Somewhere

Look for another place. I don't know how it works in Berlin, but here in London, July is an easy month to find accommodation; the time to avoid if possible is September/October when you're competing with all the university students. In a similar situation, within a week I had moved to a better place at the same rent - in fact I found mine through a friend on Facebook who was advertising for a friend.

There are some interesting stats at the UN's Financial Tracking Service https://fts.unocha.org/pageloader.aspx?page=special-syriancrisis especially the detailed information in the (large) spreadsheet that's generated when you go to Donor Funding 2012 to 2015 > Totals > Show full details / itemised list under each sub-total Germany did massively increase its humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees in 2015, donating $519m in that year mainly through UNICEF ($193m) and the World Food Program ($146m). But that's still less than 3% of the expected annual cost for basic welfare alone of Germany's 2015 refugee/migrant intake (at $15K per head). The UK remains substantially ahead of Germany in terms of cumulative humanitarian aid, despite the complaints from certain quarters that the UK "isn't doing as much as other countries". In the table below I've listed total government humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees 2012-2015 in USD by country, in descending per capita order. It's interesting how many Middle Eastern countries are near the top. Humanitarian aid figures are from the FTS site mentioned above, population figures are from Wikipedia. table.tableizer-table { font-size: 12px; border: 1px solid #CCC; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; } .tableizer-table td { padding: 4px; margin: 3px; border: 1px solid #CCC; } .tableizer-table th { background-color: #104E8B; color: #FFF; font-weight: bold; } Country Donated Pledged Total Population Per Capita Kuwait 1,039,816,837 1,039,816,837 4,183,658 248.54 Qatar 256,967,279 3,803,270 260,770,549 2,587,564 100.78 Norway 362,537,432 14,608,919 377,146,351 5,223,256 72.21 United Arab Emirates 435,287,950 118,822,508 554,110,458 9,856,000 56.22 Luxembourg 25,462,714 25,462,714 576,200 44.19 Holy See 29,828 29,828 839 35.55 Denmark 200,072,721 200,072,721 5,717,014 35.00 Monaco 983,845 983,845 38,400 25.62 United Kingdom 1,553,810,782 1,553,810,782 65,110,000 23.86 Switzerland 197,239,702 1,142,037 198,381,739 8,341,600 23.78 Saudi Arabia 736,519,452 736,519,452 32,248,200 22.84 Netherlands 335,305,431 30,652,419 365,957,850 17,019,620 21.50 Sweden 190,870,739 190,870,739 9,894,888 19.29 Bahrain 3,580,000 22,000,000 25,580,000 1,404,900 18.21 Germany 1,253,782,339 1,253,782,339 81,770,900 15.33 Canada 550,191,075 550,191,075 36,155,487 15.22 United States 4,676,016,836 37,669,216 4,713,686,052 323,940,000 14.55 Oman 58,053,249 58,053,249 4,420,133 13.13 Finland 69,992,139 69,992,139 5,491,817 12.74 Ireland 49,939,607 1,696,065 51,635,672 4,635,400 11.14 Belgium 84,545,362 6,467,942 91,013,304 11,319,511 8.04 Australia 173,397,332 173,397,332 24,116,545 7.19 Liechtenstein 258,799 258,799 37,623 6.88 Iceland 1,755,000 1,755,000 334,300 5.25 Japan 449,012,741 23,360,000 472,372,741 126,960,000 3.72 European Commission 1,804,223,514 1,804,223,514 508,000,000 3.55 New Zealand 11,753,261 2,903,226 14,656,487 4,697,481 3.12 Austria 24,654,711 24,654,711 8,725,931 2.83 France 171,876,228 171,876,228 66,710,000 2.58 Brunei Darussalam 1,000,000 1,000,000 411,900 2.43 Estonia 2,544,435 2,544,435 1,315,944 1.93 Italy 109,801,922 3,484,310 113,286,232 60,665,551 1.87 Czech Republic 10,426,866 10,426,866 10,558,524 0.99 Spain 43,696,062 43,696,062 46,438,422 0.94 Andorra 51,496 51,496 78,014 0.66 Iraq 9,965,812 13,000,000 22,965,812 37,883,543 0.61 Malta 233,258 233,258 425,384 0.55 Korea, Republic of 21,391,500 21,391,500 50,801,405 0.42 Mauritania 1,000,000 1,000,000 3,718,678 0.27 Croatia 847,141 206,897 1,054,038 4,190,669 0.25 Morocco 4,250,000 4,000,000 8,250,000 33,337,529 0.25 Russian Federation 35,759,837 35,759,837 146,599,183 0.24 Poland 7,905,700 7,905,700 38,437,239 0.21 Slovenia 330,422 330,422 2,064,188 0.16 Hungary 1,503,251 1,503,251 9,823,000 0.15 Latvia 236,081 236,081 1,961,600 0.12 Cyprus 78,492 13,793 92,285 847,000 0.11 Slovakia 587,169 587,169 5,426,252 0.11 Lithuania 218,197 82,542 300,739 2,872,294 0.10 Bulgaria 731,992 731,992 7,153,784 0.10 Botswana 100,000 100,000 200,000 2,141,206 0.09 Uruguay 230,011 230,011 3,480,222 0.07 Romania 1,053,665 1,053,665 19,861,408 0.05 Algeria 2,000,000 2,000,000 40,400,000 0.05 Portugal 508,635 508,635 10,374,822 0.05 Greece 394,223 394,223 10,858,018 0.04 Ecuador 500,000 500,000 16,544,793 0.03 Brazil 5,690,000 100,000 5,790,000 206,131,387 0.03 Turkey 2,000,000 2,000,000 78,741,053 0.03 Mexico 3,000,000 3,000,000 122,273,473 0.02 Malaysia 500,000 500,000 31,404,332 0.02 Georgia 50,000 50,000 3,720,400 0.01 Kazakhstan 200,000 200,000 17,753,200 0.01 Chile 200,000 200,000 18,191,900 0.01 China 14,802,932 14,802,932 1,377,406,500 0.01 Montenegro 5,000 5,000 621,810 0.01 Colombia 300,000 300,000 48,758,500 0.01 India 3,594,517 2,200,000 5,794,517 1,295,170,000 0.00 Mongolia 10,000 10,000 3,092,925 0.00 Indonesia 500,000 500,000 258,705,000 0.00 South Africa 93,465 93,465 55,653,654 0.00 Philippines 10,000 10,000 103,275,200 0.00

