Utopia, you are standing in it!

In his annual letter to shareholders, published earlier this month, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said this about decision-making:

Rational people charged with making national energy policies need an antidote to the biased and alarmist IPCC “Summary for Policy Makers (SPM)”  As most are aware, that document purports to be summarizing the science proving humanity is causing dangerous global warming by using fossil fuels.  Those who understand the IPCC process are also aware that the SPM wording is negotiated among politicians and the scientific reports are adjusted accordingly.

A timely discussion of this issue is provided by someone with experience in briefing governmental officials on issues requiring choices.  Michael Kelly writes in Standpoint Magazine:

“A well-briefed minister knows about the general area in which a decision is sought, and is given four scenarios before any recommendation. Those scenarios are the upsides and the downsides both of doing nothing and of doing something. Those who give only the upside of doing something and the downside of doing nothing are in fact lobbying.”

Definition Fussbudget:  A person who fusses over trifles. Also called fusspot.

In the last week, Richard Lindzen has a new youtube video which explains briefly and clearly who is making a fuss about climate and why. (Hint: It is not primarily from climate physicists). The video deserves to go viral, since the presentation is brief, informative and accessible to anyone.

Why are so many people worried, indeed panic-stricken about this issue?
It’s due not so much to climate physicists, as to politicians, environmentalists and media. Global warming alarmism provides the things they most want:

• For politicians, it’s money and power;
• For environmentalists, it’s money for their organizations and confirmation of their near-religious devotion to the idea that man is a destructive force acting upon nature;
• For the media, it’s ideology, money and headlines.
• And crony capitalists have eagerly grabbed for the subsidies that governments have so lavishly provided.

Beyond the…

My opinion on taxing corporate income varies with my mood.

When I’m in a fiery-libertarian phase, I want to abolish taxes on corporate income for the simple reason that all income taxes should be eliminated. Heck, I would also eliminate October 3 from the calendar because that’s the awful day in 1913 that the income tax was signed into low.

But when I’m going through a pragmatic-libertarian phase, I grudgingly accept that my fantasies won’t be realized and focus on incremental reform. And that means I want a simple and fair system like the flat tax, which is based on the principle that all income should be taxed, but only one time and at one low rate.

And that means corporate income should be taxed.

That being said, while it may be appropriate to tax corporate income, that does not mean the U.S. corporate income tax is ideal.

• The

Ed Hoskins writes:

I am an ex-pat in France. In spite of the mess its likely to cause me directly I am 100% for Brexit.

The EU has far exceeded the mandate I and many others throughout the UK and Europe gave it from 1975 onwards.

The crazy thing is that the “Common Market” that was sold to the unwitting people of Europe in 1975 was all that needed to maintain peace in Europe.  The European peoples were duped because the real unifying intent of the EU project was never disclosed.

It is overweening and vain political ambition of “ever closer union” that has destroyed that the laudable aim of a real “Common Market”.

A documentary on Gallipoli

I am sure there will be lots of squabbling over parameters and assumptions of any tax, spending or regulation proposal submitted to the independent costings unit proposed recently by the New Zealand Greens.

The bigger problem is static and dynamic scoring. There is some history of doing this for taxes but little for spending and that is before you consider externalities. Imagine the squabbling over roading proposals and their externalities. The practical hurdles to dynamic scoring are:

• Economists do not know how to accurately measure the growth effects of most policies
• Dynamic scoring relies on less-than-accurate, theory-based macro models
• The macro models undergirding dynamic scoring have numerous controversial and unproven built-in assumptions
• The assumptions embedded in the macro models are not always carefully empirically based
• Macro models…

Sandeep Moudgal has a great piece on the topic. How certain castes/communities come to being associated with certain products and then how they keep looking at ways to revive and stay in competition. It just makes for a great reading.

Iyengars that run bakery shops in Bangalore are one such community. They migrated from Hassan and started bakeries across the city: