GINI - or the increasing inequality between the rich and the poor

This is the 2nd part of the "Leftie Serie" which I created after attending the People & Planet Conference on the 8th of March 2014. 
Here's a link to the other posts: Feminist Economics

As in any gathering of political lefties, inequality is a often-discussed topic. There are very decent debates around and differences to what this actually means, what equality would be and how equality is to be gained - but generally, most lefties agree on the notion that inequality is bad. 

At the conference these ideas were frequent. "The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer" has echoed throughout the world since Seattle, "UK inequality is raising", probably been said since Thatcher or before that even, "rich getting rich at the expense of the poor" are repeated until they stick. Question is, how accurate are they?

We were presented with the following charts of  Wilkinson & Pickett showing the how more equal countries are better countries, also notions heavily worshipped within the left. The chart plots countries according to Income Inequality (measured as GINI) and an index consisting of various problems, obesity, teen pregnancy, mental health, violence etc), showing how more equal countries tend to have less of those social problems.

Discussion

This discussion is twofolded. The left argument is something like this:

P1: "Inequalities are increasing"
P2: "Inequalities are bad and must be prevented"
C = we must prevent the inequalities from increasing, preferably reduce them

I'll address these in turn.

Let's have a look at income inequalities as measured by GINI, then. Here's a chart which compares the UK (Red square) with Scandinavian countries, Germany, France and the US.

Source: Ekonomistas, based on OECD numbers. UK GINI inside the red square.

The trend for continental Europe and Scandinavia is indeed upward over the last 30 years, but from very low levels. In the case of UK, on the other hand, the income inequality has been stable since 1990, actually falling slightly over the last few years. The notion that income inequalities in the UK are increasing is simply not true. Also consider the article published in the Guardian last summer about how income gap in the UK is at its lowest point for 25 years.

The other discussion often involved here is that the rich are getting rich at the expense of the poor, as news regularly imply when posting these kinds of arguments. That discussion is wider and regards the economic foundations and structure of a company. Suffice to say that level of bonus vs layoffs have very little to do with one another.

If we turn our heads to a more global scale, Johan Norberg's In Defense of Global Capitalism, comes to mind. He shows systematically how capitalism increased the living standards around the world and made people better off. He also describes the following, taken from a Forbes article when the book was first published:

"As for the argument that the rich are getting richer, well, they are, according to Norberg: The top fifth of the population made an average $14,623 in 1998, a 75% increase over 1965 wages. But the poor are getting richer faster. The bottom fifth, making $1,137 in 1998, doubled their 1965 wages." - Forbes

That is - yes, the richer are indeed getting richer, but not as fast as the poor. Yet again the Leftie's notion is inaccurate.

Is inequality bad?

Following the first section, the second becomes more philosophical; if inequalities aren't increasing, it matters less whether or not they are bad. Even if they are, it's still less of a problem than the global left claims. And surely, if the levels of inequalities experienced in the UK in 1990 were sustainable, given the increased living standrads since then, surely UK 2014 would be a better place than 24 years back. 

Anyway, the discussion finds most of its academical value in Wilkingson & Pickets work, which relies entirely on correlation. They plot their charts and break law #1 in Academia: don't mix Correlation with Causation. But the Left, hardly creditted with academical excellence or consistency, takes their research and use it for certain proof that inequality is bad. 

How would that even be possible? Inequality is a strictly relative term, not too different from Relative Poverty (which I wrote about some time back); that is, indicators of inequality could be up, even though everyone in a society was better off. Besides, all the effects discussed occur on individual levels (obesity, violence, mental health etc) - why would I suddenly become more violent because a banker across town gets a bonus or because cleaners in a different part of the country suddenly make more money than me? Inconceivable.

Defending the 1%

In addition to all of this, the recent discussion in US media about the top 1% should be taking into consideration. The Harvard economist Greg Mankiw published an article in the NY Times a few weeks back vividly defending the 1% and their contribution to society/world. He also provides compelling reasons to why the Lefties' notions about the richest of the rich are incorrect. More extensive reading can be found in his article 'Defending the 1%'.

