bozo's return

The only alternative to socialism

Here are some basic facts:

• According to the National Statistics website the average salary in the UK in 2010 climbed to £26,000 a year.
• According to the Land Registry website the UK average house price is £161,000. Or about 6.t times the average man's salary.
• A Ford Focus basic model will cost you about £16,000.
• A VW Polo will cost you about £10,000.
• So lets say an average kinda family car will cost the average salaried guy 50% of his salary.

Of course we havent allowed for the tax this man will pay. But that be about £5,000 right?

Let us compare this with a person earning £1,000,000.

• An average home is about 1/6 of that persons salary.
• So if the millionaire decides to own property equivalent to the same proportion of salary as the average salary dude i.e 6.2 times... well thats property worth £6.2 million. Which amounts to a garage or so more than 38 homes.
• A Ferrari comes in at about £175,000. This is a lesser proportion of the £1,000,000 than a ford focus is of £26,000!!!
• In fact a Ferrari is 17% compared with the Focus being 61%!!!!

Let's do this comparison with the average salary man having £21,000 after tax and the £1,000,000 having £500,000 after tax (yes i know they pay less tax than that)

The average family car is now about 75% of averahe salary.
The Ferrari is now about 33%.  Stll much lower.

The average home is now 7.7 times average salary and the £1m guy can now only buy 3 of them.

It doesnt seem to me that tax is dragging this bloke back very much? It seems to me that tax is a bigger issue for the average salary person than it is for the £1m man. But that is because I think that if you can afford to buy 6 average homes with your annual salary then you are rich. He theoretically carries a bigger cash tax burden. But given what he gets left with his burden is not what i call I burden. I think you are rich if you earn £1m.

But you probably don't!

I was listening to the amazing John Ortberg and came acorss some amazing facts alongside his usual enlightenment.

He says (and I take him at face value) that Fidelity did some research in whch they asked 1,000 millionaires ($ not £) "Do you feel rich?"

40 % responded NO!

The average net worth of the 1,000 surveyed was $3,500,000. And when asked how much they would need to have to feel rich the answer avergaed out at $7,500,000.

But guess who said that $7.5 million wouldn't make them feel rich?

YUP you're right... those with $7.5 million say they don't feel rich.

And of course if you don't feel rich then you don't feel you should contribute more.

In fact, if we analyse GIVING (as opposed to being taxed) we can see you actually contribute LESS!

In the US, John Ortberg says a survey reveals that those earning UNDER $25,000 give away 4.2% of their money.

Those who earn OVER $100,000 give away 2.7% of their money.

No, I wasn't surprised either. Statistical fact - those with more are less generous than those with less. A lesson I learned in Soweto, Botswana and Tanzania.

Now, Capitalists keep telling me some things...

They tell me capitalism is proven to create wealth. They tell me that socialism was discredited and has never worked.

OK>>>

What has the success of capitalism given the world as a whole?

Sod all basically.

In the last 20 years (since the demise of the Soviet Bloc) the rich have got richer and the poor have got poorer! Capitalism has indeed created a lot of wealth. But only for 0.01% of the world's population. Even in the US 1% of the population control 95% of the wealth. The one success of the Soviet Bloc was that so long as it existed the rich and the government cared a lot more about the fate of the poor because the poor were seeing an alternative. Now there is no alternative the rich shrug their shoulders.

Or they think the rich is those other guys with more than £1,000,000

More than £7,500,000....

2,000 years ago a man agreed with the capitalists that Goverment should not be supporting the poor. He suggested however that the rich should do it directly. This does not seem to be very popular though, mainly of course because "i am not rich, the other guy is rich."

I speak to Republicans, Tea Partiers and Tories generally. I agree with you big government doesn't work,

But the success of your beloved capitalism has not eradicated poverty and until it does the world is not a place anyone can live in with comfort. And if you don't want government to do it then YOU do it. And not with 2.7% of your millions either.

 

Management Matters (still)

Regular Bozo readers will know he is a baseball fan.

They will also know he is a great admirer of the management skills of Joe Maddon - the manager of the Tampa Bay Rays - and has quoted him and his wisdom on this blog in the past. Well I have no quote from Joe today but it is time to give him another accolade.

Last year everyone said was the Rays last big chance to win something. Many of their stars had contracts expiring and they would all walk off into the sunset to get big contracts that Tampa could not afford to give them. That the team would be broken up, that it was back to square one for Maddon and Tampa, if not square zero.

