Category: politics

09:56 – I’ve seen several articles about the US private sector creating 200,000 new jobs in July. The problem is, most of those shouldn’t be counted as real jobs. Depending on who you listen to, since Lehman kicked off the crisis the US has created about two new jobs for every three that were lost as a result of the crisis. The problem is, most of those three jobs were real jobs and most of those two jobs are garbage. I mean, if a job lost paid $40,000/year with full benefits and a job gained pays $8/hour part time or temporary with no benefits, how can anyone claim with a straight face that the new job makes up for the loss of the old one?

The government collects all the data needed to provide honest employment figures, but they never do. I mean, removing people from the unemployed category when they’ve given up looking for jobs because there aren’t any available is simply dishonest. We need to dump the whole idea of unemployment rates and substitute employment rates. What percentage of adults aged 18 to 70 are employed, and at what level? Temporary and part-time jobs should be separate categories, as should jobs that pay less than, say, $20,000/year, as should government “jobs”. The reason these figures are not easily available is that people would be stunned to find just how small a percentage of adults have real private-sector jobs. You know, ones that involve actually making something or providing a service that people are willing to pay for voluntarily, as opposed to ones that involve extracting money from taxpayers and transferring it to the pockets of the otherwise unemployable.

14:20 – LinkedIn Creates Furor When It Bars Photos Of Pretty Female Engineers

I guess LinkedIn thinks this young woman is too pretty to be an engineer. Morons.

07:32 – In what must be a complete coincidence, the morning paper reports that North Carolina authorities have shut down the abortion clinic in Asheville, which was the only one of the state’s 17 abortion clinics that met the new ambulatory surgery facility standards required to remain open. The religious nutters who control our state legislature have gotten their own way, in effect outlawing abortion. Let’s hope their contemptible “victory” doesn’t last long. I’ve already emailed Mr. Obama to suggest that he issue an Executive Order that any hospital that receives direct or indirect federal funding must provide timely, inexpensive abortions on demand or lose that federal funding.

The IMF is not supposed to throw money down ratholes. Its brief is to provide temporary, short-term loans to countries that find themselves in financial difficulties. One guiding principle for the IMF is that it is not supposed to lend any money unless and until the borrowing country’s debt burden can be put on a sustainable footing. On that basis, the IMF has violated its own rules by lending money to Greece and Portugal, neither of which has a sustainable debt burden.

Since before the first Greek bailout, it’s been clear to any rational person that Greece’s debt burden is unsustainable, and that any “loans” made to Greece were in fact gifts because no reasonable person could ever have expected them to be repaid. It is not within the IMF’s remit to grant gifts to bankrupt countries. The IMF proudly proclaims that every loan it has made has been repaid, but it’s been pretty clear for at least two years now that that record is at serious risk. One cannot get blood from a turnip, and Greece is definitely a turnip.

There have, no doubt, been heated private discussions within the IMF over the last couple of years about just this issue. Why should the IMF be loaning money to a bunch of deadbeats who have neither the intention nor the ability ever to pay it back? Well, Brazil, representing itself and 10 other Central- and South-American countries, has finally gone public.

Although the article doesn’t touch on it, the IMF violating its own lending rules is only part of Brazil’s problem. The other part of it, and probably the more important, is that Brazil and a lot of other countries wonder why the IMF is involved at all. Their point, and it’s certainly a valid one, is that the eurozone crisis is not an IMF problem; it’s a eurozone problem. The eurozone is much wealthier than many of the countries whose contributions to the IMF are being used to bailout eurozone countries. Why should poor countries subsidize bailouts for the wealthy eurozone? Good question, and the only reasonable answer is that they shouldn’t. The eurozone crisis is an internal eurozone problem. The IMF and other international bodies should not be involved, nor should non-eurozone EU countries, and the US certainly should not be involved, either directly or indirectly as the major funding source for the IMF. The eurozone created this mess; cleaning it up should be their problem, as should paying all the bills for that clean-up.

The fact that the managing director of the IMF is a former French finance minister probably explains a lot. Without Ms. Lagarde’s influence, I think it’s unlikely that the IMF would have intervened in the first place. It’s high time for her to withdraw the IMF from this mess. For a start, the IMF should provide no further funds to the eurozone. The next step is to require the eurozone itself immediately to repay all outstanding debts to the IMF owed by eurozone members.

