Mitt Romney's halo

[stamper]

At the Torie's conference yesterday the ruling parties leader - UK prime minister - stated that he wasn't here to defend privilege but he was here to promote it. Talk about rubbing salt in the wounds. It will be a privilege to see his demise along with his supporters.

[Chairman Bill]

You started it.

I know, I posted a photo & asked about crap photoshopping!

[stamper]

What do you think would happen if you posted an image & asked about sex1

[Rob C]

Stamper, it must be the Scottish dictionary that's confusing your listening/interpretative powers.

Anyway, diehard obsolete socialism apart, here's something from today's Spanish tv news which quite upset my lunch. Or as stamper may suspect, made it? Not.

In the city of La Coruña they are advertising a job for a qualified engineer, with very good English for €500 per month. yes, that's right, per month. Six grand a year.

"..Una oferta de 500 euros al mes para un ingeniero con experiencia
..Por Redacción
 .Entradas .Por Redacción | Yahoo! Finanzas – Hace 3 horas
....Correo electrónico
Share16Imprimir.....Que el empleo se haya precarizado en España no es ninguna noticia, pero a veces la ficción traspasa la realidad cuando se publican algunas ofertas de trabajo en los diversos portales de empleo. Una de ellas, subida a Infojobs el martes pasado, ha desatado la polémica: 500 euros brutos al mes (6.000 al año) para un Ingeniero Técnico de Obras Públicas con dos años de experiencia como jefe de obra, nivel muy alto de inglés y disponibilidad geográfica total que tendría que trabajar a jornada completa.

La cantidad, más que para un puesto de este tipo, podría pertenecer perfectamente a una beca a tiempo parcial y es irrisoria si la comparamos con el salario bruto medio anual en España (22.790,2 euros en 2010, según el INE), incluso con el más frecuente (16.500), por no hablar de los 40.000 -50.000 euros que cobra de media un ingeniero en otros países como Alemania.

La empresa, que en la oferta no se identifica, se presenta como una importante compañía en crecimiento con 1.300 trabajadores; el puesto, según se detalla, ofrece un proyecto de desarrollo profesional a nivel nacional e internacional desde La Coruña."

The punchline? In 24 hours they received 183 applications.

Hey friggin' ho.

Rob C

[Chairman Bill]

€500 per month? No doubt that employee will need significant government (taxpayer) benefits to top-up a wage that won't even cover a month's rent, let alone anything more. Then the Spanish equivalent of the Daily Hate Mail will complain about benefit scroungers costing the country a fortune.

Being an obsolete socialist, I see it as a state hand-out to business, cutting business costs, maximising employer profits. More privatisation of profit, socialisation of debt. Which is pretty much how we got where we are now.

[RSL]

The fiscal multiplier during such times might be as high as 1.5-1.7 ... Not the 0.5 as many people believed.

See the IMF's recent World Economic Outlook.

Jeremy, there IS no "fiscal multiplier." If there were, our economy would be booming to the point of explosion by now. It amazes me how people who were taught Keynes's theories in school can't seem to shake the multiplier theory in spite of the evidence directly in front of their eyes. It's an academic abstraction that sounds so good nobody wants to admit it's wrong. It's a freebie, and everybody loves freebies. All sorts of con-men have made their fortunes on that principle. Some of them are in the IMF.

[jeremypayne]

Jeremy, there IS no "fiscal multiplier." If there were, our economy would be booming to the point of explosion by now. It amazes me how people who were taught Keynes's theories in school can't seem to shake the multiplier theory in spite of the evidence directly in front of their eyes. It's an academic abstraction that sounds so good nobody wants to admit it's wrong. It's a freebie, and everybody loves freebies. All sorts of con-men have made their fortunes on that principle. Some of them are in the IMF.

What you say above makes a nice political soundbite, but is intellectually vacant.

It would appear your ability to respond to new information has been compromised by your political ideology.  That's a shame ... you should never close your mind like that.

[RSL]

Oh dear, you're doing what psychologists call "projection" Jeremy. It's a dysfunction often found on the political left. It seems to go along with an inability to distinguish observable fact from theory.

[Chairman Bill]

Oh dear, you're doing what psychologists call "projection" Jeremy. It's a dysfunction often found on the political left. It seems to go along with an inability to distinguish observable fact from theory.

Would you care to offer some evidence to support that assertion? Me being a lefty psychologist an' all, I'm interested to know

[RSL]

The evidence is right in front of you Bill. All you have to do is compare what Jeremy's saying against economic conditions in both Europe and the US. If Jeremy were able to respond to new information he'd realize that pumping funny money into our economies, rather than improving them is trashing them. "New information" to Jeremy would be the observable fact that there's no such thing as a Keynesian "multiplier." I can't comment on the significance of his "political ideology," but I think the situation speaks for itself.

[Chairman Bill]

The evidence I was asking for was with regard to the assertion that 'projection' is a dysfunction often found on the political left, and that it goes with an inability to distinguish between theory & fact.

BTW, one difference between theory & fact, is that theories explain facts. That's why I think theories are more important than mere facts.

