Brilliance on Twitter

People who moan about Twitter often say that it cannot convey complex information. This tweet by @biolojical shows how, with some imagination, one can convey complex ideas.


Mass in grams

10^33 . . . . 10^28 . 10^26 . . . . . . . . 10^17 . . 10^14 . . 10^11 . 10^9 10^8 10^7 10^6 10^5‍ 10^4 1000 100 10 1 0.1 0.01 0.001 . . . . . 10^-9human cell . . 10^-12bacterium . . 10^-15virus . . . . . . . 10^-23

NHS

Watching the NHS creak and groan under the weight of winter flu causes me to reflect on changes in the UK since WWII.

We started out with a basic generosity and altruism in which the government worked for the benefit of the people and made everyone better off. Building and funding the NHS was part of this. The economy boomed, there were jobs for everyone, and more or less everyone could afford to rent a house, if not buy one.

Since about 1970 we've gradually changed to a culture of selfishness and greed. And the government works for the benefit of large corporations. The value of people and work has declined precipitously, while rents have gone mental and hardly anyone can afford a house. And yet the 1% are doing better than ever.

Adults who saw WWII and perhaps WWI as well, were keen to make the world a better place in practical ways and to pay for it in taxes. But the children born afterwards, the so-called "baby-boomers" seem to have been spoiled by all this generosity. Ironically they *talked* about making the world a better place, but as a generation they prioritised and even festished self-interest (think Economic Theory and Ayn Rand). Witness the Beatles complaining about the tax rate (with John still in his trademark NHS spectacles).

Now we have low taxes and some people have more individual wealth but the health system is not able to cope. As a nation we are poorer and weaker than we have been for a very long while.

The worst thing is that our present prosperity is built on personal debt which has risen to about 100% of GDP and about 150% of household income. Debt mines our future prosperity. We have more now, but less in the future, because it costs money to borrow money.

Don't ask for a raise or we'll replace you with a robot that will work for free

In the news today is a story warning us not to implement a living wage because the pay rises will mean more jobs being lost to "automation".

The living wage being the minimum amount you need to actually live in the UK without government subsidies. Quite of a lot of people in full-time employment are still dependent on govt handouts to make ends meet.

Anyway, the gist of the story is:  Don't ask for a raise or we'll replace you with a robot that will work for free.

But the thing is that about 15 years ago New Labour opened the floodgates to migration from Europe flooding the UK with cheap labour from Eastern Europe. The results are that we are now leaving the European Union, we have the lowest economic growth of any country in the EU (on a par with Greece and worse than Italy!).

In other words its an empty threat that we know will backfire spectacularly.

Falling wages and rising personal debt has meant that there is a demand crunch - rising inflation is only making it worse. Unemployed people don't have much to spend and they tend to spend it on rent and food. Landlords and budget supermarkets do OK, but no one else who relies on the real economy does.

If you replace all the workers with robots who do not earn anything, but also do not *spend* anything, then the robots will make products that no one can afford and you go out of business. It's a race to the bottom. Meanwhile top CEOs are being paid 120 then average wage, to win this race to the bottom.

The only rational policy for a government is to aim at full employment, at rates of pay which provide for what everyone needs and a little more. If employers won't pay employees a living wage then the government has to legislate to make them. Yes, shareholders dividends might be a littler smaller, but fuck em, they're probably not even paying tax on their income.

The irony for those conservative business people who favour small government is that their refusal to offer a fair wage for a fair day's work is the biggest impediment to small government there is. Welfare would be minimal if there were jobs for all and fair pay and conditions. It is the greed and intransigence of business people that fuel the need for big government.