Gasoline just one thing pushing inflation higher
Inflation is running higher across the rich world. In the United States it is the highest it has been for decades. There have been signs of this building since the spring, but most people were in denial, with central bankers calling it `transitory’. It is real.
Stagflation? In every G7 country inflation is outstripping growth.
Clicl here for OECD data on third quarter growth
Oil prices and climate change
It seems to me that you can’t moan about higher gasoline prices and virtue signal about climate change at the same time. Higher gasoline prices should mean people drive less cutting down on carbon. President Biden wants big oil companies investigated for price fixing.
High gasoline prices hurt the popularity of the president of the United States, though in reality there is little he can do to lower prices apart from begging the Saudis to pump more oil.
The BBC Poll on how people see the top 1%
This is a couple of years old, but it shows how much people think the rich own. In most countries people overestimate how much the richest people control. One glaring exception is Russia where the top 1% actually own than people think.
Save Your Trees: We already cut down ours
The European Union says if a country cuts down trees in a way it doesn't like it will stop buying six important commodities: beef, soy, palm oil, coffee, cacao and timber. It appears to be aimed at Brazil and Indonesia and some countries in Africa.
The Amazon rainforest gets the most attention but huge swathes of the Indonesian rainforest are burned to make way for palm oil plantations. Guilt hasn’t stopped cutting down trees; maybe sanctions will. The Orangutan hopes so.
Solar Trees
The oddest things float by on the Internet; a piece on solar trees. Here they are:
These are in Singapore. There are solar panels inside the uplifted branches. Much better looking than solar farms that sit beside highways. A site called Treehugger does point out that solar trees are much more expensive than solar panels. “…the power generation potential of solar trees is relatively limited, and their primary purpose is to raise public awareness about renewable energy by getting people to notice and interact with solar in new ways.”
Here is another iteration.
Unintended consequence of going green.
In Norway if you drive an electric car you don’t pay sales taxes when you buy it and you don’t pay tolls when you drive it, along with a host of other incentives. About 70% of cars sold in Norway are electric
But the opposition party in Norway — they were the government until last month— says there are so few gasoline and diesel cars to tax — when they are bought and when they buy fuel— that it means $2.3-billion less in the Norwegian governments annual tax revenue.
Affected plural of the week
“We’ve had many, many encounters at all sorts of different international fora…” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the White House on Thursday. Fora is the Latin plural of Forum, second declension neuter, as Trudeau would have learned at the private Jesuit High School he attended in Montreal.
The use of fora instead of forums is so rare in English as to be jarring when you hear it spoken. The language column of The Economist wrote about it:
The Economist, for example, pluralises "consortia", "data", "media", "spectra" and "strata" thus, but prescribes "conundrums", "forums", "moratoriums", "referendums" and "stadiums".
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Essay of the Week
This is the second chapter of the book I published on Harry Steele. The little aphorism at the start of each chapter is typical of the comments Harry made about people. Eventually I will publish every chapter, but not every week.
Chapter Two
A Kickstart from Joey Smallwood
Seldom right. Never in doubt.
Harry Steele
We are all part of all that we have met. A steal from the poet Tennyson, and more than true in the case of Harry Raymond Steele. We are all part of the place we were born and the era in which we grew up.
Harry Steele was a child in the Depression and came of age in the years before Newfoundland joined Canada. Proud of his roots, Harry was also determined to break free and make more of himself. He showed a streak of adventurousness when he walked out of Musgrave Harbour along the railway tracks and made his way to western Newfoundland, where he started work as a labourer on the roads in Deer Lake.
It seemed that there wasn’t much of a future for him at the time. Harry could have returned to his outport home and taken up a subsistence life of fishing and working in the woods. But then opportunity presented itself, and Harry grabbed it.
Let’s step back a bit. When Harry Steele was born in 1929, Newfoundland was a self-ruling Dominion, the same as Canada. The people of Newfoundland elected their representative government, which was headed by a prime minister. The Great Depression of the 1930s hit Newfoundland particularly hard. Cod prices were cut in half, and the same was true for overall exports. A quarter of the population was on government relief. The government had to borrow to help people survive.
When Newfoundland prime minister Frederick Alderdice announced in 1932 that the Dominion was so financially strapped it would have to renege on its debt, the British government was in shock. At the time, 56 percent of government revenues were paid just in interest on loans. Although Britain and Canada covered some of the debt, Newfoundland was still unable to pay the interest on the loans that it had incurred. A commission was set up to study the problem; the solution was that Newfoundland was in effect put into receivership. London would set the rules, not the elected representatives of the people of Newfoundland.
