John Deere hybrid front loader, YeaHawwwww!
Very cool! All snark aside.
This ain’t your cousin’s Prius! | SAE
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Category Archives: Economics
Going quietly (slowly) into that good night
Wired, Danger Room piece on after the aircraft carrier.
The Montford Point landing platform is essentially a cut down supertanker ( the predecessors of today’s Ultra Large Crude-oil Carriers, ULCC) which can ballast down and ‘lean’ so hovercraft can come aboard in open sea. One option is to similarly use this type of craft or similarly modified commercial hulls as cheap almost disposable carriers as needed. A sub divided double hull tanker is very hard to sink and the hull plates are sufficient to keep out small arms and splinters. Plus armoring and fire fighting kits are available and cheap today. The ‘fighting’ bit’ would essentially be a mod kit (a skin) that can be updated, moved around, even stored ready for war, the hull could be almost any commercial large bulk carrier. Heck large container ships are very fast today as are some RoRos, so you don’t even lose much strategic deployment speed.
Maybe, just maybe, we have met the shortfall (in social security) and it’s (mainly) us.
Meagan McArdle, Asymmetrical Information at The Daily Beast making sense from the noise as usual. If you care about Social Security, Retirement Accounts, 401Ks, today or tomorrow, liberal or conservative, read the article, it’s possible we’ve actually got a reasonable (i.e. maybe the best distributed risk coverage that’s possible in an imperfect world) system, we just need to understand it’s on our shoulders to use it well.
Public Sector Unions and their fundamental Downside for the Public/Taxpayers
Hat tip to Instapundit and Joel Gehrke for the pointer to this excellent article
The New Tammany Hall
Public sector unions have become a labor aristocracy–and they are bankrupting states and municipalities.
OCT 12, 2009, VOL. 15, NO. 04 • BY DANIEL DISALVO AND FRED SIEGEL
laying out the fundamental problem with public sector unions. When I started and even ended my 15 years as a civil servant working for the DoD I/we accepted the trade of lower wages for more certain and good benefits including retirement. That is no longer true, public sector wages have overtaken private sector wages as time has gone on and supporters have tweaked the laws to make it possible. Worse the system puts a lot of power in their hands leading to excessively aggressive defensive tactics on their part and concomitant anger on all sides as the Public – Taxpayers claw back what their supine “representatives” gave away.
Antifragile | NYTimes oped that says a lot
A very good short piece in/on the NYT ‘Stabilization Won’t Save Us‘ by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, “a former derivatives trader, is a professor at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University and the author, most recently, of “Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder.”” The succinct and I believe very accurate + timely article is hopefully a sign that thinking is broadening among the elite, left and even right. To big to fail is a failed concept and our continued federal go’t idiocy shows the danger of letting too much power float to the top. It would not take that much to force (over a few years) the big banks and other over sized and overly protected corporations and guilds ( doctors, lawyers, politicians, AARP, …) to fragment into more useful+effective small scale somewhat competitive (or at least less centralized) organizations.
From my viewpoint large protected organizations with access to Big Data are somewhat troubling since the tools could facilitate continued centralization of wealth and power.
Fox News | Ripped apart by financial crisis, Greek society in free-fall
Ripped apart by financial crisis, Greek society in free-fall
This could happen to parts of the US if we do not fix our fiscal house. And that does not mean higher tax rates. It means reduced special deals for everyone, like a cap on mortgage interest tax relief at the average home price in the country etc.
Also this is in some ways a pointer to the effects of a corrupt and ineffective tax authority, Greece’s is awful, the IRS is quite good if not perfect, just remember taxes are a necessary evil, make sure the taxman is competent and fare or things can get ugly.
This would get my vote…the truth stinks
I strongly favor inking more trade and investment agreements on behalf of the United States. Yes, it’s likely true that greater globalization is one of the lesser drivers for increased inequality in the United States. Oh, and no trade deal is going to be a jobs bonanza — the sectors that trade extensively are becoming so productive that they don’t lead to a lot of direct job creation. Will some jobs be lost from these deals? Probably a few, but not a lot. But on average, greater globalization will boost our productivity a bit, which will in turn cause the economy to grow just a bit faster, which will indirectly create some jobs. Goods will be cheaper, which benefits consumers. Oh, and by the way, there are some decent security benefits that come with signing trade agreements. Finally, the rest of the world is going to keep signing free trade agreeements and bilateral invesment treaties whether we play this game or not. So we can choose to stand pat and have our firms and consumers lose out on the benefits of additional gains from globalization, or we can actually, you know, lead or something. Your call. Greater integration with the rest of the globe is no economic panacea, but the one thing we’re pretty sure about is that most of the policy alternatives stink on ice.
