On Tuesday, June 6, 2017 at 7:00:06 AM UTC-7, wrote:
On Tuesday, June 6, 2017 at 1:13:04 AM UTC-7, Andre Jute wrote:
On Monday, June 5, 2017 at 2:47:29 PM UTC+1, wrote:
On Sunday, June 4, 2017 at 6:51:04 PM UTC-7, Andre Jute wrote:
On Sunday, June 4, 2017 at 11:59:06 PM UTC+1, jbeattie wrote:
On Saturday, June 3, 2017 at 12:23:24 AM UTC-7, Andre Jute wrote:
Chain lubes are such a racket.

-- Jay Beattie.

You don't need to be a victim of the chain lube racketeers. Chain lubes -- and chain-lubing -- are easily dispensed with. All it takes is some brains and a little money.

To save bandwidth on RBT, see the full instructions for installing a zero-maintenance chain at
http://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=6813.0
and a photo of the chain after running service-free for 3500km at
http://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index....77889#msg77889
with the final report of the experiment at
http://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index....79431#msg79431

Of course, some cyclists measure their manhood by their chain-cleaning exploits: they're the natural victims of the chain lube racketeers, so there's no help for them.


Alas, I have derailleur bikes, which kind of moots the chain-case thing. Also, I can't buy a Rohloff hub because it would add to the US/Germany trade imbalance. That's wrong, and I'm going to fix it, if I can get Congress behind me.

-- Jay Beattie.

That's not a trade balance, that's an investment balance. Here's the short version: American manufacturers, when they sell abroad, get taxed at punitive rates when they repatriate their profits, so they leave them abroad. That reduces trade numbers and increases the imbalance. Foreign manufacturers, like Mercedes, find it costs too much to ship whole cars, and German workers are pretty pricey too, so they invest their profits in American factories where they build their cars with American workers. So that's German money coming into the States, but it isn't counted (it isn't offset against outflows of cash to Germany to pay for imports from Germany) because it is investment, not trade. What Mr Trump is looking at is obsolete accounting methods failing to keep track of modern realities, not real a trade imbalance. The Japanese "trade imbalance" works the same way.

I think I've said enough to demonstrate that it's more complicated than the populists make it seem. Tariff barriers made the Depression run for nine years instead of the one that should have shaken it out; your President appears unaware that tariffs will cost American jobs and on a very large scale.

The only remedy is free trade, but it has to be fair free trade, not dumping such as the Chinese indulge in, together with aggregating trade and investment balances in the national accounts for a truer picture of what isn't a zero-sum game.

It gets more complicated. The Germans aren't the trade culprits Trump makes them out, even if he's right about them being too cheap to pay for their own defense. The fact is, Europeans with their minds in gear like a toothless Germany very much indeed. We don't want Trump to conflate his misunderstandings of economics with his ignorance of history, because we know in our blood that his attempt to rearm Germany can only end in tears. The European Coal and Steel Community, the predecessor of the EU, was specifically a deal between Jean Monnet and Konrad Adenauer that Germany would get access to everyone else's markets, which is what Bismarck, the Kaiser and Hitler fought their wars for, in return for a promise not to rearm; more politely it was usually expressed, before it became axiomatically internalized in a smug, unearned, unexplained and unexplainable Franco-German pose of moral superiority, as French food for German cars. We fixed the German problem (and coincidentally the French peasant problem); we don't want an ignorant cowboy to start the Germans marching again.

Once your Treasury writes up the books up (there was a great man at Harvard, Wassily Leontief, ironically a Russian refugee, who was the great expert on national input/output -- I wonder if he's still sprightly enough to go straighten them out), the White House will call to say that, thanks to your pal Andre Jute, they've looked at the numbers again and you can, after all, give the Germans a grand for a Rohloff box so that you can join the 21st century.

Andre Jute
If you take it step by step, it soon becomes real clear

Andre, you just went through the reasons why we should eliminate the punitive taxation of repatriated profits and then say Trump who is trying to do just that isn't facing realities.

Apparently you simply are rolling your own eyes even at your own statements.

Not so! I didn't say that. I said Trump is right about some of what he said, and implied, on his European trip, and mistaken in some. The glass is half full. Brownie point for shooting down the Paris Accord in flames.

You must understand, Tom, I'm not a partisan. I feel no obligation to defend everything Trump does, nor any embarrassment in applauding him when he does something right. I'm interested in the facts and the practical implications of policy. The politics I generally leave aside, except insofar as the irrationalities of the players interest me professionally as a psychologist.

Andre Jute
3000 miles across the water

I'm not saying you should or shouldn't. What I would like to see is people wait and see how his policies work out. If they don't work I don't mind people complaining but if they do admit it.

What I see is a partisanship so far out in left field that we are no longer looking at Democracy but at people with a direct socialist desire. In California they actually have a bill in the legislature to have a "one payer health care system" - this would cost the average family $40,000 a year AT the preposterous estimate of costs which are so low that you can tell that it would be at least double.

Socialism has not worked anywhere and in most areas it has become little more than a dictatorship. Whatever the Democrats are now it certainly isn't Americans.

I assume you're on Medicare. That's a single-payer system. Your benefits are better than my uber-expensive private plan payed for out of my own pocket.

We are so terrified of the word "socialism" that even adopting the German insurance-based health-care model is verboten because it would amount to socialized medicine according to US conservatives. Anything that smells like socialism is off limits even though socialism or collectivism gives us buying power. I don't know what California is doing or if it is feasible or desirable, but "socialized medicine" can work because it is working everywhere else in the civilized world. It's working for you and all the other Medicare recipients.

What is amazing to me is that the confederate battle-flag flying ultra-conservatives are often the biggest users of social services -- from SSI (which Donald wants to cut) to SNAP (which Donald wants to cut). The heroic coal miners who Donald wants to bring back in droves cost us billions to prop-up the Black Lung Disability Trust. A staggering amount of those guys are on disability, and the coal companies that are killing them will actually see a drop in per-ton trust fund payments in 2018 while the US will have to borrow $1.6 billion to cover the shortfall. Dig into the budget and you'll see who is paying for what.

And by the way, illegal immigrants do not qualify for SSI or SNAP, so they are not the ones sucking it dry. You have to be "legal" for either of those benefits. Legal immigrants are still immigrants, but so were your ancestors -- unless you are Native American.

What we should be working towards is economic efficiency. That sometimes means collective action which may smell like socialism. Other times it means free-market or free-er market. The Donald could be a change agent because he is an outsider, but he can't get out of his own way and prefers to tweet insults. It's bizarre. Plus, he doesn't understand insurance and has more or less checked out of that battle. I'm hoping that Frank and Clair Underwood can make it happen in 2020.

-- Jay Beattie.