Van Horstmann's Abacus

@WiborgQ99 @TheEarlyStage @AndreasSteno The defence spending goal and the membership fee are two different things. No one has had a discount on their membership fee (and actually, on a per capita basis, the US gets one of the best rates).

@TheEarlyStage @AndreasSteno Likely partially an influence. Keyword is partial, but still relevant. “Denmark has for many years got a discount on its NATO membership, paying significantly less than two percent of GDP, which is the alliance’s official defense spending goal.” thearcticinstitute.org/denmark-intere…

I hate high taxes, but why anyone would die on the hill defending the U.S. healthcare system is beyond my understanding. You can't find a system anywhere on Earth that delivers worse value for money. Incredibly expensive. Mediocre outcome.

@raoul_duke2 @samuel_leeds @DanNeidle Dan Neidle's understanding of economics would struggle to fill the outside of a cereal packet

@samuel_leeds @DanNeidle Also to assume @DanNeidle doesn’t want what’s genuinely best economically is patronising rubbish. A genuine non partisan economist driven by fact

Gary Economics has just ruined its credibility and proven that it clearly knows very little about economics. The absolute tax legend @DanNeidle destroyed Gary in his own documentary. The very documentary just a compilation of Gary being proven wrong time and time again about his "solution" to economic inequality. Let me know if you have watched it. The Dan Neidle debate has gotta be one of the best moments in the show!! #garystevenson @Channel4 @garyseconomics

@numbeast @BarristerSecret EU needs to ban them and UEFA unless they're located within the EU proper and have auditors slammed up the wazoo

@BarristerSecret It's time the big hitters in World football give FIFA the ultimatum to clean up the corruption or they break away forming a new governing body. The likes of Germany, Brazil Spain Argentina England et al. Without the big names in international football FIFA will wither & die

Prepared to wager hard cash money that after the USA are deservedly eliminated, Infantino announces a new FIFA World Winners Prize and awards it to them.

@Dark_Knight_Vid @alleyandapu @thecolonel120 @PeterStefanovi2 Exactly, not counting Major requires some niche condition where a party elects its leader for the first time directly into a GE campaign, which is fairly ridiculous. I'd also argue Blair and Thatcher shouldn't be discarded. That still leaves 19 years of nonsense since Blair.

@alleyandapu @thecolonel120 @PeterStefanovi2 Still won a GE then left office at a GE having served - IIRC - a full parliament.

'There's not been a PM who was both elected at a General Election and left office at a General Election since Edward Heath and that was over 50 years ago' Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds says he supports a 'swift and orderly transition' to Andy Burnham

@joseluis0473 @yanisvaroufakis Johnson never hid himself apart from famously in a refrigerator, and lied at a rate that is only now not considered prodigious because Trump exists.

@yanisvaroufakis Comparing Johnson with Starmer, Johnson did right, he never hid himself, he was a clown, but we knew that,Starmer is vile, liar, and never deliver anything for the people, raising council tax for masses, high energy bills, now energy cap in july goes up again, YES GOOD RIDDANCE

