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Few comments since this topic is as perennial as the AIT issue among internet H -- of course you may not like it, so don't @ me. The domesticated Bos was a central animal for the subsistence of the Indo-European pastoralists on the steppe. It was also a major domesticate for the


the pre-IE Indian peoples like the Harappans and the neolithic Ash Mound culture of southern India (i.e. the bUti-palli/halli-s; early Dravidians?). What is clear is that these pre-IE & circum-IE entry peoples of India consumed the flesh of cattle. However, it is like the female

animal (henceforth cow) was also valued for milk->curds/cheese(?) among both the Harappan and Ash Mound peoples. The former probably also used them as draught animals. The situation was similar with the IEans on the steppe with their version of Bos cattle playing a major role in

food (both diary and flesh) and as draught animals. Given their value for the IEans, the idea of the protection of cattle was central to their culture (independently of them consuming their flesh). Thus, the cattle raids& countering such were very central to their imagination.

Hence, we may infer that the concept of cattle-protection, emerged entirely independently of their consumption among the steppe IEans. For a IEan king whose wealth was animal herds such protection was a central role. Hence, the ideal of go-pAlana emerged long before beef-taboo.
the absence of private demand makes government expenditure necessary. It repays itself by creating a stronger economy than would have otherwise been the case. For me that is the macro - non-household budget - reasoning. (1/13ish)


Making G contingent on a ultra low government rate of interest (ULGROI) seems household budget thinking: lower expenditure on interest payments is being portrayed as permitting the higher expenditure on G. (2/13)

All fine that this is permitting those who think in a household budget way (OBR, IFS etc) to support spending (or rather not prescribe austerity) but it is not the macro of the situation. (3/13)

As an aside I'd rather call out the household budget mob for prescribing austerity last time, not least in the week that the OECD publicly acknowledged austerity was overdone. Parotting their present argument seems to let them off the hook. (4/13)

As you know the low rate of interest - in advanced economies on government debt - is not a matter of chance but a consequence of a decade of reliance on QE and a wider global retreat from risk. (5/13)
A few days ago @mrjamesob asked me if I felt vindicated bc I’ve been saying for years that they’re fascists. And I realized when I woke up this morning the answer is: I feel angry. Furious. We warned people, using historical evidence, of what was happening.


Now they’ve come out as fascists and smeared the capitol with feces and bashed a cop’s head in and tried to overturn the election and now those fuckers are calling for “unity”?!

Make no mistake: a call for unity with people who incited and took part in an insurrection against American democracy is not a call for unity, but for surrender.

Unity with fascists makes us fascist.

We don’t unite with fascists. We defeat them.

Unity keeps them in power. Unity concedes they were right. Unity suggests they had good reason for what they did.

They participated in an insurrection and an ongoing coup. They need to be removed, disqualified from ever holding office, & jailed where they have committed crimes.

They smeared our Capitol with shit, threaten to lynch members of our government - including the Vice President, a member of their own party - and you’re telling me to unite with them?

Fuck unity. Fuck the fascists. And fuck anyone who makes this argument.
I've had a lot of positive comments on this theory, and some helpful challenges. The most common of which was: surely a single-day effect wouldn't be big enough to cause the 'twist' in the data that we're seeing in those age groups? So I set out to find out if it was (thread)


This is one of those university / job interview 'order of magnitude' estimation problems. So feel free to disagree with any or all steps on my logic chain, and please explain why - it will help improve / refine (or falsify) the analysis.

So let's focus on the primary-school-age kids as that's where the effect is strongest. We have 3.5m 5-9 year-olds in England. I don't know how many were in school on 4th Jan - we know some regions (London / Kent etc.) didn't go back, and a lot of schools had INSET days etc

So I'm going to make a wild guess and say 40% were in school on that day. Better ideas (particularly if backed by data) very welcome. So that's about 1.4m children in school

Now ONS tells us that about 1.5% of that age group would test positive for coronavirus in early January. So that's about 20,000 kids with the virus heading into school.