Some quieter thoughts on the EU debate

I'm sick of the EU debate.  You're sick of the EU debate.  We're all sick of it - because it's not a debate.  It's degraded into a shouting match of fury and noise.  If you actually wanted a reasonable discussion or rational debate you're all out of luck.

So I thought I'd try and write something.  You might agree with it - you might not.  My "win condition" is that you reach the end of this post with a nagging doubt.  Maybe the leave campaign might not be all bad... maybe they're not all frothing loons. 

Caveats - this is going to be fair, but not unbiased.  I'm writing this from a pro-leave perspective, but an honest one.  Also - do not post links to politicians in the comments. If I wanted to listen to them I'd turn the news on.

As a rule of thumb, poverty is bad and I oppose it.  Not the relative poverty we talk about in the UK, of xx% percent of some average income.  That's not poverty, that's being in the top 20% of the worlds population.  I'm talking real poverty - the 2$/day grinding poverty that has been humanities base state for most of it's existence.  Subsistence farming for the most part.

What's this got to do with the EU?  Well, a third of the EU's money goes towards maintaining global poverty.  It doesn't do this very effectively, nor is it a primary objective.  But that's what it does.

That's... a bit of a leap.  Once more, with workings?  Sure.

So.  About one third of the EU's budget goes towards the common agricultural policy, or CAP.   It used to be more, but over the years it's dropped from about two thirds, as the EU has expanded.  What is this CAP I speak?  It's  a huge set of interlinked tariffs, subsidies and rules which the EU has being saying it's going to reform any day now for as long as I can remember.

Lets look at the case of sugar.  Let's use EU statistics, because using the numbers of your enemy is big and clever.  Ahh, lets use these.  We're going to use the "EU market price for white sugar" graph, in euros per ton.  So note that these prices are vulnerable to currency fluctuations.  Because of this we're only going to use the two lines denominated in euros/ton - because dollar fluctuations make things more complicated for all our purposes.

Go look at the graph.  No, seriously - you really need to.  On the "dashboard" page it's the top right one.  Fine, here's a copy:

Lets start with the obvious.  Ignoring the black dotted line (which is just the same as the black line but in dollars) what do we see?   First, apart from for a few months the price difference between the EU and the rest of the world has been at least 100 euros.  Usually it's been a multiple of hundreds of euros per ton.  Currently it's only ~50 per ton, but that's quite uncommon.

The EU is paying a higher price for sugar than the rest of the world.  That means that every single user of sugar in the EU is paying more than they need to.  Currently around 10% more, but historically up to 300% more than world price.  That's a heck of a lot of money there - where does it go?   Get to that in a second.

So why don't the sugar producing nations sell to the EU and make a mint?  They'd love to.  Except that there are tariffs.  Yep, that's right.  The EU will charge you for the privilege of importing sugar*.  The EU - keeping prices high for it's members since it's formation.  This keeps the market price high, which benefits...

Ah, who does all this benefit?  That's right - the farmers and producers of the EU.  All these market distortions significantly benefit the sugar farmers of the EU.  Entirely co-incidentally, the EU is the worlds largest sugar beet grower.    Which came first?  I don't care, to be honest.  Either way, it's a huge waste of money.

So we've established that the EU members all have a higher price, making life that bit more expensive.  But you say I was talking about a third of the EU budget.  Well, the CAP accounts for a third of the EU budget.  It's nowhere near that expensive to enforce tariffs - so where does it go?   Subsidies.

We pay our farmers for all sorts of things.  With sugar, the EU mandates that all sugar produced as part of an EU farming quota should be paid a minimum price for sugar beet.  We also pay farmers money for a host of other things.  Here's the Guardian as an example.  Critically we pay per acre.  Own farm land, get a payment.  There's payments and allowances for all sorts of things.  Critically, it goes to farmers and landowners. 

But how does this hurt the cause of World Poverty?  Well, if we didn't subsidize our own farmers, who would grow sugar?  Well, it wouldn't be us.  But you remember the * above?  It's the poorer nations of the world.  Proof of this?  From an EU site:

Since the reform of the sugar market regime, the EU has become a net importer of sugar. Imports are mainly in the form of cane sugar for refining, from the African, Caribbean and Pacific states (ACP) and Least Developed Countries (LDC) which benefit from quota-free, duty-free access to the EU market.