[RSL]

With respect to the first statement, as I said before, Jeremy is illustrating the answer to your question. Jeremy is a member of the political left -- he's said so himself -- and he's projecting his inability to distinguish between theory and fact. He's hanging on to the Keynesian multiplier theory in the face of clear evidence that no such thing exists.

And I wouldn't go so far as to say that theories "explain" facts. I think that sometimes theories help to organize facts so that they can be understood -- however provisionally. But, for instance, the flat earth theory doesn't "explain" the fact that the earth is round any more than Keynes's multiplier theory "explains" the fact that our economy is in tragic condition.

[Chairman Bill]

And you don't think that such a limited data set is insufficient to justify a blanket statement of the kind, 'projection' is a dysfunction often found on the political left, and that it goes with an inability to distinguish between theory & fact?

And a theory is something that accounts for data. It explains facts. The best of them make testable predictions too. 'Flat Earth Theory' explains nothing, and is a misuse of the word 'theory'

[RSL]

Really? Flat earth theory explains why when you look out over the cornfield the earth looks flat. It's a typical theory. It accounts for the data available to the theorist. That's all any theory does.

As far as the other thing is concerned, it's a theory Bill. It accounts for the data available to me when I came up with the theory.

[Chairman Bill]

But flat earth theory doesn't account for the data, just a very limited bit of data. View the earth from high up, look out over the ocean, and the world looks less flat. There's other data. Ships' sails appear over the horizon before we see the ship. If the earth was flat, we'd find an edge, and in the absence of an edge, we could expect the earth to stretch into infinity, with some edges getting burned by the sun, others disappearing off into the cold vastness of space.

So it doesn't account for the data. What it does do is show the danger of trying to construct a theory based on a very limited data set.

[RSL]

Yes, if you go up in an airplane and look out over the edge of the world it soon becomes clear that the earth isn't flat. Same thing if you're at sea and you watch a ship rise over the horizon. And when you have that much more data you can revise your theory. But if you live in Kansas and you've never been up in an airplane and you've never been beyond your cornfield, the data you have available would lead you to theorize that the earth is flat. In fact, if you had any other theory on the basis of those data you'd probably be considered a crank or a crackpot.

And yes, people used to think that the earth had an edge. I even once saw a woman with a T-shirt that said: on the front: "Minot, North Dakota isn't the end of the earth," and on the back: "But you can see it from there."

[Chairman Bill]

... I even once saw a woman with a T-shirt that said: on the front: "Minot, North Dakota isn't the end of the earth," and on the back: "But you can see it from there."

 

[Rob C]

€500 per month? No doubt that employee will need significant government (taxpayer) benefits to top-up a wage that won't even cover a month's rent, let alone anything more. Then the Spanish equivalent of the Daily Hate Mail will complain about benefit scroungers costing the country a fortune.

Being an obsolete socialist, I see it as a state hand-out to business, cutting business costs, maximising employer profits. More privatisation of profit, socialisation of debt. Which is pretty much how we got where we are now.

That’s a strange conclusion to arrive at, Bill.

There is no money for handouts from the State; that’s why it’s now the second-bottom country in economic terms, next to Greece.

It’s the very State’s lunacy in making employment such an expensive tax burden upon employers that’s the problem; that’s why there is such an enormous black economy here: companies simply can’t afford the levy on employees, and the self-employed pay a rate that would bring tears to the eyes of a similarly placed self-employed person in the UK. I know; I paid both sets of National Insurances for several years. So, the private individual can't pay the costs of the job he needs someone to do for him plus the VAT on top of it, and the result is that the job still gets done, but minus the invoice and the VAT charge, so over-taxation costs government lost revenue.

(But then, you and I know perfectly well that there is no way that a political attitude can ever be changed by exposure to the realities of life – it’s something that comes from background and is borne out in the way that experience is interpreted, so let’s not fight each other on this.)

If Spain had a problem re. employment, it was with its public servants. You should experience standing in a queue at the offices where they used to issue residency permits in the old days; I swear that I can remember standing at a window that carried a Closed notice whilst the pert young lady sitting at the desk behind it sipped coffee, chatted and did her nails. And the jobs of those people were fireproof. I hear an echo from across the Channel…

Private businesses here are very family-based and only if they grow quite large will they stretch to employing other people. However, the country is not safe from the generation thing associated with family firms: speaking to a local furniture shop owner one day, he remarked that times were getting difficult because of the fact that the founders of these businesses worked, the second generation more or less held steady but the third was often the final, refusing to work but wanting to enjoy the fruits, hence the fashion for BMWs. Then, when the business bled dry and folded, they would find jobs in the Town Hall and tell other people how to run their businesses.

It’s all so bloody familiar.

Rob C

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... No doubt that employee will need significant government (taxpayer) benefits to top-up a wage that won't even cover a month's rent, let alone anything more...

Right on, Bill. The welcome package for new Walmart employees contains instructions how to apply for food stamps and other government-sponsored programs.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... there is no way that a political attitude can ever be changed by exposure to the realities of life – it’s something that comes from background and is borne out in the way that experience is interpreted...

But that is true only for the opponent's views, right Rob?