Conclusions 

The notion of increasing income inequalities in the UK is incorrect; GINI has remained stable for the last 20 years, marginally falling/raising over the last decade. The rich around the world are indeed getting richer - but so are the poor, and at a rate faster than the rich.

The starting point of the Left ("Inequality is bad") doesn't have more support than the correlations provided by The Spirit Level. Since correlation ≠ causation, this gives us nothing more than a hint towards further research. Also Mankiw's arguments about the top-1% should be taking into account; why are transactions that make both parts better off and at the same time creating income inequalities undesirable?

The question I have for you lefties is simple: why exactly is inequality bad?

Feminist Economics

After the countless amount of ideas, statements and reasoning I was exposed to at the People & Planet Conference on Economics today (the "Lefties Conference", that I refered to previously), I decided to make an extended series. Every day for the coming weeks or so, I'll be posting something that originated at this conference and address the flawed reasoning and/or incorrect premises used in reaching their conclusions.

First up, in honour of the day, I'll dedicate my first blog post to Feminism. Now, I'm not a particularly big fan of feminism, depending obviously of what you choose to fill that concept with. This position I've addressed elsewhere. However, at the Conference I was introduced to the field of "Feminist Economics", and as this blog overwhealmingly focus a lot of its attention of economics, obviously I was curious.

The way I understand Feminist Economics, it includes the regular presuppositions given by marxian approach to class remade and re-organised for Sex or Gender; structure, exploitation, traits inherent to those groups that determine their actions etc. Wendy McElroy has done extensive works in that particular area. Anyways, we touched upon 3 specific areas that came up during the session.

1) Domestic work done by women is excluded from measures of the Economy.
2) Women are forced to choose between Career and Family.
3) Stats and the Wage Gap


1) Domestic Work
The argument here is that domestic work (care ex or relatives of children, household cleaning, cooking) is unpaid, doesn't involve a measurable transaction and is not included in the GDP, thus in the economy as a whole. Feminist Economics try to distinguish itself from 'Traditional Economics' by including such unpaid work into their models and measurements of the economy.

2) Career or Family?
Such an ancient question, constantly been part of the feminist movement. How is a woman to choose? Does she even have to? Can she have both? The discussion here is that there's a social pressure for women to focus on family, a structure implicitly telling women they're bad mothers if they spend too much effort/time on their careers. Because men doesn't face these questions, all things equal, women will be disadvantaged by such anticipations.

3) Stats and the "wage gap"
We had three sets of statistics presented to us. Taking them at face value, they were "Women hold 70% of jobs paying the minimum wage"; "30 000 women are sacked each year because they are pregnant"; "Average Domestic work for women are 3x the domestic work of men".

Also included the discussion about the wage gap, that is men making more money than women, within the same occupation.

Addressing these issues resolve mainly around two things; Refutal of the "Wage Gap" and the notion of Choice. In the first two areas, choice is a dominant factor, largely ignored. Let me give you a hypothetical. Let's say the entire economic society went 'equal' overnight; supply and demand randomly created an equal pay for everyone (women included) and sectorial work identital between men and women. No wage gap, no involuntary part-time work, no penalty for choosing family etc. Now then let's also say there's a change in attitude towards leisure in the case of some women whilst the pattern of leisure/work for men is held constant; these women now prefer staying home, planting flowers in the garden, watch tv, involve themselves in community work and whatnot to a larger extent than before. They substitute some work for leisure and are therefor better off (First, they had a certain ratio between work and leisure that they were happy with; now the change in preference altered that ratio, resulting in a higher rate of leisure, and they recieve more personal benefits from this - otherwise they would stay in the same ratio as before, like the other women did). 

How would we see this? We would see that 1) the wages of men would outstrip women (if women work less and pay is perfectly equal, their aggregate wage is reduced), 2) men would work more than women, 3) women would be overrepresented in part-time jobs. Not too different from the story Feminists tell us today.

My point here is that domestic work is a choice; relationships, assumed here to be male-female, are determined by their reciprocal relations. Simply, in living together, men and women decide who is taking up what task, who is doing what. If that choice comes out with 5 vs 15 hours work respectively, what does it matter? Two people voluntarily choose to distribute domestic work in a certain pattern. No more, no less. Domistic work is, by its nature, unpaid, because it is what you do in your home. The fact that women happen to do more of such work than men means very little, especially for the entire economy. Irrelevant.

