SOME ECONOMICS

Candle-makers, blacksmiths ... and the Post Office: "Candle-makers were none too happy with the invention of the light bulb, for obvious reasons. Ditto blacksmiths with the invention of the automobile. So you can imagine how the post office must feel today about cheap long distance rates, faxes and email. While candle-makers and blacksmiths still roam among us today, like the buffalo their numbers have greatly diminished since the country's founding years. I assume they fought the tide of progress tooth-and-nail, but in the end their fate was inevitable. So, too, is the fate of the once great United States Postal Service (USPS). Its demise is a foregone conclusion. The only question is when and how the USPS as we know it today will be put out to pasture for good."

Realism comes to Germany: "A website that gets unemployed Germans bidding against each other to work for the lowest wages is set to spark fresh controversy with plans for an August launch in Britain. Trade unions have accused jobdumping.de of promoting "slave labour" with reverse auctions that see workers compete against each other in a downward bidding spiral for odd tasks and short-term contracts.... Jobdumping.de invites employers with openings for waiters or construction yard workers to offer a maximum fee and wait for a crush of eager workers to knock down the price. It's a nightmare come true for defenders of Europe's cosseted social model, already consumed by angst over a "race to the bottom" with low-wage economies in eastern Europe and Asia".

California shame. What happens when you spend all your money on bureaucracy: "When it comes time for the state to send monthly paychecks to more than 200,000 employees, someone in the controller's office in downtown Sacramento downloads the data from a mainframe computer onto a tape the size of an eight-track and walks it over to the room that houses the printers. The information-transfer process takes so long that the controller's staff has to start it before the end of the pay period to get the checks mailed out on time. And if anything goes wrong, only the old-timers on the controller's staff know how to fix it. The payroll program was written about 30 years ago in a computer language so ancient that to recent computer-science graduates, it looks like hieroglyphics. Decades after the birth of the computer industry, much of it right here in California, the state's massive information technology systems are disorganized, outdated and deficient".

Invisible foreign aid -- America subsidizes new drugs for the world: "Health care is expensive, but inadequate treatment is even more expensive. This is a lesson the German government has yet to learn. For years much of the world has been a free rider on U.S. medical R&D. Most industrialized states rely on a mix of price and volume controls to limit pharmaceutical spending. These governments expect American drug makers to keep supplying their products, almost irrespective of price. As a result, U.S. citizens are bearing a steadily increasing medical burden: Since 1999 America has accounted for 71% of the sales of new chemical entities, up from 62%. Japan and Germany, the next two largest pharmaceutical markets, account for just 4% each. Washington is under increasing pressure to end this sweet deal for other nations. In fact, the U.S. has started to raise the issue in trade negotiations. The real solution, however, is for other nations to pay a fair price for what they use."

Another jealous attack on business success: "Maryland lawmakers yesterday approved legislation that would effectively require Wal-Mart to boost spending on health care, a direct legislative thrust against a corporate giant that is already on the defensive on many fronts nationwide".

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ELSEWHERE

Another win for blogs: "An American blogger has suddenly emerged as a force in Canadian politics. Edward Morrissey, a 42-year-old Minneapolis area call-center manager who runs a Web log, or blog, called Captain's Quarters as a hobby, last Saturday began posting allegations of corruption that reached the highest levels of the Canadian Liberal Party. The postings violate a publication ban instituted a few days earlier by a federal judge, Justice John Gomery, who is leading an investigation into accusations of money laundering and kickbacks in a government program from the 1990's that was aimed at undermining Quebec separatists. The scandal, which involves government payments of up to $85 million to a handful of Montreal advertising firms for little or no work, has dominated national politics for a year and led to the Liberals losing their majority in the House of Commons last June.... According to Mr. Morrissey's blog, recent testimony for the first time links people who have been close to Prime Minister Paul Martin to the scandal.... While the Canadian news media have not reported explicitly what Mr. Morrissey is posting, their newspaper articles and television features about his work have led Canadians to visit Captain's Quarters (www.captainsquartersblog.com) to read the latest scandalous details. Mr. Morrissey said his blog had been flooded since Canadian CTV television first reported on its existence and contents Sunday night, and that he was now getting 400,000 hits a day."

Jeff Jacoby has a touching article about the late Pope's lifelong opposition to antisemitism -- which is all the more remarkable considering how antisemitic Poland has always been. There is another similar story of this truly righteous man here. That Leftists refer to a man of such great integrity as a "conservative" is a great compliment to conservatives. But Leftists would not know integrity if they fell over it, of course.

Frank talk about Muslims a crime in Britain: "The leader of the anti-immigration British National Party was charged yesterday with inciting racial hatred last year at a party gathering, in a development likely to shift the focus of Britain's general election campaign increasingly to immigration. Nick Griffin, who was expected to appear overnight with BNP founder John Tyndall at Leeds Magistrates Court, is standing as a candidate in next month's election in the seat of Keighley, where race is seen as a flashpoint issue and where the party won two seats in last year's council elections. Mr Griffin faces four counts of using language likely to stir up racial hatred, while Mr Tyndall is charged on two similar counts.... Mr Griffin said he welcomed the martyrdom that the race-crime charges represented. He said they were the result of speaking the truth and would lead to electoral success for the BNP."

If you have not seen it yet, have a look at the stereotyped view of America that a major German newsmagazine has just presented to its readers. How they hate America for being what they would like to be!

There is a big article here about Britain's huge numbers of NEETs (dole-bludging dropouts, mostly single mothers or criminals). Welfare payments that enable people to live adequately without working are of course the cause of the problem but nobody seems to be mentioning that.

My latest quote on MARXWORDS shows that Engels despised Greeks too. Germans and Hungarians (Magyars) seem to be about the only peoples he liked.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

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