great Inflation was getting under way, even the oldest of the baby boomers was no more than 25 and most were under twenty. We didn’t cause the inflation and I would hardly say we had accepted the acceleration in prices given that we did what we could to end it. If you want causes, you have to go back to the generation before. But if you want solutions, who were our political leaders that we first voted for and put into office? In the US it was Ronald Reagan and in the UK, Margaret Thatcher. Where are your equivalents today? There is not a ghost of a chance that his generation would ever put either of these into office. They were giants compared with the pygmies who have come since. He goes on about my generation, here in a continuation of the above quote:

“Now in their fifties, sixties and seventies, they insist on low inflation, fearing the erosion of their lifetime savings as they head into retirement. The boomers have had their cake and made sure they could eat it.”

You really do have to help me out here, Stephen. We didn’t cause the inflation of the 1970s since we were not in political charge but have worked hard ever since to make sure inflation does not take off again. Was this the wrong call? Should we have had more inflation? Do we need more inflation now? What’s your point? Well here are his thoughts about how to deal with this baby boomer generation for whom he has a name of his own.

“One answer would simply be to wait for the selfish generation to expire. By that stage, however, the damage may have been done: their gains will have been the rest of society’s losses.” [My bolding]

Yes, we could wait for us all to die off, but that’s such a slow process, he thinks. So what to do? In a continuation from the previous sentence and in the same para he therefore suggests this.

“Another would be to recognise the futile nature of the large amounts of medical expenditure for those approaching the final curtain, a use of resources for which the returns are, sadly, lacking [!!!]. It seems unlikely [!!!], however, that society is yet [!!!] willing to embrace voluntary euthanasia – let alone the involuntary kind – any time soon [!!!], or to become indifferent to death, whatever the age.”

This is not written as a joke in “a modest proposal” sort of way. You can quite clearly see that even if he’s not game to say it, his actual real answer is to leave us all to die off as quickly as possible. If we are no longer productive, we should no longer be allowed to absorb resources.

This man is an absolute caricature, a Monty Python version of a merchant banker.

And while he has a chapter he titles, “Dystopia”, these answers are in the following chapter, the one he titles, “Avoiding Dystopia” where he has put all of his suggested remedies. And while Charles Moore in The Daily Telegraph may believe, as it says on the cover of the book, that “it is alarmingly difficult not to disagree with Stephen King”, if he really believes that, I think he might have had the wrong Stephen King in mind.

A hundred photos to start the century

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The century is only a little over fourteen years and we began it in 2000 which isn’t technically correct but these are the iconic photos that best represent the century so far. They are in chronological order so that you can see the way the century has so far progressed. It also reminds you of how much we seem to have forgotten.

Yet its progressive left agenda is best represented by the absence of a photo of a plane being flown into the World Trade Center. Such imagery is verboten since it conjures up the wrong kind of thoughts in people about the menaces we face today. It reminds me more about what’s wrong and I fear it will only get worse.

The worst generation

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Who today could this be referring to? From Stacy McCain talking about American universities:

Scarcely a day goes by that we don’t hear some report of the increasing turn toward totalitarianism by the campus Left. Progressive hegemony on university faculties, a humanities curriculum heavily influenced by crypto-Marxist “theory,” and the radicalization of students through an identity-group Culture of Grievance, all contribute to this growing climate of intolerance. Administrators, when not actually in sympathy with the radicals, abdicate authority in the face of intimidation tactics employed by the militant Left at universities and colleges.

Getting with the program

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Well, here we are heading for the fiscal falls. The Government has locked in their strategy, not one I would have chosen but they have made the decision so over the falls we will go.

Let us try to be positive. First and foremost, it is better than anything that Labor might have done. For all their maunderings about balancing the budget and getting their house in order, there was never the slightest chance they would. The Swan-Wong team of economic managers had no will at all to stop the fiscal rot. The spending ministers overwhelmed those who thought about prudential outcomes, assuming any thought that way at all.

Second, the budget will be a tough sell but it can be done. Abbott has credibility. No one will be in any doubt that the fiscal horrors left by Labor are an Augean stable that were not the Coalition’s doing. I don’t think they have set this narrative up anyway near well enough but even at this late stage they might be able to convince the country (or at least 50.1%) that these are steps that must with absolute necessity be taken.

