conservation of Euros

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 15 May 2010 07:46:30 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On May 15, 12:50 am, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Fri, 14 May 2010 15:07:07 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman



bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 14, 10:42 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Fri, 14 May 2010 17:53:22 +0100, Martin Brown

|||newspam...@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:
On 14/05/2010 16:06, John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 14 May 2010 08:31:49 +0100, Martin Brown
|||newspam...@nezumi.demon.co.uk>  wrote:

Engels saw first hand what greedy industrialists were doing to their
workers in the Lancashire cotton industry. Boiler explosions were
commonplace up until the Vulcan insurers made a stand and insisted on
proper boiler safety inspections. And in cases of tampering with safety
relief valves they would not pay out.

[snip]

It makes reasonable sense to pay your workers a living wage for the work
that they do rather than pay them less than they can sensibly live on.
Ford was about the first in the USA to actually do this.

It only makes sense if the money comes from somewhere. If all the
employers arbitrarily doubled wages, inflation would take it all away

We are talking here of industrialised manufacture that was possibly two
or more orders of magnitude more productive. All the profits went to the
mill owners and their workers were left to starve on a subsistance level
of pay because it was marginally better than being out of work.

That effect was transient. The first mill owners could indeed hire
unemployed labor cheap.

At the time, the mechanisation of agriculture was decreasing the
demand for agricultural labourers in the country, so they moved into
the cities to find work.

As other mill owners got into the act, they
had to compete for labor whether they were nice people or not.

They didn't have to compete; they could agree to divide up the
labourers availalble and pay them the same subsistence rate. Cartels
and trusts formalised the process by which evil factory owners
conspired to rip off their employees, and employers who upset the
apple-cart by offering higher pay could sudenely find that they
couldn't buy the feed-stock from which their products were
constructed. Why do you think that US first introduced anti-trust
legislation in 1887?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law

The
laborers benefitted on the other side as food, clothing, building
materials, all sorts of stuff, got cheaper because productivity and
transportation were indeed orders of magnitude improved by new
technology.

If the factory owners didn't reduce wages to reflect the new, lower,
cost of living ...

Productivity is the ultimate benevolence. Technology pushes
productivity.

Perfectly true. But it doesn't do a thing to ensure that the benefits
of increased productivity are equally shared between capital and
labour.

Competition does that, and anti-trust laws make companies compete.
Unfortunately, no laws make unions compete. So business reacts
logically, by leaving the country or going out of business.

But what would you know about productivity?

More than you do, obviously. The Germans have strong trade unions,
well-protected by law, and German companies are neither out-sourcing
nor going out of business.

You seem to be getting your ideas about "productivity" from the usual
right-wing propaganda mills,

No, I get my ideas about productivity by doing it, and helping other
people do it. Your career seems to have been punctuated by a series of
technical failures; the most productive thing you have done is quit
designing electronics. We thank you for that.

John

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 15 May 2010 11:08:13 +0100, Martin Brown
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 14/05/2010 21:42, John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 14 May 2010 17:53:22 +0100, Martin Brown
|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 14/05/2010 16:06, John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 14 May 2010 08:31:49 +0100, Martin Brown
|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

Engels saw first hand what greedy industrialists were doing to their
workers in the Lancashire cotton industry. Boiler explosions were
commonplace up until the Vulcan insurers made a stand and insisted on
proper boiler safety inspections. And in cases of tampering with safety
relief valves they would not pay out.

[snip]

It makes reasonable sense to pay your workers a living wage for the work
that they do rather than pay them less than they can sensibly live on.
Ford was about the first in the USA to actually do this.

It only makes sense if the money comes from somewhere. If all the
employers arbitrarily doubled wages, inflation would take it all away

We are talking here of industrialised manufacture that was possibly two
or more orders of magnitude more productive. All the profits went to the
mill owners and their workers were left to starve on a subsistance level
of pay because it was marginally better than being out of work.

