jaywalker

corporal

rahrahrah Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > We have to accept that the deficit is going to be > an ongoing problem for some time. I agree with virtually everything rahrahrah; but there is a plan for the deficit. It is called inflation. Every time there is inflation one has to remember that the chief beneficiary is the economy's largest debtor: the government. Particularly, when combined with inappropriately low interest rates so new government debt can be serviced for next to nothing. Problem is that this creates massive distortions of the kind you mention, and the IFS are worried about today (those who will suffer are those who cannot wage-bargain). The elephant in the room is what you say about immigration. We have an absolute need of it (economically - I would also say socially); but it has become unacceptable. Oh dear - perhaps that was time for political leadership. But we did not and will not get it. I also agree with you ???? - that there was no meltdown. I see it rather as a slow-motion crash of epic proportions (with impact probably still a couple of years away). Rather like you are on a plane and the engines cut out but you can glide over the ocean for while before the inevitable. Time even for a couple of glasses of champagne and some escape fantasies. But also that the EU may well not exist by next summer even if we have not by then triggered article 50 - as you say, events. We may well try to brexit at exactly the same time as other countries are trying to re-forge alliances. A North European Free Trade Association perhaps (encompassing Scandinavia and Germany) - not France if they go mad with the national front.

The question is whether there will be enough residual moments where judgement is required rather than rule. Driving is heavily rule-based; but not entirely so. To make it entirely rule-based would probably require banning humans - certainly to optimise it. I'd be all in favour: there is a simple statistic about road deaths to make the comparison. One advantage is that entirely computer-driven cars will be able to go MUCH faster in non-residential areas, perhaps the speed limit could be raised to 120 or so. And my cat will be a great deal safer in east Dulwich! The general effect will be MUCH reduced congestion, no parking problems etc (cars can go off and park themselves somewhere out of the way even when owned). The other advantage is that one will no longer own a car unless one wants to make the statement (I really don't). So I can sell my car and start renting (as with so much else, property is looking outdated). I can treat myself to a ride in some bling one day, or in a utility vehicle the next. This mirrors other situations: underground trains, planes, medical advice. I'm really looking forward to not having to worry about driving.

The ?60bn extra deficit forecast is based on a 'we don't know what's going to happen to the economy' when we actually brexit but we think it will be much the same as before. The forecast will therefore be the mean around a normal distribution of outcomes in the model - but this is precisely a Taleb situation in which there is no underlying probability distribution (not even just 'fat tails'). That is, the UK has been put in a situation in which complex non-linear feedback processes (the mythical 'the economy') will shift from a current relatively stable state to something completely different (like water to steam, or as here, one fears, ice). No one knows what that will look like (it might be good, it might be horrific: but there are enough signs that the economy is getting cold not hot to make the whole thing look deeply worrying.

I forgot to mention warmth. This is a real issue with cats (they are descendants of desert cats, hence the Cheshire weird orange look of some). You can tell exactly when they have 1 degree warmth too much because they ruffle their fur like opening a ventilation window. On this basis, the optimum temperature for my cat is 21.5C. This does raise a problem: after a Spartan boarding school youth (cold showers, no curtains or carpets, the lot) my optimum temp is 18.5C (if I want to sleep). So we sleep in different rooms ...

byte

perhaps they are benefitting from the fall in sterling? so we may see that we cannot afford to live, only tourists here. thank you brexiteers: we will watch the wealth of tourists with wonder.

I am not at all sure why ?120bn or so (or even x5 that) is of any interest in the current situation. We are rushing fast towards the cliff edge (oh dear, did May really say that?) and so borrowing an additional one tenth of our annual income to put the breaks on would seem to be quite a modest proposal (especially at negative real interest rates).

i'm not sure where this recipe comes from, but it has enormous nostalgia for me. I do not think it would go down well on Masterchef :-). Take a packet of ginger biscuits. Soak them in (real) coffee and brandy for a while re-arrange as in a packet of biscuits. cover in a tin of chestnut puree (available in the ED Cheese shop if not elsewhere) cover the whole lot in whipped double-cream (whip to a peak) grate real chocolate over the top. (keep everything cold - i.e do not put cream on biscuits if still warm from coffee!)

a vat cut to zero would offset that :-). but the increase in disposable income is not of any relevance to the post - it would be pre-announced that it would be taken away again later (so only a marginal discounting effect on the perceived time horizon). As to the suppliers, they are not passing all the price increases caused by the sterling fall (even the MNUs, as we have seen) so there is a symmetry with the price falls in the event of a vat cut.

I agree it would be a bit of a gimmick, although the effect is presumably more on aggregate supply (if the policy is time consistent it cannot have a significant effect on AD as you say)- the idea in the original post was to smooth the inflation path.