I think there is a real problem with tariffs, because in addition to the standard economic distortions introduced by any form of taxation, tariffs discriminate between two classes of producer, foreign and domestic.

There may be a tendency for men to overreport and women to underreport, but assuming those figures are correct, all you can infer from them is that the female distribution of number of partners is more skewed (a minority of women having a relatively large number of partners) than the male distribution is. As you suggest, the male distribution is likely also skewed, but those figures tell you nothing about that. The figures are of course medians rather than means; the mean number of partners is the same for both sexes, assuming a closed heterosexual population for simplicity.

Specifically on tariffs, there's a blog post by Criton Zoakos: "There is overwhelming historical evidence that links protectionism with rapid growth, especially in US economic history" https://letopostscripts.net/2016/05/16/myths-of-free-trade-and-protectionism/ New Zealand had a highly protectionist economy in the 1950s and 1960s and it thrived. But I'd want to know a lot more to be persuaded. As with epidemiological studies in medicine, there are so many confounding factors to be considered.

Deeply creepy campaign on online and print media to pin a false campaign claim on Farage. The claim was that the UK contribution to the EU is £350m a week. But this is very misleading; it's just a notional figure before a discount ("rebate") of about 1/3 which is applied because the structure of the UK economy makes it unfair to calculate the UK's contribution in the standard way. The £350m claim was a core part of the platform of the "official" Vote Leave campaign, a very establishment organisation which was selected by the Electoral Commission to be the official Leave campaign and was regarded with deep mistrust by a lot of Leavers. Farage was never allowed to have anything to do with the official Vote Leave campaign so he had no control at all over what they were saying. Boris Johnson, now a possible future Prime Minister following David Cameron's resignation, was closely associated with the Vote Leave campaign. Farage is currently the most popular leader of any of the UK political parties, by some distance. Some examples of the attempt to make it look like the £350m claim came from Farage are here (red text is my annotation): and here: "within hours of the result on Friday morning, the Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, had distanced himself from the claim that £350m of EU contributions could instead be spent on the NHS"

Judging by the widespread distress and anger on Facebook today, you would think that rather than being a referendum on whether laws should be made in Brussels or Westminster, it was in fact a vote between good and evil, and the box that should have been marked "thick xenøphobe" was only marked "leave" because of a printing error

I've not read Piketty, although Thomas Sowell discusses his ideas in passing in his (good) book "Wealth Poverty and Politics: an International Perspective". Sowell says that Piketty treats "the 1%" as though they were the same people through time, which is absolutely not the case. There is huge downward mobility from "the 1%" (50% after 10 years, if we're talking about income) and it would be more accurate to call it "the 12%" because 12% of people in the US will at some stage in their lives have an income in the top 1%. Likewise, 56% of US households are in the top income decile at some point in their lives, so when people resent "the rich" they are quite likely to be resenting their future selves.

This is funny

I like this idea. A small innovative business like this would no doubt evolve a lot as it grew. Some craft/how-to teaching communities use Membergate http://www.membergate.com/although the cost is perhaps too high for the early stages of the business.

