More Thomas criminality- Thomas sold his 1/2 interest in his mother’s house to Crow for an above market price of $133000 in 2014 (and likely hers for the same price) and did not report it on his financial disclosure form, a clear specific requirement of government code for any real estate transaction over $1000, including for supreme court justices and including sales to “friends”.

Crow also improved the home and allows Thomas’s mother to live there rent free, also not reported, but it’s less clear how criminal that is despite its clearly being unethical bribery.
Crow also bought and bulldozed the neighbors homes so she wouldn’t have noisy neighbors….I mean because he really just wanted to beautify that random neighborhood.

Of course, in your mind, nothing burger. Thomas clearly wouldn’t rule in favor of the man who funds his and his families extravagant opulent lifestyle and his wife’s high paying extreme right political lobbying group….never….and breaking ethics and tax laws don’t count if the perp is Republican.

Referred to the DOJ for prosecution. First time ever in history for justices. More MAGA greatness.

Dont worry those jobs are a fiction. The world's going to renewables and robots fast -Trump or no Trump.

And if coal did come back big the Chinese would just swamp the market. How long do you think Trump - or any republican - is going to pay triple market price as a favour to Jonny Lunchpail?

The traditional next move for a big promising, low delivering demagogue is to immediately start a war.

I'm sorry to hear about your difficulties, @eric3579. The U.S. most certainly has one of the most fucked up healthcare industries in the industrialized world.

But instead of socialism, why not give a free market a chance, instead? What we have now, is anything but a free market. Intellectual Property, regulations, and a lack of any real accurate economic calculations sets the stage for some wide fluctuations in health care (in terms of access, cost, and quality of care). Sadly, while @Yogi is correct in saying that fraud is not unique to socialism, socialism is burdened with a lack of any real economic calculation (as to what things are supposed to cost). Thus, you have the kinds of costs you're describing.

Interestingly, the article stated, "he discovered that health care costs are largely arbitrary, inflated, and unfair. “The health care market is not a market at all. It’s a crapshoot,” he concluded. “Everyone fares differently based on circumstances they can neither control nor predict.”

This isn't surprising. Without a free market, we have no real prices. We don't need socialism. We need economic calculation.

The article goes on to say, "health care costs are largely arbitrary, inflated, and unfair. “The health care market is not a market at all"

I couldn't have said it better. “The health care market is not a market at all."

Or as Hayek says in the "rap battle" music video (floating on the sift somewhere), "We need stable rules and real market prices, so prosperity emerges and cuts short the crisis."

@rottenseed I agree that it won't be an over-night operation. The wingnuts would absolutely freak out if the evil gubment actually did "COME FOR OUR GUNS". We'd have a civil war.

The long view is to start reducing the number of guns produced. Start making it more difficult to get them. Start buying guns back from the citizenry at market prices (and then destroy them.)

This might be a 200 year plan...

@GeeSussFreeK

I tried to stay way from issues specific to the use of nuclear technology for a reason. There's very little in your reply that I can respond to, simply for a lack of expertise. So bear with me if I once again attempt to generalize and abstract some points. And I'll try to keep it shorter this time.

You mentioned how construction times and costs are pushed up by the constant evolution of compliance codes. A problem not exclusive to the construction of power plants, but maybe more pronounced in these cases. No matter.

What buggers me, however, is what you can currently observe in real time at the EPR construction sites in Olkiluoto and Flamanville.
For instance, the former is reported to have more than 4000 workers from over 60 nations, involving more than 1500 sub-contractors. It's basically the Tower of Babylon, and the quality of work might be similar as well. Workers say, they were ordered to just pour concrete over inadequate weld seams to get things done in time, just to name an example. They are three years over plan as of now, and it'll be at least 2-3 more before completion.
And Flamanville... here's some of what the French Nuclear Safety Authority had to say about the construction site: "concrete supports look like Swiss cheese", "walls with gaping holes", "brittle spots without a trace of cement".

Again, this is not exclusive to the construction of NPPs. Almost every large scale construction site in Europe these days looks like this, except for whatever the Swiss are doing: kudos to them, wonderful work indeed. But if they mess up the construction of a train station, they don't run a risk of ruining the ground water and irradiating what little living space we have in Europe as it is.