That effect was transient. The first mill owners could indeed hire
unemployed labor cheap. As other mill owners got into the act, they
had to compete for labor whether they were nice people or not. The

That isn't how it worked at all. There were enough starving people
migrating to the cities that the mill owners could fix the price they
were prepared to pay and anyway preferred to employ children at roughly
1/10 of the adult rate where possible. The working day was unregulated
but typically around 14 hours. A brief history of some of the worst
areas of the country for these practices is online at:

http://www.manchester2002-uk.com/history/victorian/Victorian1.html

The poor were viewed as an underclass to be exploited for commercial
gain like beasts of burden and kept poor. They lived in squalour and
paid barely enough to stay alive. This "transient" situation persisted
until the late 19th century which is how Engles came to observe it.

Yes, that was al the transition period. Before technology caught up
with fertility.

The blockade of cotton during the American War of Independence led to
mass starvation in Lancashire as without raw cotton the mills closed.
Like all these things the reality was more complex than the simple anti
slavery storyline history that is taught in schools. eg.

http://www.spinningtheweb.org.uk/m_display.php?irn=10&sub=overview&theme=overview&crumb=Lancashire+Cotton+Famine

And there was cotton available but spivs and speculators were holding it
in warehouses waiting for the price to rise even more.

laborers benefitted on the other side as food, clothing, building
materials, all sorts of stuff, got cheaper because productivity and
transportation were indeed orders of magnitude improved by new
technology.

No they didn't. The food was deliberately overpriced by way of the Corn
Laws (which misleadingly apply to wheat) whereby rich land owners and
the merchants in the cities could rip them off. It was paradoxically the
more enlightened of the mill owners who fought back against this
particularly nasty exploitation of the poor to keep their wage bills low
by forming the anti-Corn-Law League in Manchester in about 1840.

About the same time as the banking system crashed spectacularly as a
result of a new cunning scheme by merchant wankers. It was indirectly
related to the Mississippi banking crisis but effectively crippled
global trade. I think in part triggered by a collapse in raliroad mania.
There was even a similar letter from the Bank of England reprimanding
the bankers for their "irrational exuberance" aka wild speculation. It
led to a campaign against the gold standard.

It seems that the global banking system has major crashes with an almost
predictable period of 80-90 years - 1847, 1929, 2008

The period is getting shorter, and nobody with any sense is doing
anything to lend stability. Quite the opposite.

Productivity is the ultimate benevolence. Technology pushes
productivity.

Increased productivity is good, but only when some of the proceeds are
shared with the people who are doing the work.

If workers are massively productive, where is the stuff going to go,
but to the workers? Where else could it go? Why would Henry Ford want
to personally own a million model Ts? Why would Edison want a billion
light bulbs for himself?

Widespread productivity is better than widespread lack of same.


In the Victorian era most

of the mill owners were out to exploit the poor for maximum profit. They
had enough money to buy the capital kit to enter the market and were
determined to keep it that way. The eventual rise of a powerful middle
class of managers and administrators eventually broke the deadlock but
the workers at the bottom of the pile had little option but to form
unions if they were ever to get a fair deal.

All business people want to maximize profit. As productivity and
competition increase, we go from pre-Victorian poverty to modern
car-in-every-drivway. Nobody guides the process... it has its own
dynamic. There's no credit and no blame; actors act and the system
changes.

John

 

[Bill Sloman]

On May 14, 10:52 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Fri, 14 May 2010 11:29:35 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman



bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 14, 5:18 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On May 14, 9:51 am, John Larkin

jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2010 22:16:49 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com
wrote:

On May 13, 5:02 pm,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 13, 8:20 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

The argument for progressive taxation is usually put in terms of those
with the broadest shoulders carrying more of the load.

Right.  That's how the Little Red Hen got a hold of all the other
animals' bread, greedy thing that she was.  She had broad shoulders.

This falls a
long way short of Marx -

Marx was kind of an idiot.

"The average price of wage labor is the minimum wage, i.e.,
that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely
requisite to keep the laborer in bare existence as a laborer."
  --The Communist Manifesto

 See what I mean?

Yeah, he wouldn't understand a female plumber making $150K.

What created our modern wealth was engineers applying science.

Yep.  They made machines to relieve human toil, to improve the human
condition.

Evil capitalists.  Marx the Moocher should've stopped 'em.

Some of the capitalists were quite evil, as Martin Brown has pointed
out elsewhere in this thread. Trade unions were one of the mechanisms
that reigned in the greedy, evil, short-sighted minority.

