10:04 – Oddly, given all of the hundreds of science kits we’ve shipped, today was the first time we got an order for a kit to be shipped to an APO address. Shipping it was just like shipping any other kit, with two exceptions. First, the city was “APO” and the state was “AE”, and second I had to fill out a customs declaration, which seems strange. Oh, yeah, and USPS doesn’t give a delivery estimate for Priority Mail APO shipments. Express Mail would be delivered Friday, so I’m guessing that Priority Mail will get the box to the customer sometime next week.
It appears that Spain is likely to request a second bailout this coming weekend. Germany may be a problem, as many of its politicians are loathe to approve a second bailout so close on the heels of the €100 billion they approved for the Spanish bank bailout a couple months ago. At this point, it’s pretty clear even to committed europhiles that Spain is going down the toilet, with Italy likely to follow soon thereafter. Germany is finally waking up to the fact that its taxpayers are already on the hook for as much as €1 trillion, less whatever minor amounts they can recover after the crash. They must realize that providing additional funding in the hopes of delaying the final crash of the euro is simply throwing good money after bad. Germany, Holland, Finland, and now Austria are all sending strong signals that they’ve had enough.
“The PC is over” is back again.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/10/the-pc-is-over.html
I like this comic about the pc is dead:
http://thedoghousediaries.com/4557
Are all these EU countries in trouble because of the common currency? So when the Euro goes down, will they all magically be healed? I doubt it but they will less able to hide there true financial conditions – maybe.
I can remember visiting Europe in the 1990s. Changing money at every country was a total pain as it was the last thing you did while leaving. Or it was the first thing you did and in both cases the money changers took you for a ride. Luckily, most merchants would take US dollars but gave only change in their currency.
In 1990 I did a tour of Scandinavia (“Land of the Midnight Sun”). I got sick of getting all the various currencies so in Finland (I was there for about four days) I didn’t get any Finnish money. As a result I only got the meals that were included in the tour price, which never included lunch. My belt tightened one notch in those four days.
No, nothing will be healed for anyone by the euro failing. In fact, I believe it is impossible, and you will not ever see it happen. It would hit Germany the worst, as Germany’s income is nearly 100% reliant on massive exports TO Europe, which is its biggest market by far. The whole reason they pushed the euro on everyone (and it was Germany that demanded integration, not France, as some commentators have claimed), was because it eliminated banking transaction costs in currency exchanges and border tariffs that greatly impeded trade. If you had been there during the period I was, the difference before and after was dramatic and immediate.
Having worked in the accounting office for the whole of Europe at The Chemical Company (that is the last part of their real name), I can tell you that the euro became fact in Jan 2002, and when I left in 2009, they were still in the very complex process of closing out hedge funds that were necessary for every currency in every land they did business with. Europe will never go back to multiple currencies. Whatever problems they have now, pale in comparison with the difficulties and the threat to business of splitting up, and everyone involved at the business and government level is fully aware of that, having just recently lived through the change.
The North is going to have to get over the fact that they must carry the South—just like in the US when slavery was abolished and plantation farming, which had made the South far richer than the North, collapsed, and it was not until the widespread use of air-conditioning that manufacturing began moving south, and it began recovering. Having had relatives involved in the move of industry to the South, I can tell you that the problems of getting going in the South were so serious, that many businesses folded in the attempt to move. Schaeffer Refrigeration (the ice cream freezers in drug and dime stores of my childhood), which thrived in Minneapolis, closed its doors because the level of manufacturing expertise required to make stuff did not exist in the South, and they relocated lock, stock, and barrel, all at once, instead of doing it slowly and training a workforce along the way.
The world today demands tighter integration, and we really would return to barbarism, if that integration started falling apart. It is not a possibility, IMO, barring a holocaust. Governments of the North are turning against Germany, because Merkel and her cronies are not telling the truth to the people. I heard an interview with the Finance Minister of Finland recently, and she said that Germany has given the impression to everyone that the “bailouts” are gift money, when they are loans, not gifts. That is causing significant problems in her country, because they have been telling the truth to their electorate, but rumors from Germany are accepted as fact.
The whole world is in trouble because of bubbles that have been allowed to go unchecked, then collapsed and removed tremendous capital wealth from the system when they burst. The US had both the housing and banking bubbles burst spaced just a year apart; the European south had a real estate bubble burst, which started the whole European affair; and China has a growing real estate bubble which has yet to burst, but will remove significant wealth from their economy when it does. Just like in the US, Chinese economic leaders refuse to admit there even is a growing bubble, but we will all see it when it bursts. Right now, people in China who have enough money to get loans, are buying property—not to live in—but as an investment, because housing prices are doubling every several years. They have a name for those people (which slips me at the moment), but they are speculators who are driving up rents because of the fantastic income they must get from the properties to pay the mortgages. The general population is fully aware that these people are driving up rents in all the major well-developed cities.
