Catallaxy Files | Australias leading libertarian and centre-right blog

Time 2021-06-04 06:14:46

Web Name: Catallaxy Files | Australias leading libertarian and centre-right blog

WebSite: http://catallaxyfiles.com

ID:180937

Keywords:

Australias,leading,Catallaxy,

Description:

Lies, damned lies and the National AccountsPosted on June 3, 2021 by Steve Kates We close down much of the economy for more than a year and this is where we supposedly now find ourselves: Economy back in record recovery. And looks who the star of the recovery has been.Australia’s economy is larger than before Covid-19 triggered the worst recession in a century, with GDP lifting by 1.8 per cent over the first three months of the year to confirm the most rapid recovery from a downturn in peacetime history.National accounts figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show quarterly economic activity reached $501 billion in real GDP terms, 0.8 per cent above the pre-pandemic peak of $497 billion in the December quarter of 2019.The economy grew by 1.1 per cent over the year.Victoria was the best performing state, with its final demand jumping 2.3 per cent in the quarter as the momentum from its delayed reopening late last year carried into early 2021.If you would like something a bit more realistic so far as the economy is concerned, there is this chart below on seasonally adjusted growth in wages between September 1998 and March 2021. A very dismal story and these have not even been adjusted for movements in the price level.The National Accounts are an absurdist Keynesian form of misleading indicator that never tells you what you really want to know, unless you know where to look and how to interpret what you read. Despite what that GDP stats might say, living standards are falling and are only going to get worse, assuming they ever get better again.For more on just how much of a junk science Keynesian economics is, I invite you to have a look at THE GEEK IN PICTURES: KEYNESIAN CRIME WAVE EDITION from Steve Hayward at Powerline. I will only take in one of his graphs which is this: The Number of Democrats relative to Republicans for Each Academic Discipline. Even economics has 5.5 Dems for every Republican a left-right balance of 5.5:1 which is why Keynesian economics remains the standard issue nonsense that it is.LET ME ADD: I probably shouldn t buy into this since it will be misunderstood at every level but the question of my interest in rising real wages was mentioned in the comments. As it happens, I used to write the employer economic submissions to the National Wage Case from 1980 through until 2004 and even presented the employer submission from 2002 to 2004. And if you will note, during my time within the system, wages continued to rise, which was, in fact, the aim of every one of us who were party to wage fixation in those days. Real wage increases without inflation was the gold standard which was the outcome we all sought.Alas, it has always been a mantra on the Coalition side of the fence that wages should be left to the market with no institutional interference of any kind, the sort of system that exists absolutely nowhere in any place on earth. In fact, Australia had, and may still have, the best wage fixing system in the world which is based on ensuring money wage growth is kept within the limits permitted by the growth in productivity. Of course, Labor has even less of an understanding of these issues, but was saved time and again by decisions of the centralised system which made the effort to encourage money wage restraint but higher output per hour worked.It is a bad business that this ethos has disappeared from our wage system along with the outcomes which were not so long ago absolutely routine. There are probably  a host of reasons but I have been away from it for too long to know what they are. But if anyone believes that higher government spending and an enlarged public service are part of the answer, they could not be more wrong. That is a large part of what has gone wrong with very little indication, given the deficits that are now being routinely run, that anyone will anytime soon figure out what needs to change, or will be able to put those changes into effect.Debby Does MalicePosted on June 3, 2021 by currencylad Fair Work official investigated over allegations he let off firecrackers at unofficial function .Yeah simpler times. Before there was Brittany, there was Gerard Boyce s scantily clad figurines. Last year, sandwich maker for union blokedom Deborah O Neill used gender as an angle when she asked if Boyce s hobby statuettes had been topless in his office. Now she s pretending to care about firecrackers. Note the Labor senator s willingness to besmirch, frame, exaggerate, run to the police and demand China-style psychological punishment all to ruin a man s career and exact revenge. O Neill is one of the best and brightest alumni of the Australian Catholic University. Useful idiot mugged by realityPosted on June 3, 2021 by Sinclair Davidson This piece by Thomas Frank has been circulating on social media.I am no expert on epidemics. Like everyone else I know, I spent the pandemic doing as I was told. A few months ago I even tried to talk a Fox News viewer out of believing in the lab-leak theory of Covid’s origins. The reason I did that is because the newspapers I read and the TV shows I