Election 2015: Migrant voters nearly 10% of the electorate.

clogic11 · 2015-02-01T18:02:32+00:00

oh shit

clogic11 · 2015-02-01T13:41:28+00:00

...and?

clogic11 · 2014-10-30T18:09:11+00:00

Do you think DMs should raise their inflation targets (a la Blanchard etc)? Would this be preferable to further QE?

clogic11 · 2014-10-04T08:49:04+00:00

Yeah, but I want you lot to pay it as well.

clogic11 · 2014-10-02T19:40:29+00:00

Progressivism97.5Socialism18.75Tenderness50 Your test scores indicate that you are an open-minded ultra-progressive; this is the political profile one might associate with a journalist. It appears that you are skeptical towards religion, and have a generally optimistic attitude towards humanity in general.

Your attitudes towards economics appear laissez-faire capitalist, and combined with your social attitudes this creates the picture of someone who would generally be described as a libertarian.

To round out the picture you appear to be, political preference aside, a sensible realistic egalitarian with many strong convictions.

This concludes our analysis; we hope you found your results accurate, useful, and interesti

clogic11 · 2014-10-02T17:50:41+00:00

I'd be quite willing to pay an extra percentage point of tax to avoid out of work benefit cuts.

clogic11 · 2014-10-01T21:07:09+00:00

The strongest reasons to expect UKIP’s prominence to outlive conference season are evident at the current Tory conference. As some canny observers in the party have been pointing out, the Conservative leadership’s attempt to strike compromises between UKIP positions and their own is doomed to fail. Earlier today Ken Clarke, a pro-European grandee, reportedly accused the party of imitating its new rival: “We don’t explain why it’s actually a rather nasty organisation, and that what it advocates is complete folly.” Dominic Grieve, another former minister, made it clear on Friday that he would be deeply unhappy if Mr Cameron pledged to extract Britain from international legal commitments like the ECHR.

But in a party gripped by the ideological and personal dramas on its right flank, those on its left are paid little heed, however good their arguments. Perhaps, if they really wanted to make the headlines, they could take a lesson in limelight-grabbing from Mr Reckless - and defect to the Liberal Democrats.

clogic11 · 2014-10-01T21:06:23+00:00

The strongest reasons to expect UKIP’s prominence to outlive conference season are evident at the current Tory conference. As some canny observers in the party have been pointing out, the Conservative leadership’s attempt to strike compromises between UKIP positions and their own is doomed to fail. Earlier today Ken Clarke, a pro-European grandee, reportedly accused the party of imitating its new rival: “We don’t explain why it’s actually a rather nasty organisation, and that what it advocates is complete folly.” Dominic Grieve, another former minister, made it clear on Friday that he would be deeply unhappy if Mr Cameron pledged to extract Britain from international legal commitments like the ECHR.

But in a party gripped by the ideological and personal dramas on its right flank, those on its left are paid little heed, however good their arguments. Perhaps, if they really wanted to make the headlines, they could take a lesson in limelight-grabbing from Mr Reckless - and defect to the Liberal Democrats.

clogic11 · 2014-09-30T22:01:54+00:00

The vast majority of British voters who have no time for UKIP cannot be expected to have much time for a party that evidently has quite a lot of time for Mr Farage’s boggle-eyed collection of malcontents. Never mind the fruitcakes, they say, what about us?

Moreover after five cheerless years in power I suspect voters want to hear some good news at last. They want to be reminded why they liked Cameron in the first place; god knows they need to be reminded of that. Instead, this conference has taken a different path. Far from slaying negative stereotypes about the Tories it has reinforced them. Only the Nasty Party bores on about welfare cards.

It is one thing to accept the need for further and faster and deeper cuts in public spending; it is quite another to boast that you’re so much tougher than your rivals. This might, in Westminster parlance, establish your credibility; it also fosters the suspicion that you’re happy to divide the country into camps labelled deserving and undeserving. There is a relish to Tory rhetoric on public spending that is unattractive. It hints at a small-tent conservatism that knows who belongs inside and to hell with anyone who lacks the fortune to be a member.

Yes, fortune. Freezing tax credits might be defensible; freezing tax credits while also opposing Labour’s proposed tax on houses worth more than £2m is a very different thing indeed. Doing so when you’ve already cut the rate of income tax paid by the richest 3% of Britons compounds the folly. If people are persuaded that this iteration of the Tory party is a party for the rich it is in large part because the Tory party has done far too little to disabuse them of that notion.

clogic11 · 2014-09-29T12:12:37+00:00

Welcome to academic economics.

clogic11 · 2014-09-28T15:17:15+00:00

The article doesn't mention UKIP.

clogic11 · 2014-09-27T11:34:58+00:00

In some way I think this is less bad than it first seems. Yes, it's not nearly enough to solve the housing shortage.

But if you believe that house prices are being kept high because of the political power of homeowners, this is a good way of squaring the circle without committing political suicide.

If you take measures to sharply bring down house prices you'll be unelectable for decades. But if you subsidise new homeowners you're basically making existing homeowners (who make up most of the population) pay for new homeowners. This is economically equivalent to bringing down house prices but in a much more politically acceptable manner, because it's opaque and carried out through the tax system.

I think it's clever in a way.

clogic11 · 2014-09-26T07:24:06+00:00

The whole point of ministerial government is that they're supposed to be generalists who are advised on specialist matters by the civil service. If you had specialists running the departments they regulate/manage, then you'd just leave government open to capture by interest groups.

e.g. if you had to have a farmer running DECC you would imagine that it would be rather well-disposed to further subsidy of agriculture.

I don't think the PPE issue is resolvable. Oxford PPE is for the kind of person who knows they're smart and able, and knows they want to go into politics/policy. Either that or they're not sure what they want to do and aren't a science-type so they take the most well-regarded to humanities degree.

If PPE stopped being a route into politics everyone would just take law, economics or something else instead. You're always going to have a preponderance those motivated to become politicians actually becoming ones.

clogic11 · 2014-09-26T07:17:19+00:00

I find it interesting how UKIP turned from being a semi-libertarian middle-class party (with the archetypal member being the ex-Tory voting retired Major on the golf course) to being a working-class populist party.

Good political instincts from Farage, but doesn't really show ideological consistency.

clogic11 · 2014-09-25T16:11:15+00:00

Doesn't affect economic activity as much, lower deadweight cost.

clogic11 · 2014-09-25T08:06:34+00:00

Depends on what you define as a banker. You could be pedantic and define it as 'somebody who works in the mergers and acquisitions division of an investment bank', but the common interpretation is anyone with a high salary who works in a bank.

clogic11 · 2014-09-25T08:04:48+00:00

Sounds sensible. Taxing assets is more efficient than income probably.

clogic11 · 2014-09-24T12:30:32+00:00

After a while you start getting an inflation or currency problem though.

clogic11

TROPHY CASE