 So since 2009 the EU has made a start in reversing some of the damage they've been doing.  For 16 years we/they deliberately prevented the world's poor countries from selling to us.

Of course, this is for sugar.  I'm not an expert, and I've simplified the subject.  There have been improvements and small reforms over the years.  But we still have the situation where we

• Tax the people 
• To subsidises farmers
• Who sell at an inflated price
• Caused by a tarrif structure that hurts the poor sugar producing nations of the world
• Causing everyone in the EU to pay more for sugar and all related products.

To add insult to injury, if the EU produces excess sugar, above quota, what happens to it?  It gets sold to the rest of the world, at market rates.  Yep - we pay farmers to grow sugar to sell in direct competition to the poor.  Isn't the EU great?

Now, if it was just sugar I'd shrug.  There's a few other CAP goods... ok, it's pretty much every agricultural good I can think of. 

•     cereal, rice, potatoes
•     oil
•     dried fodder
•     milk and milk products, wine, honey
•     beef and veal, poultry meat and eggs, pig meat, sheep / lamb meat and goat meat
•     sugar
•     fruit and vegetables
•     cotton
•     peas, field beans
•     sweet lupins
•     olives
•     Flax seeds
•     Flax fibres
•     silkworms
•     hemp
•     tobacco
•     hops
•     seeds
•     flowers and live plants
•     animal feed stuffs

The first step on the climb out of poverty for any nation in the modern world is easy.  Find someone to buy your stuff.

While we are in the EU we are directly paying for a system that harms the world's poor.  If we leave it, we can just buy their stuff.  We go from causing active harm to helping the worlds poor.

No donations, no aid, no corruption.  Honest pay for an honest product.  Oh, and we'll save money on food while we're at it.

PS:  If we want to subsidize farms, to ensure we keep internal agriculture going that's an option.  But we do that while being open and honest about what we're doing.  We freely and openly accept and admit that we're screwing the third world in the process.  But we can do it in less market distorting ways.

PPS: Note that there's been no actual policies proposed to reform this.  But this is almost certainly because all the parties are campaigning to leave.  Serious policies on the "So what now" are essentially impossible till we know what the final conditions are on leaving.  

Why the Treasury report on the EU is wrong

Hi All.  It's been a while, and this is a politics post.  Feel free to ignore.

So, the treasury report can be found here.  The bits that this post is concerned about are page 192-193, B.26-B.33

It's an interesting read in it's own right, but there's something of a critical flaw in the numbers.  It's not a huge flaw, but it's misleading.  Misleading to the tune of £Billions. 

How, I hear you ask?  Well, it's about how much the UK contributes to the EU.   This is a complex number that changes every year, depending on a whole host of factors.  What the report does is look at the last 5 years published in the last published ONS report, which was 2015.  The average of those five years, 2010-2014 is ~£7 billion a year.  Sounds reasonable so far, right?

Well, no, actually.  Because the share of EU costs shifts.  The better off countries pay more - and one factor that this entire debate has failed to mention is that the UK has grown faster, year on year, than the EU.  And so because we've been doing markedly better our bills are going to increase.  Take a look at this report from the Parliamentary Library - Page 9.  There's a table of costs there, and it illustrates the problem.  EU Net contributions are going to be going up - by lots.  Billions, in fact.

Now, to be completely fair, the Parliamentary Report isn't directly comparable to the treasury, because this doesn't fully account for the money that the EU spends in the private sector in the UK.  But if we look at the 5 year average, 2010-2014 we get 8.86 billion, vs the 7.08 billion average the treasury gets.  If we look at the projected costs 2016-2020 in the Parliamentary report we get 9.5 billion.  That is, we're expecting an increased bill that's ~.7 billion bigger, every year.

Which the treasury doesn't think is important enough to mention. 

Even though this was reported in the telegraph last year...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/11727741/Budget-2015-Cost-of-EU-member-to-be-3-billion-higher-than-expected.html


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Oh, and another thought.  This entire treasury model is based around relative strengths.  It doesn't take into account the risk of the disintegration of the EU.  Of Greece, Italy and Spain's current  woes.  Of the impact of Syria, or Turkey joining.  The model assumes no potential downside..

Change my mind

Hi All

First, thanks for coming this far.