Meanwhile, Europe could not have embarked on a more disastrous course by the North demanding austerity, when it was not even overspending that caused the problem. Instead of immediately guaranteeing the bonds of member countries, they actually caused the economies to plummet to the point where there is no hope at all of a fast recovery. The North is responsible for this, and they will have to pay for it—but they continue to call for counterproductive measures, insuring further decline of the South. And, IMO, the North will pay for the South. German business, economic, and government leaders are fully aware that what Merkel is demanding would destroy Europe and Germany. None of the important ones back her, and she will not win, but she has done much damage during the whole sorry episode. She cannot win, because the only alternatives she will consider are both losing ones.
I don’t understand how the Euro can work without political and fiscal union. A pal who was in merchant banking at the time said it would and could work without union, but he never really explained how, and no one else has. I mean, if the North is willing to bail out the South on an ongoing basis what incentive is there to practice restraint?
@Miles: None, of course. And that is exactly the problem. The Euro brought a lot of advantages, so everyone stuck their heads in the sand and ignored the obvious problems. As you say: this was all obvious to anyone with a brain.
I disagree with Chuck: Austerity is the way to go: forcing governments to reduce spending. The problem isn’t austerity, the problem is that this should have been enforced from day one. Any government that borrowed more than was allowed by the Maastricht treaty should have immediately been punished. This was never done, even though a limit was, in fact, in place. More, the punishment would have been financial, when in fact it should have involved personal punishment of the responsible politicians. If Berlusconi’s personal fortune had been at risk, he would have balanced Italy’s budget in a flash.
Austerity in the current situation accomplishes nothing but misery and probably deaths by now, in the case of Greece. Reducing spending may be a noble goal, but a deep recession in half the union is not the place or time to implement it. That needs to be done in an intentional, coordinated, voluntary, agreed-upon effort by government when the economy is not in a recession. But the fact is that such a thing ain’t gonna happen either there or here, IMO.
Then it becomes the same thing as my objection to picking one speeder out of 100 and giving them a ticket. All 100 deserve the ticket, or none do.
Singling out the European south and giving them instructions to commit suicide is not in any manner just. Especially when the facts demonstrate that Germany and France also violated Maastricht, and it was not increasing deficit spending against GDP by Ireland, Spain, Portugal, or Italy that caused the problem—it was the housing bubble that began in Spain and drained capital and liquidity from the economic system, exactly as in the US of A. Fortunately, we did not pull in spending and demand austerity of all states running deficits, or we would be in worse shape than the EU.
There seems to be no understanding among the general public that a government which prints money is not in any way equivalent to a household—OR a state of the union in the USA. If that were true, then when you stopped spending in your household, your household income would also go down coordinately. Do we need to bang heads against the wall and suffer a Great Depression—more than once—to get that message? (actually to still NOT get that message) That is exactly what the EU is playing with. All they need to do is split up or dissolve the euro to effectively enact Smoot–Hawley equivalent protectionism, and you are going to have a doozy of a depression over there.
Since politicians NEVER save during the good times for the bad, austerity during the bad is harakiri. That is too bad for people who want to see government spending reduced dramatically (and I am among those, but not during bad times). We’ll watch and see how this comes out for the EU. So far, everything they have done is a flat-out, dismal failure. And it is not because they are not doing enough austerity; it is because austerity is the exact wrong thing to do. The failure was predictable, whether you are a Keynesian, Austrian, or Marxist. But if you only know household spending, and think it applies to governments who print money, then I suppose there is an excuse for not getting it right. At least you are in company with Merkel, who only knows household economics, too.
What the US has done is to figure out a way for the taxpayer to suffer the losses by letting taxpayers assume the losses of the big banks. It also continually steals money from everyone with US dollar-denominated assets by allowing the dollar to become more and more worthless as time goes on.
Hey, it works for us. The EU should try it. What they are doing sure isn’t working.
Hi Chuck, I beg to differ that politicians NEVER save during the good times for the bad times. In Texas, we have what is know as a rainy day fund which currently has 10? 12? 15? billion dollars in it for the next biennial legislative meeting in 2013. They knew in 2011 that Medicaid was a budget buster here in Texas and that we are going to have more severe budgetary trouble in the next cycle. The forecasts are proving it to be even worse than expected and Governor Perry has already sounded the alarm.
The Texas House and Senate only meet once every two years, from Jan 2 to May 31 of odd numbered years. Hide your young ladies, the legislature is going to Austin in Jan! I feel this would be a fairly excellent solution to the federal House and Senate which meet all the time. Meeting for five months every two years tends to make important things like budgets to be more urgent. I believe that both Governor Perry and Ron Paul campaigned on this issue.
