Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Ground control to major Caterists ... put that subsidised helmet on ...



Oh those wags at the Daily Terror with their photoshop ...

The pond, being addicted to marching to a different tune with the reptile commentariat, naturally confused yesterday's sad news with Ziggy says NBN faces challenge meeting 2020 completion target ...

No, no, not that Ziggy, nuke the suburbs Ziggy ...

But enough of conservatives doing cartwheels over a man they once deplored as a drug-addled weirdo, pervert and freak, because it's time, in these caring Murdochian tax-free times, to think about serious issues ...

The pond was drawn to this outing at the rarely visited ABC ...


Indeed, indeed, and it probably shouldn't be controversial that people share a belief in Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy and pixie dust, but what happens to people not in the grip of a mass delusion? You mean Muslims and Christians sharing the same delusion shouldn't be controversial?

Never mind, here's the real rub ...

Comments for this story are no longer available. ABC policy is to delete comments on stories three months after they are published.

Which made this passing strange ...

First posted yesterday at 12:18pm ... updated yesterday at 1:26 pm ...

Never mind, you'd think someone used to 24 news and fuck-ups 24/7/12 would be trained to expect such things, but there's the reason the pond rarely visits the ABC... what's the point of producing a witty Gervais line thanks to a glass or three of kool aid, only to see it turn to dust in three months time?

Meanwhile, over at reptile HQ, the conspiracy theorists are on a roll ...


No matter how others might point out Good story about MH370 gets a bit hysterical, let nothing stand between a reptile and a click-baiting good conspiracy theory EXCLUSIVE ... even if no one really has much of a clue what actually happened ...

But enough, because what we need is some sensitive sharing and caring, and as always, the caring, sharing Gary Johns is on hand to show how it's done ...


Nothing to do with me, nothing to see here, not in my back yard PUHlease, but can we just make sure they're all put on contraceptives, because there's too much breeding going on here,  and by all the wrong people ...

And happily for the world, today is Caterist day, with the Caterists furiously concerned about bludgers yet again ...

Sssh, please note that research institutes that score substantial sums of cash in the paw from government are always excluded, because how else could said indigent institutes, saddled with useless reptile cast-offs, survive and provide a decent living for the wretches kicked from their Murdochian home (ah Mumble, is it sic transit, will academia provide or does an institute call?)

And so to How will Labor deal with Menzies Research Centre welfare?


Now apart from the usual knock knock jokes - Q: How will Labor deal with welfare? A: Give more taxpayer subsidised support to the Menzies Research Centre ...

... and apart from the usual recourse to Piketty ...

At the American Economic Association conference this week, economists Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman, and Thomas Piketty released their preliminary research that uses a new analysis of tax, survey, and national accounts data. That’s more accurate, they say, than just looking at tax data, which misses huge chunks of the actual income people bring home. 
The new analysis disputes previous findings that the bottom 90 percent of Americans have seen a slight decline in income since the late 1970s. Instead, the economists say, their income actually increased slightly, by 0.7 percent annually. But the data still corroborates the story of increasing inequality between most Americans and the richest. The incomes of the wealthiest 10 percent grew faster than everyone since 1980, they found. Worse, incomes for the top 1 percent grew about four times as fast as the bottom 90 percent in the same time period. 
The data revealed other disturbing trends as well. Until 1980, income for the bottom 90 percent grew at the same pace as the rest of the economy. But after that point, incomes slowed down while the economy kept growing.

And so on and so forth, and more here ... and here ...

... the pond had to face up to the grim prospect of actually reading the Caterists explain why it's important to make sure other less fortunate people deserve no taxpayer subsidy - remembering of course that subsidy of the Menzies Research Centre repays itself a thousand fold with wondrous insights ...


There are days when the pond can barely repress a yawn, especially when the recipient of an unfeasibly large government subsidy clucks in Chicken Little style about the unfeasibly large level of of government spending ... and this was one of those days ...

For what it's worth, here's the rest of the guff, with a pond proposal for a splendid competition:


And so to the competition.

Who can explain, in a hundred words or more - probably much more, if a fan of the Caterist style - why a generous taxpayer subsidy to the Menzies Research Centre isn't a form of welfare, but rather is a way of affording a Caterist the dignity of work?