Then you explain the advantages of small scale, modular reactors. Again, no argument from my side on the feasability of this, I have to take your word on it. But looking at how the Russians dispose of their old nuclear reactors (bottom of the Barents Sea) and how Germany disposes of its nuclear waste (dropped down a hole), I don't fancy the idea of having even more reactors around.

As for prices, I have to raise my hands in surrender once again. Not my area of expertise, my knowledge is limited to whatever analysis hits the mainstream press every now and then. Here's my take on it, regarding just the German market: the development, construction, tax exemption, insurance exemption, fuel transport and waste disposal of the nuclear industry was paid for primarly by taxes. Conservative government estimates were in the neighbourhood of €300B since the sixties, in addition to the costs of waste disposal and plant deconstruction that the companies can't pay for. And that's if nothing happens to any of the plants, no flood, no fire, nothing.

That's not cheap. E.ON and RWE dropped out of the bid on construction permits for new NPPs in GB, simply because it's not profitable. RWE CEO Terium mentioned ~100€/MWh as the minimum base price to make new NPPs profitable, 75.80€/MWh for gas-powered plants. Right now, the base (peak) price is at 46€/MWh (54€/MWh) in Germany. France generates ~75% of its power through NPPs, while Germany is getting plastered with highly subsidized wind turbines and solar panels, yet the market price for energy is lower in Germany.

Yes, the conditions are vastly different in the US, and yes, the next generation of NPPs might be significantly cheaper and safer to construct and run. I'm all for research in these areas. But on the field of commercial energy generation, nuclear energy just doesn't seem to cut it right now.

So let's hop over to safety/dangers. Again, priorities might differ significantly and I can only argue from a central European perspective. As cold-hearted as it may sound, the number of direct casualties is not the issue. Toxicity and radiation is, as far as I'm concerned. All our NPPs are built on rivers and the entire country is rather densely populated. A crashing plane might kill 500 people, but there will be no long term damage, particularly not to the water table. The picture of an experimental waste storage site is disturbing enough as it is, and it wasn't even "by accident" that some of these chambers are now flooded by ground water.

Apologies if I ripped anything out of context. I tried to avoid the technicalities as best as I could in a desperate attempt not to make a fool of myself. Again.

And sorry for not linking any sources in many cases. Most of it was taken from German/Swiss/Austrian/French articles.

So wait, they get their shit made in sweatshops, they sell their shit at 3x the cost of the market price for the hardware components AND they aren't paying their taxes? What are they doing with their profits? Building a secret underground evil base in an abandoned missile silo?

Oh nvm, they probably spend it all on marketing.

>> ^NetRunner:

"Free market" rules work like this


And that's where people like you fail. You don't understand the free market because the free market is just you and me, and you can't predict the actions of the people. We are the market. Not the corporations or the government.

Let me tweak your equation. Person A has X dollars and wants cherries. And the market price for cherries is Y dollars. If X < Y, then Person A can't afford cherries, but if he wanted the badly enough there are ways he could save for them, prepare for them in case he ever needed them, if it was important enough he could ask for help buying them, etc. etc. etc. There could be any number of services and charities that would help.

But we don't have a free market, we have a crony capitalist market where corporations reign supreme. And it's a flimsy talking point to attack a free market for the ills of corporations and government collusion, then in another conversation claim that since we've never had a free market it wouldn't work. But what's staggering about your ideology is that on one hand you believe in the democratic voice of the people in politics but on the other hand you don't trust them to run their own lives and want to silence their voice in economic matters. It's crazy to me.

>> ^NetRunner:

@blankfist I'm pretty confident that by this point I could recite your position on health care and government in my sleep.
That's why I'm still waiting for you to answer the question. "Free market" rules work like this:
Person A has X dollars, and wants cherries. The market price of cherries is Y dollars. If X < Y, then Person A can't have cherries, no matter how badly he might want them.
Should those rules ever be different if we're talking about life-saving medical procedures?
Since this keeps being answered with cries of "Charity!" I guess I need to point out that charity doesn't change that fundamental picture, nor does it eliminate the possibility of that ever happening to anyone.
So we're back to the same question, with just one more caveat. What should be done with people who can't pay, and didn't get helped by charity? Leave them to die?