I’d like to see them meet less frequently and not be paid. Let them have real jobs. It’s often said that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys, but I’ve never believed that lie. I think paying politicians less would improve their quality, and it seems to me that an empty seat in a legislature will never go unfilled.
Okay, I should quit using blanket statements like that, but Texas must be very unusual. Now if they would just quit executing hundreds every year… Even though I do not take the Bible at face value, I do not believe killing is a solution for anything or anyone, and abhor it. If this so-called “Christian country” cannot lead the way out of the practice of taking the life of others, then what good is that religion and its teachings?
Indiana usually has a balanced budget (mandated by the state’s constitution), but reserves are never what I would call ample—or even a reserve.
Australians are now being warned that we face a Greek style meltdown:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-04/australia-could-face-greek-like-economic-downturn/4294534?section=business
As to capital punishment, I don’t have the least objection to executing people who murder in cold blood, and the worst of other types of criminals. I don’t understand Chuck’s comment “Even though I do not take the Bible at face value, I do not believe killing is a solution for anything or anyone, and abhor it.” Since the Bible explicitly permits/mandates capital punishment for certain crimes the “Even though” comment doesn’t make sense.
What *does* bother me is that an accused person might be convicted but in fact be innocent. Executing such people is very bad, not just the accused (obviously) but for the state too, and the people who constitute it.
Here’s a few Australian cases where there’s essentially no uncertainty about the guilt of some pretty bad murderers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowtown_murders
John Bunting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bunting_%28serial_killer%29) was the leader of a group of people who killed 10 or so people in South Australia in the Nineties. I’d be perfectly willing to push the button on him. Instead he’s serving 10 or 11 consecutive life sentences for murder, his file is marked “never to be released.” Any of the bleeding heart liberals here want to pay the cost of his incarceration?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bega_schoolgirl_murders
These two creeps raped and killed two teenage girls. We’ll be paying to keep them in prison for many years. They’re kept in isolation because even hardened, lifelong criminals in their jails want to kill them. I agree.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backpacker_Murders
Even Milat’s own lawyers admitted that someone in the Milat family was responsible for these murders. I think the evidence against Ivan Milat is pretty strong, and I’d like to see him put out of his misery. But instead we’ll be paying to keep him in jail for however long it takes him to die.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stuart
This guy raped and murdered a nine year old girl in Ceduna, South Australia, in 1958. Even though the evidence against Stuart was and is pretty strong the cops thought it would be smart to fabricate a confession, claimed to be in Stuart’s own words. The confession was in polished, idiomatic English, although Stuart was more or less illiterate in that language. This helped Stuart get a commutation of his death sentence. Stuart had a prior conviction for rape or statutory rape of a young girl in another town. I just wish the damned cops hadn’t lied about his confession, he probably would have been executed in 1959 if they hadn’t.
None of these people should be alive today, but we’ll be paying to keep most of them behind bars for a very long time.
My post is awaiting moderation? I thought you switched off the restriction on the number of links in a post.
I think the limit of 2 is still in effect. I forgot and put 3 in recently and got a moderation message.
No, it’s still at three links. If I raise it to three, all sorts of spam gets through.
As to capital punishment, I don’t have the least objection to executing people who murder in cold blood, and the worst of other types of criminals. I don’t understand Chuck’s comment “Even though I do not take the Bible at face value, I do not believe killing is a solution for anything or anyone, and abhor it.” Since the Bible explicitly permits/mandates capital punishment for certain crimes the “Even though” comment doesn’t make sense.
Well, this is a perfect example of what happens with the convoluted, contradictory, mostly illogical non-fact-based fiction of the Bible. The logic in my mind concludes that when Moses decreed the new commandments of law, killing for any reason whatever became forever verboten, and even this dude, Jesus, who is likely a totally and completely fictional character, only reinforced that by demanding that Moses’ commandments be observed and adding even more self-immolating rules. To my mind, that means even if somebody else committed the most heinous and gruesome of murders, killing them is not allowed.
Obviously, you derive a different interpretation, which shows the uselessness of the Bible as any kind of universal rule book. However, in my own take on the Bible, Moses’ law and Jesus’ additional rules, take precedence over any other place that may condone the killing of other humans. I am most definitely on the side of no killing of other humans, regardless of what the Bible may say. My own compass is not derived from the utter confusion in the Bible. I do not know if my feelings are because of the Christian influence that has been pervasive around me for all but the 5 years I lived in East Germany, where religion is not a factor in life, or whether it is just my own moral construct. No matter, though; I personally oppose the killing of humans on any grounds.
Umm, Chuck. I was saying that you were the one that was mixed up.
The Bible clearly envisages the death penalty for certain offences. Now I know you’re not a believer and that you oppose the death penalty, so something like “this shows why the Bible is so wrong/irrelevant…” would have made sense.