Third, the steps to be taken are decided by cabinet so no point in dwelling on what I would have done. That’s a lot of people amongst whom the right compromises must be found. No doubt the PM and Treasurer are leading the way, neither of whom is an economist but there have been other hands on the tiller as well. Everyone in the Ministry is frightened by the size of the deficit they must deal with and are thinking about how this is to be done. They cannot see economic growth as the road to balance, and in fact, don’t really seem to have much idea about how to generate that growth. This must be looked at as a distant second best solution but with Treasury a dead zone for economic thinking, maybe that’s all that can be done. I imagine very few in Cabinet think that a program of cuts to public spending, pulling down regulation, and freeing up industrial relations would do the trick. So this is the way they have chosen to go forward.

Fourth, the major issue is the politics. If there weren’t an election to come in 2016, for which these decisions will be anthrax and strychnine for a large proportion of the voting public, it would not be all that hard to accept that this is how it will have to be. Since this seems to me like a poor approach to the economics and a very dangerous approach to the politics these decisions fill me with dread. If they lose office on the back of these decisions, they will be deposited in the very lowest depths of our political inferno. To have misjudged the politics will be unforgivable. Three and out would repel me and anyone who seeks good governance into the long term. If it brings Labor back to office after three years and not six or nine, there is nothing they can do or will have done that would be anywhere near fair compensation. All they will have done is hand over a more solid foundation for future Labor Party waste. Bill Shorten is far and away the strongest supporter of these policies in the country.

Nevertheless, this is their call and they may pull it out. Economic policy is not the only thing that affects the direction of an economy so there might really be a strong economy leading into the next election. Even more impressively, the country might even appreciate someone taking responsibility for the horrors that the ALP left behind. There may be a constituency for people saying that we must pull together for the national good. The media won’t help them but the Government does have its friends. The die is obviously cast so there’s no point in going on about it. So for me, I will hope things work out for the best.

David Horowitz and the fight against the left

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The single most important characteristic I share with David Horowitz is that I, too, was a red-diaper baby that shifted from the radical left to the conservative right side of politics. Encounter Press is in the process of issuing the collected conservative writings of David Horowitz. The emphasis is, of course, on the word, “conservative” since his previous writings were entirely on the left where he was amongst its leadership group and was for many years the editor of Ramparts when I was one of its subscribers. This is from a column at Powerline where they discuss this publishing venture under the heading, David Horowitz: Who are our Enemies. From Horowitz’s article explaining why he is publishing these books:

It is for this conservative audience — a constituency on whom the American future depends — that I undertook to put together The Black Book of the American Left. It is first of all a narrative map of the battles fought over the last 40 years and — it must be said – lost, almost every one. The Black Book contains a record as complete as any likely to be written of the struggle to resist a Communist-inspired Left that was not defeated in the Cold War but took advantage of the Soviet defeat to enter the American mainstream and conquer it, until today its members occupy the White House.

It is an often overlooked but immensely significant fact that during the Cold War the vast majority of American progressives supported the Communist enemy, working as apologists, appeasers, and enablers for a global movement openly dedicated to the destruction of their country. At the time, the progressive movement was much smaller than it is now and was opposed by mainstream Democrats whom progressives referred to derisively as “Cold War Liberals.” In 1968, progressive activists staged a riot at the Democratic Party convention. The riot was overtly designed to destroy the electoral chances of Hubert Humphrey, regarded as the Cold War Liberal in Chief because of his support for the Vietnam War.

The Progressive Party, was formed in 1948 to challenge the cold war liberalism of Harry Truman and was in fact controlled by the Communist Party. The so-called New Left that emerged in the Sixties did not represent a clean break with communism and was not, in fact, a “new” left but a continuation of the old. It developed a modernized, deceptive political rhetoric — calling itself “populist” and even “liberal” — but it was mobilized behind the same malicious anti-individualist, anti-capitalist, and anti-American agendas as the Communist movement from which it sprang.

