Tag: damage

Posted on by Tim Worstall

It’s Uncertainty About Idiot Politicians, Not Trade Restrictions Themselves, Which Is So Damaging

If someone comes out with a dingbat policy – say, we should all tax ourselves more for our temerity in buying from Johnny Foreigner – then that’s bad. But if we’ve had a series of dingbat policies then the truly damaging part becomes the uncertainty of what he next piece of dingbattery is going to be. Rather the problem with all politically directed policy of course, it’s terribly difficult to gauge how stupid the politicians are actually going to be:

Misdirection and the trade war malediction of 2018: Scaling the US–China bilateral tariff hikes
Simon Evenett, Johannes Fritz 01 July 2019

What is the practical and intellectual significance of the Sino-US tariff hikes of 2018?…

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

If Only The Guardian Understood Numbers – Fat Chance

As we know the arts graduates that produce The Guardian don’t understand numbers in the slightest. That’s why we get the tosh from them that we do. An example today being the damage done to human welfare by plastics in the seas. This doesn’t even make sense in the numbers they themselves quote:

Plastic pollution in the world’s oceans costs society billions of dollars every year in damaged and lost resources, research has found. Fisheries, aquaculture, recreational activities and global wellbeing are all negatively affected by plastic pollution, with an estimated 1-5% decline in the benefit humans derive from oceans.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Fido Will Be Fine – Dog Food Made From Insects Arrives

Given the fine and delicate nature of the average dog’s tastebuds this new form of dog food – made from insects – will do just fine. There is though rather an overdoing of the environmental benefits as the story is laid out here. For we’ve not been feeding our pets on what we would ourselves eat all these years. That might be one of these new millennial things but it’s most certainly not standard practice:

Dog food made from insects to go on sale in UK for first time
Globally pets consume 20% of meat and fish, a figure insect pet food could help to reduce  

Dogs are omnivores, as long as they’re getting protein, fats, carbohydrates and so on they’ll be fine.…

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