The Anti-Targ

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

Sounds like someone thinks Prigozhin had a pretty sweet set up and wants to do similar but thinks he's smart enough to avoid how that ended.

On the charging of parents for stuff their kids do - that's only justifiable imo when the parent is an accessory to the crime. Providing a murder weapon after being aware of the issues seems sufficient to be that, but not for any of the other scenarios discussed. And that really should be the framing - the conviction is as an accessory not as a parent.

Don't most countries already have laws and [badly underfunded] agencies for dealing with delinquent parents who are not necessarily guilty of committing a crime? Here it's called removal orders (or something like that) where kids get taken into state care, because as bad as state care can be it's better for the child's welfare than staying with their parent(s).

I'm not sure if skipping school alone has ever risen to the degree of seriousness that it has lead to a removal order, but the fact is, there are legal parental standards and obligations that if not met can mean parents lose the ability to [keep] screw[ing] up their kids. We can discuss where the line should be for placing a removal order, but people should not pretend for the purposes of pontificating about bad parents being allowed to get away with stuff that there is no legal accountability or that legal accountabilities are not enforced. 

Also, apparently live on air Hannity shows and celebrates a New York vigilante group assaulting a man, allegedly because he shoplifted and is an illegal immigrant when it turns out the man is a US citizen /or legal resident and there has been no police confirmation of shoplifting. Let's hope there is some criminal justice applied to the appropriate people here.

18 minutes ago, ants said:

The advantage is being in a group which will value success. One where the teachers presumably give a damn. Rather than a shitty government school where half the teachers treat it as just a job, most of the class have no major ambitions, unless you’re good at sport there is no acclaim, and most of the class will deride you for trying to learn and do well. 
 

I finished top 2% in Victoria in my year so you can do it. But I also swore if I ever had kids I’d never send them to a standard government school. And my parents were upper middle class so I had significant non-school support and encouragement. 

That is a completely inaccurate generalisation of state schools. The state school I went to, and the one my sons went to basically placed no career / life goal value on sports, and the teachers were generally committed to the educational success of their students and very competent in their subject areas. It is true, however, that both of these schools were by a significant margin majority white and Asian. But our schools weren't even among the top academic performing state schools. I am pretty sure New Zealand is not the only country where many / most state schools place high value on academic achievement, and whose students do attain high academic achievement both at school and in tertiary education.

I can't claim to be a student of the teachings of Sun Tzu, but it seems like it might be consistent with some aspect of the Art of War for Ukraine to talk confidently about a summer offensive both for it's supposed allies and Russia to hear.

It's allies want to hear confidence on the part of Ukraine in order to keep up pro-Ukraine PR to their voting public and give head room for continuing to send military and non-military aid. Ukraine needs Russia to think Ukraine is confident so that Russia at least has moments of pause about throwing so many resources into a winter/spring meat grinder that will drain Ukraine's resources and make it even harder for a summer offensive to happen. I think I thought last summer would be a definitive period to determine how the war would play out to its end point. Clearly I was wrong. But maybe this summer will be it, because this summer will really test Ukraine's support countries' abilities to keep providing Ukraine with the hardware and tech to eventually push Russia out of Ukraine.

I'm still leaning towards Ukraine not being able to succeed without allied countries putting boots on the ground behind front lines and in front line support / logistics roles in Ukraine at least, so that more Ukraine troops can be deployed to the front line. I think at some point there will need to be some way to reduce the military personnel numbers deficit, and I think that can't happen drawing solely from the Ukrainian population.

49 minutes ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:

So basically all of human history. 

Indeed, but the situation is coming to a head. The time of certain privileged classes and countries being able to act with impunity without consequences coming back onto them is fast* coming to an end. The only question is whether those in the positions of privilege will give it up willingly and peacefully or whether a world shaking conflagration will be how it all comes crashing down.

I think I have some notion of what's more likely.

*By fast I mean fast relative to the timescale of all human history. It's likely shit is going to drag on for our lifetime and possibly even the lifetime of the next generation. Though global warming will likely accelerate the process. I expect to be dead, of natural causes, by or not long after 2050. I'm not confident of any truly momentous and transformational shake up happening before then.

16 minutes ago, drawkcabi said:

Steve Shives just said this in his latest video, I don't know if he was quoting someone else, but it's a pretty damn good quote:

"Sometimes success is the result of being able to choose the failure you can survive over the one you can't"

He was talking about an episode of Star Trek but then he was like "yeah, I'm really talking about the upcoming election..."