Keir Starmer was not merely a disappointment. He is a mendacious figure of ethical decrepitude, a man who won the Labour Party leadership based on promises that he jettisoned five seconds after winning - a Labour leader who dared banish from the Labour Party not only his predecessor but also remarkable human beings like director Ken Loach - the gentleman who has taken the historic Labour Party and transformed it into a vessel for the very oligarchy it was elected to restrain. Consider the litany of Starmer’s moral and logical failures. He promised a 'different Britain', yet his actions were a masterclass in Tory-lite politics—using the same maxed-out credit card analogies that once served the austerity brigades to justify his own failure of vision. He promised a human rights lawyer’s approach but he embraced a racist-lite version of Farage. On Europe, Starmer promised Brexiteers that Brexit is Brexit yet stood before those who yearn to rejoin the European Union, winked at them to make them feel that Britain would gradually reconnect, even rejoin, with the EU while offering nothing of substance. This is not leadership; it is a fraud. And then there's the manner in which Starmer and his government rushed to offer Israel unequivocal support in pursuing its genocide in Gaza, sacrificing precious political and civil liberties in the UK by imprisoning grandmothers, priests and peaceful activists who dared support Palestine Action, an organisation that Starmer and his minions proscribed as terrorists for practising the usual activist tactics of trespassing to spray paint military planes that had demonstrably aided in the genocide. To add insult to injury, Starmer performed the diplomatic pantomime of recognising a Palestinian state, in a manner that ensured it would never happen. But above all else, this is a government that has learned nothing from the post-2008 era. Starmer and his Chancellor are playing the same tired austerity game while enabling and empowering the Finance Curse perpetrated by the City of London, throwing in forgood measure cuts in international aid to fund a military spending trickle under the guise of a "Strategic Defence Review" . It is the same old doctrine: austerity for the masses, socialism for the financiers and the arms dealers. History will remember Mr Starmer as a man without conviction, a Prime Minister who offers not a shred of honesty, but merely the cruel illusion of change. He is ethically decrepit because he had chosen, consciously, to abandon principle for power. And for that, history will indict him. Good riddance, I say. #block-6a38f4108f08d76ddac5a1da" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">theguardian.com/politics/live/…

@WesleyCorbett @yanisvaroufakis He means winning the election for Labour leader

@yanisvaroufakis "based on promises that he jettisoned five seconds after winning..." I am not sure that is entirely true, because the Labour Party manifesto promised austerity, and Starmer delivered that austerity.

@HenricCont @InputEndorsers @AusMMT @wbmosler Why don't you show the full quote instead of misrepresenting the paragraph? Liability ≠ Payment

@InputEndorsers @AusMMT @wbmosler This was written by him First a property tax of 100, then spending. According to Mosler

THE PURPOSE OF TAXES Why do we pay taxes? It's not to "fund" government spending. A sovereign government doesn't need our money. Taxes serve three main purposes: 1. They create demand for the currency. 2. They allow the government to manage inflation by reducing private spending power. 3. They can be used to discourage undesirable activities (e.g., carbon tax) and redistribute wealth. Thinking of taxes as a tool, not a funding source, is a revolutionary shift. buff.ly/dsXGLlj #MMT #ECON

@WilliamTaborDDS @AusMMT The Weimar Republic was not fiat.

@AusMMT Unlimited fiat money worked so well for the Weimar Republic.

@datchuguyy Doesn't really justify being unable to find a moderately competent holding midfielder for over a decade 🤷‍♂️

“There was a time we had 90 million turnover and we had to pay back 22 million per year for the stadium, I couldn’t sleep because we had to qualify for the champions league to pay back the money. We had to sell our best players. Other clubs came in with lots of money but we were on the same level from 2007 to 2016” Arsene Wenger

@adam_copp @Jcortesconde1 @mazzenilsson Mens rea is for the jury to decide, so no, you're wrong

@Jcortesconde1 @mazzenilsson The sentencing guidelines that a crime having a terrorist connection is an aggravating factor. Eg: Stealing a CCTV camera is bad. Stealing it to enable someone to sneak into a facility for terrosim is worse. The jury's job is to figure out if the accused stole the camera.

A UK jury convicted four people of criminal damage for breaking into an Elbit Systems weapons site near Bristol and dismantling Israeli military drones. The jury was never told the judge intended to sentence them as terrorists. He had already ruled, before trial, that there was a “terrorist connection” and ordered that the jury must not hear it.

@EboCee @malcolm_reavell Cost of container shipping going up 1000-1200%, for example, was not caused by money supply, it was caused by scarcity of containers stuck sitting full because restrictions ground emptying them to a halt. Knock on = product scarcity.

@malcolm_reavell Sir, the papers cited to support your thesis mostly predate the Covid19 inflation, which correlates with increased money supply. In the last analysis, once the world's economy is at capacity, inflation will only be actualised by increased money supply. Inflation isn't magical.

Zimbabweimargenzuela! The fairytale goes that these 4 countries printed too much money and caused hyperinflation. Not true. These countries just printed enough money to meet the demand for cash that people needed in order to pay the inflated prices that sellers of goods demanded.