No. Competition did.

Comptetion was one of the other mechanisms, once anti-trust
legislation had forced the greedy, evil and shorted sighted
capitalists to compete rather than conspire.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On May 15, 12:50 am, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Fri, 14 May 2010 15:07:07 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman



bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 14, 10:42 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Fri, 14 May 2010 17:53:22 +0100, Martin Brown

|||newspam...@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:
On 14/05/2010 16:06, John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 14 May 2010 08:31:49 +0100, Martin Brown
|||newspam...@nezumi.demon.co.uk>  wrote:

Engels saw first hand what greedy industrialists were doing to their
workers in the Lancashire cotton industry. Boiler explosions were
commonplace up until the Vulcan insurers made a stand and insisted on
proper boiler safety inspections. And in cases of tampering with safety
relief valves they would not pay out.

[snip]

It makes reasonable sense to pay your workers a living wage for the work
that they do rather than pay them less than they can sensibly live on.
Ford was about the first in the USA to actually do this.

It only makes sense if the money comes from somewhere. If all the
employers arbitrarily doubled wages, inflation would take it all away

We are talking here of industrialised manufacture that was possibly two
or more orders of magnitude more productive. All the profits went to the
mill owners and their workers were left to starve on a subsistance level
of pay because it was marginally better than being out of work.

That effect was transient. The first mill owners could indeed hire
unemployed labor cheap.

At the time, the mechanisation of agriculture was decreasing the
demand for agricultural labourers in the country, so they moved into
the cities to find work.

As other mill owners got into the act, they
had to compete for labor whether they were nice people or not.

They didn't have to compete; they could agree to divide up the
labourers availalble and pay them the same subsistence rate. Cartels
and trusts formalised the process by which evil factory owners
conspired to rip off their employees, and employers who upset the
apple-cart by offering higher pay could sudenely find that they
couldn't buy the feed-stock from which their products were
constructed. Why do you think that US first introduced anti-trust
legislation in 1887?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law

The
laborers benefitted on the other side as food, clothing, building
materials, all sorts of stuff, got cheaper because productivity and
transportation were indeed orders of magnitude improved by new
technology.

If the factory owners didn't reduce wages to reflect the new, lower,
cost of living ...

Productivity is the ultimate benevolence. Technology pushes
productivity.

Perfectly true. But it doesn't do a thing to ensure that the benefits
of increased productivity are equally shared between capital and
labour.

Competition does that, and anti-trust laws make companies compete.
Unfortunately, no laws make unions compete. So business reacts
logically, by leaving the country or going out of business.

But what would you know about productivity?

More than you do, obviously. The Germans have strong trade unions,
well-protected by law, and German companies are neither out-sourcing
nor going out of business.

You seem to be getting your ideas about "productivity" from the usual
right-wing propaganda mills, filled in by your ideosyncratic
experience in the company you run. My own grasp of the subject goes
back to my childhood, when I grew up in an idnustrial environment - or
as industrial an environment as Tasmania offers, since my father
worked as research manager at the local paper mill, where he invented
and patented "counter-current cooking" - and I got to hear a lot about
trade union activity from a very early age.

Once I'd done my stint in academia, I spent the rest of my career
working in various aspects of manufacturing industry, mostly in the
UK, when trade union membership was more the rule than the exception.
I got to see productivity in action in a number of different firms,
and got the clear impression that management initiative (usually it's
absence) was crucial to a firm's productivity, or the lack of it. The
trade unions would have liked management to do better, but their
opinions were not taken seriously.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Nico Coesel]

John Larkin <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a.hdgFGtPjbY

You can't fool Mother Nature. When a few hundred million people choose
to not work much, not breed much, and consume a lot, you just can't
spend your way out of the problem.

This is the leading edge of the European demographic crisis that's
been building for generations now. There's no quick fix.

My gut feeling says this is all a bunch of nonsense. Countries are
still waiting in line to start using the Euro:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8678073.stm

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Joerg]

Nico Coesel wrote:

John Larkin <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a.hdgFGtPjbY

You can't fool Mother Nature. When a few hundred million people choose
to not work much, not breed much, and consume a lot, you just can't
spend your way out of the problem.

