152 replies to this topic

[duke_Qa]

cyan isn't perfect... a bronze medal

But it seems to be coherent with right-wing liberal economics, Japan, Chile, UK, Germany, Belgium and Qatar seems to be in that box. And if you were to calculate populations it probably will beat those darker blues out of the water.

anyway, you force my hand to google for corruption analysis. Luckily I had a nights sleep and some coffee to blunt the hurt. Here's the post I found about it...

Most of the existing, accepted measures, as the Washington Post noted in an editorial, rely on "perceptions" of corruption or on individual experiences of bribery. There are several well-known surveys, including the frequently-cited Transparency International Global Corruption Barometer, that ask business people or households questions such as whether they think the government is corrupt, whether they have ever paid a bribe or how much they think businesses in general spend on bribes.

as it mentions later, that is quite subjective and can be negatively influenced if corruption comes up a lot in media, for good or bad.

Edited by duke_Qa, 31 August 2011 - 06:46 AM.

[Ash]

Is it a crime to be ambiguous?

No, it's a crime to act against your nation's best interests, though. I believe it's called 'treason' and I think anyone who's been involved in mainstream British politics since the Thatcher years is guilty of, or at least accessory to, it.

Those yellow and red bastards in eastern Europe, France, Spain, Italy Greece balkans etc. are the ones the EU should be(and probably are) spending their time on. Baby + bathwater and all that; if you were to disband the EU just because You, a pretty "high standard" political system with little corruption, feel it is being incompetent and lazy and corrupt because its just eating out of your pocket: That would not be very fair for those that are developing in a positive direction from their help.

Yeah. Know what? Fuck 'em. Let them get their own back yard in order before they start pissing up someone else's wall. Why should I have to pay to clear up a mess that isn't in (and wasn't born in) my country? Why the fuck should I care about Greece's economic problems? Or Spain's? Or Italy's? Because I would be pretty damn sure they wouldn't give two shits if the UK was up shit creek.

Yeah, I can agree that a EU debt machine looks like a bad alternative. But I'm pretty sure some of these economists have to start making sense of this, and it seems that the eyes of politicians and the people of these nations are slowly opening and realizing they've been living over means.

But they're not realising this! Those politicians are still raking more money into the EU. The EU budgets tithes in most European countries is growing year on year!

The alternative is economic depression, and not just for the idiots. If you think its bad with a bit of debt, I'd like to see how you react once economies start to actually shrink instead of just cooling down. It would be Armageddon compared to our whimpering complaints right now.

More overtime for me.

[duke_Qa]

You should have become a repo man or undertaker

No, it's a crime to act against your nation's best interests, though. I believe it's called 'treason' and I think anyone who's been involved in mainstream British politics since the Thatcher years is guilty of, or at least accessory to, it.

"best interest" is kinda subjective isn't it? Treason is In my eyes a cousin of Honor and Shame, subjective and personal offenses that have little to do in a modern society with proper laws. A sense of treason is what motivated this terrorist we got imprisoned up here.

I would have thought Europe and its nations would all in all gain from developing its less fortunate nations. The bigger the economy, the more money to be made in trade and all that. I can see the frustration in paying more than you are getting back(£312 returned for the yearly dose of £412 put into it, and don't think of that as a bill, but as what your taxes gets spent on. How big a percentage would that be of your tax total?), but the collapse that would come from a EU implosion would cost you a hundredfold in lost revenue and union rights.


edit: I found this article about Keynes and Hayek, which mentions the UK as a fine example of Hayek philosophies in action. also this.

Perhaps, on closer examination, Americans have concluded that cutting public spending when the economy is teetering on a downturn is a guaranteed way of ensuring a double dip recession. (If you want to see what that looks like, go to London, where a Hayekian experiment is in full swing.) Perhaps an idea that seemed good when discussed around the kitchen table doesn’t sound so great from the mouths of Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann. What exactly is going to be cut? Education? Social Security? The armed forces?

Edited by duke_Qa, 01 September 2011 - 07:23 AM.

[Ash]

I would have thought Europe and its nations would all in all gain from developing its less fortunate nations. The bigger the economy, the more money to be made in trade and all that. I can see the frustration in paying more than you are getting back(£312 returned for the yearly dose of £412 put into it, and don't think of that as a bill, but as what your taxes gets spent on. How big a percentage would that be of your tax total?), but the collapse that would come from a EU implosion would cost you a hundredfold in lost revenue and union rights.

That £65billion (and rising) figure could be better spent on things like, oh, policing, or maybe on healthcare, or maybe housing or...I dunno, a thousand and one things that it is not being spent on because it's being given to people who were not entrusted by the people to run the country, and whose diktats are making the country nigh unrunnable in a sensible way.

We would evidently be 65bn a year better off out of the EU. We could keep the trade agreements etc. We just don't need their overregulation and the eyes peering over our shoulder and regulating everything that moves.

And then France and Germany are all there throwing good money after bad at Greece and Italy. The more money thrown into these black holes, the more it will cost us year on year. Better to maintain an independent economy.