How can Romney respond to Candidate Obama’s exposure of his underlying socialist mindset?
Respond to what, it was just a misstatement, right?
Wrong!!
if you listen or read more it’s quite obvious he meant it in a deeper sense than a softly communitarian sense, he denigrated the hard work and smarts it takes to build up the smallest or commonest business. Yes you need infrastructure to build on, but it was leaders and tax paying citizens who built that, government is at its best when it’s a framework of self organization not the organizer.
How could Romney respond…by declaring a regulatory holiday, for two years. Also rescinding all new regulations from the last eight years unless the were a relaxation of prior rules or to do with acute toxic threats…and I know that even that would be abused.
During the holiday the US’s regulatory framework would be changed from mostly a matter of sovereign law to contract law. Regulations would be matters of goals and baselines and an standard if unwritten contract line item not a legal straight jacket. Don’t feel the regulation is best for your customers, neighbors, employees etc? Then write it up and submit it as a change to your social contract. Regulatory law is ‘now’ contract law, you pay for your day in court to review your change, if someone protests they have to pay the extra court costs (and by the way court is in your HQ’s state capital or a nearer regulatory court, not in your or their venue of choice.) If you’re sued on a ‘regulatory’ item, first hearing is split if it’s extended the ‘suit filer pays’ unless they can prove that you lied, if it’s a question, you split costs.
Simple minded you say? Good laws are simple and philosophically clear. Applying law to complex and ambiguous reality is what we pay judges and lawyers for.
Such a plan would lay the foundation for a new US boom, it would take the shackles off and let people’s ingenuity and desire to build something for the future blow the roof of the doldrums the regulatory over reach of the last several decades has built over our dreams.
How can Romney respond to Candidate Obama’s exposure of his underlying socialist mindset?
Respond to what, it was just a misstatement, right?
Wrong!!
if you listen or read more it’s quite obvious he meant it in a deeper sense than a softly communitarian sense, he denigrated the hard work and smarts it takes to build up the smallest or commonest business. Yes you need infrastructure to build on, but it was leaders and tax paying citizens who built that, government is at its best when it’s a framework of self organization not the organizer.
How could Romney respond…by declaring a regulatory holiday, for two years. Also rescinding all new regulations from the last eight years unless the were a relaxation of prior rules or to do with acute toxic threats…and I know that even that would be abused.
During the holiday the US’s regulatory framework would be changed from mostly a matter of sovereign law to contract law. Regulations would be matters of goals and baselines and an standard if unwritten contract line item not a legal straight jacket. Don’t feel the regulation is best for your customers, neighbors, employees etc? Then write it up and submit it as a change to your social contract. Regulatory law is ‘now’ contract law, you pay for your day in court to review your change, if someone protests they have to pay the extra court costs (and by the way court is in your HQ’s state capital or a nearer regulatory court, not in your or their venue of choice.) If you’re sued on a ‘regulatory’ item, first hearing is split if it’s extended the ‘suit filer pays’ unless they can prove that you lied, if it’s a question, you split costs.
Simple minded you say? Good laws are simple and philosophically clear. Applying law to complex and ambiguous reality is what we pay judges and lawyers for.
Such a plan would lay the foundation for a new US boom, it would take the shackles off and let people’s ingenuity and desire to build something for the future blow the roof of the doldrums the regulatory over reach of the last several decades has built over our dreams.
Technology Review-high Frequency Soft Switching inverters could be a breakthrough enabler of small and mid scale Solar PV
Novel Electronics Could Speed Adoption of Solar Power – Technology Review.
Not a new technology but if these guys can bring it to market at a significantly lower total cost of ownership number they are going to ignite the market.
Biggest issue with SftSwt has always been complexity and consequent reliability issues. If these guys have reduced the parts and interconnect count (in other words integrated the controls and sensors)they are on the right path.
This World and Others 