Utopia, you are standing in it!

From George Orwell’s Notes on Nationalism:

All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side . . . The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

HT: Glenn Greenwald, who HT’ed Hume’s Ghost

As expected, the European Union and International Monetary Fund have chosen to subsidize the profligacy of Greek politicians. A deal has just been announced. As the Washington Post reports:

Greece on Sunday announced a long-awaited deal with the European Union and International Monetary Fund for a $145 billion financial rescue, an unprecedented package… The three-year package is also the largest international rescue to be backed by the IMF. …The proposed cuts in Greece include a new round of reductions in salaries for state workers, more flexibility to fire them, an increase in the value-added tax from 21 percent to 23 percent, and higher taxes on fuel, tobacco and alcohol. More state-run industries are expected to be privatized, and military spending will be slashed.

I’m not terribly optimistic about the long-run consequences. I also can’t resist pointing out that the VAT has jumped from 19 percent to 21 percent to…

Economist and Harvard Professor Greg Mankiw isn’t the only one who is thinking about working less in an era of higher marginal taxes.  So are golfers like Phil Mickelson according to a recent story:

“Well, it’s been an interesting off-season, and I’m going to have to make some drastic changes,” said Mickelson, who lives with his wife and three children in Rancho Santa Fe, near San Diego. “And I’m not going to jump the gun and do it right away, but I will be making some drastic changes.”

When asked whether the “drastic changes” meant moving from California to another state or perhaps even country, Mickelson would say only that he was not sure.

“If you add up all the federaland you look at the disability and the unemployment and the Social Security and the state, my tax rate is 62, 63 percent,” Mickelson said. “I’ve got to make…

2014 wasn’t exactly a great year for the Russian rouble. However, there is a ‘currency’, which performed worse than the rouble in 2014…Bitcoin

“ Can capitalism survive? No. I do not think it can.” Thus opens Schumpeter’s prologue to a section of his 1942 book, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. One might think, on the basis of the quote, that Schumpeter was a Marxist. But the analysis that led Schumpeter to his conclusion differed totally from Karl Marx’s. Marx believed that capitalism would be destroyed by its enemies (the proletariat), whom capitalism had purportedly exploited, and he relished the prospect. Schumpeter believed that capitalism would be destroyed by its successes, that it would spawn a large intellectual class that made its living by attacking the very bourgeois system of private property and freedom so necessary for the intellectual class’s existence. And unlike Marx, Schumpeter did not relish the destruction of capitalism. “If a doctor predicts that his patient will die presently,” he wrote, “this does not mean that he desires it.”

Capitalism…

SIGNIFIGANT RISE IN SEA LEVEL NOW SEEMS CERTAIN
By ERIK ECKHOLM
Published: February 18, 1986

MANY scientists are so sure that the sea level will rise visibly in the coming decades that they are advising planners to adopt new strategies now. A predicted rise in sea level of one foot within the next 30 to 40 years willdrive much of the Atlantic and Gulf shoreline inward by a hundred feet and some of it by more than a thousand feet

SIGNIFIGANT RISE IN SEA LEVEL NOW SEEMS CERTAIN – NYTimes.com