Second point: Wage gap. All kinds of numbers are generally presented to support this idea; women make 15% less than men, £5000 less in a year; higher in private sector (19%) than public (13%) etc, etc. What does this mean? How is this measured? The simplest of comparisons are made through dividing all income by women by the amount of women to the same ratio for men. Clearly inaccurate, because that would compare the pay of a female working minimum wage at tesco with a handsomely payed lawyer. Most studies then controll for other factors, most obviously what profession you're in. But even then, same questions arise; differences in productivity, experiences, in certain education etc. Some studies controll for more factors than others, but very few of them are conclusive in the sense that they add such tiny things as choices or personal adequacy.

Truth to be told, when more factors are accounted for (education, experience, career choice or even negotiation skills) the gap narrows into virtually nothing. There is no wage gap, there's only choices. More extensive reading here.

Bottom Line: if there is no wage gap due to sex, and the domestic issue is largely determined by choices, the fundamenta for "Feminist Economics" is largely pulled away.

___________________________

P.S: There was also a discussion about particular male characteristics that women allegedly had to embrace in order to become successful career-wise (ie, the idea that 'female traits' such as emotion or care is less usefull in business and career than are 'male traits' like logic or self-discipline and whatnot). A widely-used UK example is Margaret Thatcher, who, allegedly, wasn't female enough.
That's a perfect example to what I mean with "Epistemology" in my story of Feminism: how can we know that? How is such knowledge obtained? How is even 'male traits' to be defined?

Also, the idea of "Sacked because of Pregnant" faces the same issue; how do we know? Because such an action is illegal in the UK, it's not simply to gather statistics of "reason for redundancy". Furthermore, Wendy McElroy has a great outline of why exactly discrimination is justified.

You're entitled to your own opinion - Not to your own facts

So, tomorrow there's this lefties conference at one of the Student Unions. Exciting! I've talked myself into going with the intention of keeping quiet and listening carefully to all the arguments and positions I will encounter. How thoughtful of me, not to ruin their conference with unconventional views!

Anyway, as a pre-runner, I'm doing some reasoning regarding freedom of opinion - your right to think whatever you want. Fundamental pillar upon which our western democracies rest. Let's go.

One of the most interesting clashes of politics is facts vs. opinion. We all, predominantly, recognize that other people are entitled to their views, just as I am entitled to mine. However, what happens when such opinions are countered with plain facts, insofar that such facts can be obtained?

First, fundamental difference:
Opinion: I like Ice-Cream
Fact: Ice-Cream contains cream (unless it's vegan, made differently, lala).

Regardless of my opinion about what Ice-Cream contains, or my right to excercise that opinion, it doesn't change the fact that cream is a component of Ice-Cream - thus, it renders my opinion ridiculous, superfluous and straight out silly.

So, what happens when opinions are based on or fully rely on facts? That is, what happens when the relation between the two are established?

Let me give you an example. Consider a fairly easy statement, "Cats are the best animals!"
An opinion, easy enough, and a very subjective statement. How is "best" to be defined, or even measured? We can't do anything about it, and the freedom of opinion applies fully.

If we add the next layer: "Cats are the best animals, because they have most legs!"
Now we've established a relation to measurable fact, and the person has also implied the indicator for how "best" is to be measured: the amount of legs.

But here facts come in: There are a number of other animals with more legs than cats, say spiders or ants. Applying the person's own measure for why cats are the best animals (namely amount of legs), his/her opinion is invalidated. Cats simply are not the best animals, regardless of this person's view or opinion. He or she is wrong. Not from my point of view, but from any point of view.

How is all of this relevant for a Leftie Conference?

I tend to encounter socialists or people on the left that carry certain ideas and believes that I find preposterous. Fair enough, we're all entitled to opinions, which is a major criticism I get when I say they're wrong or should change their views: "We're all entitled to our own opinions, why don't you let me have mine?"