And I too could recite your position. In my sleep. In a coma. In my grave.

If no one is willing to help someone who is dying, then they would die. I felt like I've answered this. But you want me to say something sensational and controversial, that I want people to die or think they should. But my point is it shouldn't be up to me or you. It should be up to the individual how he handles his life even in life-saving health treatment.

What you've created is a very specific scenario that appeals to our fears as mortal beings. And using it to promote a political agenda is just as disgusting as those who used 9/11 to justify taking away our liberties and rights.

What's worse, you think you've discovered some big gotcha question to rule them all. You didn't. It appeals to the basest of emotions instead of reason. And it shows the narrow-mindedness of your movement. We let people die all the time. It's almost an accepted part of our lives. You thump your chest over saving lives with universal healthcare, yet say nothing about military aggressions that lead to large scale life loss. At least dying in a hospice gives you some dignity and comfort unlike dying in a wartorn street from phosphorus burns.

@blankfist I'm pretty confident that by this point I could recite your position on health care and government in my sleep.

That's why I'm still waiting for you to answer the question. "Free market" rules work like this:

Person A has X dollars, and wants cherries. The market price of cherries is Y dollars. If X < Y, then Person A can't have cherries, no matter how badly he might want them.
Should those rules ever be different if we're talking about life-saving medical procedures?

Since this keeps being answered with cries of "Charity!" I guess I need to point out that charity doesn't change that fundamental picture, nor does it eliminate the possibility of that ever happening to anyone.

So we're back to the same question, with just one more caveat. What should be done with people who can't pay, and didn't get helped by charity? Leave them to die?

@mgittle

I agree that particularly the sheer volume of speculative versus physical transactions is an issue.

You say though that speculative activity has nothing to do with supply and demand though, which I disagree with as ultimately that's what it's looking to predict. After all speculation based on rumor and not fundamentals is essentially a ponzi scheme, ultimately the price will fall back down to true levels when enough further buyers cannot be found, or for that matter when counter parties can't be found. Food may to some extent be an exception here in that people can't choose not to buy it though, so there is less pressure on it to fall if it rises too far.

Ultimately I agree that whether it causes more instability is debatable, but you could just as easily argue that more transactions means a deeper, more liquid market and that the price instability is more as a result of the market pricing in food price changes more readily. My issue with the video was more than it only listed the other factors, saying nothing of their significance relative to the argument it was making, which seems disingenuous.\

On topic, there needs to be a better ability to measure and monitor OTC derivative contracts, but I think generally people who sorely blame speculators don't understand how markets work.

Everything ultimately has a fundamental value, if speculators are taking excessive amounts of positions expecting the price to go up, ultimately it will rise far beyond levels determined by supply and demand for the physical good and these speculators will stand to lose in their derivative position.

What is their incentive to inflate prices if they know that this will happen? Why not simply attempt to predict the market price accurately, whether it is trending up or down? Now obviously bubbles happen and what the video says about property investors heading into food commodities may well be true, but that is precisely why shorters have a role in the market to push the price down if it gets over-inflated.

You know when the video talks about hedge funds betting in price falls? What they conveniently omit to mention is taking these contracts puts downward pressure on prices.

Furthermore, whether high or low food prices hurt people in developing economies depends on who you're talking about. People living in country areas who rely on farming for their livelihood tend to gain from higher prices, urban dwellers tend to lose from it.

Demand and supply is also quite obviously driving increases in prices regardless of what you believe about speculation.

1) As developing countries have become wealthier they've shifted from a grain/rice diet to a more meat reliant diet, which is far more agriculturally intensive.

2) It's pretty self evident that weather instability has increased worldwide which destabilises prices.

3) Increased use in bio-fuels both in the US and Europe has taken up supply and pushed up prices.

4) All of these factors have in several cases resulted in countries establishing temporary trade barriers which in itself push up prices.

