Month: January 2012

Portugal’s Prime Minister Tells Citizens to Emigrate

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Portugal is an EU and Euro member with a population of 10.5M. Portugal is one of the “PIIGS” (along with Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) that are having severe debt and austerity problems caused by a lack of confidence in their ability to service their huge financial burdens.

Portugal is relatively uncompetitive within the EU. They benefited from inflows and subsidies from the EU over the years and used it to raise living standards and develop a large and expensive public sector.

One advantage Portugal does have is their connections to former “empire” countries that also speak Portuguese including Angola and Brazil. These countries, while they have their own very significant problems, are not shackled with the anti-competitive rules and regulations that burden companies in the EU. While Portuguese citizens are not at the top of the education group in EU terms, in Angolan or Brazilian (general) terms they are very well educated and can assist multi-nationals taking advantage of the natural resources that Angola and Brazil are blessed with.

In this context, when asked what young people should do when faced with high unemployment, this article the conservative prime minister told them to “just emigrate”.

While many thought that his comments were not appropriate, there are few avenues for ambitious young people since the gravy train of EU subsidies is drying up and EU labor policies make it very difficult for companies to remove redundant staff in order to make room for more productive and cost compeititive new graduates.

This is a practical, if sad, solution to the problem of a non-competitive state which is forced to support the high cost and social benefits of the EU. It also perfectly crystalizes the “fixed pie” view of the left – keep jobs and barriers high for those that have them, and watch as the nation slowly loses competitiveness, falling hardest on those newest to the work force.

It is a blessing to the former colonies, however, who will receive the youngest, most productive and aggressive citizens who can make their fortune overseas rather than waiting in line (in vain) for a spot in the bureaucratic system.

Cross posted at LITGM

Rolling Stone Botches Top 100 Guitarists

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Rolling Stone magazine compiles “top lists”. Their top lists used to be very bad; they seemed to solely represent the personal preferences of their editor. Recently the lists have gotten better as they use a “panel” of musicians and critics to select which is an improved system. And in any list, there is a lot of judgement, and should be a little fun.

Even with these improvements, in my opinion, Rolling Stone botched the Top 100 Guitarist list. The list is far too tilted to the past; their #1 guitarist, Jimi Hendrix, DIED OVER FORTY YEARS AGO. Thus my methodology includes “relevance” in the calculation, and someone who died over forty years ago, correspondingly scores lower. I read through the list carefully, consulted outside sources, reviewed my own music, and built a “methodology” that resulted in my own list.

Alternative Methodology:

In reading through the list Rolling Stone and the musicians doing the evaluations obviously employed a lot of criteria. This isn’t the “most talented” list, or we’d be looking at Steve Vai and John Petrucci as #1 and #2, but they don’t make the Rolling Stone(nor mine)list at all. Rather than use a “subjective” evaluation criteria, I made my own up, and made it more explicit.

– Skills – ranked 1-3, with Neil Young a 1 and Eddie Van Halen a 3
– Innovation – ranked 1-3, with Jimi Hendrix a 3 and Nick Mars a 1
– Relevance – ranked 1-3, with Dave Grohl a 3 and Hendrix a 1
– Songwriting – ranked 1-3, with Neil Young a 3 and Yngwie Malmsteen a 1
– “Bonus” – an arbitrary category I added which allows for 0-2 points to be added for outsized contributions beyond the above categories. Dave Grohl gets 2 points for being the best rock drummer in the entire world; Matthew Bellamy gets 1 point for being the best singer on the entire list

In the process you were either a “top 100” guitarist or you weren’t; then I started scoring the methodology on the top 100. Then I looked at the results and seemed if they made sense, and adjusted the scores accordingly.

Results of the Analysis:

As a result, the list I came up with is dramatically different than the Rolling Stone list, since it doesn’t just contain dead blues or rockabilly musicians and it weighs newer contributions higher than what happened 40+ years ago.

– only 46 of the 100 guitarists on the RS 100 list made the adjusted list
– 4 of the top 10 in the adjusted list weren’t even ranked in the Top 100 by RS
– 13 of the top 25 guitarists in the adjusted list weren’t even ranked in the Top 100 by RS

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Dear Year 2012,

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we wish you a warm welcome! Nevertheless we’ll keep a close eye on you. We hope you won’t mind. Your predecessor had some issues, such as earthquakes, famines, nuclear disasters etc., etc., so we are a bit wary at this point.

But don’t let that put you off! Just relax, be yourself and things should turn out alright. Or else.

Kind regards

Ralf Goergens
p. p. Everybody else