This is the leading edge of the European demographic crisis that's
been building for generations now. There's no quick fix.

My gut feeling says this is all a bunch of nonsense. Countries are
still waiting in line to start using the Euro:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8678073.stm

Maybe they should wait a little until the exchange rate versus whatever
they are using now has dropped some more? Yesterday it fell to under $1.24.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

 

[Nico Coesel]

Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Nico Coesel wrote:
John Larkin <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a.hdgFGtPjbY

You can't fool Mother Nature. When a few hundred million people choose
to not work much, not breed much, and consume a lot, you just can't
spend your way out of the problem.

This is the leading edge of the European demographic crisis that's
been building for generations now. There's no quick fix.

My gut feeling says this is all a bunch of nonsense. Countries are
still waiting in line to start using the Euro:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8678073.stm


Maybe they should wait a little until the exchange rate versus whatever
they are using now has dropped some more? Yesterday it fell to under $1.24.

The exchange rate is probably fixed already. Before the euro was
actually introduced the exchange rates where already fixed. Balancing
exchange rates between European countries has been going on for a long
time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Currency_Unit

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Jim Thompson]

On Sat, 15 May 2010 17:11:04 GMT, nico@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel)
wrote:

John Larkin <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:



http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a.hdgFGtPjbY

You can't fool Mother Nature. When a few hundred million people choose
to not work much, not breed much, and consume a lot, you just can't
spend your way out of the problem.

This is the leading edge of the European demographic crisis that's
been building for generations now. There's no quick fix.

My gut feeling says this is all a bunch of nonsense. Countries are
still waiting in line to start using the Euro:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8678073.stm

Yep! Bring in those third world "economies"

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

The only thing bipartisan in this country is hypocrisy

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 15 May 2010 17:11:04 GMT, nico@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel)
wrote:

John Larkin <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:



http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a.hdgFGtPjbY

You can't fool Mother Nature. When a few hundred million people choose
to not work much, not breed much, and consume a lot, you just can't
spend your way out of the problem.

This is the leading edge of the European demographic crisis that's
been building for generations now. There's no quick fix.

My gut feeling says this is all a bunch of nonsense. Countries are
still waiting in line to start using the Euro:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8678073.stm

Sure, Germany has lots of cash to spare.

John

 

[Joerg]

Bill Sloman wrote:

On May 13, 5:59 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Bill Slomanwrote:
On May 13, 3:46 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2010 02:34:35 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman
bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 12, 7:57 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Wed, 12 May 2010 10:13:56 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman
bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
I don't harvest; I think.
An unconvincing claim. Your "thinking" reflects your indolent habit of
picking up predigested nonsense that fits your fat-headed
preconceptions.
I've been calling you a fathead for years. You can't even design
original insults.
In this thread you've claimed that the euro can't be stable currency
because it shared across several countries with different economic
strengths and weaknessess, while failing to note that the US dollar is
shared across the united states of America - running from Alaska to
Wyoming (neither of whose economies look much like California's).
But we only have one government.
Your states don't have legislatures and governors?
They aren't allowed to print money or regulate big financial
institutions. Most must balance their budgets. The trouble that
California is in now will be fixed by California. The trouble that
Greece is in now will be fixed by Germany.
Do pay attention. The trouble that Greece is now in will be fixed by
Greece. The EU - as a whole - will under-write Greek borrowing until
that happens. The Germans have had quite a lot of influence on the
requirements imposed on the Greeks in return for the guarantees, but
the Greeks have to do the work.
Do pay attention:

http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/2010/05/german-parliament-clears...

Quote: "Members of the Bundestag, Germany's lower house, approved a
state-backed guarantee for the loan ..."

It's you who needs to pay attention. The EU - as a whole - is under-
writing the Greek borrowing. The individual memebers of the EU have to
pass legislation to approve their particular country's part of the
package. The Dutch lower house approved the Dutch component recently.
It's still a collective decision.

So, what exactly does "state-backed" mean in your opinion?

Your notion that "The trouble that Greece is now in will be fixed by
Greece" will IMHO not come to pass. They are unlikely able to fix the
damage that living beyond their means for years has done. It's other
European countries who will fix it, also countries overseas such as the
US (via IMF).