If I wrote “Even as a Christian, I don’t believe in the death penalty, even though it is clearly permitted in the Old Testament” that also would make sense.
But saying “Even though I do not take the Bible at face value, I do not believe killing is a solution for anything or anyone”, as you did, is redundant. You might have said that that was one of the reasons you disbelieve the Bible, or that the OT is cruel, etc.
Now, what would our host have said? He’s just as much an atheist as you but he believes in the death penalty for certain crimes. Do you think he gets his belief in the death penalty from the Bible?
Moses forbade me from killing because I coveted my neighbor’s wife, or whatever. He did not forbid the state from executing people for various reasons. Since you seem pretty busy at the moment I guess you don’t have the time to check, but the OT clearly permits the judicial killing of people by the state under certain circumstances. Some of those offenses I would not support the death penalty for today, like blasphemy. But if two guys rape and kill two teenage girls I don’t have the least problem with the state putting them to death. If the Bega schoolgirl killers had been put to death, as they very richly deserved, we can be sure they wouldn’t do that again, and we wouldn’t have to pay for their incarceration for the next 40+ years.
Chuck, you seem more concerned about the rights of hardened criminals, I’m more concerned about the safety of people from those criminals. And I think you’ll find that our host agrees with that sentiment.
Yes, I agree with you that we are clearly in disagreement about how to interpret what the Bible says about killing. My original statement assumes that everyone would accept that what Moses and Jesus said was clear and takes precedence over other statements in the Bible to the contrary. I agree that my statement did not allow for your position. You are correct: my statement is in error.
Well, I guess some Christians would take the view that there are contradictions between what Moses and Jesus said on the one hand, and what the OT law mandated on the other. I and quite a few others take the view that Moses and other parts of the law are an integrated whole. Moses forbade me from killing and stealing but the law permitted executions under certain circumstances and the taking of money from me by the state for various reasons.
Yes, Christ softened the law considerably. He did not condemn a woman who had been taken in the very act of adultery, but he did tell her to “sin no more.”
I’m not aware of Christ saying anything pro or con the death penalty, but the Jewish state, the Romans, and many others of that time and later did permit the death penalty. In some circumstances I would still agree with imposing that penalty. My major concern is that a person condemned to death really should be guilty, and have had competent legal representation at their trial. I fully support commuting death sentences in cases where there is doubt.
Hi Chuck, have you read the Bible, specifically the New Testament? Paul wrote that the sword is Caesars and that we should fear it. It is in the 13th chapter of Romans.
“But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer”
BTW, in Texas nowadays, most, if not all, executions are for multiple murderers or child killers. The rest of the scum usually get life in prison.
BTW, yes, Texas is very unique. No state income tax, legislature meets every two years, lots of jobs (mostly low paying), very few unions, very low welfare payments.
I want to put a fence across our northern, western, eastern and southern borders. We’ve got people moving here from everywhere. After hurricane Katrina, about 20% of Louisiana’s population moved here. A not insignificant number of those have killed each other in gang fights, etc.
A lot of Californians are moving here now. They zoom around in their little beemers between our trucks and suvs. They are amazed at how cheap the houses are until they get their first property bill. California property tax is limited to 1% of the property value where Texas is not limited and usually 2 to 4%.
Heh. Here, near Albany NY, I’m paying 2.5% rate on property tax (with
constant fights to keep the assessed value somewhat realistic), about
10% income tax, and 8% sales tax. As well as constant business
fees and taxes and other state-required expenses. Being here in NY,
rather than some less sucktastic state, is a continuing problem between
my wife and me.
That’s actually not all that much higher than North Carolina, except that our property values are lower.
I still advocate a flat tax. Dollar amount, not percentage. Call it $100/person, total. Paid to your city, which contributes as much of that as it wishes to the county, which contributes as much as of that as it wishes to the state, which contributes as much of that as it wishes to the feds. And if you don’t pay the tax, you get exported.
I figure that with about 310 million people in the US, that’s a total of about $31 billion a year. I figure the breakout as follows:
Cities: keep about $30.7 billion
Counties: get about $300 million from the cities
States: get about $3 million from the counties
Feds: get about $30,000 from the states
Which seems about the right breakdown to me.
I live out in the county, I guess that my tax would be zero.
I think that you are overly optimistic that the cities would give anything to the counties. Every city that I have seen, especially Houston, has the capacity to spend well beyond its means on meaningless drivel. Houston has more boondoggles going on that nobody knows about.
The trick is to keep the people making the decisions as close as possible to their voters. We have at least a chance of throwing out a local councilman who spends too much. County commissioners are harder, state elected officials harder still, and federal elected officials almost impossible. I want to be able to make a short drive over to the home of the guy responsible and pelt it (or him) with rotten tomatoes. Or killer tomatoes.