Point is, it's easy (and not entirely rational) to blame speculators but analysing all the factors at play (which this video brushes off) paints a far more complex picture.

I don't think the idea that usage might increase can be ruled out so easily. Personally, all my life I've stayed away from marijuana because it's illegal. It's not that I think every law should be blindly obeyed, but they have made it genuinely inconvenient.I just don't want to deal with drug dealers, I don't want to have to worry about being hassled by the police, I don't want to pay black market prices and get inconsistent quality, and I don't want to smoke in secret. I wouldn't go through that sort of pain in the ass for alcohol either, because I'm just not that crazy about it.

But having said that, why do people who are in favor of legalization care if usage increases? If you believe that people have a right to choose for themselves, why would it matter if it's 10% or 20% of people that decide to partake? It seems like the argument should be that it can be enjoyed responsibly by most, and there should be compassionate help for the people who get dependent. Just like alcohol.

I find myself unable to process the job advertisements in a way that actually translates into tasks you would actually be performing. I don't know how many times I've heard of people talking about they applied for a job that read like they wanted an entry level person, and come to find out they ended up hiring people who were 10 and 15 years above the experience level it sounded like they were asking for.

My dad just recently got a job, the position he applied for was road maintenance.....fixing pot holes basically and then in the winter plowing snow. They sent him an offer letter, no details of actual job activities. He needed a job and he had been looked over for stuff in other jobs for not repeating himself in each category, one applicant assessor told him he should put "Asphalt" in front of "Paver Operator" because they don't know if a paver is the same as an asphalt paver...and that he should have repeated that in every section that left room for entering your own info. So after dealing with that for over a year, he took this job....thinking he's finally got something that is at least in his ballpark and they have some sort of reasonable job description where the guy isn't performing the job duties of six people. After he went through his orientation and got the gear they required him to have for safety.....he was put on a weed eater. That's all he does all day is run a weed eater.....which was never mentioned in the job description he applied for. Never mentioned in the orientation, never mentioned in the offer packet......basically just never mentioned.

So......all I have to say to that is. Employers are their own worst enemy. You get people into jobs through networking or lieing, as the process that is in place is pure deception based on both fronts. If you answer questions honestly and try not to exaggerate or guess what they want, you look like you are unqualified by a large margin. So you get people who have drastically less experience and do things that are very dangerous because they don't know know any better....because they exaggerated/lied on their applications.

It's like when I read the resumes of my highest paid friends. I know they can't do what's on their resume, I even ask them if they can. And they pretty much preface anything by saying "I could learn how to do it.".....which to me, if it's a core job task you're looking at it's an unacceptable answer. Because you don't know if you could learn it to the level you would need for that job. And that's on top of the crazy list of skills they ask for when most of them are not even slightly used by their company.

Basically they need to figure out what they actually need/want so they can find a fair market price to ballpark on their job ads.

There's still a company in my area that advertisers for a specific job all year round, and has done so for 3 years. I find it impossible that they have not filled an entry level job position adequately in 3 years with 2 universities located in the same town and a even larger universities located just an hour away. I believe they want to marginalize their staff, so they can plug anyone in at any time for as close to minimum wage as they can manage....or they are using it as a tool to say "Look we've interviewed countless individuals and we have no filled that position."

Lyrics:

“Fight of the Century” Lyrics.

Written by John Papola and Russ Roberts

KEYNES
Here we are… peace out! great recession
thanks to me, as you see, we’re not in a depression
Recovery, destiny if you follow my lesson
Lord Keynes, here I come, line up for the procession

HAYEK
We brought out the shovels but we’re still in a ditch…
And still digging. don’t you think that it’s time for a switch…
From that hair of the dog. Friend, the party is over.
The long run is here. It’s time to get sober!