Well, insofar as
1) an indicator for measuring that opinion is provided,
2) facts for that indicator can be obtained, and
3) there's a straight relationship between the indicator and the opinion, i.e you use that indicator to say why exactly your opinion is prefered,
then your opinion can be made as useless and incorrect as the one about cats above.

That is, if I can prove to you, within these three conditions, that your ideology is incorrect, your statements invalid and your facts wrong - then no, you're no longer entitled to have that opinion.

This is, I think, essentially why I wanna go tomorrow. If I can prove to lefties that their perception or ideas are factually incorrect, they are obliged to change their position, those perceptions and ultimately their entire ideology.

Seems easy enough, why do we still have socialists around?

The Invaluable Socialist Logic part #2 - Perspective

Link to the first part of Socialist (lack of) Logic

One of these socialist features of University Life is portrayed in certain subjects; sociology is the prime example, but also Public Policy, a subject I had the great (mis)fortune to study last semester. When basing its raison d'être on the right of Government to control and intervene, it obviously becomes very biased toward socialist frameworks/attracts students with those values. Not to mention all the students mopping around about 'intersectionality' or staff going on strike every other day. Where are all the freedom-minded students?

Anyway, here's a fun example from Public Policy course of last semester.

Apart from continuously reading from Fredrich Engels, taking his words for granted, my lecturer had such a striking example of socialist logic:

Before Industrial Revolution
First she explained to us a view of 18th and 19th century Great Britain, before the technical and economical changes of the Industrial Revolution. She depicted an awful environment, vividly describing how poor women in rural areas had to spend their entire day on sewing tiny, tiny laces which were used for table decorations in Upper-class homes. For this, they made the equivalent of 2 pence. Oppressive, horrible life, lots of them became huckle-backed and blind from working in the dark. Let's just neglect the discussion of historical accuracy of this description and take it at face value.

After Industrial Revolution
Now machines were invented that could do 10-20 or even a 100 times what these women had been capable of doing in a day. My lecturer, consequently, condemned the change in society, arguying that these poor women no longer could spend their entire days on sewing laces, because machines took their jobs - and they became unemployed! Horrible, oppressive unemployment.

You'd think that if sewing these tiny laces all day, which were sold for essentially nothing, was such a horrible treat, finally getting rid of it and being able to dedicate yourself to somethink less harsh - that'd be a good thing. Nono, not in Socialist Logic. Whatever happens, whatever the reason, the oppression of poor workers is taken as given. Also, it's a terribly convenient position to take; when workers do a, they're oppressed. When they finally are relieved from doing a, they're oppressed. Falsifiability, anyone?

Especially awkward is this description of 19th century life when the lecturer appropriately forgot to mention that the standard of living between 1780-1860 increased some 150% for regular poor people like these. Well, well. Nobody accused socialists for being thorough. Or even coherent.

Socialist Logic: Everything is always bad and capitalism is oppressive. Period. Especially when capitalism/globalisation over the last 20 years lifted some 900-1000m people out of poverty. Awful, really.

Invaluable Socialist Logic - Inequality

Link to the second part of Socialist (lack of) Logic.

Socialists' main concern normally is equality, or rather its opposite; inequality. To them, it's the most horrible feature of capitalist societies, and they regularly use studies like The Spirit Level to get their points across; more equal societies are better societes (Also where analogies to Scandinavia are plentiful). They also heavily rely on the measure called GINI coefficient, which shows income distribution/equality throughout a country (0 = everyone has the same income, 100 = one person has all the income; most western countries have GINIs between 20-40)

Anyway, let's have a look at how perverse the effects of equality might turn out.

Let's say we have a country consisting of 100 people. They're all poor, with very little means to get around, living below the PPP $1,25/day (Extreme Poverty Line), with all the bad stuff associated with poverty: disease, low life expectancy, high child mortalities, undernurished etc., etc. Quite bad. On the other hand, however, because they're all more or less equally poor, this country is gonna score very low on GINI, say 5-10.

Now, let's introduce something else. For different reasons, say capitalism or globalisation, 10 of these people start selling their crops abroad, invent some machinery that's terribly useful for foreign people etc. For whatever reason, these 10 people are now a lot wealthier, makes substantially more money, build nice houses for themselves and whatnot. If we ignore spillover effects that socialists generally criticize capitalism for not having, what's going to happen with the GINI indicator? It will soar. Completely fly through the roof. We'd be talking numbers of 60, 70, 80. A riddiculous increase in inequality.