The first nine games seemed to prove that was true. The team did indeed lose almost all of its best position players. Most of its relievers and was 1-8. Bottom of the division after nine games on April 10th.

Since then...poor denuded undermanned Tampa has won 22 and lost only 8.

They are now 23-16.

They are now top of their division ahead of the biggest salaried teams in Baseball (The Yankees are second, two winw behind, and the big spending Red Sox remain under .500 and still flirt with bottom of the division).

To my mind this is all about Joe Maddon's knowledge. Both of the game, and of management.

There are some big similarities between sport and business. Key people get paid a lot, sometimes they get paid so much that managing them becomes hard.

When i was trading it was always the case that managers in a trading room had to be great traders or no one would respect them.

It's kind of understandable.

it;s also utter cods.

If you look at great sporting managers and ask them to show their player's medals, you can be disappointed.

Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger, Jose Mourinho... no great success as players

Joe Maddon, no great success as a player.

But they can manage, They understand their jobs intellectually.

And they know how to create a winning team.

And guess what... unlike the other names I mentioned, Joe Maddon's winning team isn't the highest paid team in their sport.

This makes Maddon superior (in my mind) to Fergsuon and Mourinho by far.

The question for you folks in business is this.

What sort of manager are you?

A cheque book manager?

Or a good manager?

 

Civil Service Glory

It is hard to argue against the proponents of small government sometimes...

because the big government so rarely covers itself in glory...

 

Sent in by Bozo's Antagonist...

Wooley - MOD

Whilst looking at various elements of the Ministry of Defence, the Public Accounts Committee called the Ministry Of Defence’s Trevor Woolly for questioning.

What follows is an extract of a verbatim exchange at the start of his interview:

MR RICHARD BACON MP (CON, S. NORFOLK): Mr Woolley, are you a chartered accountant?
MR WOOLLEY: I am not.
BURTON: Are you a qualified financial person of any kind? Do you have any financial qualifications?
WOOLLEY: I do not have financial qualifications
BURTON: What is your job?
WOOLLEY: I am the finance director of the Ministry of Defence.

Classic!

Greed

I read in my least favourite freebie paper that Raj Rajaratnam has been found guilty of fraud and conspiracy. Having stolen tens of millions from users of the markets who think they are fair. (Well there has to be a price for stupidity).

They aren't fair. They are full of people who know more than you do (some of that knowledge is even legal!). Insider trading is not a victimless crime. It victimises everyone who owns a share.

And Raj and his buddies at Mc Kinsey and Goldman were already being paid gazillions and gazillions.

Yet they had to steal more!

It must be the pressure of the high tax burden. After the taxman has had his share a few million doesn't go very far. Especially if you have set your heart on a new Ferrari and a flat in Collingham Gardens SW7.

Of course its equally wrong to steal to feed your crack habit.

It's even wrong to steal to pay your mortgage so a bank that got a big fat government handout doesn't repossess it (after you were made redundant by a bank who paid its traders a billion in bonuses - some of whom probably sold info to Raj and the boys ...)

All theft is wrong.

I just know who I despise the most....

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

How do you spell Praetorian?

Over the weekend we watched The Blind Side. It is beyond question a feelgood movie. Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy are as impressive on film as they were in Michael Lewis' book. And because Hollywood has done its thing (although not too aggressively) you kinda need to have read the book which (being by hard edged Michael Lewis) is , er, more hard edged than the movie.

BUT, what hit me most is that the poor part of Memphis, Tennessee was a lot like Arusha Tanzania. Not the bit where Graceland is. The bit where the poor black people live. When we were in Arusha we did some home visits with health care volunteers to HIV patients/families. I have to say it was far less depressing than seeing Memphis 2010. The world's richest country has people living in almost as much poverty as Tanzania! You may say the almost is a big gap - and i say PHOOEY. I say you look at poor America and try to tell me Capitalism is a success and I will laugh in your face.

You may say socialism has failed. And I will laugh in your face. Socialism has never been shown to have failed the way Capitalism has. The Soviet Union failed. But only an idiot compares the Soviet system to actual socialism. Besides we all know it failed because it could not both keep up a military hardware competition with the USA and  feed the population. And that was because of America's borrowing power. Winning that battle was the birth of the US deficit. But nowadays people are seriously questioning if America can actually sustain that deficit.