If the mails are being sent via a "Contact Us" page, can you set expectations on that page, for example you can tell people in advance what kind of e-mails will get a response and what will not, and set standards for tone there too if that is important to you?

Basic TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) training would do what you want, for non English-speaking countries.

Remain is a very establishment campaign, so the list is a broadly accurate representation of what is happening. According to the polls, the working class wants Leave (roughly 2 to 1 in favour) whereas the middle class wants Remain (again roughly 2 to 1 in favour). Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, most politicians and the UK's largest companies want Remain, while entrepreneurs like James Dyson want Leave. Some trade unions want Leave. https://www.facebook.com/LabourLeaveGroup/photos/a.1296892710326494.1073741828.1291676554181443/1371921186156979/ Martin Lewis said he is slightly in favour of Remain, not "strongly" as stated by the list. http://blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2016/06/05/how-to-vote-in-the-eu-referendum/#ivote Lexit The Movie, a left-wing video produced on a tiny budget, is worth watching. They are quite good on the economic case, in particular the segment on the euro starting here https://youtu.be/pq72f81kkM4?t=1662which is a gem. The simplest rebuttal to the Facebook list could just be to mention that a similar list of people were adamant that the UK had to join the euro, the currency that had such disastrous consequences for Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal. The much better-known Brexit The Movie is also good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYqzcqDtL3k. Flexcit The Movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GliFMIHiGog is interesting in a geeky how-things-work way because it looks at the details of how a "leave" would work.

I don't know that particular area but actually for London that looks cheap. It's a 1-bed and quite a good size, close to good transport, although stuck under the roof, which could be hot in summer/cold in winter; ideally it would be insulated using radiant barrier foil. If I had to buy in London I might consider somewhere like that, although with the security situation / UK foreign policy I personally wouldn't touch London real estate. I have nice memories of living in Croydon, which is just down the road from there.

Also US spousal visas are usually very slow to arrange. I knew a US woman who married a Swedish guy and it was over 2 years later before he could legally move to the US. There are probably easier routes into the country!

The argument against refugee resettlement is usually made in terms of the interests of the people in the country where the resettling is happening, and although that's a valid argument it does allow open borders advocates to make the usual accusations against the person putting it forward. The moral, humanitarian case against refugee resettlement is compelling. It's important to cite the "right" sources; if you cite the CIS http://cis.orgas I lazily did at one point above (I'll change it when time permits) then the open borders advocates will deflect the argument by saying that they are Bad People, even when the CIS is just citing government figures. The moral argument probably won't convince an open borders advocate - for example, one that I put this argument to came back with claims of unspecified benefits that the refugees would bring to the host country - but it should lose them a lot of their audience.

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Maybe Bitnation https://bitnation.coor some of the other blockchain-oriented groups? It's not unreasonable to suppose that the kind of systems that these people are working on will gradually become standard - Hernando de Soto is particularly keen on these systems http://www.ild.org.pe/our-work/ild-projects/blockchain-ild because people in developing countries typically have the most to gain from them. Or maybe start a group yourself?

There has been chronic underfunding of support to Syrian refugees in the Middle East, while the German and Swedish governments instead pursue poorly targeted and hugely inefficient resettlement programmes. This underfunding, which affects the most needy refugees, could have been cleared completely at a small fraction of the cost of the European resettlement programmes. Funding raised as a percentage of target for all major agencies helping Syrian refugees in the Middle East (about 25% of this funding typically goes through UNHCR) 2012: 64% (figure covers UNHCR only) 2013: 71% 2014: 61% 2015: 62% 2016: 31% (period to 22 March) For comparison, the funding reported last year as at 24 March 2015 was 42% of their year to date target (Source: http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/download.php?id=8634) so the 2016 funding may catch up as the year progresses, although at March 2013 the agencies were funded at over 100% of year to date target. Sources: UNHCR Funding for the Syrian Refugee Response as of 7 January 2013 (2012 requirements) http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/download.php?id=1345 RRP Funding Update - 31 December 2013 http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/download.php?id=3968 RRP Funding Update 2014 - 5 February 2015 http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/download.php?id=8137 3RP Funding Update 2015 FINAL - 22 February 2016 http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/download.php?id=10298 [syria Sit 2016] 3RP Inter-agency funding snapshot - March 2016 http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/download.php?id=10555