WRT Gaza, I'm not entirely sure there is a survivable failure, via the US elections, for those whose lives are actually in danger. The difference between Biden and Trump in this, it seems to me, is Biden can't do anything to solve this problem, Trump has no interest in even wanting to try. The US is shackled to always allowing Israel to pretty much do what it wants, no matter how bad, and to block as far as possible any actions other countries want to take (e.g. using security council veto).

No one who wants to fundamentally change the nature of the US-Israel relationship will ever get close to being elected President, and no party will ever be able to stitch together a majority in congress to pass legislation to bring Israel to heel.

It seems like politics for pre-schoolers that even if you believe trans-women are men and trans-men are women, you don't rub it in the face of the parents of a murder victim who was murdered because she was trans.

But worse still the PM being deliberately transphobic in the House of Commons, basically giving the impression (confirmation?) that govt policy is transphobia, puts all trans people in danger... sorry I mean even more danger than they were already in. Just another step in the dehumanisation of the trans community.

Is it not possible, regardless of your position on the legitimacy of trans-ness, for all politicians to at least agree that the govt should not endanger the life or health of any law abiding people? That seems like it should be a given, it's not even asking govt to protect the lives of all, just don't do or say anything to endanger them.

3 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

Yes, it's obvious that it's wokeness that is the problem here. /s

Also,

ETA: only just saw that the person setting the "end wokeness" user straight is none other than the QAnon Shaman! It just keeps getting better and better!

Who wasn't a bisexual who preferred men back then? You study that region and that time period enough you can be forgiven for coming away with the impression that women / marriage was for producing heirs, men were for fun and pleasure.

4 hours ago, Hmmm said:

True. America's reputation as an ally has already taken a huge hit. With ugly ramifications. 

I still think that if Trump loses in November he might finally get jettisoned by the Republicans. Or at least lose enough of his influence to no longer be able to scare moderate Republicans into doing his bidding like now. At some point, even a lot of his real supporters should get second thoughts about supporting a movement that just keeps losing. 

If Trump loses in November and Congress does it's job in January '25, then Trump is gone forever as a political force, IMO, there's no shot he is in line for the 2028 nomination after a failure in 2024. He either takes the White House by hook or by crook this year or he's out forever. The question is whether MAGA disappears as well.

20 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Do no US states still stream students? We had streaming here in Canada when I was a teen. By grade 8 your life was taken over - you went into the university stream if you attended certain schools, or there was the “commerce” stream where you were sent to become a secretary or other office worker, and if you were deemed too stupid to handle the course loads, they sent you to a technical school to learn to be a mechanic or a woodworker or something. Lots of parents put their kids into the Catholic high school system because they were pissed off at what the school boards decided for their kids.

Iirc, Germany did that, though I think they also wanted smart kids in the technical schools, and I think a number of Asian countries do it, particularly Japan. Which is why terrified parents push their kids hard to get them in a good school. I think there’s an element of what school district you live in as well, everyone wants to live where the good schools are.

Good lord that's awful!

There is streaming here but only within a school and only a few schools do it beyond maths streaming (I was always the worst maths student in the highest maths stream). Any student from any school can go to any university and apply for any degree course, provided they have the grades in the relevant subjects. And every state high school provides all of the core senior HS subjects (maths, English, phys, chem, bio) and all of the main non-core subjects (history, geography, 2 or more foreign languages, music, art, sports "science", tech). The less competent high school seniors do statistics as their maths subject, the braniacs do calculus. I did stats, both my sons did calc and they scoff at my lowly stats brain . As long as you do well enough in either you can apply for medical school, but if you only do stats you'll have to take remedial calc if you want to do a maths or physics degree.

5 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Going back to the Michigan verdict.

If you give your underage kid a firearm, then you should be responsible for what he does with it. Esp. if there are that many red flags, and you mouth off to school officials and then instead of taking away his new toy you send him an encouraging text lol not mad at you, but make sure you don't get caught. Then you have acted so without any regard for the lives of the other children at that school that you most certainly should spend some time in jail.

Seems the parent is rightly convicted of being an accessory to murder, as would anyone who did these things regardless of familial connection, not convicted of being a delinquent parent. So the right to be a delinquent parent remains, so long as that delinquency doesn't include committing actual crimes of your own.