08:07 – So, Republican Governor Pat McCrory, despite his campaign promise to oppose any further restrictions on abortion in North Carolina, now says he’ll sign the “compromise” NC Senate version of the anti-abortion bill. Weasel. He ran as a moderate Republican without ties to the Religious Right, but now here he is doing their bidding. Bastard.

Obama seems enamored of ruling via Executive Order. All he needs to do to solve the problems caused by Shiite Southern Baptists in North Carolina, Texas, and elsewhere is issue another Executive Order: any hospital or clinic that receives federal funding, directly or indirectly, must provide abortions on demand, in a timely manner, inexpensively, and without any restrictions whatsoever, or lose that federal funding.

09:33 – I was just reading an article in the paper about the US House splitting the farm subsidy and foodstamp programs into separate bills, for the first time in 40 years. Disregarding for a moment that both programs should be eliminated, I was struck by the absurdity of how much we’re spending on foodstamps. Apparently, about a fifth of North Carolinians receive foodstamps, although I don’t believe I’ve ever known someone who’d ever gotten them. If that ratio holds up nationwide, we’re spending $80 billion a year to give foodstamps to about 60 million people, or more than $1,300 annually per person. And those foodstamps can be spent on packaged foods, meat, and other foods that are expensive way out of proportion to their food value. There’s no way it costs more than $100/month to provide proper nutrition to one person, if we keep the choice of foods as inexpensive as possible.

We need to revisit what Republic Rome did to keep the head count fed. A subsidized grain dole, which any Roman citizen was entitled to, without means testing. Stand in line to get a chit, and then stand in another line to get the food package for the month. I’m guessing that if we distributed wheat, dry beans, and similarly cost-effective foods we could reduce the costs of this program by at least two thirds. Call it $30/month/person, or $1/day.

08:09 – I see the interest rate on subsidized federal student loans doubled yesterday, from 3.4% to 6.8%, bringing them in line with the rates charged on non-subsidized loans since 2007. Yet another failed federal program. As usual, it started with the best of intentions–making sure that qualified students could afford to attend college–and, also as usual, it quickly degenerated into a hopeless, expensive mess. The worst effect of this student-loan mess is never mentioned: it’s hugely increased the cost of a college education for everyone, including those of us who pay for it themselves.

One of the fundamental laws of economics is that when you subsidize something you get more of it. And, boy, have we gotten more college graduates out of this deal. The problem is, most of them aren’t qualified to do anything more than counter work at McDonalds or Starbucks, jobs that obviously don’t require a college education in the first place. These kids could have saved themselves a lot of time, money, and heartache by skipping college and going straight to work in the dead-end jobs that are all they’re qualified for anyway. And they wouldn’t have had tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to pay off.

The solution to this problem is easy, and should have been obvious all along. No taxpayer tuition subsidies and no federally-guaranteed student loans for students who choose to major in non-rigorous subjects. If you want to major in science or accounting or medicine or engineering or nursing or agriculture, fine. The taxpayers have an interest in maintaining an adequate supply of people qualified in these fields. If you want to major in English literature or sociology or European history or women’s studies, fine. Pay your own way. Don’t expect the taxpayers to pay for your four-year vacation, either directly via taxes that support state universities or indirectly by taxes that support federally-guaranteed student loans.

09:53 – I try not to pay attention to the economic news nowadays. It’s just too depressing. Europe is beyond salvaging, with the PIIGS in worse shape than ever, France going quickly down the tubes, and even Germany starting to show cracks in its foundation. The UK isn’t much better off, and would now be a basket case had it been foolish enough to join the euro. We’re watching as China and the rest of the BRICS implode, and Japan under Abenomics has lit a fuze that will almost certainly lead to the destruction of its economy.

Among major first-world nations, only the English-speaking trio of the US, Canada, and Australia seem likely to get through this mess, albeit not unscathed, and it’s no thanks to their politicians. And I have my doubts even about Australia, which has allowed itself to become far too closely linked to China’s tanking economy. Ah, well. As I’ve said before, the US and Canada can produce everything we need, so I think it’s unlikely that things will get really bad here. As for the rest of the world, I fear that the next five to ten years will see increasing poverty, rioting, revolutions, and wars. And there’s not a thing we can do about it other than get used to a lower standard of living and isolate ourselves as much as possible from the rest of the world.