RANDOM THOUGHTS ON UKRAINE, EUROPE AND THE FUTURE

This will be a fairly unstructured post. Too many things to say and too much emotion.

70+ people died to give Ukraine this moment. Thousands more stayed on Maidan and hundreds fought on when they were gunned down by snipers in cold blood.

It is the collective duty of the Ukrainians to honour this courage by NOT wasting this opportunity. And it is the duty of their friends in the EU or elsewhere to help them, when we can.

The Ukrainian Parliament ought to vote a law giving the widows of those who fell at Maidan the same kind of pension awarded to the widows of soldiers. They died fighting the internal enemies of Ukraine. This is no less brave nor less deserving than fighting foreign enemies.

TAXES, CHARITY,THE RICH AND US

Warning! This is not a short post... And it is also a long overdue post. Late last October, Pr. Kimball was kind enough to link on his own blog the article I had written about his general philosophy.

While Pr Kimball's tone was generally appreciative, he rightly pointed out that I had not really commented all that much on his proposed solution(s) to keep the provision of public goods high despite a lowering of taxes.

This is this criticism that I would like to address in this blog-post.

CAN JOHN COCHRANE BE SAVED?

This will be a short post. I haven't posted much lately but I've kept on reading some eco-blogs and my blood boiled when I saw an article on 'The Grumpy Economist' (John H. Cochrane's blog) where John first uses a straw-man and then proceeds to tearing it up so as to prove that liberals are just loonies.

I guess we are all guilty of simplifying our opponents' positions from time to time to better laugh at their ineptitude. But controlling for this bias is what makes for good productive debate. I don't expect it from politicians on a re-election trail... I do think it should be the standard for econo-blogging.

The first part of the article is pretty good and is underlying some of the reasons we might think that raising the minimum wage won't affect poverty rates too much. I pretty much agree with the specifics but, while I am not actually a big supporter of minimum wage, I also know that raising it can be done for reasons other than reducing poverty. It could be done to boost AD, for example...

But it's the second part, where John quotes John Goodman that really got me upset. To quote: 

"OK, if inequality in the US is the problem, what is the logical consequence? John notes we now tax wealthy people who want to leave but

...when a wealthy person expatriates, the distribution of income and wealth becomes more equal. Should we reverse course and encourage the John Templetons of this world to get out of town. If equality is a serious goal, we should at least relax the penalties.

At the other end of the income ladder, consider poor immigrants. Every time one comes to our shore, the distribution of income [within the US] becomes more unequal. But the same could be said if the immigrant is rich. Any immigrant who isn't earning close to the average income is going to make the distribution less equal as a result of his immigration. If equality is a serious goal, we definitely need a different immigration policy".

You know what would also reduce the degree of inequality within a given country? Killing all the very rich and all of the very poor. That would be the most efficient policy ever to get your inequality down. Since the liberals don't propose such a policy, they can't be very serious about inequality... QED.

Also, on a technical point, it's one of the problem with taking a measurement (level of inequality) and making it a goal.

But I am afraid such a subtle argument would be too much for John Cochrane... unless it was in support of his socially conservative prior, of course. In which case, he'd get it within a split second.

I got friends who are conservative and I got no problems with them. Because, unlike Cochrane, they are not intellectually dishonest.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014!

How I actually feel about it...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I know, I know... I am a sour puss but I can't help myself

and...

UKRAINE: WHY OH WHY, TAKE 2!

Sweet picture of youth!

In my previous blog-post, I described briefly the most likely reasons Yanukovych walked away from the EU deal, with the main one being that there was nothing in it for himself - quite the contrary.

But a goodly chunk of the country really wanted that association with Europe. The polls I saw and which put support for the EU deal anywhere between 45 and 55% (depending on how the question was phrased and who was doing the survey) did not convey the depth of feelings of those pro-Europeans.

UKRAINE: WHY OH WHY?

I apologise to anyone following this blog for the long silence - Real world stuff kept me away but I hope to now be able to resume my average of roughly a post a week. And, to return, I decided to write about what is for me a pretty personal and important matter, ill-covered by most economic blogs I follow: Ukraine and its refusal to pursue talks to sign an Association Agreement with the EU. Not to mention that the manifestations on the European Square and the Kreshchatyk in Kyiv (see pictures above) are literally a stone throw away from our flat.