Confessions of a European Business Insider

Most government transfers are not from the rich to the poor. Instead, government takes from the relatively unorganized (e.g., consumers and general taxpayers) and gives to the relatively organized (groups politically organized around common interests, such as the elderly, sugar farmers, and steel producers). The most important factor in determining the pattern of redistribution appears to be political influence, not poverty.--Lee

Chris got a good checkup yesterday.

Mom really cut her hand badly yesterday.

Another government Bait-and-Switch. In 2007, the U.S. government made a promise to public service workers: Make 10 years of payments on their federal student loans and any remaining debt would be erased. But officials have largely failed to deliver. Signed into law under President George W. Bush, the program is meant to help college graduates who pursue jobs that often pay modest salaries but serve a greater good, such as careers in teaching, the military or with nonprofit groups. But turmoil has been mounting around the program since last year, when the Education Department revealed that 99% of borrowers who applied for loan discharges had been rejected. As of December, just 338 public workers had been granted loan forgiveness out of nearly 54,000 applicants, according to recently released department data.
Somehow the one way to disqualify you from any government program seems to be to have a job. 

Marriott International is starting a new home-rental business, aiming to challenge Airbnb and other home-sharing companies.

The utopian flaw is in expecting the politicians who enact taxes, subsidies, regulations, and reassign property rights to be more inclined to virtue than the business people we need to guard against.

In France,  5.5 million government employees out of a population of 67 million consume around 13% of GDP in wages. 

Born this way:
In an online lecture hosted by TEDx, a speaker made this claim:
"Mirjam Heine [a German medical student] gave a lecture in defense of pedophiles during the 'independently organized' TEDx Talk at the University of Wurtzberg in Germany in May. The title given to Heine's talk was 'Why our perception of pedophilia has to change.'
"Introducing her theme with the 'story' of 'Jonas,' a 19-year-old pedophile who studies law and plays soccer, she asked her listeners to put aside their revulsion for pedophiles.
"'Anyone could be born a pedophile,' she told them.
"According to the medical student, pedophilia is just another 'unchangeable sexual orientation just like, for example, heterosexuality.'"
(LifeSite.com--I don't know the site but it looks like a Catholic website so they may be more outraged than many but ....)

One of the reasons that the costs of medical care services in the US have increased more than twice as much as general consumer prices since 1998 is that a large and increasing share of medical costs are paid by third parties (private health insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, Department of Veterans Affairs, etc.) and only a small and shrinking percentage of health care costs are paid out-of-pocket by consumers.

Industrial progress, mechanical improvement, all of the great wonders of the modern era have meant relatively little to the wealthy. The rich in Ancient Greece would have benefited hardly at all from modern plumbing: running servants replaced running water. Television and radio—the patricians of Rome could enjoy the leading musicians and actors in their home, could have the leading artists as domestic retainers. Ready-to-wear clothing, supermarkets—all these and many other modern developments would have added little to their life. They would have welcomed the improvements in transportation and in medicine, but for the rest, the great achievements of Western capitalism have redounded primarily to the benefit of the ordinary person. These achievements have made available to the masses conveniences and amenities that were previously the exclusive prerogative of the rich and powerful.--Freidman

What happened to me is being repeated at colleges and universities throughout the country. Unfortunately, a growing number of university students equate being made uncomfortable in the classroom with being “harmed.” And in this they are encouraged by a growing number of faculty and administrators who view the mission of the university as more about shielding students from such “harm” (for the sake of “inclusivity”) and less about meaningful education. In the “surveillance university,” students are encouraged to report on the transgressions of faculty, and in what has been called an impulse of “vindictive protectiveness,” faculty are judged guilty and harshly punished.--from a letter written by Evan Charney, professor of twenty years, on his being fired from his job at Duke

                   Confessions of a European Business Insider

Sir Jim Ratcliffe is the billionaire businessman who runs the $60bn chemicals and energy group, Ineos. 

Recently he wrote an Open Letter to the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

 Tuesday, 12 February 2019 

•  INEOS Group

Open letter to President Jean-Claude Juncker
President European Commission
European Commission
Rue de la Loi 200
B-1049 Brussels

                                                                                                                        11th February 2019

Dear President Juncker,

“Are you quite mad?” was the reaction of one well known CEO of a European chemicals company when INEOS publicly announced recently its huge €3 billion petrochemicals expansion in Antwerp in January of this year.   The first of its kind for a generation.

Nobody but nobody in my business seriously invests in Europe.   They haven’t for a generation.   Everyone in my business does however invest in the USA, Middle East or China, or indeed, all three.   The USA is in the middle of a $200 billion spending spree on 333 new chemical plants.   China has spent that sum annually for many years, constructing its own chemical building blocks.

Europe, not so long ago the world leader in chemicals, has seen its market share in the last decade alone collapse from 30% world market share to 15%.   This is an industry that employs over 1 million people in high quality jobs in Europe and five times that in indirect jobs. Worldwide, chemicals is an immense industry, considerably bigger than the automotive sector with revenues approaching $4 trillion.

Europe is no longer competitive.   It has the worlds most expensive energy and labour laws that are uninviting for employers.   Worst of all, it has green taxes that, at best, can be described as foolish as they are having the opposite effect to how they were intended.  

Europe going it alone with green taxes prevents renewal as it frightens away investment into the open arms of the USA and China. It also pushes manufacturing to other parts of the world that care less for the environment. To get a sense of the importance of renewal a 70s car will emit 50 times the pollution of a modern day car. Chemical plants are not so different.

The USA is fully in the process of renewal.   Immense building programmes are installing the world’s finest chemical technology which has a fraction of the emissions we saw a generation ago.   Old units are being shut down.   The USA doesn’t have green taxes but it does insist on the very highest environmental standards before it issues permits for new builds.

So let’s step back.   Europe remains with an industry built one or two generations ago with old environmental standards and has frightened away new investment for a generation with heavy green taxes.   America has welcomed new investment but on condition that it has the highest possible environmental standards.   It has created investment, new jobs and improved environmental emissions.   Europe has done the opposite on all fronts.  I know who looks smarter.

I have an intense interest in preserving the environment.   I see wildlife being slaughtered in Africa, forests burning all over the world, fish stocks being decimated and I fully believe that we must arrest global warming.

But Europe ‘going it alone’ with green taxes as its main strategy has got it wrong.

As for the question posed to me at the outset, “Are we mad?”, the answer is no.   INEOS is uniquely able to import huge quantities of cheap energy and feedstocks from the USA and we have no ‘market risk’ as all the product that we will produce will be consumed by our own INEOS businesses in Europe.

But don’t expect others to follow.   They will be welcomed by the USA and China with a warm smile and a good strategy.

Europe, reminds me somewhat of the Charge of the Light Brigade, immortalised in Tennyson’s wonderful poem, full of valour and good intention but the outcome will not be pretty.

Yours Sincerely

Sir Jim Ratcliffe Chairman, INEOS.