So, what I want to do is try to disprove something I've believed all my life.  I'm doing this because people whose opinions I respect think that I might be wrong.  Because not everything you learn as a child is true - and even those things that are sometimes might as well be wrong.

The belief is simple - that it is almost always better to increase the size of the overall economy than change the way it's distributed.  Or, as I met the idea as a 10 year old, "Why argue about who gets the biggest bit of pie.  Make a bigger pie!".  In very modern terms (which is the definition I'll be using here) the belief is "Economic growth is more important than reducing inequality, under standard western conditions".

The process which I would like your help with is two(ish) steps long.  First, I want to identify the things that would prove that this belief is wrong *to me* - and then gather evidence. An example of the process:

"We have reached the limit of growth".  If more growth isn't possible, then more growth can't be more important.  Strong evidence against: UK average growth over xx years is 2%.  Therefore this statement is provably false.

I've come up with a number of these already, some completely trivial, others not.  Even a couple which I'm really not sure about, left in for completeness and potential debate.

The help I'm looking for at this stage is both "More ways that would falsify the theory" and "Evidence that supports previously accepted ways to falsify the theory".

An important point though - while I might not agree with what people say, every contribution will be read and considered.  Nothing will be just dismissed, except as outlined below.  While I might not agree with you your comments will be respected.  Evidence however will be carefully considered, but if this bogs down into a significant literature review this process will be reconsidered - I don't have time to do an undergrad in Sociology to help me reconsider my political views.  The election is this year, not next.

Further, I would ask everyone to comment (and read) in the spirit of reasonableness.  We may disagree about things but this is no reason to be angry or annoyed.  If a comment persuades you of something, say that.  Thank them for it.  This entire exercise is to try to change my mind - but I'd ask that you accept that it might change yours as well.

Also note that everything will be looked at with sane eyes and rebutted as needed.  For example, "Economic growth has killed our children's childhoods" will be rebutted by "Yes, but infant mortality has dropped significantly; less childhood is lost by death in childhood".  This could of course be rebutted by some argument on the sexualisation of children and the degraded quality of childhood.  At this point I would mark the point as "Insufficiently clear cut without a degree in Childhood studies; this debate is not on the relative quality of childhood.   On hold pending further evidence." The point here is not to argue one point into the ground, but to establish clear cut statements.  If it boils down to "You can argue it either way in the end, and we don't actually know", this is a perfectly acceptable. 

There are some quibbles further below, for the interested.  Short version: no misleading stats, no spirit level.

Now there are some of you out there (Alan, I'm looking at you) who will be muttering that you don't have to choose between economic growth and reducing inequlity.  I have a couple of answers; 3 really.  First, "If you chase two rabbits you will lose both".  Second, this is a matter of priority, not an absolute zero sum game.  Third, the people who are usually able to make decisions of Growth vs Inequality are politicians - and I don't trust them to get one thing right at a time; let alone two.

So, the Falsifiable statements I already have:

Trivial to dismiss, but included for completeness

1) We have reached the end of growth
2) External costs of growth have significant externality costs that exceed the value of growth
3) Rate of growth so slow that other options are significantly more important/significant
4) Universal acceptance of the need to resolve inequality
5) Economic growth can't be significantly influenced.

Less trivial

1) The cost of redistribution to further reduce inequality is less than zero
2) That current inequality is provably Unfair.*
3) Inequality has significant, clear external costs.

Iffy - might apply, maybe.

1) There is no way to escape poverty, at the level of an individual lifetime for a functional,  non-handicapped individual.
2) The rate of growth of inequality is greater than the growth of the economy, including the effects of technological development - and that this matters.

So, people.  How else could you prove this theory wrong?  What strong evidence can you think of?


Quibbles

When it comes to trying to prove/disprove the statements there are going to be a number of quibbles.  While I'm not going to spell out all the quibbles (because that would take forever!) they could all (bar one) be described as "Be reasonable".  If something is true, but has only been true for one year, that isn't enough.  Obvious misuse of statistics is Bad.  Showing that a thing is un/true during an unusual economic period isn't proof, be it WW2, the 2008 recession or the Napoleonic wars.  You get the idea.

