You can try but it'll probably not work

It’s most certainly possible to try to ignore economics but it’s not so certain that economics is going to ignore you:

The Gallagher Premiership clubs will each receive a windfall of about £13 million after the league sold a 27 per cent stake to a private equity firm, but they have been ordered not to blow the cash on player salaries.

That’s not the way that sporting teams work. Not, that is, if there’s promotion and relegation.

There’s no specific standard which a team must be at in order to remain in the top flight. They’ve instead just got to be better than the other teams straining to remain in that top flight. That means that there’s no specific level of talent required, instead the team needs the best talent. Once we’re in such a game we find that all of the revenue flowing into the team flows out again to that talent. A new TV contract simply means player salaries go up for example. Most teams don’t make a profit on exactly the same basis.

So, an insistence that this new money not go on salaries isn’t really going to work. There’s only one set up where it might, which is to abolish relegation as in most American sports. Such a creation of a cartel among the owners does mean that limits upon player salaries can be made to stick. But, obviously, at the cost of having created a cartel and limiting the wages of the workers.

What if blood pressure - heart attacks, strokes - is not about salt consumption?

We would warn that we’re not doctors here, there’s a marked absence of any form of medical training floating about. However, we are connoisseurs of how an incorrect idea can become embedded in the political process and thus drive the world to ruin as it is incorporated into all policy. There’s really no other excuse for socialism for example, is there?

Which brings us to this conjunction of stories, interestingly in the same paper on the same day. Public Health England spitting their dummy out and banging the tray of the high chair in toddler tantrum over salt:

Health chiefs have demanded “no more excuses” after new figures showed just half of targets to cut salt intake in common foods have been met.

A report by Public Health England (PHE) reveals zero progress reducing average salt content in some foods – including bacon and ham – since pledges were made four years ago.

Ministers have repeatedly vowed to wage war on salt, which increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

The new analysis found that just 52 per cent of the average sodium level targets were met for products consumed in the home, PHE said.

Meat products were the saltiest culprits, with no average targets met and 43 per cent of products above recommended maximum limits.

And:

Exercise may be as good at drugs at reducing high blood pressure, research suggests.

The study – the first of its kind – pooled data from almost 400 trials looking at the impact of either medication or physical activity.

It found that for those with high blood pressure, exercise seemed to be just as effective as most drugs used to treat it.

PHE is telling us that more have high blood pressure, more die from heart attacks and strokes as a result. Let’s just leave aside the usual points that as we’ve largely conquered communicable disease as a cause of death of course this will happen as we will all die of something.

But what if it’s not the salt as the cause? For we do know that with the near total absence of manual labour in our rich and modern economy near all of us are taking very much less physical exercise than our forbears. Yes, we do know this as the recommended calorie intakes these days are well below what those forbears would have lost significant weight upon. Actually, today’s average recommendation is below a minimal WWII rationing diet and about half a front line soldier’s in WWI.

No, we don’t know but we really are certain that we should all go and find out. For, as we continually point out around here, we can never come up with a solution to a problem unless we correctly identify the cause of it.

A freeport Northern Ireland

While the UK could invoke article 21 of WTO (previously GATT) rules, claiming “vital national security” to allow goods from the Republic of Ireland tariff-free access into Northern Ireland, it is uncertain if this would ultimately be upheld by the WTO. There is, however, an alternative approach.

The UK could, simultaneously with the passing of the Brexit deal, also pass an Act committing it to granting Northern Ireland Freeport status at the end of the transition period if no free trade agreement with the EU had been signed. If a free trade agreement were signed, then no backstop would be needed because goods could flow freely across the border.

If no free trade deal were agreed, however, the granting of Freeport status to Northern Ireland would mean that goods from outside could enter tariff-free, unilaterally removing the requirement for a backstop. Northern Ireland would not need to be part of the Customs Union because the border between North and South would remain open to goods. Once it has left the EU, the UK will be free to set up Freeports wherever it wishes.

It would be entirely up to the Republic of Ireland and the rest of the EU, to decide how to respond to this UK initiative, but it would be hugely advantageous to Northern Ireland and would boost both cross border traffic and inward investment. The DUP would almost certainly endorse it enthusiastically, given the shot in the arm it would impart to the Northern Irish economy.

There is quite a good possibility that such a commitment would bring the DUP behind the Brexit deal, and allay many of the misgivings that some MPs have concerning the backstop situation, and allow them to support the deal. There is an even stronger possibility that such a commitment would encourage the EU to agree a free trade deal that would make it unnecessary before the end of the transition period.