[duke_Qa]

Hey, Google statistics are cool. fun with income per capita(I see I have to raise my hour wages next year if this I'm to hit average).

Your total GNP seems to be around £1.377trillion. So with the EU you'd be up to £1.433trillion, thats about 4.7% I guess. You can't add expenses like that straight into your GNP though. I'm an economic idiot and even I know thats not how macro-economics work. I still believe much of that money comes back to you through deals and trade. If you didn't send the money out, they would not be able to buy or create anything to sell to you, causing a breakdown in trade, which nobody wants. Keeping Greece and the gang afloat keeps the economy up and running. If not, we will have a revolution and we will rejoice after years of bloody warfare.

But, what the GNP gets spent on is 100% your elected official's, and the lobbyists who get them expensive dinners, responsibility. The only way to fix that is to fix the system, which can be quite tricky.

We would evidently be 65bn a year better off out of the EU. We could keep the trade agreements etc. We just don't need their overregulation and the eyes peering over our shoulder and regulating everything that moves.

Yeah, thats just the bureaucracy at its worst. I had a theory today that there should be a anti-bureaucracy institution in the style of anti-corruption systems. My sister is very frustrated with the national bureaucracy these days(requesting money that practically gets spent on writing those requests). As a teacher she has enough skill in language to see bullshit purple prose, and 90% of those papers are filled with typos and 3-4 lines of bullshit that could have been said with two words.
nice quote from the wiki article on bureaucracy:

While recognizing bureaucracy as the most efficient form of organization, and even indispensable for the modern state, Weber also saw it as a threat to individual freedoms, and the ongoing bureaucratization as leading to a "polar night of icy darkness", in which increasing rationalization of human life traps individuals in the aforementioned "iron cage" of bureaucratic, rule-based, rational control. In order to counteract bureaucrats, the system needs entrepreneurs and politicians.

Problem is, politicians are in many western nations just another part of the bureaucracy, and the entrepreneurs keep to themselves, or leave as soon as they are able. We are in dire need of reforms, meta/butcher-bureaucracies, or privatization/10 year tenders for the different bureaucracies so they have incentive to do their job effectively and quickly. "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.", so you better damn well have systems that keeps that time to a minimum.

[Ash]

You don't need politicians to sort out bureaucracy any more than you need an anti-bureaucracy quango. You just need common sense and someone in the middle and upper management willing to see that it's bullshit and therefore to take measures to combat it.

[duke_Qa]

Thats not how bureaucracies work. "Rational calculation . . . reduces every worker to a cog in this bureaucratic machine and, seeing himself in this light, he will merely ask how to transform himself… to a bigger cog… The passion for bureaucratization at this meeting drives us to despair."

You might say common sense could stop bureaucracies, but for the bureaucrats, common sense is increasing the size, power and opacity of the bureaucracy they are in control of.

the irony is that to keep bureaucracy at an acceptable level, you need an internal affairs/inquisition bureaucracy.

[Romanul]

There's something awkward here.

The Romanian National Bank estimates that we'll enter the eurozone in 2015. Which is really quicker than we expected, even if our economy didn't go that well and the anti-crisis measures were... nonexistent, really.

Is it really that easy to join the eurozone?

Also, another thing that (from my view of point) is really bad: Euro is printed on papers. The Romanian currency (RON/Leu) is printed on plastic. It's plastic money. I wonder, wouldn't it help out the entire Union to have all of them plastic papers?

You know, not every bureaucrat checks every banknote.

[Námo]

*bump*

First Black Swan arrived yesterday!

[duke_Qa]

The referendum? Seems more like a pitiful politician trying to put the blame up for a vote instead of on himself. Though if the vote is not done before December it will cause bankruptcy. I'm neutral all in all, if the economy crashes more, major reforms will have to take place, bringing OWS anger more into the mainstream, if the economy balances out we live happily ever after in our dreamworld.

[Námo]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGQIxYfKKtc

[duke_Qa]

He kept himself somewhat moderate in that video. I have no doubt that many bureaucrats in the EU are in for a rude awakening the next few years. And hopefully the system will get a cleanup and counterweights to ever-inflating bureaucracy.

I do think this video tells the real reason why people are annoyed at EU and governments though, especially around 2mins with the "its the government!" mob:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5kHACjrdEY

Edited by duke_Qa, 30 November 2011 - 12:12 PM.

[Romanul]

Yesterday I simply wanted to hit on S$P guys. I mean it. They recently downgraded Romania @"good for investement" category. WTF?

Romania was and still is darn stable. It's not worse. What's awkward is that nothing happened on the Romanian market/economic policy recently. Really, nothing, it was WAAAAY more stable than the other Eastern European markets (compare the RON's fluctuation of a max. of 5% to Poland's and Bulgaria's 10% and Hungary's 20%.).

The economy has raised more than expected this quarter, with 4.4% than the expected 3.8% (with a increase of 1.9 % in the precedent quarter).

I really am starting to feel that the concept of companies that rate economies should be destroyed. Same with banks fucking up countries' economies for trying to be good with their population (and here I mean Hungary.).