It was front-page news in the New York Times on November 22, 1933: “Britain to Govern Newfoundland; First Dominion to Lose Status.” The story from London went on to say that Newfoundland “…will lose her status as a self-governing Dominion.”
The Commission of Government ruling Newfoundland took office in February of 1934. It was made up of a governor, a Brit appointed by London, and six men, three from Britain, three from Newfoundland. It was a humiliating experience for Newfoundlanders.
Throughout the Depression, Newfoundland continued to suffer, but the Second World War brought prosperity to Newfoundland. Since it was the closest point in North America to Britain and Europe, it became home to a giant air and naval base. The island teemed with well-paid soldiers, sailors, and aircrew, and Britain, Canada, and the United States poured money into military bases and airfields.
At the end of the war, there was growing dissatisfaction with being ruled from London. Britain, sucked dry by the war and close to insolvency herself, was only too willing to be rid of the responsibility for Newfoundland. There were three main choices: return Newfoundland to Dominion status; join Canada; or join the United States.
Joey Smallwood, a writer and radio broadcaster, led the camp to join Canada. Chesley Crosbie, who would later play a part in Harry Steele’s life with Eastern Provincial Airways, pushed for Newfoundland to become part of the United States The Steele family from Musgrave Harbour were on the pro-Canada side. As we all know, Smallwood won, and Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949. Enough of the history lesson.
One of the first things Premier Smallwood did was to offer $300, quite a sum in 1949, to any high-school graduate in Newfoundland who wanted to go to Memorial University and earn a teaching degree. Harry Steele took him up on it.
“I worked for three years in Deer Lake, and then I decided I should go back to school, but I didn’t have any money so I went to Memorial [University] four years in a row and I had to be subsidized otherwise I would never have made it,” says Harry.
In addition to the Smallwood bursary, there was support from the navy, as Harry had signed on to the UNTD, the University Naval Training Division, which offered to pay for tuition in return for a promise to serve in the navy for a brief period after graduation.
During term, Harry had to live in St. John’s, but every chance he had he would return home. Christmas and other holidays, Harry would go home to Musgrave Harbour. Many times he would walk the last twenty miles from Lumsden, after arriving there by boat.
“When Dad was in Memorial University, there wasn’t any road connecting Musgrave Harbour with any other parts of the island. You had to travel by boat,” says Harry’s oldest son, Peter, a man with a phenomenal memory, in particular when it comes to family lore.
“When he would come home at Christmas as a student he would always land at a community called Lumsden, just along the coast from Musgrave. He would be met often by his cousin Lloyd Cuff. They would walk along the beach by the salt water, and it was twenty miles. He did it because he wanted to do it, not because he had to do it.”
Harry started university in 1949. Although he had accepted a bursary from the province to receive the training necessary for becoming a teacher, the prospect of becoming a school teacher wasn’t that appealing to Harry. He enjoyed learning and the new things university life opened for him, but what lay beyond university remained a question for him.
Harry never boasted of being a stellar student. He did enough to get by. When he wrote his final exams, he was already going out with Catherine Thornhill, who had graduated from Mount Alison University and was teaching music in St. John’s.
“Harry was going to come and see me after he wrote his exams. It was only about an hour, and I wasn’t ready and all of a sudden the doorbell rang and who should it be? I said, ‘Harry, what happened, didn’t you have to write your exam?’”
“Yes, I wrote until I figured I had fifty.”
“I should have known then I was making a mistake,” says Catherine with a smile. “Because if it was three hours for the exam and I could get three hours and one minute, I’d take it. Opposites attract and you have them here. But somehow it has worked. Sixty-two years.”
When Harry earned his Bachelor of Education in 1953, he went into the navy. On the list of naval officers serving in the Royal Canadian Navy at the time, his name stands out. He was one of the few with a B. Ed. By this time he was a married man, and joining the military meant leaving Newfoundland, where he had lived all his life, and connecting to the broader world.
Harry took to the navy like a sailor to water. Many of his fellow students from the UNTD program went into the navy to fulfill their obligations. Harry quickly realized he loved the military life. It was the height of the Cold War, the standoff between the Soviet Union and the western countries united under NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Joey Smallwood never knew Harry Steele when he was a student; later in life, when Harry was a successful businessman, the former premier knew him well. There is no record of whether Joey Smallwood took credit for Harry Steele’s success.