It's easy enough to be generous with other peoples' money

The Labour Party has announced that it will spend £100 million to deal with the curse of rough sleeping in cold weather.

Hahaha, no, of course not. The Labour Party has announced that they will spend £100 million of our money to, well, something, about rough sleeping in cold weather.

Labour has pledged £100m a year in additional help for rough sleepers in cold weather, which the party says is key to reducing the unacceptably high number of homeless people who die each year.

Hmm:

That’s why today I announced that Labour will make emergency accommodation available for every rough sleeper in every area whenever local temperatures are set to fall below freezing. The new national scheme will be funded through a new Rough Sleepers Cold Weather Fund, set at £100m in the first year…

That’s an interesting number. There are, according to the usually agreed numbers, some 5,000 (just to round up a bit) rough sleepers on any one night in the UK. That’s thus £55 per person per night being spent there, not a greatly efficient scheme therefore.

Or, we could say that winter is only one quarter of the year, giving us a cost per person per night of £220 which is when this looks rather more inefficient.

Or perhaps we should look a the number of frost days, which seems to be about 21 at Heathrow at least. After all, they are saying this lodging is to be specially available on frost days. That’s 950 pounds per rough sleeper per night - yes, we’re obviously in the realms of government plans here, aren’t we? Must be to reach that level of inefficiency.

Do note also that this is on top of all of the things already done by government, charity and just plain hearted good folks.

As Milton Friedman pointed out it’s really easy to waste other peoples’ money on other people, isn’t it?

It's not just how they talk about things; it's also what they choose to talk about

I recorded a podcast interview last week with an Australia-based group that deals with critical thinking. I was asked several questions about logical fallacies, given my book on the subject, and was asked which ones were the most widespread today, and which were the hardest to detect. I chose examples that crop up in public debate, guessing that this is what would command interest.

I made the point that as well as critically analyzing what people are saying, it is important to ask why they are saying it. When an historian is confronted by a document, for example, they should immediately ask how it came to be in front of them: Who wrote it and why? How did it come to survive where similar ones did not? Did this purport to be a factual account, or was it written as one-sided propaganda?

Similarly, when someone is making a case on television or radio, it is helpful to ask how they came to appear on the programme to present it. Did the producer deliberately choose extreme views in order to set up a straw man to be attacked or ridiculed, or did they choose someone who reflected their corporate outlook? Even more importantly, why was that subject chosen in the first place? The content of a news bulletin often reflects the bias of the producers, in that the items included usually represent those the producer thinks are important or significant. The very selection of what to cover can be just as much a source of bias as the decision of how to cover it.

UK television news bulletins seem to feature a high content of Trump stories and Brexit stories (both hostile), coupled with stories about alleged gender inequality. Obviously, these items are those the producers think should be given priority over other stories they might be covering, such as foreign wars, shark attacks, natural disasters, or local initiatives to mitigate social problems. The fact that they prioritize their chosen items reflects a bias, maybe even an unconscious one, as does the slant they choose to put upon them.

There is almost an infinite amount of news that could be covered, so bias creeps in to the choice of what to include in a short bulletin. It is possible that the producers' selection corresponds with what their viewers and listeners think important, but I doubt it. Their bias does not reflect my preferences for news, and I often find myself tuning into foreign stations to hear about stories that are of more interest to me than the diet served daily in the UK.

Madsen Moment — differing on method but not desired outcome

Dr Pirie takes a look at how the Left and Right have drifted apart in recent years. But while we differ on method, what we want is often the same outcome.

Squabbling over Social Care Costs

Last week, the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) updated its 2012 guidance on who should cover the costs of those needing health and social care. A simple matter, you may think: the NHS pays for healthcare and local authorities pay for social care.

Well, not quite. 167 pages of “guidance” reveal a massive bureaucratic process whose costs should be devoted to the care itself. Many elderly people have both health and social care needs and neither public purse wants to pay for the care they need. In extreme cases, the patient dies before the squabble is concluded and care is provided.

The basic guidance is that “where an individual has a primary health need and is therefore eligible for NHS Continuing Healthcare, the NHS is responsible for commissioning a care package that meets the individual’s health and associated social care needs.” (p.6, my italics).

A complication is that the NHS is not great at providing social care so it either does so expensively (e.g. keeping people in hospital) or has to contract it out—normally to the local authority, but in theory the private sector could meet the need.