I'm starting a thread on the economics of the migrant crisis because that at least is one area where it's possible to push back on fashionable but very wrong beliefs. We have to get the word out on this. The German government's policy on refugees is deeply un-humanitarian. The annual cost of their 2015 migrant intake alone could have supported around 20m refugees, had they supported them in the normal way via agencies such as the UNHCR. Instead they chose to support just 2.5% of that, around 500K refugees, together with roughly the same number of economic migrants, by resettling them in Europe. Even the 2.5% who were helped are likely to be amongst the least needy refugees, because they were able to pay thousands to the people smugglers. Meanwhile as at 22 March, the UNHCR's budget to support Syrian refugees in the Middle East was about 1/3 underfunded and the overall agency funding for Syrian refugees in the Middle East (because only about 25% of the Syrian refugee aid budget goes through the UNHCR) was at just 31% of budget. http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/download.php?id=10555. That's the real refugee crisis. Had the German government just funded the relief agencies in the normal way instead of resettling migrants, it could have single-handedly funded all the relief agencies' entire 2016 Syria budgets (total $4.5bn) more than 3 times over for the annual cost of their 2015 migrant intake. A recently published report showed that the cost of resettling refugees in Europe was crowding out billions from foreign aid budgets: Centre for Effective Altruism. Effects of the Refugee Crisis on ODA. . 2016-04-06. URL: https://drive.google.com/a/givingwhatwecan.org/file/d/0B551Ijx9v_RoSG1JS2NlY0J1LWlHTFR0RHMyTXNlMk9sVnlB/Accessed: 2016-04-06. (Archived by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/6gYo5ZeIs) Some details: At the end of 2014 there were an estimated 59.5m refugees and internally displaced persons worldwide http://www.unhcr.org.uk/about-us/key-facts-and-figures.html The UNHCR's annual cost per refugee is around $1K for Syrian refugees http://cis.org/High-Cost-of-Resettling-Middle-Eastern-Refugees#23and around $380 in Kenya http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e483a16.html. This compares with estimates for resettlement in Germany (from the Deutscher Städtetag and the Institut für Weltwirtschaft Kiel) of EUR13K ($14.5K) per year: Greive, Martin. Flüchtlingskrise kostet bis zu 55 Milliarden Euro im Jahr. Die Welt. 2016-04-06. URL:http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article149854636/Fluechtlingskrise-kostet-bis-zu-55-Milliarden-Euro-im-Jahr.html. Accessed: 2016-04-06. (Archived by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/6gYpP7kSm) General information about Syrian refugees from the UNHCR: http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php

Returning to the original post, Richard Muller has long backed the AGW cause; it's not accurate to call him a "converted climate sceptic" as the MSM generally do. He did break ranks to criticise the "Climategate" scientists and to criticise the Mann et al "hockey stick" papers that claimed to show unprecedented warming and that were used to persuade governments to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. He criticised Mann's papers at a time when it wasn't fashionable to do so, although nowadays climate scientists tend to agree with his view of those papers, which were ferociously defended by the climate establishment and their followers at the time. But even in criticising them back in 2003, he said "My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate".

There's a great deal wrong with this video. As a busy person who actually does useful things in the real world and who isn't paid to do this, it's going to take me time to get to all of the points, but to start with point 2, "The globe's not warming" he proposes an incorrect trend line and says that it's incorrect (straw man) he says "13 of the 14 hottest years have occurred this century" (not relevant to the trend) he says the graph is "old" and "if you take satellite data into account" the warming reappears. This is apparently a reference to Cowtan and Way (2014) in which the authors look at ways of correcting HADCRUT4, one of several global temperature series, for its lack of arctic coverage. HADCRUT4 has run cooler than the other global temperature series in recent years, and there has been a lot of warming in the arctic. One of the ways they propose to correct HADCRUT4 is to use satellite data, hence the reference to satellite data in the video. Even without getting into the details of Cowtan and Way, this is a proposed correction to just one of several global temperature series. The RSS satellite temperature series shows no warming for 18 years 9 months, the UAH series shows no warming for almost as long, and the heavily-adjusted surface temperature series (of which HADCRUT4 is one) show an average 1.1°C per century rise over the same period. This is for a period over which about 1/3 of all the anthropogenic CO2 ever generated has been released.

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The gentleman in the video, Jeremy Corbyn, is now the leader of the opposition in the UK parliament. He is very popular with a certain section of the community in the UK, rather as Bernie Sanders is in the US, although Jeremy is not popular with the general public, with 24% seeing him favourably versus 42% unfavourably. He gets his economics from Richard Murphy, an accountant and blogger whose views have been discussed at great length in recent weeks on the blog of Tim Worstall of the Adam Smith Institute.

I've been looking at private refugee sponsorship programmes. The programme offered by Barnabas that resettles Christian refugees in Poland for around GBP 2000 each (including travel and first-year living expenses) seems amazingly good value compared with the likely cost of government resettlement programmes in high-income countries. If all the refugees could be resettled at that sort of cost then there probably wouldn't be a refugee problem. There's also a programme in Canada through which individuals can sponsor refugees although I doubt the cost would make much sense except for people sponsoring relatives. I'd be interested to hear of any other such programmes.