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

 

[Joerg]

Nico Coesel wrote:

Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Nico Coesel wrote:
John Larkin <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a.hdgFGtPjbY

You can't fool Mother Nature. When a few hundred million people choose
to not work much, not breed much, and consume a lot, you just can't
spend your way out of the problem.

This is the leading edge of the European demographic crisis that's
been building for generations now. There's no quick fix.
My gut feeling says this is all a bunch of nonsense. Countries are
still waiting in line to start using the Euro:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8678073.stm

Maybe they should wait a little until the exchange rate versus whatever
they are using now has dropped some more? Yesterday it fell to under $1.24.

The exchange rate is probably fixed already. Before the euro was
actually introduced the exchange rates where already fixed. Balancing
exchange rates between European countries has been going on for a long
time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Currency_Unit

Yeah, but: Nothing will prevent any country (and the people living
there) from buying bonds denominated in USD or other currencies before a
switch and then selling them at a convenient time later after the
multiple crises in Europe have settled. Hoping that they do settle soon ...

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On May 13, 5:59 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Bill Slomanwrote:
On May 13, 3:46 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2010 02:34:35 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 12, 7:57 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Wed, 12 May 2010 10:13:56 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman
bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
I don't harvest; I think.
An unconvincing claim. Your "thinking" reflects your indolent habit of
picking up predigested  nonsense that fits your fat-headed
preconceptions.
I've been calling you a fathead for years. You can't even design
original insults.
In this thread you've claimed that the euro can't be stable currency
because it shared across several countries with different economic
strengths and weaknessess, while failing to note that the US dollar is
shared across the united states of America - running from Alaska to
Wyoming (neither of whose economies look much like California's).
But we only have one government.
Your states don't have legislatures and governors?
They aren't allowed to print money or regulate big financial
institutions. Most must balance their budgets. The trouble that
California is in now will be fixed by California. The trouble that
Greece is in now will be fixed by Germany.

Do pay attention. The trouble that Greece is now in will be fixed by
Greece. The EU - as a whole - will under-write Greek borrowing until
that happens. The Germans have had quite a lot of influence on the
requirements imposed on the Greeks in return for the guarantees, but
the Greeks have to do the work.

Do pay attention:

http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/2010/05/german-parliament-clears...

Quote: "Members of the Bundestag, Germany's lower house, approved a
state-backed guarantee for the loan ..."

It's you who needs to pay attention. The EU - as a whole - is under-
writing the Greek borrowing. The individual memebers of the EU have to
pass legislation to approve their particular country's part of the
package. The Dutch lower house approved the Dutch component recently.
It's still a collective decision.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On May 13, 6:29 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Thu, 13 May 2010 08:59:10 -0700, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid
wrote:



Bill Slomanwrote:
On May 13, 3:46 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2010 02:34:35 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 12, 7:57 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Wed, 12 May 2010 10:13:56 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman
bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
I don't harvest; I think.
An unconvincing claim. Your "thinking" reflects your indolent habit of
picking up predigested  nonsense that fits your fat-headed
preconceptions.
I've been calling you a fathead for years. You can't even design
original insults.
In this thread you've claimed that the euro can't be stable currency
because it shared across several countries with different economic
strengths and weaknessess, while failing to note that the US dollar is
shared across the united states of America - running from Alaska to
Wyoming (neither of whose economies look much like California's).
But we only have one government.
Your states don't have legislatures and governors?
They aren't allowed to print money or regulate big financial
institutions. Most must balance their budgets. The trouble that
California is in now will be fixed by California. The trouble that
Greece is in now will be fixed by Germany.

Do pay attention. The trouble that Greece is now in will be fixed by
Greece. The EU - as a whole - will under-write Greek borrowing until
that happens. The Germans have had quite a lot of influence on the
requirements imposed on the Greeks in return for the guarantees, but
the Greeks have to do the work.

Do pay attention:

http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/2010/05/german-parliament-clears...

Quote: "Members of the Bundestag, Germany's lower house, approved a
state-backed guarantee for the loan ..."

[...]

