Ryugyong hotel being completed?

Not PC describes it as the worst building in the world. Wikipedia tells about its abortive history. The building that looks like a shard of glass has fallen from the sky or shot itself out of the ground.

However, someone has decided to upgrade it. Egyptian company Orascom is refurbishing it to make it a tower for cellular phone service. Quite how many customers it expects for the phones or the hotels is a mystery especially since most citizens are not permitted a private phone (for obvious reasons), and tourism is rather low. So now we have pictures of it being clad in glass (right).

Scaffolding at the top presumably to allow telecommunications equipment to be installed. Although the rusty crane that has been at the top for around 20 years appears to be there (imagine the worker who was in there - and had to get down).

It has been described as the worst property investment ever by the Times. It apparently will be finished by 2012, which tells me either Orascom knows something nobody else does, or it has far too much money.

Jobs summit outcomes?

I agree with most of what Not PC has already suggested here, here and here, as an alternative view to the Jobs Summit. These are:
- Government should get out of the way;
- Government should resist pressures for protectionism (one positive thing it COULD do is lobby hard internationally to reboot the Doha Round to make the biggest push for free trade since the 1950s);
- Production drives the economy, not consumption. Precious little government does encourages production. As Government spending takes money out of the hands of the productive, there should be further tax cuts. I'd suggest simply dropping company tax to 20%. What better signal to the world to locate to NZ?
- Abandon the minimum wage;
- Cut government salaries;
- Allow malinvestments to be liquidated;
- Restrict the Reserve Bank's ability to inflate the currency;
and so on.

However, in one respect I DO digress from PC, I do NOT believe all government spending is consumption. It is possible for government to spend money and generate more wealth than it spent. However, this really only happens in two areas:

1. Spending money on capitalising SOEs to expand. A very risky endeavour indeed. Singapore does it well, but you'd question whether NZ governments ever can do it well. Air NZ and Kiwirail being Labour's greatest dud investments.

2. Spending money collected from consumers of a government service to benefit those consumers beyond the cost of the spending. I mean roads. The private sector is almost entirely shut out of providing roads, so government taxes road users and can spend that money on improving roads to reduce delays, wasted fuel, accidents etc. For example, the widening of the highway through Paremata-Plimmerton north of Wellington generated savings in travel time, fuel etc of around $5 for every $1 spent on it. The dangerous side to this is politicians get excited about roads too much, and want to spend money on the ones that DON'T do that. Transmission Gully and the Helen Clark Memorial tunnel (aka Waterview Connection) are examples of this. Japan is littered with such bridges of the sort Henry Hazlitt referred to.

In short, if anyone is advocating spend up on projects, they need a seriously rigorous piece of economic analysis. Will the project really generate wealth based on proven demand, what is the risk contingency on this. If there is a reasonable risk it wont generate at least $2 for each $1 spent over a 20 year period then it isn't worth doing. Sadly the ideas that have come out include the insane idea for a cycleway (although if the government was rational about Kiwirail it mind find it has plenty of corridors for one) and the Green Party's rather predictable favourites.

However, regardless of the economic efficiency of government spending it does not justify it morally. Theft is still theft. I undoubtedly think I can spend your money better than you can, but it hardly justifies me doing so does it?

Finally, it is tragically notable that the leftwing commentary on the Jobs Summit has been virtually nothing about substance or policy (with the exception of the Greens. The Greens played the identity politics card and then ideas), but about identity politics. The Standard showed pictures of men, said everyone has an ideology (true), damns the cycleway (but forgets that Labour started pouring money into cycleways itself) and makes a few comments about what was said. However no new ideas. Idiot Savant goes on about men, and then damns the cycleway (yet this is Green Party policy), and goes on about identity politics again. Hand Mirror thinks it shows John Key does not value women. Apparently women can't be represented by organisations that are open to them and include them.

Not enough women, not enough people of different races. Apparently if you have a vagina or differently coloured skin it means you have different ideas. Those don't come from a brain. If you don't feel represented there, then say so - it isn't because there aren't enough women, Maori, Koreans, blondes, cross-dressers, asthmatics, pianists, vegetarians, balloon fetishists, dancers, nudists or twins - it is about ideas. The truth is that if the summit was full of leftwing women, which would surely cheer many on, the ideas are unlikely to be about getting government out of the way of the productive.

Most of those at the summit were there because it showed they were wanting to work with the government, and because they wanted some booty from the rest of you.

Like I said before, the Fourth Labour Government had an economic summit conference shortly after it was elected, and promptly ignored most of what came out of it. That seems the appropriate precedent.

UPDATE: I see the whingy 23yo unemployed woman who thought the world owed her a living at the Lange Economic Summit Conference, Jane Stevens, retains her Marxist view of the world in the Herald. Given she works for an organisation partly supported by taxpayers and ratepayers, I'm hardly surprised. Shame her passion and commitment didn't teach her that the government produces nothing, and that the free market generates wealth.

Sending freedom messages to North Korea

A Japanese organisation advocating for victims of abduction by North Korea is calling for people to send spam faxes to North Korean fax numbers, in order to facilitate change and revolution.

The blog post above includes the fax numbers, suggests you send a message in Korean only with a photo of Kim Jong Il - because it is illegal to throw away images of the General Secretary. The message should not be confrontational, but be about sending factual information, making the recipient think, and it is important the faxes be individualised.

It IS an innovative approach. Takes a bit of effort to get some Korean written by those who do not know the language, and it isn't cheap. North Korea charges a lot of money to terminate any fax calls in its country (after all that's foreign currency it can earn from overseas telcos).

Imagine if you were in a totalitarian state, knew little better and received a fax from overseas that told you that some of the things your government told you were a lie. Would you tell anyone else? Would you keep it secretly? Would you send a response?

Obama's deficit, spend and tax budget

So President Obama has released his budget. If you believe the hype it would be different, well I guess it is:

- US$1.75 trillion deficit. You just can't begin to imagine how big that is. 12.3% of GDP. He's going to reduce it to US$533 billion by 2013. Wont hear him talking about mortgaging children though;
- He wants to spend US$3.6 trillion, around US$25,000 per taxpayer. However he says he doesn't believe in big government;
- He wants to spend US$634 billion on a health care reserve fund, to introduce socialised health care, though you might wonder whether if every taxpayer spent that around US$2000 a head on health insurance they would be more than covered;
- He wants to increase taxes on the rich (spit on them all of course) those earning over US$250,000 to around 40%;
- He wants to cut military spending, largely as a result of withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan;
- He wants to create a cap and trade programme for CO2 emissions that the Federal government will profit from.

Change you can believe in? Or is it just change people are left with when they and their children face this monumental debt to repay? He says he doesn't believe in big government. Who is he kidding?

£15 London-New York return plus taxes

Yep, that's where airfares have gone. Virgin Atlantic announced today it was selling seats in riff raff class at the lowest marginal price in ages. £15 is barely enough to cover the cost of loading an additional meal.

Now to be fair, another £50.30 comprise taxes and levies from the US side, and £55.30 comprises taxes and levies in the UK, plus £106 Fuel surcharge (which goes to Virgin Atlantic).

So it's really £121 fare plus taxes. Still this is a fare to simply recover costs, and let's be clear airlines don't make money on the Atlantic in economy class. A full economy class section loses money for Virgin Atlantic if it carries nearly no one in premium economy class and upper class.

So it's not just the drop in bankers flying the Atlantic.

and don't forget, landing slots at Heathrow are allocated somewhat on a "use it or lose it" provision, so Virgin has to fly the flights to hold onto the slots - which of course are worth a fortune when there isn't a recession!