According to the socialist interpretation of GINI, this new country is a horrible place. Inequality, some rich people are extremely wealthy while others are on the brink of starvation. But what has actually changed? Capitalism lifted 10% of the population out of poverty, increasing the standard of living for 10 people - while the rest are still at their previous level. According to Socialist ideals, this country went from equal (and bad) to unequal (and worse), even though only 90 people instead of 100 are in extreme poverty. For all intend and purposes, 90 people starving rather than 100 people starving is an improvement, regardless of what the GINI says.

Since capitalism and globalisation is doing just that, why stop it?

My point here: focus on equality, income distribution or the GINI-coefficient is misleading. It doesn't tell the story and is rather useless to explain lives in different countries. Socialists should stop using it as an argument to why capitalism is bad. Especially when capitalism  over the last 20 years has lifted a billion people out of poverty.

Fundamental Rights - On Glasgow, Edward Snowden and the Inconsistency

Last week the Student body of Glasgow surprised everyone by electing Edward Snowden as University Rector, a notion subject to a number of jokes, including my personal favourite "The most important feature of a rector is the ability to leave Russia".

I'd like to add an interesting inconsistency with this entire debate, about surveillence, personal liberty, integrity etc. Snowden said the following in an interview given to the Guardian:

"If we do not contest the violation of the fundamental right of free people to be left unmolested in their thoughts, associations and communications - to be free from suspicion without cause - we will have lost the foundation in our thinking society." - Edward Snowden

Key points here are unmolested in their [...] associations. Most people would agree right.

Let's now apply that to other areas, say economic ones. Tax rates, for instance, or even food regulation laws. Where does that leave us?

How is any rate of taxes consistent with "unmolested in their associations"? Politicians decide to take some percentage of anything you make/sell/earn, add VAT to anything you buy, and also take chunks of a large bit out of corporative profits. If anything could come close to "MOLESTING", this would be it.

Ok, let's go with food regulations. In my native country, the rules that apply to retailers of food, producers, restaurants, café or anything connected to food, are extensive and the Government even has its own authority to give permits, inspect and decide upon what you can or cannot do in the food business. Likewise the UK, Germany, France (not to mention EU standards) have regulations for how such business is to be made. Yet again, how can anything be more in line with "molesting free people in their associations"? If I enter into a transaction of, say, disgusting and rotten food, that's my responsibility. Not to mention the obvious point of WHY I would enter such a transaction? (and, if food contains whatever substance I can't inspect on my own and that makes me sick, I say it's safe to assume that neither me nor anyone I know would buy from that company again - i.e, incentives align to produce good-quality food).

Point is, our Socialist Governments (including those labelling themselves as Liberal, Conservative etc) are filled with regulations, tax rates, fees, distortions to freedom - all of which represents "violation to the fundamental rights of free people to be left unmolested in [...] their associations".

Now tell me, if integrity, personal freedom and "Freedom to be left unmolested" are such virtues in terms of tele-communications, surveillence - how come they're NOT virtues in the fields that actually matter? THat is, taxes, price-levels, regulations to people and business and virtually all parts of British society?

Inconsistency. Hypocracy. Lousy. If freedom and integrity are good enough reasons to sanctify Edward Snowden, why are they not good enough reasons to reduce taxes, remove regulation and increase real freedom? Stuff that actually matter.

If you seriously want to embrace freedom, I'll be the first to congratulate you. But until then, stop pretending you're a supporter of freedom only because you agree with Snowden. Get real.

A personal account to why Publicly-funded Universities is a very bad idea

The tutorial is about to start. Of the 15 students supposedly in this group, only 6-7 are present. The tutor shrugs and starts anyway. He briefly outlines the content of today's class and moves on to the first topics.

Oh, right. Some background. These tutorials have weekly excercises to be made in preparation of each tutorial. They're rather elementary tasks based on lectures as well as textbook. A few months into the semester, not to mention that the format didn't change during Christmas, even weak students should be rather aware of this by now.