After the convention riot of 1968, this neo-Communist Left marched off the streets and into the Democratic party, and over the next decades took commanding positions in the party’s congressional apparatus, and eventually its national leadership. As it acquired power, it gradually shifted its self- identification from “liberal” to the bolder “progressive,” a designation shared by most leaders of the Democratic Party today. The betrayal of the Vietnamese by the “Watergate” Democrats, the appeasement of Latin American Communists (now firmly entrenched throughout the hemisphere and allied with our enemy Iran), the betrayal of the Iraqis and the sabotage of the war on terror, the traducing of the civil-rights movement and its transformation into a mob led by the racial extortionists Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (the latter now the president’s chief adviser on race), the subversion of the modern research university and the conversion of its liberal-arts divisions into doctrinal institutes for training American youth in the radical party line known as political correctness, the rise of a campus fascism aligned with Islamic Jew haters and genocidal terrorists, the political undermining of the public-health system during the AIDS epidemic which led to half a million avoidable deaths — all these were crucial battles lost during the 40 years that preceded the White House reign of Barack Obama. All are documented in the pages of these volumes in week-by-week accounts of the arguments and conflicts that accompanied them.

When the Money Runs Out – the government’s guide to policy

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Simultaneously reading today’s papers on the Commission of Audit report and the Economist and The Financial Times 2013 book of the year, Stephen D. King’s When the Money Runs Out: the End of Western Affluence, I can see what the latest fashion in economic policy has become. Here I heave a sigh of despair. This from page 54 sums it up:

With poorly performing asset markets and much lower prospective economic growth, our entitlements are about to take a hammering. On current plans, only wishful thinking on economic growth stops government debt from spiralling out of control in the decades ahead. If the wishful thinking proves to be wrong, we will be in serious trouble.

And if you doubt that the wise heads of Treasury and the Government have not been reading this book, this is how it is described by the publisher:

It’s not just the end of an age of affluence, he shows. We have made promises to ourselves that are achievable only through ongoing economic expansion. The future benefits we expect—pensions, healthcare, and social security, for example—may be larger than tomorrow’s resources. And if we reach that point, which promises will be broken and who will lose out? The lessons of history offer compelling evidence that political and social upheaval are often born of economic stagnation. King addresses these lessons with a multifaceted plan that involves painful—but necessary—steps toward a stable and just economic future.

And so here we are.

I am the last person in the world to argue that wasteful and unproductive spending can go on forever. Cut waste. Live within your means. Do what is required to cut non-value-adding expenditure. But this book is half the story of what needs doing or possibly even less, just as the Commission of Audit doesn’t to my mind get there either. So far I have not come across a single sentence in the book that indicates the importance of the “private sector”, “the role of business” or “entrepreneurial activity”. The words don’t show up in the index and nothing in the contents goes anywhere near these issues. It is all about government policy, the financial system, the level of entitlements and containing outlays on entitlements. Nothing about what is needed for growth, and as the subtitle suggests, “The End of Affluence”, is entirely pessimistic about our economic possibilities.

And if you follow the guidelines found in the book, you would have to agree. We can no longer afford our way of life, our living standards must contract and therefore the only thing governments can do is cut various entitlement programs but strangely leave public sector infrastructure spending more or less as it is. No discussion of cuts to public waste, those useless money-losing operations that are everywhere absorbing our scarce savings for a negative return. If the real economy is discussed at any point along the way, I have not come across it. It’s all money, finance and interest rates. Encouraging business investment, cost containment, reducing government regulation – of these there’s not a word.

You want growth, cut back on government take up of resources. I love the headline on this story because of its cluelessness: UK AUSTERITY TO STAY DESPITE GROWTH PICK-UP. This is re-stated in the first para:

Austerity will remain the U.K. government’s mantra, Treasury chief George Osborne said Wednesday — even as he lauded the stronger than expected economic recovery.

The people who write such stories think “austerity”, the name its enemies give to cutting back on public sector waste, is bad for the economy, and because of their Keynesian mindset can only be harmful. They have no idea that it is the austerity itself that has led to the higher than expected growth. They cannot even understand what possible connection there could be. Moreover, a return to a stronger economy is not a warrant for higher public spending. The lesson that ought to learned and understood is that non-value-adding outlays slow an economy down. Reducing those outlays allow the economy to re-adjust towards faster growth. And already the Treasurer is talking about personal tax cuts in the lead-up to the next UK election. If only the same would happen here.