@MickA20227981 @premnsikka Would eliminate any business legitimately operating on a low margin basis, in turn causing regressive inflation on low wealth/income people. Need to add transfer pricing & other intra-group transfers to the non-allowable list of tax deducts like most forms of entertainment cost.

@premnsikka They should be taxed on turnover rather than imaginary profits. As should all the multinationals that shift money around subsidiaries to avoid their rightful share of tax.

Amazon UK entities' pre-tax profits up from £455m to £555m. It pays corporation tax at an effective rate of 7.1%, headline rate is 25%. Profits shifted through intragroup transactions. UK retailers can't compete with hard-wired systematic tax avoidance. theguardian.com/technology/202…

@Iqoogloo @ScottEgner1 @afneil Your last sentence says "Eurozone countries need to borrow it from the ECB on terms", which is not true.

@VanAbacus @ScottEgner1 @afneil We're talking about who controls the euro currency. european-union.europa.eu/institutions-l…

Typical of the MMT mumbo-jumbo on social media. The idea governments can simply finance spending by printing money without regard/resort to taxation/borrowing is inane.

@AlanJenkins2 @MMTUK_PRG Can still avoid joining the € by not meeting the Convergence Criteria.

@MMTUK_PRG What about our index-linked debt ? What if we re-join the EU and have to adopt the Euro ? [our exemption for that expired when we left]. What if we wind up printing so many pounds that no one will accept them ?

The UK is a currency issuer. It cannot run out of pounds any more than a football team can run out of goals. So when politicians ask "how will we afford it", they are asking the wrong question. #MMT #JobGuarantee #UKEconomy

@Stuarty771 @DEhnts You will find somewhere in that legislation a requirement that the CB meets every government payment obligation (Exchequer & Audits Act, Paymaster General Acts, amongst others, in the UK).

@DEhnts This is not how government financing is explained anywhere in mainstream outlets here or abroad Currency is issued by a separate CB independent of govt spending needs No developed country is run along these principles, and the uk is not going to volunteer to be the first

There is no "financing" for the government - the £ it spends via money creation of the BoE are returned via tax and bond revenues (French for "returns"). Thatcher's "taxpayer money" is mumbo-jumbo: There is no such thing as "taxpayer money"!

@BonesAFC @jed05052108 @MoArsenal86 For the record, Maguire took a pen in the Euro 2000 final shoot outs and broke the camera in the top corner of the net.

@jed05052108 @MoArsenal86 They probably should if there are multiple attackers that have yet to go. I can’t think of any CB in the world I would want to take a PK over even an average attacker

For me there are two non-negotiables for pens: 1) Never attempt an elaborate run-up. 2) Never allow your CB (unless a technician) to take a pen when midfielders or attackers are available. Eze, Zubimendi, Noni - not acceptable. At this level it’s simply unacceptable.

@Iqoogloo @ScottEgner1 @afneil Eurozone countries issue bonds or borrow from the markets, they can't borrow from the ECB or national banks. The ECB can only acquire eurozone bonds on the secondary market. (Article 123 of the TFEU)

@ScottEgner1 @afneil The UK creates its own currency, the £, under a legal framework that gives the UK government the monopoly legal right to create/issue £. The USA, Japan and many others do the same. The euro is not a sovereign currency. Eurozone countries need to borrow it from the ECB on terms.

@dvarets @afneil Not an example of a fiat currency.

@afneil They think we can be like Germany from 1921 to 1923 fuelling massive hyperinflation, they've learnt nothing from History, it's never worked.

@paultrowntree @afneil Weimar was not a fiat currency because of the Treaty of Versailles. Zimbabwe printed money to continuously acquire foreign currency, which is bad policy, so its only relevance here is some bad understanding or strawman.

@afneil Well, they can; but as Weimar Germany and Mugabe discovered, the printed money soon becomes worth less than the paper it is printed on if you do.

@ProfHall1955 @Bas648 @afneil Weimar was not even operating a fiat currency because of the reparations required by the Treaty of Versailles