An introductory question is launched at the group, only to strike dead silence. Today, I'm not answering all the questions, I decided in advance. Next question. I can't bear this silence anylonger, I'll do it. These bunch of caffeinated and regular-looking students, pens ready, doesn't seem to follow more than a few lines of thought at once.

15 minutes after the class starts, the first two latecomers rumble into the room. One of then instantly picks up a question, greatly to my delight, only to destroy that initial boost of happiness when the truth is revealed; she has no idea, answers diametrically opposed to what the tutor is asking. Cool enough.

5 more minutes, and the guy who most closely resembles the quarterback in some typical american movie bangs the door, drops his bag on the floor and takes a seat, staring at the tutor. Wait, striking resemblance to, erhm, elementary school.

Speaking for the remainer of the tutorial: the tutor, me or the girl who's basically got everything wrong. 
_____

Now, let me ask a few questions. If you come to a tutorial, why don't you participate? If you don't do the tasks or know what they're about, why do you show up? If you intend not to speak/participate, why do you bother showing up 20 min late (on a bloody 50 min tutorial)? If you're not into studying, why are you even at a University to begin with?

Let me get to my point. This country, as does my native country, provides people with free-of-charge education. They allow and accept tons of students. What does this give us? It gives us people who don't want to be here, and shouldn't be here because  1) it's expected of them, 2) they have nowhere else to go, as socialist governments ruin their labour chances by minimum wage laws, restriction and interventions etc.

Also, basic ECON101, what happens to demand of a service when price is artificially held at 0*? Heavily increased. What kind of people? Those who wouldn't pay should there have been a price tag. That is, in econ talk, those who value the opportunity cost for giving up labour over the benefits of University. Now, with a 0-based price tag, their calculations change, sending lesser-motivated students into Universities.

Final remarks. Publicly-funded education may produce these events; students lacking motivation, students being used by governments as a labour market initiative. Oh, and most importantly, standards are reduced so that the general student population (now less able, less productive etc) can keep up.

That's amazing. I'm so glad tax-payers' money is used for completely silent tutorials. Lovely.


___
* = ignoring the effects of certain elasticity levels etc.

Public vs. Private

Yesterday I had two particular interactions with certain institutions. The first, a publicly run and funded health care service, the second a privately owned and operated retailer of pharmaceutical products.

At the first, I was making an appointment. The receptionist was bitter, somewhat angry and seemed genuinly unhappy with being there. I asked for an appointment, and she firmly answered me that 15.00 would do. I politely asked if she could make it later (or even earlier, perhaps?) as 15 was not a very good time for me.

- 15.00 or nothing, now leave. 

Thank you, oh humle Party Representative, for rationing according to what you see fit, and distributing the available resources regardless of my wishes. I am thee eternally thankful.

____

The second interaction was with the pharmacy retailer, who looked up when I entered, greeted me politly, had a look on my prescription and excused himself for a moment in order to look for that particular drug. A minute later he returned, apologizing heavily - perhaps three times - explaining that it won't arrive until the day after at 11 o'clock, if I would be ok with that. He asked if I was in a lot of pain, and I answered that I was, though not worse than the days before. He apologized on behalf of the firm again, and promised to have it readily available and waiting for me at 11 the next day. I thanked the nice man, left, and felt somewhat happy anyway.

___


Now, this is not an attempt to prove that private is better than public, although I firmly believe that is the case. Besides, this is probably more of a personal issue than anything else; if the awful women in the reception would have been in the pharmacy I suppose she'd still be awful, bitter and unkind whereas the nice man placed in a public situation would still be nice. And again, the women was probably held back by silly regulations saying that appointments had to be allocated in the exact order people came in etc.

But, I still can't get that feeling out of my head; in private organisations/companies there tends to be a lot nicer people, they treat their costumers with dignity and respect, whereas the opposite tends to be the case in public organisations. There certainly is something weird about that, and I am inclined to believe that it's due to the format public-private.

Responses? Experiences?

Subsidies for EU agricultue - a critique of CAP

Today I'm in the mood of attacking state-financed industry. Actually not subsidies in general, but a particularly harmful subsidy; agricultural subsidies.