The lovely, delicious and sexy irony of that is that the last few trillion of deficit has been created by bailing out the banks who are the jewel of capitalism's crown.

Almost as deliciois is that it is analysts in the same bailed out banking system that question whether governments are spending/borrowing too much!!! It's like something Dogbert could have created (actually he probably did).

Capitalism has told us that it works because only the fittest and smartest survive. By the laws of capitalism there would be no Goldmans no AIG no Citi. So the lions of capitalism managed to suspend their onw laws for their own benefit for a while... Interestingly they still want to apply those laws to the poor souls who cannot pay their mortgages!

Now that is irony in spades. Citi, who should have been foreclosed on in 2007-08, was bailed out but doesnt want to allow any form of grace to its borrowers...

So in Memphis, and just about every other city in America you have people living in about the same squalor as in parts of Africa, and that is meant to show us the success of capitalism.

Really?

Of course what capitalism has created is plutonomy. The top 1% richest people in America control 95% of the wealth. Which is like Pareto on steroids!

The proponents will tell you that the American dream works because anyone can lever themselves up out of the squalor and achieve riches. Yeah right. It is aspiring to do just that which leads so many poor black Americans to arm themselves with automatic weapons and sell drugs. In the slums of memphis if you cannot claw your way out by playing sport (Gladiators anyone?) then your next best chance is by becoming a drug dealer.

The plutocrats the plutonomists are poor students of history. They don;t even understand the recent lessons of Reagonomics and the fall of the Soviets. They certainly don't understand the Roman lessons.

When the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; then the rich build bigger walls around their communities and pay more armed guards to patrol them.

Eventually the vast numbers of armed guards stop being the servants and become the masters.

Go and read your Gibbon and maybe you will learn how to spell Praetorian.

 

Enjoy!

Representation of the people...

Bozo remembers elections where (and memory is imperfect) the Liberals (I am old enough to remember the pre SDP era) or Lib Dems got 18-22% of the popular vote, and managed 14 seats out of 650.

The maths on all that is too complicated.

But basically what it meant was that 20% of the votes got 2% of the seats.

That doesn't look to me like democratic representation of the people.

Now I know all the arguments about local politics and local representatives but the fact is that - and we all know this is true - that campaigns are not by any means purely local and that most people are casting their vote for a national party manifesto.

In the last election...

Tories 10.7 million votes - 306 seats

Labour 8.6 million votes - 258 seats

Lib/dem 6.8 million votes - 57 seats

If we ignore the other parties we can see that 26.1 million votes were cast for the majors and the tories got 41%, Labour 33% and the Lib dems 26%.

You may feel the 57 Lib Dem MPs have too much influence on government (although most Lib Dem activists slag off Cleggy for not having enough!) for 57 seats.

But 6.8 million Lib Dem voters may question why 26% of the votes got only 8.7% of the seats. They may argue that 17% of their voters are going unrepresented.

If I didn't know the 'local politics' argument was so spurious for the majority of voters it might carry more weight in my thoughts, and without it the under-representation of those parties outside the top two is so patently clear and undemocratic it hardly needs comment.

Bozo discussed the practical aspects last week, but the democratic principle aspect seems not to be in much doubt.

Since the demise of the liberal party in the 1920s, if you vote Liberal your vote doesnt count much in the democratic process.

I have heard proponents of first past the post say that liberal voters whould vote differently if they want their vote to count...

That's like a restaurant onwer telling a vegetarian that if they decided to eat meet there would be dozens of options for them on the menu.

I am lucky in that the first time I ever voted LibDem my vote counted - sadly not because i got any form of socialism into government, but because I at least had a voice doing something to restrain the Tories.

We all know Bozo believes in deficit reduction. But he believes in it because we foolishly still allow those total f@@@wits in the banking community to decide far too much. And if we have to believe their views on sound fiscal government (and why we have to given the sub prime CDS CDO nonsense they all believed in amazes me) then we have to have at this stage sound fiscal approaches.

So i am glad at least that we have someone restaining the Tories...

I wish we had had someone restain Maggie

I wish we had had someone restain Tony Blair (Iraq anyone?)

I wish we had had someone restrain Gordon from selling us out to the banks

I find it hard to see coalition as a crime given what a full on mandate to govern has done for us as a country since 1979