watched had assured me on many occasions that the lab-leak theory wasn’t true, that it was a racist conspiracy theory, that only deluded Trumpists believed it, that it got infinite pants-on-fire ratings from the fact-checkers, and because (despite all my cynicism) I am the sort who has always trusted the mainstream news media.My own complacency on the matter was dynamited by the lab-leak essay that ran in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists earlier this month; a few weeks later everyone from Doctor Fauci to President Biden is acknowledging that the lab-accident hypothesis might have some merit. We don’t know the real answer yet, and we probably will never know, but this is the moment to anticipate what such a finding might ultimately mean. What if this crazy story turns out to be true?Oh no. The horror, the horror.Let me repeat I don t really care if the lab-leak theory is true or not. It will have precisely zero impact on how governments respond to the crisis.But what does Frank think the impact would be?Now here we are in the waning days of Disastrous Global Crisis #2. Covid is of course worse by many orders of magnitude than the mortgage meltdown — it has killed millions and ruined lives and disrupted the world economy far more extensively. Should it turn out that scientists and experts and NGOs, etc. are villains rather than heroes of this story, we may very well see the expert-worshiping values of modern liberalism go up in a fireball of public anger. Because if the hypothesis is right, it will soon start to dawn on people that our mistake was not insufficient reverence for scientists, or inadequate respect for expertise, or not enough censorship on Facebook. It was a failure to think critically about all of the above, to understand that there is no such thing as absolute expertise. Think of all the disasters of recent years: economic neoliberalism, destructive trade policies, the Iraq War, the housing bubble, banks that are “too big to fail,” mortgage-backed securities, the Hillary Clinton campaign of 2016 — all of these disasters brought to you by the total, self-assured unanimity of the highly educated people who are supposed to know what they’re doing, plus the total complacency of the highly educated people who are supposed to be supervising them.So Frank is worried that if the lab-leak theory turns out to be true, the masses may stop being sheep. That is the problem here.Well, yes.I have spent a fair part of my career pointing out errors and lies that the government and its minions tell us. I am confident that Frank has nothing to worry about.Seen To Be DonePosted on June 2, 2021 by currencylad VICE-president of the Rule of Law Institute, Chris Merritt, last Friday warned that the accused in the Brittany Higgins case cannot possibly receive a fair jury trial. A decision on whether to arraign the former Liberal staffer accused of raping Miss Higgins in Parliament House in March 2019 will be made by ACT Director of Public Prosecutions, Shane Drumgold SC. AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw told a Senate committee last week that a brief of evidence for Drumgold s consideration will be ready soon. Merritt argues that only a bench trial would afford natural justice to a man repeatedly found guilty by politicians, commentators and protesters for several months. The very fact that several inquiries have been set in motion by the government to find out who knew what and when about something that may never have happened is itself massively prejudicial to an accused. Additionally, Higgins deserves to know that any conviction will be beyond reproach. A guilty verdict from a jury would be widely regarded as tainted. The problem is that an amendment of the ACT Supreme Court Act that enables judge-only trials as a pandemic measure will lapse on 30 June.There is something else about this potential prosecution hitherto unreported which strikes me as noteworthy. Merritt s opening paragraphs will serve as an introduction for our purposes:Shane Drumgold SC might not be a household name. But he soon will be.As Director of Public Prosecutions for the ACT, he will decide the fate of the Brittany Higgins affair. It might go to court. But then again, it might come to a sudden end.Drumgold is duty-bound to ignore the politicians and thousands of others who have made up their minds about this case.As it happens, I first took an interest in Mr Drumgold when he wrote to the AFP back in June 2020 recommending former High Court justice and arch-villain to the labour movement Dyson Heydon be investigated in relation to harassment allegations upheld by the non-judicial inquiry conducted by Dr Vivienne Thom. In a statement explaining his somewhat odd intervention, Drumgold said he wrote to Federal Police to draw their attention to two news articles, one about the Thom inquiry described as an investigation in the media and the second about an allegation by former ACT Law Society president Noor Blumer that Heydon had groped her leg under a table at a University of Canberra Law School ball in 2013. Despite the non-existence of justiciable evidence, the DPP wanted the AFP to determine if Heydon should be prosecuted for criminal offences. Four months later they were in no hurry Federal Police tried to get copies of the complainants statements to the Thom inquiry but the High Court refused to