The public purse squabble starts at the top: although the DHSC is nominally responsible for social care, they do not pay for it. The money comes to local authorities from council taxes and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government who have no particular interest in social care. This is crazy. It would just need a flick of a switch to transfer central funding to the DHSC.

Under the current multi-pocket arrangement of paying for care, the expensive drugs for a lucky few are, in effect, funded by evicting frightened old people from their care homes because the local authority has run out of money or needs to use it for other purposes.

Unsurprisingly, in this context, the new DHSC guidance notes are written from the perspective of the NHS. The objective appears to be the avoidance of having anything to do with social care and especially not to pick up the bill, unless it is to free up a hospital bed. In other words, the guidance notes appear to be an elaborate means of refusing to pay for Continuing Healthcare.

They use two devices: a multidisciplinay team (MDT) and a decision support tool (DST): “Determining whether an individual has a primary health need involves looking at the totality of the relevant needs. In order to determine whether an individual has a primary health need, an assessment of eligibility process must be undertaken by a multidisciplinary team (MDT) (refer to paragraphs 119-123) which must use the national Decision Support Tool (DST) (refer to paragraphs 131-141).”

One might think that a good way to determine if someone has a primary healthcare need would be to ask their GP but not in the wonderland of the DHSC. Instead a committee of people with other territorial, the MDT, interests should be formed. It is very unlikely to include the GP who will be too busy to participate in these buck passing games. There is also the risk that the GP will say their patients have healthcare needs. The CCG (Clinical Commissioning Group) does have to sign off on the MDT’s findings but they too are mainly driven by trying to keep within budget.

Best of all is the DST which is a sophisticated, modern measurement technique based on the Texan methodology for weighing pigs. A plank, with a basket on each end, is placed across a tree. Once it balances, a pig is placed in one basket and stones progressively added to the other. When the plank balances again, they guess the weight of the stones. The DST works in much the same way: needs are broken into 12 “domains” each of which is assessed (by non-doctors) along with how it mat develop in the future.

To decide whether it is primarily a health problem (and the NHS should pay), the MDT is required to see if social services could cope, with the NHS doing the medical bit. The purpose of the whole charade is to dump NHS problems onto local authorities. According to one senior GP: “In practice, very few people seem to be awarded continuing healthcare, hardly surprising since virtually everyone’s primary need in life is social care.”

From both a national and an individual point of view, this may be a good thing. Social services look after people far more economically than the NHS and none of us want to live out our lives in hospitals.

Three things are wrong with these “guidelines”: the DHSC is partisan because it pays for the NHS but not social care (it should pay the share from the public purse of both); they needlessly bureaucratise what should be a simple matter thereby taking funds away from any kind of personal care; and squabbling over who pays the bill does nothing to bring the two sides of care seamlessly together.

The DHSC agrees that health and social care should be seen together but their twin green papers on these subjects are now long overdue. It is high time DHSC practised what it preaches.

BIS is right to worry about clearing risk, concentrating it well, concentrates it

The Bank for International Settlements - often described as the central bankers’ central bank - is worrying about central clearing houses. They’re right to do so, for concentrating risk into the one place doesn’t make risk go away:

The pillars of the global financial system are fundamentally unstable and could lead to a frightening chain-reaction in the next crisis, the world’s top watchdog has warned.

Giant "central counterparties" (CCPs) that clear much of the $540 trillion (£428 trillion) nexus of derivatives are themselves vulnerable to failure in times of extreme stress.

Entirely so and there’s not really a solution here either. There’s an optimal position to each but no actual solution - w’re in that economics lesson where there are no solutions, only trade offs.

As the perceptive expert on the subject Craig Pirrong has been detailing for some time now any insistence that everything be cleared through the one or few clearing houses does indeed risk creating another too big to fail component of the system.

I believe that I am on firm ground saying that I was one of the first to warn of the systemic risks created by the mandating of central clearing on a vast scale, and that CCPs could become the next Too Big to Fail entities. At ISDA events in 2011, moreover, I stated publicly that it was disturbing that the move to mandates was occurring before plans to recover or resolve insolvent clearinghouses were in place.

The underlying points being that if everything is running through the one or three points then, in the absence of crisis, that’s efficient. One clearing house means just the one stock of capital to meet margins, it being possible to offset the requirements for different positions and thus only be consuming the net amount to support the net position. This makes the laying off of underlying risk - the point of such markets in the first place - cheaper and that’s a good thing.