What’s the matter with our own economic managers in this country? If they really do want to take Australia down into some kind of American never-ending recession, then maintain or possibly even increase public sector outlays, raise taxes and do next nothing to encourage private sector growth. That way, the money most surely will run out but it didn’t have to be that way at all.

The Machal

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A video about the Machal, the pilots who comprised the Israeli airforce in 1948. A miraculous story, at the link a trailer for a film I intend to see.

My Uncle Harold was there, not as a flyer but as part of the ground crew, as he had been during the war in Europe along with my Uncle Percy. Bless them both.

The film is Above and Beyond. And as one of those interviewed said, a thousand years from now, as Jews look back on their history from what will then be 6774, the two moments they will remember of our present era are the Holocaust and the creation of the state of Israel. What else they will be compelled to remember of events during this coming one thousand years fills me with enormous fears.

Does the American media really want to live in a wasteland?

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Here it is. The media in the US (and Australia for that matter) must either decide whether they wish to live in a wasteland run by the party of the left rather than live in a secure and prosperous nation run by the more conservative party of the right. The President and the Democratic Party are ruining what the United States once was and turning it into an impotent backwater.

The media can say it’s not us, it’s the people who decide. But say what they like, the massively left-leaning media have shaped the political debate so that the common sense of the past is now seen as extremism. But they, too, will live in the wilderness they have helped to create. It will give no satisfaction to anyone else that they will have to share this tumbledown shambles of a nation with everyone else, but they will.

Obviously a joke

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The kind of nonsense you find on the web all the time. Who could take any of this seriously? Via Instapundit:

The following is the God’s-honest truth from the perspective of an imperfect man who was taught chivalry, respect, and love for women. Opinions are solely his and the hundreds of other imperfect men he’s spoken to about this subject in one way or another.

1. We think it’s stupid when feminists think it’s cool to not know how to cook. We don’t give more respect to a woman who thinks keeping her home organized and tidy is weakness. We find a woman who hates babies and children kind of off-putting, even if we don’t currently want a child. We don’t think it’s edgy. We think it’s silly that they think this somehow makes women strong and independent. Our mothers did all the above and more, and we recognize her as super strong. Do they think they’re better than our Mom? NO ONE is better than our Mom.

2. No, we don’t think women can do most physical jobs just as good as us. We’re built for tougher physical exertion than you. We have more muscle mass than you do. On a base level it insults us that feminists claim your strength is equal to ours when we clearly see it isn’t. You have strengths and we acknowledge them, even find them sexy in some regards, but physically demanding tasks generally require a body built for it. It’s why construction sites, ranches, and other physically-demanding jobs primarily consist of men. Women are physically weaker than us, and it hacks us off that feminists only want to recognize that fact in a courtroom.

3. We want to wear the pants in the relationship, and we want you to wear the pretty sundress. Believe us, WE invented pants and have regretted it ever since. They aren’t that great.

4. There’s no “wage gap” between our sexes. If you get paid less than a man it’s probably because he’s been there longer, or works harder, or has a higher title than you. Men do a lot to climb the ladder to make a better living, and often times it’s to make a better living for you. Don’t buy the feminist lie that the literal man is keeping you down.

There is no grand evil patriarchal scheme. There are too many women CEO and managers making more than men out there to give credence to this claim. Also, if a woman gets paid less than a man for doing the same amount of work, then why would a business ever hire a man?

5. We’re wired for destruction. Boys play games that mimic violence of their own accord. We’re not taught that like feminists like to claim. We’re hyperactive because we’re built to hunt, kill, conquer, and protect later in life. We get a rush out of doing these things.

We think it’s stupid that feminists think that’s stupid. We think girl stuff is boring. We don’t think feminine stuff is bad, it’s just boring to us.

Shoes: Boring

Makeup: Boring

Clothes: Boring

Gossip: Boring

Home and Garden Magazines: Boring

Shopping: Boring

Underwear: Boring… unless we get to see it on you, and even then our goal is to get it off you.

Also, if masculinity is so evil then how come feminists are constantly trying to put themselves on level with it? Why do you want to be like us, but not let us be us?

6. Yeah, we’re wussies when we’re sick. There is nothing better than being taken care of by a woman. We love the gentleness and reassuring touch that only a woman has. Even science says you make more thorough and caring doctors.