The post code aspect of state schools is also a terrible indictment on the education system. That's a really hard nut to crack. My wife started professional life as an English teacher with a bit of music teaching on the side, and now she's mostly a music teacher with a bit of English on the side. She has taught in some of the lowest socio-economic schools in the country. She knew kids who had great potential, but for many of them they didn't get close to that potential largely because of their social environment, dysfunctional families, other family pressures, poverty, lack of role models to help create a vision that higher education, professional qualifications are legitimate aspirations, largely things that are going on outside the school boundary, which no matter what the school tries to do it can't mitigate all those negative factors dragging these students down. There is a perception among parents that if their child is a promising student the only way for them to achieve is to gain admission into one of the prestige state schools. Some of the prestige state schools have established out of zone "scholarships" for students from poor areas. As a state school there's not that much of a cost to going to the prestige schools because they are still state funded, though they have annual "voluntary" donations charged to parents, so the "scholarship" waives the "voluntary" donation. 

@Crixus I didn't intend to be judgemental of you or your family, my intention was to rail against the multiple injustices of the system that winds up with families who will struggle and make sacrifices to get their kids an overpriced education because of the benefits of being at those schools, which have nothing at all to do with educational achievements, i.e. it should not matter where you get your A-levels from. Sadly in many ways it does matter where you get your A-levels from. So I do not judge or criticise people for doing what they think is necessary to get their children the best opportunities. I only criticise the social order that makes such things almost necessary.

And some people still think they can argue that we have equality of opportunity. My arse!

On 2/5/2024 at 1:50 AM, Jeor said:

I sort of get what you're saying but I struggle with this part of it. Unless you are in some completely self-sufficient economy (and Australia certainly isn't), the exchange rate matters. Proponents of MMT and so forth often forget that virtually no economy runs in a vacuum and that global confidece in a country's currency has a major effect.

A government that runs long, systemic deficits will have a falling currency. If the objective is to always create more money to make payments, that currency quickly becomes worthless. Why would an international investor put money into Australia if the Australian government keeps flooding the market with more and more created AUD? An international investor will demand higher yields to offset this, this creates a falling currency, a big rise in the cost of imports, and in the long run, hyperinflation. Then you have a trade crisis like the one that befell Sri Lanka recently, who couldn't pay for imported medicines, fuel, etc.

Now, if you had a completely self-sufficient economy that could manage itself, then this would have more of a chance of working, but even so the inflation spiral would start when fiscal discipline gets out of hand and the yields on government bonds keep rising.

 

The MMT school requires a floating exchange rate for a fiat monetary system to work properly. Confidence in a country is all about confidence in the economy, not with how much money is in the system. It's also wrong to characterise this as advocating flooding the system with money any time the government wants to. Governments have to spend money on procuring goods and services that will be of benefit to the public, transport infrastructure, health system, housing, education, science and research etc. Handing money out for nothing in return (which is what govt bonds are, passive income for the rich) is not what MMT advocates.

1 minute ago, mormont said:

 

The thing about that is, these kids then go to uni and struggle academically. Getting in the door doesn't help if you don't have the ability. That's part of the reason why entrance qualifications are a poor predictor of your university grades. 

I meant get them across the line for graduating high school and coming out with some marketable skills. I wasn't imagining them going to university.

Interesting that the only federal laws "reasonable" republicans are willing to entertain are the ones that ban abortion. So People like Haley aren't looking for consensus at all, at least not consensus with Democrats.

I'm utterly unconvinced that there is educational value for money in private schools, except for the borderline idiots for whom going to a private school might get them across the line. If you have a good home life, parents committed to their children's education, you're inherent EQ and IQ are above average and a decent state school you will go far.

I am convinced that having "X" school alumnus beside your name opens doors, because there are people who care about that kind of thing.

My kids went to state school, one is a civil engineer soon to be chartered the other is doing their PhD in chemistry. Me and my siblings went to state school, I'm a vet, my sister is a lawyer, my brother did a physics PhD, my youngest brother has a successful business (no university degree but he's richer than the rest of us), and one brother is very smart, but lazy as fuck so has mostly been without a job his adult life. Mine was also the first generation on both sides of the family to go to university. We got there because of our ability and effort. It could be I live in a country that is more of a meritocracy than many. There's not much classism here. Perhaps in places where class is more of the thing the name of the school you attended has a bigger influence on your future.

The one thing we're not is "connected", but that's more choice than lack of opportunity.

4 hours ago, Jeor said:

I read your earlier post as well as this one, and I'm not quite sure I follow. I get that there is a difference in purpose in how you might view taxation (more as controlling the economy appropriately, rather than trying to pay for spending), but in practice, is this really any different? It seems if you're looking for low taxes and high spending you're inevitably going to run up large government deficits.