hand them over. The women s statements were confidential. The Thom report had no abiding prosecutory worth anyway. Heydon himself one of the world s top experts in evidence explained why. Nonetheless, if just two articles justify a police investigation, two hundred casually affirming the veracity of the Higgins allegation must pack quite a punch.you could ignore one re-tweet if it wasn t but the latest example of trite detestation in a portlier corpus. What shocked me, however, was not Drumgold s hair-triggered missive to the AFP but his visceral loathing of Liberals, as expressed on a seldom updated but still extant Twitter site. When a case as political as the Higgins matter is in play, re-tweeting a partisan misogyny gag by Marque Lawyers will raise eyebrows (notwithstanding that it pre-dates Higgins going public by 12 days). That firm s principal, Michael Bradley, represented the profoundly disturbed accuser of Christian Porter (pro bono). So manically does ML tweet about the sins and negligences of Scott Morrison, it s amazing any lawyering gets done. Anyway, you could ignore one re-tweet if it wasn t but the latest example of trite detestation in a portlier corpus. Drumgold s integrity is not in question. But as legal scholar Joe Biden would say, justice must not only be done, but you know the thing.Have these people never heard of Ivermectin?Posted on June 2, 2021 by Steve Kates No escape! We are obviously being government by morons, which may be just what we deserve. This is the best bit:Lockdown to be extended until at least early next weekNew strain spreading between strangers who pass each otherObviously the only answer is to keep everyone indoors forever.As for Ivermectin, why do none of them ever bring it up in conversation?I might also mention this comment at Andrew Bolt which seems apposite.I am not terrified of Covid-19 just as I an not terrified of the Flu!1255 Australians died of  the flu in 2017 and we never battered an eyelid.The events on the Diamond Princess provided a unique high load, confined space study for the Covid-19 infection.On February 3, 2020, 10 people aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship tested positive for the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Each had developed the resulting illness, COVID-19. By February 4, the people with COVID-19 had been isolated from the rest of the passengers.The case that prompted this onboard outbreak involved a person who had been aboard the ship between January 21 and January 25. Diamond Princess arrived in Yokohama early from a 14-day round trip itinerary, which departed from Yokohama (Tokyo) on January 20 and was scheduled to return on 4th February. There are 2,666 guests and 1,045 crew on board.We know the initial host arrived onboard 14 days prior to the first detection of the disease which tallies with the incubation period. Therefore. the virus was being freely transmitted in a confined, densely populated vessel for 15days prior to the passengers were confined to their cabins.Of those onboard there about 900 between the ages of 70 and 79, nearly 1000 between 80-89 and about 200 over 90. The total infection rate was about 17%. 83% either did not contract Covid-19 or exhibited no symptoms.Below is the current status in respect to those who were onboard during its quarantine in Yokohama. Total Cases: 712, Deaths: 13, Recovered:699, Active Cases: 0The USS Roosevelt provides an even more positive insight, with a crew of some 4200, less than 20% contracted Covid-19 while only 4 were hospitalized and than 5% of those 1 died of the infection.Yes vaccinate the at risk and those who want to and let the rest of us get on with our lives.Our governments have been taken over by terrorists.PLUS THIS NOW: Ivermectin obliterates 97 percent of Delhi casesA 97% decline in Delhi cases with Ivermectin is decisive period. It represents the last word in an epic struggle to save lives and preserve human rights. This graph symbolizes the victory of reason over corruption, good over evil, and right over wrong. It is as significant as David’s victory over Goliath. It is an absolute vindication of Ivermectin and early outpatient treatment. It is a clear refutation of the WHO, FDA, NIH, and CDC s policies of wait at home until you turn blue before you get treatment.Which side are you on, Prime Minister? On the side of right or on the side of wrong? On the side of good or the side of evil?That is not an apology This is an apologyPosted on June 1, 2021 by Sinclair Davidson Thankfully somebody in the government knows how it is done.On 27 April 2021, The New Daily published an article by Michael Pascoe regarding Australia’s lack of a beneficial ownership register, which contained criticism of aspects of Commonwealth Government policy.Senator the Honourable Jane Hume, Minister for Superannuation, Financial Services, Digital Economy and Women’s Economic Security has raised concerns that the article could be understood to question her integrity and unfairly impugn her character and professional reputation. Insofar as the comments in the article were capable of being understood to refer to Senator Hume personally, we retract and withdraw them and apologise to Senator Hume for any hurt and distress which has been caused.Gee I wonder what they published.

TAGS:Australias leading Catallaxy 

<<< Thank you for your visit >>>

Hot Websites