12 thoughts on “Random Pic”

  1. Well, I’ve heard of high-water pants, this is the first I’ve seen of a high-water bicycle!

  3. Letting his freak flag fly.

    The talent isn’t in riding high, it’s the safe mount/dismount.

  4. So many big stories all over the news about the scandalous leak.
    I mean “the Uber Files”, of course.
    What did you think I was talking about?

  7. I saw this referenced but not linked by zerohedge on twitter:
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/07/13/ftse-100-markets-live-news-gdp-euro-dollar-flights-cancelled/
    “Recession fears linger as GDP boosted by trips to the doctor – live updates
    Economists have warned that the UK still risks tumbling into recession even after an unexpected boost to activity in May.
    GDP rose 0.5pc over the month, according to the Office for National Statistics. That marked a turnaround from April’s revised 0.2pc fall and outstripped forecasts.
    The growth was driven largely by a strong rebound in health services as GP appointments jumped 15pc, offsetting the impact of the shrinking Covid vaccine and test and trace programmes.
    The figures bring into doubt economists’ expectations that the UK economy will contract over the second quarter, but analysts warned there was still a risk of recession later in the year.”

    I honestly don’t understand many things about this:
    How does an increased need for medical care increase the wealth of the country?
    My understanding is that in the UK there is effectively zero private medical care, so isn’t this all just increased government spending, so again how does this increase economic output?
    Is no one at all curious about why there is such a large and increasing need for medical care?

  8. “The growth was driven largely by a strong rebound in health services as GP appointments jumped 15pc”

    Contacts in the UK say that, for about the last two years, people have been lucky to get anything more than a Zoom call with a nurse under the National Health Service. There is probably a huge backlog of routine medical care appointments which were denied during the CovidScam. As that engineered panic declines, it may not be a surprise to see an increase in medical appointments.

    What that has to do with increasing the Gross National Product is a whole other issue.

    Unless the Brits are hiring a bunch of previously unemployed doctors, where does “production” increase? If the same number of doctors are now having to put in the full 40-hour working week they were being paid for during the CovidScam but could not see patients, is there any change in government costs for the NHS? And then there is the whole long-running debate about whether expenditures of government tax revenues belong in the GNP, since that is mostly merely taking from Peter to give to Paul with no genuine increase in economic production.

  9. Welcome to the wonder of macro-economics. Next year expect them to discover their economy is being buoyed up by the upswing in the funeral industry as all the deferred care reaches its natural conclusion. They could always hire people to break windows to stimulate the building sector.

  10. Hahaha tall funny bicycle picture! Will orange tall bicycle tip over? Good thing man has helmet but will he scrape knee when tipping and falling down? What gives here with funny orange tall bicycle? Why do this? So many questions!!!

  12. Very interesting article via Tyler Cowen about how in the past few decades there’s been a massive rise in rental rates in Ireland, after being nearly eliminated after the war. This was the most compelling segment to me, as it seems to capture a universal fact of early 21st century global (Western?) governance:
    https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2022/07/12/unwelcome-return-of-the-gintleman-that-takes-the-rint/
    Everybody knows the economic and social problems associated with this shift. But there is also a profound political problem: it is a hugely significant transformation for which governments have never sought, let alone received, democratic consent.
    This is why the housing question is even more than an urgent practical issue. It does of course matter in a very immediate way to huge numbers of citizens. It also matters, though, because it shows those citizens how wide a gap there is between what people want and what their governments have been doing.
    We’ve had, over the course of this century, a transformation in official policy with very deep consequences for how Irish people live their lives. But it has been done without even being articulated as a policy.

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