The phrase "under-write Greek borrowing until..." is interesting.

"Until" might include "the Germans elect a right-wing government."

The current German admistration is dominated by the Christian
Democratic Union, which isn't a left-wing party. The Wikipidea article
on Germany's political parties classes it as middle-of-the-road

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_Germany

but classifies the Bavarian branch - the Christian Socialist Union -
as centre-right, along with the Free Democratic Party, which is also
part of the current administration.

It's difficult to see how Germany could elect a more right-wing
government, unless someone sets up a new radical right-wing political
party. Far-right-thinking Americans might be willing to subsidise such
a party, as Henry Ford subsidised Hitler in the 1920's, but that
experiment didn't turn out too well.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On May 13, 6:27 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Thu, 13 May 2010 08:53:35 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

Actually, I know that it isn't important - if you have a tertiary
qualification from a European educational institution, you are going
to be fluent in English. What I don't know is why you think otherwise
- I could ask you to explain, but I don't fancy being directed to the
irrational output from some right-wing propaganda mill.

So, you don't know much about the world.

Or so you'd like to think. You still haven't told me why you think
that language is important in this context, but retreated behind your
earlier - unsupported - claim. Bankers have been managing financial
trasactions across linguistic boundaries for the past few thousand
years. It isn't difficult, and they've had lots of practice.

I'd explain, except that you told me just above not to explain.

No. I told you not to get your explanation from your usual suppliers.

But since you understand the world so well, it should be obvious.

Since you clearly don't know much about the world you claim to
understand, I'd like to know why you think that it should be obvious,
when it is clear to me that the proposition is obviously wrong, for
the reason that I gave in the post to which you responded - you
snipped it out of your response, but I've put it back in again above.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On May 14, 5:06 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On May 14, 9:56 am, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:



Bill Slomanwrote:
On May 14, 12:39 am, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

[...]

That's the way sales tax works in California. If I buy uncooked
chicken at Safeway, there's no sales tax. If I buy cooked, hot,
ready-to-eat chicken, it's taxed. It's simple, because it's a visible,
automated-cash-register, point-of-sale tax. Restaurant food is taxed
whether you eat it there or not. I can't imagine how you could work a
thing like this all the way back up the VAT chain.

It would be easy to structure a national sales tax to exempt the
things poorer people actually need. There would be some cheating
around the edges, but there always will be some cheating. But things
like VAT carousel fraud couldn't happen.

(One shop near here sells  " *WARM* " corned-beef sandwiches because
hot ones have a higher tax rate.)

I like the sales tax, as opposed to income tax, because it puts
business on a better basis against imports, so saves jobs. And because
it would be enormously simpler and cheaper to comply with. No
accountants, no tax returns, no exemptions, no deductions, no
quarterly estimates, no loopholes... almost.

Dream on. Why do you think that VAT was invented?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_added_tax

The usual. To squeeze ever more taxes out of people.

And--don't forget--to hide the deed, hence the prestidigitation.

My favorite accountant says spotting fraud is easy--she just looks for
unreasonable complexity.  Like VAT.

Whether you call
them VAT, fees, surcharges, carbon credits or whatever, a tax is a tax
is a tax.

Yup.

VAT is conceptually simple, and gets rid of many of the defects of
simple sales taxes, which is why it was invented in the first place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_added_tax

There's no prestidigitation involved, as James Arthur would have known
if he'd ever bothered to find out how value added tax actually works,
as opposed to abjuring it as a European heresy.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 15 May 2010 15:48:29 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On May 13, 6:27 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2010 08:53:35 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

Actually, I know that it isn't important - if you have a tertiary
qualification from a European educational institution, you are going
to be fluent in English. What I don't know is why you think otherwise
- I could ask you to explain, but I don't fancy being directed to the
irrational output from some right-wing propaganda mill.

So, you don't know much about the world.

Or so you'd like to think. You still haven't told me why you think
that language is important in this context, but retreated behind your
earlier - unsupported - claim. Bankers have been managing financial
trasactions across linguistic boundaries for the past few thousand
years. It isn't difficult, and they've had lots of practice.

I'd explain, except that you told me just above not to explain.

No. I told you not to get your explanation from your usual suppliers.