KEYNES
Are you kidding? my cure works perfectly fine…
have a look, the great recession ended back in ’09.
I deserve credit. Things would have been worse
All the estimates prove it—I’ll quote chapter and verse

HAYEK
Econometricians, they’re ever so pious
Are they doing real science or confirming their bias?
Their “Keynesian” models are tidy and neat
But that top down approach is a fatal conceit

REFRAIN
Which way should we choose?
more bottom up or more top down
…the fight continues…
Keynes and Hayek’s second round

it’s time to weigh in…
more from the top or from the ground
…lets listen to the greats
Keynes and Hayek throwing down

KEYNES
we could have done better, had we only spent more
Too bad that only happens when there’s a World War
You can carp all you want about stats and regression
Do you deny World War II cut short the Depression?

HAYEK
Wow. One data point and you’re jumping for joy
the Last time I checked, wars only destroy
There was no multiplier, consumption just shrank
As we used scarce resources for every new tank

Pretty perverse to call that prosperity
Rationed meat, Rationed butter… a life of austerity
When that war spending ended your friends cried disaster
yet the economy thrived and grew ever faster

KEYNES
You too only see what you want to see
The spending on war clearly goosed GDP
Unemployment was over, almost down to zero
That’s why I’m the master, that’s why I’m the hero

HAYEK
Creating employment’s a straigtforward craft
When the nation’s at war, and there’s a draft
If every worker was staffed in the army and fleet
We’d be at full employment with nothing to eat

REFRAIN REPEATS

HAYEK
jobs are the means, not the ends in themselves
people work to live better, to put food on the shelves
real growth means production of what people demand
That’s entrepreneurship not your central plan

KEYNES
My solution is simple and easy to handle..
its spending that matters, why’s that such a scandal?
The money sloshes through the pipes and the sluices
revitalizing the economy’s juices

it’s just like an engine that’s stalled and gone dark
To bring it to life, we need a quick spark
Spending’s the life blood that gets the flow going
Where it goes doesn’t matter, just get spending flowing

HAYEK
You see slack in some sectors as a “general glut”
But some sectors are healthy, and some in a rut
So spending’s not free – that’s the heart of the matter
too much is wasted as cronies get fatter.

The economy’s not a car, there’s no engine to stall
no expert can fix it, there’s no “it” at all.
The economy’s us, we don’t need a mechanic
Put away the wrenches, the economy’s organic

REFRAIN REPEATS

KEYNES
so what would you do to help those unemployed?
this is the question you seem to avoid
when we’re in a mess, would you just have us wait?
Doing nothing until markets equil-i-brate?

HAYEK
I don’t want to do nothing, there’s plenty to do
The question I ponder is who plans for who?
Do I plan for myself or leave it to you?
I want plans by the many and not by the few.

We shouldn’t repeat what created our troubles
I want real growth not just a series of bubbles
Let’s stop bailing out losers and let prices work
If we don’t try to steer them they won’t go berserk

KEYNES
Come on, Are you kidding? Don’t Wall Street’s gyrations
Challenge your world view of self-regulation?
Even you must admit that the lesson we’ve learned
Is more oversight’s needed or else we’ll get burned

HAYEK
Oversight? The government’s long been in bed
With the Wall Street execs and the firms that they’ve led
Prosperity’s all about profit and loss
When you bail out the losers there’s no end to the cost

the lesson I’ve learned? It’s how little we know,
the world is complex, not some circular flow
the economy’s not a class you can master in college
to think otherwise is the pretense of knowledge

REFRAIN REPEATS

KEYNES
You get on your high horse and you’re off to the races
I look at the world on a case by case basis
When people are suffering I roll up my sleeves
And do what I can to cure our disease

The future’s uncertain, our outlooks are frail
Thats why free markets are so prone to fail
In a volatile world we need more discretion
So state intervention can counter depression

HAYEK
People aren’t chessmen you can move on a board
at your whim–their dreams and desires ignored
With political incentives, discretion’s a joke
The dials you’re twisting… are just mirrors and smoke

We need stable rules and real market prices
so prosperity emerges and cuts short the crisis
give us a chance so we can discover
the most valuable ways to serve one another

FINAL REFRAIN
Which way should we choose?
more bottom up or more top down
the fight continues…
Keynes and Hayek’s second round

it’s time to weigh in…
more from the top or from ground
…lets listen to the greats
Keynes and Hayek throwing down

>> ^ulysses1904:

Yeah his voice is obnoxious. And the editing and sound effects are the usual manipulative crap. The only thing missing is the mushroom cloud at the finale. Or was it there, I stopped watching before the end.