On top of that you look like an angel when you’re caring for us. It inspires us to get better, to regain our strength so we can get back to being strong for you. We find the feminist concept that it’s a bad thing for a woman to be caring and gentle utterly ridiculous and a waste of natural girl power.

You don’t see us asking our bros to run fingers through our hair with our head in their laps or put vapor rub on our chest…you know…outside comedic reasons.

7. We live in a wam-bam-thank-you-ma’am promoted culture where young girls are fed the feminist lie that it’s empowering to dress like a skank and make a guy do everything in his power to take you home, and even let him succeed at it. Then feminists tell you that it’s not your fault that you can’t seem to land a good guy because men are dogs.

NEWSFLASH: IT IS YOUR FAULT!

While me and mine could seriously do with a lot more discipline, it is EXTREMELY difficult for us to resist sexual temptation. We think about it constantly, and it’s everywhere we look nowadays. From a man’s perspective I can honestly tell you that it’s MADDENING. It’s not because we’re pigs, we’re wired that way, and while we’re physically attracted to easy half-naked women, we sure don’t respect you mentally.

In fact, I hate to burst the feminist bubble, but respect isn’t what comes to mind at all. We hold these women to the level of “useful tool.” This is done very subconsciously, and men aren’t very good at fighting instinct, nor should we in the face of an easy woman. We’re taught as boys that putting value in something cheap ends badly.

8. We fully believe we’re dumber than you in many ways. In fact we hope our woman is smarter than us when it comes to day-to-day things, but we also fully believe we’re smarter in many ways too. Sadly it’s become politically correct to say women are smarter, and a man can’t argue that without a woman nearby getting angry. Men believe women to be very intelligent, intuitive thinkers. We believe you make great leaders.

That said, intelligence comes in a variety of flavors, and we think circles around women in many ways. We’re primarily responsible for technological and scientific breakthroughs. We’re highly logical, creative thinkers. The pop-culture portrayal that we’re close to the intelligence of apes is both insulting and laughable.

Do women outwit men? All the freaking time. They outwit them while they drive cars utilizing internal combustion engines around high-rises, guided by traffic lights that harness electricity. Men are pretty stupid, huh feminists?

9. You can’t tell a man to respect you like he would another man, because you’re not another man. Weirdly that’s something the feminist has a hard time with. We’re naturally competitive and recognize manly respect through manly occurrences whether it be from masculine acts, masculine chats, or masculine urges mental and sexual.

This doesn’t mean we don’t welcome the feminine to take part in these things, but it will never mean the same to you as it does to us. Even a girl inclined towards masculine activity retains too many feminine traits to truly bond with us on the level feminists are demanding us to.

We are different from you.

10. Ladies, let me crush a silly idea that feminists have made popular: You don’t need to “elevate” yourself to where men are. You don’t need to be “just as good.” Men are not on a platform above you where the sun shines richer and we reap a bountiful supply of deserved ego. We’re not better or worse than you, we’re just not the same. Our needs diverge and intersect with yours because we’re tied to each other, but this doesn’t mean we need to be equal on every ground.

Feminists say they want “equality.” That’s a lie. What they want is neutrality if not dominance for themselves. Nature can’t and won’t abide the feminist idea of masculine and feminine, and honestly neither will us men. We honestly find the idea laughable and stupid. I’m willing to bet most women do too.

A hairshirt budget

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Well, get ready for it, an experiment in democratic politics, an unpopular budget aimed at no constituency at all:

Radical reforms to health and education will be outlined today in a searing assessment of federal finances that also calls for the family home to be included in the asset test for the age pension.

Action on the asset test is a key recommendation in a far-reaching review that identifies huge cuts to “middle-class welfare” to prevent budget spending climbing to $690 billion within a ­decade.

Tony Abbott will also be urged to scrap federal agencies and ­delegate more services to the states as part of a blueprint from his commission of audit that is ­already sparking resistance from key cabinet ministers.

The closely held report stops short of calling for the dismantling of federal health and education departments but warns of a massive cost to taxpayers from the duplicated effort between Canberra and the states.

In a deeply controversial finding, the commission identifies billions of dollars in savings from including the family home in the eligibility test for the age pension, arguing it is unfair for ordinary workers to subsidise pensions for the wealthy.