makomk

26 ms·

241.
by makomk 4y ago
In particular, the money was used to bail out a bunch of German banks, who as far as I can understand it ended up with all that debt because Germany was running a trade surplus with Greece directly enabled by the structure of the Eurozone w
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by makomk 4y ago
There's actually a similar but much more widespread talking point about gas, claiming the price of that is set on the international market and therefore the UK producing more gas locally would not help reduce prices. That should come w
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by makomk 4y ago
It's obvious why the Tories are thinking about allowing onshore wind again: a huge chunk of the mainstream media, including the BBC, have been pushing the idea that it's the superior option which the Tories are just ignoring becau
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by makomk 4y ago
Arguably it's a better long term strategy - the rest of Europe doesn't really have a way to refill their storage once it's been emptied over winter.
245.
by makomk 4y ago
Hmmm. I think the big problem with a game called Cannon Fodder that portrays soldiers being treated as disposable and thrown away in some ultimately pointless game is that it's perhaps a little too on the nose in the context of World W
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by makomk 4y ago
Part of the reason this is gettting attention right now is that its users added a note to a White House tweet that was accurate, informative, and so politically embarassing they deleted the tweet: https://news.ycombinator.com&#x2
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by makomk 4y ago
From what I can tell, the US had the highest inflation in the G7 until the Fed started hiking interest rates more aggressively than the rest of the world to get it under control. This was particularly noticable to me since once they did the
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by makomk 4y ago
No, it really is only France and a couple of smaller countries which have that comparatively low inflation - Germany was 10.9%, Italy 9.4%. That headline average inflation figure is pretty representative. (Also, it looks like one of the cou
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by makomk 4y ago
The triple lock only applies to the state pension, which is not generous - it's basically about the bare minimum to live on I think. That's part of the reason why the government is willing to increase it so aggressively.
250.
by makomk 4y ago
UK inflation in September: 10.1% Eurozone inflation in September: 9.9% I've seen some wild claims circulating that, for example, 80% of the UK's inflation is caused by Brexit but those don't seem at all plausible. No EU membe
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by makomk 4y ago
This isn't just some weird game with definitions, though, I'm pretty sure it has actual consequences that are important for understanding inflation and the cost of living crisis. Currently, energy prices have been going up due to
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by makomk 4y ago
There are some other obvious reasons for that unwillingness to increase supply that I think you're missing. Any substantial increase in supply would require investing money in new infrastructure, since it's currently at close to c
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by makomk 4y ago
While you're right that this was bipartisan, worldwide inflation could well have been least partly the result of the US government handing out too much money. Here's how: the US actually had the highest inflation in the G7 until e
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by makomk 4y ago
Ah. The trick is that most of the time, news articles only compare with France's inflation numbers which are much lower than the rest of Europe - so this makes it seem like only the UK is suffering from this problem. A lot of public en
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by makomk 4y ago
A lot of people seem to still believe that the UK has the worst Covid death toll in Europe, even though that isn't remotely true, because ever since Brexit the only comparisons with the rest of Europe that most of the British media mak
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by makomk 4y ago
The UK actually seems to do a better job of treating its sewage than other European countries. What happened is that a lot of the British press absolutely loathes the current government over Brexit and wants them booted out, so they creat
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by makomk 4y ago
In a way it already has lead to worse outcomes. For example, ESG campaigning has successfully discouraged investment in oil and gas production especially in democratic Western countries. The result of this is that there's now insuffici
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by makomk 4y ago
It's not exactly true that Truss "rejected any windfall taxes on energy companies" even though the opposition Labour party keep on claiming that: https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-lab
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by makomk 4y ago
Now that the rise in corporation tax to 25% is back, the UK press are of course pushing claims by economists that it will make the oncoming recession deeper and longer. That narrative was nowhere to be found prior to the u-turn though, with
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by makomk 4y ago
More than half the population, probably. Also, for the last few years the UK media have been doing something obnoxious where they take decisions where all options have some downside and present only the downsides of whatever the government
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by makomk 4y ago
This isn't an explanation at all. I can tell you that, for example, the UK's renewable energy push is operating on a timescale rather longer than that - a good six years elapsed just between the government deciding to focus on off
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by makomk 4y ago
Things happening in the UK seems to get a lot of attention abroad, probably because we're an English-speaking country, but realistically speaking the more mild of the two scenarios here would likely involve severe power shortages on th
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by makomk 4y ago
Probably. The trouble is that we're committed to net zero, and there isn't much of an alternative to relying on wind energy this far north unless you have better sites for hydroelectric than the UK or can make nuclear work somehow
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by makomk 4y ago
The problem is that manufacturing those exports requires imported energy which goes up in price every time the Euro sinks in value, and those energy prices are already so much higher than (for example) the USA that it's basically infea
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by makomk 4y ago
There is no way to "make the change". The kinds of renewable energy that are broadly available in Europe, like wind and solar, are not a full replacement for existing fossil energy sources - they're simply too intermittent an
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by makomk 4y ago
Yes and no. The £45 billion a year figure is how much the tax cuts will supposedly cost in some future tax year - 2025/6 or 2026/7 or sometime around then, well after the next general election. Also, I'm pretty sure most of t
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by makomk 4y ago
The vast majority of the unfunded borrowing is paying for the energy bill subsidies, at least up until the next general election (and who knows what will happen after that). The IMF have also specifically warned against those blanket subs
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by makomk 4y ago
Decreases in the market price of these bonds due to interest rates rising is not, as I understand it, actually a problem for these defined benefit pension funds because they actually have to pay out a specific income to people in the plan a
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by makomk 4y ago
Specifically, the problem is that a lot of these pension fund investments are in long-duration government gilts of a kind which are mostly useful to pension funds like them, and when the margin calls in and they had to sell there was not en
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by makomk 4y ago
The energy crisis has also taken big chunks out of the wealth of super-rich people whose wealth is not in the energy industry. For example it looks like Bloomberg's Billionaires Index is estimating that Bezos (#2 wealthiest) lost 28% o

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