However, the message for the cars is completely true. I am not a wealthy person, so fluctuations in used car parts is a real pain for me...and it has been noticeable. Even moreso since many of the components I have needed of late have been engine related.
>> ^handmethekeysyou:

I almost upvoted this video after the beginning sequence.
But after the narrator's obnoxious tone, and then specifically the line, "but this government misallocation of money and resources always[emphasis mine] leads to unintended consequences," I stopped watching.
Always? Now there are a few ways of interpreting this sentences. First would be that when the government misallocates money and resources, there are unintended consequences. I won't disagree with that semantically, but if that's what he's saying, does it really need to be said? When the government screws up, it screws up. The first rule of Tautology Club is the first rule of Tautology Club.
A second interpretation is that government policy always misallocates money and resources & there are always, without fail, unintended consequences. Well, now I'll disagree semantically. Saying that all policy misallocates $$ & resources is ludicrous. If the video is going to talk about the fact that in all policy, there is always some money misused, that sounds interesting and is a worthwhile, constructive criticism. But something in those ominous clouds composited behind the Capitol Building tells me this isn't going to be an objective, in-depth look at government spending.
I suppose this video is 10 minutes of cherry-picked policies that the government screwed up. I'd love to watch and get worked up about it, but now I know it would just be anti-government propaganda.
...
I decided to watch some of it since maybe it was unfair to rail on it so hard after only a minute. Things that struck me:
- Use of Uncle Sam to suggest overbearing government propaganda. Video then proceeds to lay the propaganda on heavier than a North Korean campaign to get you to trim your hair. People in the streets, in photo negative! Capitol building with dollar signs coming out it, heading right for the lens, in photo negative! How about you composite some more shots over other shots to make this all seem so overwhelming? I think there was a full 5 seconds in there without a single hit or sting. I was bored and not emotionally outraged during those 5 seconds. Please reedit to fix.
- You're going to argue against "regulations" at large? All regulation is hurting me, the consumer, the citizen? [Regulating the amount of lead in my paint ultimately costs me more money, which means I can't provide as well for my children, who are currently eating paint chips.] Strange that he doesn't name a single specific regulation. Though it's actually nice. It saves me from having to think. Now I know, regulation=bad, and I don't need to worry my pretty little head about the whys and hows of it all.
- Nor does he explain the line "We have recently seen that sometimes it's the regulator that keeps bad businesses in business." Ok, sometimes that happens...like, when? Oh, I don't actually know any examples, just sometimes it happens. I can't wait to put on a smug expression of intellectual superiority after I wow the crowd at my next cocktail party when I pull this nugget out.
- During the regulation bit, he does relate that we're paying a "regulation tax" that's priced into my health insurance, shoes, clothing [shoes aren't clothing?], food, cars, homes, and pretty much anything I buy. I hate taxes! I buy at least 3 of those things! [So what?] So...I hate regulations! Which regulations do I hate again? [Not sure.] All of them! [Did I mention this is propaganda?]
I stopped after the regulations part [can you tell I didn't like that bit?]. I have no conclusive paragraph to sum everything up. This video is terrible and offensive.


There are many examples of bad companies staying in power because of using the power of law to enforce their agenda. For instance, the enjoyed legal monopoly of most telco and cable companies. Or, the higher prices Americans pay for sugar because of import tariffs on sugar. And thusly making corn sugar, its unhealthier cousin, the mainstay of American diets. Or, the corn subsidy that makes corn feeding beef more economical, even though it causes ecoli to then be produced by said cattle; this all benefits fast food industries to the defiant of us all. Or minimum wage, it necessarily raises unemployment by denying low skilled workers access to market priced labor; this protects high skilled labor from ever being found wanting for lower priced labor mainly benefiting large union positions, while relegating to perpetual unemployment/illegal employment a low skilled migrant worker.

But I admit, there needed to be more examples and less dogma in the video.