Where I will be unfair is the book "The Spirit Level".  I have great problems with this book.  The short version is - where I have specific knowledge of the subject matter it seems to fall apart.  For example, take Japan, one of the countries with very long lifespans and an apparently "equal" society.  The book doesn't address the severe inequalities in the country.  The huge social gulf between Men and Women.  The xenophobia foreigners experience.  If Inequality influences longevity, surely being treated as a non-person would??  What of Japanese pension fraud?  Anyway, every time I look at it the numbers seem to get worse.  So this particular book is not going to be considered evidence here.

*Note that the "Unfair" statement has significant additional restrictions.  Including but not limited to "Universally accepted as unfair" and "Unfair to all - living, dead and yet to be born".  Fair is a concept I have significant problems with, once it's passed out the realm of fair cake distribution.  Is it fair to Bob if Alice earns more than him?  Would the inequality be fair if Alice's father funded her time at university?  Would it be more or less fair if it was a scholarship?  How does talent/ability/disability effect matters?  As I said, fair is *hard* for me - it's a rabbit hole that is easy to fall down endlessly.

Free stuff from Microsoft

Hi all.  It's been a while, but I'm feeling in a strange and writing feels right.  Since I got some free stuff from Microsoft this week, I thought I'd talk about that.  Because it needs commenting on...

What was it?  Well, it was one of these, courtesy of Microsoft.  The short description is that it's a new development board called a "Galileo", for electronics and computing.  Combines both direct electrical access to components with about as much computing power as a PC from 1998.  Arduino compatible, as much computing power as a raspberry pi and a

So, full disclosure, they gave me free stuff.   Doesn't mean I'm going to be nice.

First, it's not flat.

Wait, this is a problem?  Yes, yes it is.  If I'm working on an electronics project I'm going to manhandle my microelectronics.  I'm going to - get this - plug things in.  Apply pressure.  Poke, prod, fiddle around.  And my faithful arduino sits on my desk without complaint - and it has the right to complain.  But this Galileo has interfaces all over it.  It sits ~1cm above the desk, supported on 2 small bits of plastic used for some cables or other.  Touch any bit of the board and it lifts off the desk.  How can you work on a board that won't just sit flat??

Second, power.

It uses 30 times more power then the arduino it's compatible with.  That's 10+ times the power of a raspberry pi - without any move processing capability.  So if you ever build anything running on batteries...Galileo is not your friend.

Third, wifi.

My projects always seem to have 2 problem.  Either I'm on battery (yes, I have a battery problem.  I know.  But doesn't everyone have 50 AA's laying around, just in case.  Right?) or I want it on the network.  Wifi built into whatever board I'm using would be amazing.  Not having to faff with adding wifi, just connecting with a couple of simple lines of code.  Galileo doesn't have it.  It has a PCI Express slot.  It's got a *serial* port.  But WiFi?   Nah, who uses that?

Anyway, that's enough of me moaning.  When...if I come up with something to do with it, I'll let you know...

Music...

A common way people classify themselves and others (officially "getting to know you" - but really, classifying) is asking what kind of music you like.

This is a question that I find impossible.  A track here; a tune there.  And yet this weekend I heard a new song, "Little boxes", something I hadn't heard before.

I look it up on youtube and there is this 1960's (or perhaps 70's)  era video of a man with a banjo.  This video is more gripping then a hundred modern pop songs.  There's no cookie-cutter image, just a man, in a jumper, singing about boxes.

There is tune, meaning, feeling - the things I want in my music. 

So what music do I like? 

Music like this, played by Queen, written by Bach or sung by a friend.  Easy really...

Hotmail

Hotmail. Claims to be an email service... But it deletes my email if I don't log in for a while. What a piece of junk! How are you supposed to rely on that? I've used related services...MSN and the like. Bloody junk.

Leveson inquiry

So, the Leveson enquiry.

It's been something I've been trying to ignore for a while, but it's failed. I've got to the point that I've got to make a comment on the stupidity.

Of late, we've had all these terribly damning links between media people and politicians. It's so terrible. Oh noes!

Let's be absolutely, one hundred percent clear. Before one media company was allowed to buy another recently (no names, you know who, but no names) it had to be put through a political process before it was approved. A process where the person running it had to be replaced because he admitted to a bias.

The media are completely in the hands of the politicians.

Given this, why are we so surprised and shocked that a company tries to stay on the right side of the people who can close them down?

I mean, really? Something was discussed for 2 minutes? Someone rode on a horse?

Get a grip.


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