Welfare, to use the old cliche, means changing the world one life at a time, and so hundreds of thousands directed to the Menzies Research Centre have changed one life, and provided the reptiles with a generous flow of lizard copy, and what joy there is in that ...

As for the rest, one thing is true ... it will be a long time before we see a different form of rhetoric appearing in the reptilian tree-killers as income inequality is maintained and heavily subsidised right wing think tanks blossom in the dust ...

9 comments:

  1. "Commissioner Dyson Heydon taught the subject hearsay during Hilary term at Oxford, which runs from January to March."


    ReplyDelete
  2. Okay, happy to have a try. Love a summer competition.

    I propose that the disclosure line at bottom of Caterist screeds is revised in a 2016 refresh:

    "Nick Cater is Executive Director of The Menzies Institute. Yes, he is aware of the juicy irony of writing about beneficiaries of government welfare while being a beneficiary of government welfare himself. Please, we've heard it all before".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And we have a front-runner already!

      Delete
    2. Actually Mish, it seems that VC is the winner, but the pond felt that in its aged bones when its eyes squelched on "juicy irony" ...

      Delete
  3. Hi Dorothy,

    “It is far better that people be in charge of their destiny, with the dignity that comes from work.”

    Cater is peddling the usual canard that unemployment is a moral failing and something that the Great Unwashed needs to be cured of.

    No mention that long term employment in once labour intensive industries like manufacturing have all but disappeared in Western Economies. Either these jobs have moved abroad where pay and conditions are lower or have disappeared completely as they have been replaced by technology.

    Cater is not alone in ignoring the profound changes that technology is going to make to the job market and indeed our whole notion of work and pay. It would appear virtually nobody in politics can see what is coming.

    https://medium.com/basic-income/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-us-like-a-human-driven-truck-b8507d9c5961#.afcvh7by2

    It won’t just be unskilled manual labour that will be replaced either. A lot of the research that companies like Google are working on will lead to the end of many white collar positions as well. The “offspring” of software like SIRI will soon be able to do much more than suggest a nearby Thai restaurant. They will be able to automate virtually nearly every task carried out nowadays in business offices. Offices themselves will probably cease to exist as there will be nobody required to fill them.

    This could be a great tragedy but in other ways it could be a great triumph. Surely progress and technological innovation should be leading us to a society where we work less not more.

    https://newmatilda.com/2016/01/07/why-are-we-still-working/

    Unfortunately our current economic model does not equitably share out the spoils and it would appear that in the last 40 years the much vaunted Free Market model has not been “a rising tide that lifts all boats”.

    Cater waffles on about how reforming the welfare system is a long term task without even making even the most cursory examination of what the future of employment is going to look like.

    There are going to be huge social and economic changes in the near future and we will have to make profound changes to how we share resources. The current model that is just enriching a tiny minority is untenable if we wish to retain anything resembling a democracy.

    DiddyWrote

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    Replies
    1. :)³ you can tell that to truck, bus and taxi drivers for starters DW. Every so often the pond wonders what happened to those agile futurists spruiking the notion that technology would allow everyone to work a ten hour week and devote the rest of their time to the y'artz, stamp collecting and other mind elevating activities ...

      Delete
  4. So, there is nothing (c)overtly political about a Leisure Class lackey's recursionary policy prescription of living to work and working to live as the end of welfare, the beginning of dignity, and the (un(re)formed meaning of (human) existence(s); because no-one can see the challenge(s) or the moral hazard(s) of the fundamental flaw(s) of the deformist design of the Righteous; and certainly none on, or of, or aware of the Left, for whom social, and other environmental, justice measures of poverties, and their possible solutions, might be marginally more extensive, and so too consideration(s) of intensive (de(de)funding(s), then.

    ReplyDelete
  5. "Cater waffles on ...

    Indeed he does, DW, indeed he does. Now basically I think that you are a rational person, so I'm sure you won't object if I pass on some useful advice: attempting to project your own rationality onto the majority of humanity is a fool's errand.

    In short, there's no rationality or reason to whatever Cater says, it is a catechism he's learned by heart (what you have to do when you have no brain) and he ritually recites it at every available opportunity.

    And that is Cater's understanding of the dignity of work.

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  6. And thank you, DP, for the opening nod to the Thin White Duke :)

    ReplyDelete

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