I do my own thinking, so I'm the usual supplier.

But surely, as worldly as you are, you can figure it out yourself.

John

 

[Nico Coesel]

Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Nico Coesel wrote:
Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Nico Coesel wrote:
John Larkin <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a.hdgFGtPjbY

You can't fool Mother Nature. When a few hundred million people choose
to not work much, not breed much, and consume a lot, you just can't
spend your way out of the problem.

This is the leading edge of the European demographic crisis that's
been building for generations now. There's no quick fix.
My gut feeling says this is all a bunch of nonsense. Countries are
still waiting in line to start using the Euro:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8678073.stm

Maybe they should wait a little until the exchange rate versus whatever
they are using now has dropped some more? Yesterday it fell to under $1.24.

The exchange rate is probably fixed already. Before the euro was
actually introduced the exchange rates where already fixed. Balancing
exchange rates between European countries has been going on for a long
time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Currency_Unit


Yeah, but: Nothing will prevent any country (and the people living
there) from buying bonds denominated in USD or other currencies before a
switch and then selling them at a convenient time later after the
multiple crises in Europe have settled. Hoping that they do settle soon ...

People don't gamble with currencies. They buy gold and other metals.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Joerg]

Nico Coesel wrote:

Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Nico Coesel wrote:
Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Nico Coesel wrote:
John Larkin <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a.hdgFGtPjbY

You can't fool Mother Nature. When a few hundred million people choose
to not work much, not breed much, and consume a lot, you just can't
spend your way out of the problem.

This is the leading edge of the European demographic crisis that's
been building for generations now. There's no quick fix.
My gut feeling says this is all a bunch of nonsense. Countries are
still waiting in line to start using the Euro:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8678073.stm

Maybe they should wait a little until the exchange rate versus whatever
they are using now has dropped some more? Yesterday it fell to under $1.24.
The exchange rate is probably fixed already. Before the euro was
actually introduced the exchange rates where already fixed. Balancing
exchange rates between European countries has been going on for a long
time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Currency_Unit

Yeah, but: Nothing will prevent any country (and the people living
there) from buying bonds denominated in USD or other currencies before a
switch and then selling them at a convenient time later after the
multiple crises in Europe have settled. Hoping that they do settle soon ...

People don't gamble with currencies. They buy gold and other metals.

Oh, then I suggest you ask George Soros about that

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On May 15, 5:40 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Sat, 15 May 2010 07:46:30 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 15, 12:50 am, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Fri, 14 May 2010 15:07:07 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 14, 10:42 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Fri, 14 May 2010 17:53:22 +0100, Martin Brown

|||newspam...@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:
On 14/05/2010 16:06, John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 14 May 2010 08:31:49 +0100, Martin Brown
|||newspam...@nezumi.demon.co.uk>  wrote:

Engels saw first hand what greedy industrialists were doing to their
workers in the Lancashire cotton industry. Boiler explosions were
commonplace up until the Vulcan insurers made a stand and insisted on
proper boiler safety inspections. And in cases of tampering with safety
relief valves they would not pay out.

[snip]

It makes reasonable sense to pay your workers a living wage for the work
that they do rather than pay them less than they can sensibly live on.
Ford was about the first in the USA to actually do this.

It only makes sense if the money comes from somewhere. If all the
employers arbitrarily doubled wages, inflation would take it all away

We are talking here of industrialised manufacture that was possibly two
or more orders of magnitude more productive. All the profits went to the
mill owners and their workers were left to starve on a subsistance level
of pay because it was marginally better than being out of work.

That effect was transient. The first mill owners could indeed hire
unemployed labor cheap.

At the time, the mechanisation of agriculture was decreasing the
demand for agricultural labourers in the country, so they moved into
the cities to find work.

As other mill owners got into the act, they
had to compete for labor whether they were nice people or not.

They didn't have to compete; they could agree to divide up the
labourers availalble and pay them the same subsistence rate. Cartels
and trusts formalised the process by which evil factory owners
conspired to rip off their employees, and employers who upset the
apple-cart by offering higher pay could sudenely find that they
couldn't buy the feed-stock from which their products were
constructed. Why do you think that US first introduced anti-trust
legislation in 1887?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law

The
laborers benefitted on the other side as food, clothing, building
materials, all sorts of stuff, got cheaper because productivity and
transportation were indeed orders of magnitude improved by new
technology.