How would this system deal with large systemic deficits? The USA has run lots of high deficits lately, but they are the world's reserve currency so have not had much trouble financing them. In other countries like Australia, large, continual deficits would push down our exchange rate, make imports much more expensive (hence increase inflation), push up government bonds, and increase the interest rate on the government debt. If the government was seen not to worry about large deficits and hence not be "good" to pay off the debt (or could only pay it off through printing more money), that would lead into a debt spiral, currency crash, and hyperinflation. It sounds like Modern Monetary Theory to me which I must admit I'm not very convinced by.

Search "The deficit myth" get a full, first hand, understanding of what people like Stephanie Kelton and Warren Mosler are saying.

The first question to answer is why do govt deficits matter (for the Australian federal (and NZ) govts)? The deficit is just the difference between what the govt spends and what it receives by way of taxation, fees, levvies, fines etc. They key thing is the federal govt is the sole producer of the thing that it is both spending and receiving. If the govt is the monopoly producer of money, why does it need to collect what it produces from us for it to spend the money? So, if the govt doesn't need tax in order to spend, what does it need tax for? The govt absolutely does need to collect tax, but it doesn't need to tax to balance the budget.

The true reason a govt needs to tax is hugely important to understand in order to then answer the question: who and what needs to be taxed, how much tax should be collected and in what proportion from each part of the economy? Though the answer to that also very much depends on how sensible the govt is in its spending. The wiser and more sensible a govt is in spending the less it needs to tax.

Tax creates demand for the currency, the only way you can pay your tax is with money (you can't pay tax in eggs, gold or bitcoin). If you have no tax liability you have no need of money, but it's very hard to live a decent life in NZ or Aus without having a tax liability placed on you from somewhere. Tax gives money value. When the AUD replaced the AU pound the only reason to suddenly universally buy and sell things in dollars in the private sector was because the govt stopped accepting tax payments in pounds and would only accept tax payments in dollars, and the only way for people to physically get dollars was for the govt print shit loads of them and hand them out to everyone. They exchanged them for pounds, which the govt simply then incinerated (or shredded) as they were completely useless to the govt as soon as they were handed over. Thus the pound's value went to zero immediately on the introduction of the dollar, even though there would still be lots of pound notes out there that people could accept for payment if they wanted. But why would you when you can't pay tax with those pounds? Anyone hoarding pound notes under their mattress would just have useless, highly combustible mattress stuffing, unless they went to a bank to exchange the pounds for dollars within the window of time the govt had allotted for making such exchanges. 

Govts can always make any payment so long as the debt is denominated in that govt's currency. Govts should avoid taking on debt in any other currency. Govt bonds issued in AUD are merely passive income for people who are already rich. Tax helps to control inflation. Tax is required to manage the money supply aspect of inflation, but that is only part of what contributes to inflation. The trick is to know how much and what to tax in order to keep inflation within the boundaries the govt sets as sustainable long term. Another effect of govt spending on inflation is what the govt is spending money on. If the govt is building houses and roads and hospitals and schools it is competing with the private sector of access to those resources. That will also have an inflationary effect if govt procurement leads to an excess of demand over supply. So the govt needs to watch its resource demand, probably more so than it's deficit.

Deficit is a scary word for people, because in our own lives deficit means we have less today than we did yesterday. But for the govt money deficit means money surplus in the private sector, money surplus for the govt means money deficit in the private sector. The terrible and highly inaccurate analogy many on the right especially use is saying govts are like households, and so should be run like households. That analogy has been so harmful because govts are nothing like households and should never be seen or run as such.

Total US cattle herd drops to lowest level since 1951 - USDA | Nasdaq

Quote

Total US cattle herd drops to lowest level since 1951 - USDA

CHICAGO, Jan 31 (Reuters) - The total number of U.S. cattle fell to its lowest level since 1951 as of Jan. 1, in the herd's fifth consecutive year of decline, U.S. Department of Agriculture data showed on Wednesday.

Ranchers have slashed their herds as dry weather in the western U.S. reduced the land available for grazing and raised feeding costs, tightening cattle supplies and pushing up beef prices.