Financially supporting farmers has been a key part of policies for many countries, but moreso the European Union. Since the time of ECC the framework know as Common Agricultural Policy has been in placed, disrupting markets and increasing prices for normal people. It consists of a few different components, such as encouraging overproduction, EU promise to buy at a guaranteed price and to increase general production of crops. (Here's a brief comparison over pros and con for CAP)

As this chart shows, increased European prices is not a very new phenomenon. It's been around for a while.

"The averege person in sub-Saharan Africa earns less than $1 a day. The average cow in Europe - thanks to government subsidies - earns about $2 a day. And therein lies a tale of the power of European farm interests and the weakness of African economies". Kevin Hassett & Robert Shapiro (Quote's from an article about 10 years back, so the numbers are probably not entirely accurate)

What impact does this have then? 

Not only does the CAP artificially increase food prices for European Consumers, it also harms non-european producers (predominantly African and Asian farmers, i.e the poorest of the poor) that otherwise would have supplied the European market with crops. As if that were not enough, the EU also dumps surpluses on the international markets, surpressing prices further and in another strike hurts farmers in developing countries. It's almost as if the CAP was designed to hurt African farmers as much as possible. I mean, is there anything it can do to do FURTHER harm to African farmers?

Strike 1) Block them from our Markets by Huge tariffs on Agricultural products
Strike 2) Pay our own farmers to overproduce, and sell below production costs
Strike 3) Dump the surplusses on the international markets, surpressing the price African farmers would have sold their crops for otherwise

That's amazing. Together with kickbacks and general inefficiencies with development aid and Remittances outweighting Western Development aid, the CAP is just another measure to harm poor people in other parts of the world.

Disgusting.

Strikes, Global Richlist and BACK FROM CHRISTMAS

Heey!

I took a break from blogging during Christmas and all of January, appearantly. Not too many awful events took place, and consequently, I wasn't upset enough to post anything.

Now, on the other hand, the famous straw broke the camel's back and I really have to comment on ongoing strikes, as I've written about them before.
1) University Staff demands higher wages, a UK wide action, but I feel the local consequences in Glasgow. 2) Tube strikes in London due to cuts, resulting in -950 or so jobs.

The Strikes are somewhat different
The Purpose of the Uni strike is to increase wage ("normal Union demands"), while the London strike is to save the jobs of the union members. Also, the way in which they pursue these targets are different. London strike took a more "regular" approach, by laying down work for a day, resulting in massive delays and bothering a few million people in London. The staff at University of Glasgow, on the other hand, has come up with the somewhat weird idea of 2-hour-long strikes, meaning that classes/lecture are off for 2 hours, but will then be resumed.

So, value free from my point of view, if you ARE going to strike, you kinda want it to be felt by recipients but preferably by your employer. And preferably as much as possible. In this sense, the London strike is excellent. Costumers upset, loss of income, disrupting on a large scale. Puts pressure on decision-makers. On the staff at Glasgow Uni? Not so much. Loss of income for uni? No. Costumers upset? Not really, most part of revenue is already distributed to the Uni. Disrupting? Not really, mostly somewhat annoying.

That is, at face value, the Glasgow strike doesn't even make sense; it doesn't achieve its ends, whereas the London one does.

On the Issue of salaries
This doesn't really apply to the London strikes, because they're concerned with job cuts - not pay cuts! There we might consider if extra Tube costs for millions of people are worth the jobs of 950 workers. Hardly.
But generally, Unions are concerned with wages, and that's what I'm adressing now.

I don't know what the Uni staff generally makes, and I suppose there's a distribution between café workers and professors. But, even disregarding that, I'm pretty sure they're payed above the UK minimum wage. Considering the Minimum Wage then means my calculations are on the LOWER EDGE. Currently the minimum wage is £6,31 for regular workers, resulting in an annual net payroll of about £11 700, according to this. Let's put that into Global Rich List and we find that amounts to world top 6% income-earners.

Hang on, let me get this straight. People, making more money net of taxes, than 94% of the world's population, are striking in demand for higher salaries. Really?

Someone's got to be joking. Quit fooling around, get back to work (or leave, if you don't like it). Don't be ridiculous, annoying the rest of us.