East Dulwich branch of Kwit Fit have been superb twice in recent months fixing small but urgent things for me on the spot and without charge. And for my regular service about half the cost of what I used to have to pay an 'official' garage for my car type. One tends to be cynical about garages; but this one is exceptionally helpful.

bolt

methamphetamine

Aztec

Very interesting and worrying post Loz. These lagged effects are so dangerous because the government has no good way of reacting to them in a timely way: as we have seen countless times in the past they end up often making things worse (Barber, Healey, Lawson, ...) It seems to me that cutting VAT is an interesting idea. Presumably this would be reversible on the assumption that the pound has overshot downwards (as it is inclined to do). So when we reach the promised sunlit uplands of true Brexit and the pound rises again, and import prices fall, full rates of VAT could be restored. This would smooth out the inflation path. And smoothing it out is all-important given that inflation tends to be self-fulfilling via wage demands (particularly when you are restricting migrant labour and have printed so much money). Trouble is that the OBR will point out the contribution this will make to what is already an unsustainable fiscal position. Gilt yields are already rising - I guess they have some way further to go. The BoE could find that it no longer sets interest rates (if it curtails printing cash and the gilt market gets the jitters). And we have huge household indebtedness - so the real economy is at enormous risk from the ensuing rise in interest rates.

DaveR Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > "Ensure a Platonic hierarchy of everyone in their > proper place" > > That's not what Platonic hierarchy means > "Believe in autochthonous powers." > > And this doesn't really make sense, or at least it > doesn't mean what you evidently think it does. The reference to hierarchy is The Republic. The hierarchy of position Plato argues for there is quite insidious I think (the idea that we are born to express already acquired essence and should accept our pre-ordained place once this has been determined). If that is not accurately described as a Platonic hierarchy in the context of my sentence I do not know why and - as ever - you have not said why, just that it means something else (you do not say what). Why I wonder did the word 'autochthonous' occur to me whilst I was writing that post? Did I look up a word to irritate you (or to try to impress others)? No. Did it occur to me spontaneously in the act of writing? Yes. I was writing about the sense that we are fine to go it alone on the basis of some atavistic myth that the UK population is not a collection of mongrel genes assembled contingently and through migration (how else?) so that we can 'get our country back' and its powers. It seems perfectly reasonable to me to use the word autochthonous here: looking on Google, people use this word in comparable ways: e.g. "autochthonous thought". The dictionary says: "indigenous rather than descended from migrants or colonists" (Google) and that was exactly the sense it had in my sentence, even if the phrase "autochthonous powers" fails your category of 'conventional meaning' (not sure how this is derived). I guess it will be atavistic next ... I do wonder if, when you say my posts "do not have any coherent meaning if the words are understood in the conventional way" and the repeated use of the criticism "literally makes no sense" imply that you have a slightly rigid view of the process of signification. No word has a fixed meaning, all words are saturated with AND DESTABILISED BY the metonymic and metaphoric associations in the local contexts of their use. To suggest otherwise is simply to try to bureaucratise language to some sense on which we always-already agreed.

gaiters

The one I really loved this week was the news that, with record and rising employment, 19 out of 20 new jobs are going to FOREIGNERS (the word used in the headlines). So of course, all we have to do is implement immigration controls and those jobs will grow at the same rate (with the UK outside the EU ... ) with OUR PEOPLE (who in the popular press, which includes of course the unspeakable Telegraph and Times, have rather particular characteristics). I am not sure what these press views are based upon, but my guess is that it is an adolescent mercantilist phantasy. Gather close to ourselves (those who know we are of the same essence) to stop incursion. Build fences (Calais) and walls (Mexico). Treasure our island state. Dream of perfect order. Ensure a Platonic hierarchy of everyone in their proper place (grammar schools will achieve this). Stop prisons being so 'soft' (dear god). Forget the pragmatic alliance with Europe. Stand on principle. Believe in autochthonous powers.

clog

er, right. quids, is this just cognitive dissonance on your part? the Times today reports decisions already-taken to move financial HQs to Dublin (of course!) Google announced that their decision was conditional on free-movement of appropriately qualified labour (oh the irony of the recent May failed trade talks given that their CEO is Indian) The inflation figure was unchanged (unless you think the CPI a good measure of the cost of living - if you do then you are in cloud-cuckoo land) with all commentators agreeing there is significant pressure in the pipeline (what do you expect with the sterling depreciation, no cost effects ??). And, strangely not mentioned by you, the headline in the FT today. Er, a hole in the public finances so big it will scupper all May's plans completely unless there is a huge rise in interest rates to ensure a market for the gilts they will have to sell (and that in an economy with record indebtedness). Dr Pangloss had nothing on you quids.

barbed-wire

gown

handkerchief

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