But, of course, having all the risk on one place means that in extremis we’ve all the risk in one place, making that one node of the system too big to fail. We simply cannot afford to let it fall over. And, sadly, at the real extreme ends of the long tail of possible events there’s a possibility that it will attempt to fall over.

We’re in the same sort of bind as we are over fractional reserve banking itself. That system has the inherent instability of possible bank runs, yet in more normal times the system is societally wealth enhancing. We can manage - say with central bank support - the risks but we cannot make them go away entirely. The same is true of central clearing. BIS is right to worry.

The best solution being to work through, as Pirrong says, what we’d do if there was that failure. And most certainly we’ve got to acknowledge that it could happen. We’re in that reality where we’ve no perfect solutions, only trade offs of greater or lesser desirability.

Making "Green" mean green

A significant part of the opposition to building more houses where there is a demand for them comes from two erroneous impressions. The first is that the UK is vastly overbuilt, and we are in danger of losing huge swathes of what little countryside remains.  In fact 5.9 percent of UK land is built upon, with a further 2.5 percent designated as "urban green," such as parks and cemeteries. This means that about 92 percent of UK land is not built upon.

Even the notion that "the Southeast is overcrowded" is an exaggeration, as anyone flying over the Southeast will have observed. Most of its land is not built upon.

The second error is the assumption that the Green Belt is green. Some of it is indeed what people think of as "green," with meadows, woods and streams and rolling green fields.  Much of it is not, however. Some 65 percent of it is agricultural, including vast fields of monoculture crops onto which quantities of fertilizers and pesticides are applied, running off into nearby waters. This does not provide a suitable habitat for birds and small mammals, and is not "green" in the understood environmental sense.

Within land designated as Green Belt there is also a significant amount of damaged or distressed land such as abandoned quarries, dumps, breakers' yards, abandoned factories, filling stations, and former car parks. Some 18 percent of Green Belt land is deemed to be "neglected," rather than properly green.

The Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 has led to a shortage of housing near or around cities. It might have been appropriate for the very different UK of 70 years ago, but it should now be updated to bring it to meet modern needs. A major step would be the classification of land within the Green Belt into three categories. Genuinely green land would be designated as "verdant," the type people like to look at and to walk through, and to feel that we are protecting nature by keeping it green.

The second designation would be "agricultural," itself perhaps subdivided into the different types of farmland given over to cereal crops, animal husbandry, or other agricultural uses. L The third designation would be "damaged" or "distressed" land.  The Town and Country Planning Act should be amended so that it protects the verdant land, but allows building, especially house-building, on some agricultural and damaged land.

Not a great deal would be needed. A recent ASI report found that building upon just 3.9 percent of London's Green Belt, for example, could allow for 1 million new homes.  A reclassification of this nature would allow for the building of the desperately needed homes, while protecting the genuinely nature-friendly green land that is part of our heritage and part of our sense of identity as a nation.

Government's not very competent - therefore it should do less

We’re just fine with this line of reasoning but we are surprised to see it in The Guardian, that home of the Panopticon state, all seeing and all knowing. For that is what would be required of government if the varied plans that newspaper proffer to us were possible to bring to fruition. We’d need to have a state which was able to know, in detail, what the problems were, their causes, and how to cure those ails.

Yet here we’ve a complaint that government can’t in fact do more than one thing at a time:

Brexit: not just a political shambles, but a disaster for all public policy

Richard Vize

Vital services in health, social care and local government are being neglected. It’s an unforgivable failure

No, the argument is not just that Tories don’t care therefore. It is instead that by concentrating upon Brexit there’s not enough government left over to look at these other things:

It’s a funny way to take back control: vital areas of public policy that directly affect our lives are being sacrificed to the obsession with Brexit, and there seems little chance of respite.

While Brexit sucks up all the political oxygen, major areas of public policy, including local government, health and social care, are drifting.

Note that it’s not even the competence of government to be able to do these things which is being called into question - something we’d question ourselves but so be it. It’s that government simply doesn’t have the attention span, the capacity, to even consider more than one thing at a time.

At which point we’d better to move to a system of government that only does concentrate on one thing at a time then, if that’s all it can do. Welcome to the minarchist state, courtesy of The Guardian, on the grounds that government just can’t handle more than the one problem at a time. Therefore only allow it to deal with one at a time.