If the factory owners didn't reduce wages to reflect the new, lower,
cost of living ...

Productivity is the ultimate benevolence. Technology pushes
productivity.

Perfectly true. But it doesn't do a thing to ensure that the benefits
of increased productivity are equally shared between capital and
labour.

Competition does that, and anti-trust laws make companies compete.
Unfortunately, no laws make unions compete. So business reacts
logically, by leaving the country or going out of business.

But what would you know about productivity?

More than you do, obviously. The Germans have strong trade unions,
well-protected by law, and German companies are neither out-sourcing
nor going out of business.

You seem to be getting your ideas about "productivity" from the usual
right-wing propaganda mills,

No, I get my ideas about productivity by doing it, and helping other
people do it. Your career seems to have been punctuated by a series of
technical failures; the most productive thing you have done is quit
designing electronics. We thank you for that.

Oddly enough, my designs weren't technical failures - they all worked
pretty much as intended, and if the firms involved had been in state
to put them into production and get them into the hands of customers,
they would also have been commercially successful, if the original
demands of the marketing people had been well-founded.

The shaped-beam electron beam microfabricator project foundered
because the cost of finishing the project turned out to be more than
Cambridge Instruments could afford (largely because they'd mismanaged
getting the S.360 electron microscope into production and couldn't
produce it fast enough to satisfy the demand from the market) - which
wasn't a technical failure (or at least not in an area that I could do
anything about).

The digital stroboscopic electron beam tester was canned after we'd
built a working prototype - the problem was that we would have needed
to sell 18 over about eighteen months to get the necessary cash flow,
and the original marketing estimates turned out to have been about 50%
too high. It didn't help that the original marketing specification had
included an irrational demand that we should be able to place our
500psec wide sampling pulse with a precision of 10psec, which meant
that the timing electronics had to be built around Gigabit Logic's
GaAs parts, making the development a little more demanding than it
needed to have been (not that we ran into many unanticipated problems
with the ultra-fast bits of the circuit).

When I proposed using GaAs to solve the problem, I thought that I was
satirising the technical specification, but unfortunately the solution
I sketched was actually technically feasible - I really am a good
circuit designer and systems engineer, and even my jokes will really
work.

The smaller stuff did better, perhaps because marketing had a clearer
idea of what the cusotmers actually wanted and needed.

Since I got to answer the questions from production and final test
when they ran into problems in producing my stuff (which didn't happen
often) I think I too can also claim to have tested my ideas about
productivity by actually doing it.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[John Larkin]

On Sun, 16 May 2010 06:05:49 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

The digital stroboscopic electron beam tester was canned after we'd
built a working prototype - the problem was that we would have needed
to sell 18 over about eighteen months to get the necessary cash flow,
and the original marketing estimates turned out to have been about 50%
too high. It didn't help that the original marketing specification had
included an irrational demand that we should be able to place our
500psec wide sampling pulse with a precision of 10psec, which meant
that the timing electronics had to be built around Gigabit Logic's
GaAs parts, making the development a little more demanding than it
needed to have been (not that we ran into many unanticipated problems
with the ultra-fast bits of the circuit).

The GBL parts were fabulously expensive, and weren't long for this
world anyhow. Tek was making sampling scopes ca 1968 that had 10 ps
resolution and jitter, using all discrete transistors. Heck, the
HP185, around 1962, managed about that good with tubes. 10KH ECL is
fine for 10 ps timing.

I cleaned out our library before we moved a few years ago, and tossed
a VW-sized dumpster worth of datasheets and databooks, including the
GBL databook. Pity, I should have kept that one. I still have one of
their samples, a $150 pin driver thing.

Hittite is sort of repeating that pattern: very fast, high power
dissipation simple gates and comparators, made from exotic materials,
very expensive. I haven't bought any so far.

Betting the farm on one product is dangerous. Our approach is to
design a lot of products every year and accept that some will sell and
some won't, and survive on the ones that sell. That means that they
all have to be turned around fast.

John