Interesting. I wonder if global warming is basically going to force methane emitting animal farming to diminish as the areas of the world that can sustain such farming reduce because of hot and dry conditions, esp in areas that were pretty marginal before there were any significant warming effects. US cattle herd (dairy and beef) has been on a declining trend since 1998, and currently sits at about 10% below the 1998 level. So long as the fossil fuel burning sectors do their bit ruminant farming only needs to decrease somewhat as a GW mitigation. Since the world has been so bad at dealing with fossil emissions the farming side might not need a whole lot of deliberate action because the attrition will happen automatically. Though reducing emissions per animal through various scientific advancements should definitely continue.

Of course the above article comes from the perspective that this drop is not good and talks hopefully about the herd size going back up, but even if it does bounce up a bit I don't see the numbers getting close to the 1998 level again.

Also, it's not socialism.

On 1/31/2024 at 1:53 AM, Jeor said:

Yes, stamp duty is a scourge that should be abolished. The land tax that Perrottet introduced in NSW wasn't a bad idea and would have been much fairer over the long run, not to mention potentially free up mobility.

The fundamental problem of tax reform is that no one would ever want less money in their pocket, and no one would ever want lower quality government services or support. Hence the need to tinker around the edges and only hit small segments of the population. I actually think "reform" is more geared towards hitting the rich rather than the poor. America is a weird outlier on this but in a compulsory voting democracy like Australia, the Albo plan of changing Stage 3 was made easier by the fact that only 10% of the population were worse off while 90% were better off.

If Albo wants to get rid of negative gearing, now might actually be the time to do it. People are already asking questions. There is a fair bit of support in the electorate for abolishing negative gearing (or at least limiting it to only one property) because, fairly or unfairly, it's seen as a major driver of the housing affordability crisis and he wants to be seen as doing something like that. 

If he's broken a couple of promises (superannuation, Stage 3), he may as well go the whole hog and go for negative gearing, franking credits, CGT reductions...

In other news, the Future Fund now will have Greg Combet as chairman taking over from a retiring Costello. I hope the Fund doesn't become a political warchest to spend on whatever priorities the government of the day has, or is liquidated just to retire government debt. I'd rather have a large asset and a larger liability, rather than no asset and a large liability. At least with an asset you have a chance to grow faster than the debt.

Of course, within limits, once people stop believing the "tax pays for [national] govt spending" lie they can have both. The tax burden, esp on the poor and low income, should be much lower than it is now, and govt spending does not need to decrease.

6 hours ago, Skyrazer said:

LVT is a sensible tax yes and was part of the Henry Tax Review. Too bad it got all but mostly ignored.

NSW Libs briefly introduced a property tax which was similar in vein as an alternative to stamp duty (which is an atrocious tax that shouldn't be a thing IMO), but of course they then got voted out soon after and the Minns govt pretty much immediately scrapped it.

Tax reform in this county is just a doomed endeavour.

Except of course the "reform" that increases the burden on the poors and gives much needed relief to the rich.

Am I the only one who is slightly amused at the UAW union president's name sounding just a little bit similar to Sinn Fein?

I have to assume his parents knew what they were doing when they named him. 

I'd be surprised if sex and drugs would get you kicked from a UK public school, unless you're a scholarship student from the lower classes. But I can imagine cheating being a deal breaker and being something a school would warn universities about.

Or am I reading the [im]moral compass of UK public schools wrong?

I don't know enough about Fox to know if he was always like this. Maybe he was an OK guy for a while? Wanting to give Billie Piper an out for having been so intimately associated with him.

14 hours ago, Kalbear said:

The money was injected into the economy with the goal being to offset business closures and firings. It wasn't just money being put in - it was money being put in to counter the money being removed.

Note also that the inflation increased significantly not after covid restrictions were lifted  - they coincided much more strongly with the Ukraine war. Which makes more sense given that that affected supply of all sorts of things far more strongly.

Technically the only way to remove money is to pay taxes, otherwise in situations like lockdowns its the speed of money that is slowing down, so injecting some money into financial for assistance to firms and furloughed workers speeds up money. Paying off private debt also removes money since that money is only virtual money it was created by the bank making money and anti-money with the money going out into the world and the anti-money sitting in a debt account waiting to be annihilated with the return of the money. So one way to not inject new money into the economy is to slow down or completely halt the destruction of money by having debt and / or tax jubilees.

Here's an interesting video on tax I saw just today, that was first posted a year ago. I think as a starting point for a great tax reset it's an interesting idea.

I've liked pretty much every Mr Beat video I've seen. He's got a great deadpan style, but it also helps that he and I seem to play in the same socioeconomic viscinity.