Can I just point out that Tourettes is a neurological disorder caused by excessive dopaminergic activity which affects speech and movement, it’s not a “mental illness” in the generally accepted sense of the word.

If the DK wrote a post complaining about inappropriate or vulgar language I’d be equally amused.

I wonder what chris mounsey would say if someone else addressed a point by a writer/blogger and put up a picture alongside referring to his “Jewish features”.

What does that mean? Are you suggested he has done so on his blog? If so, via the power of Google, could you point us to it?

Yes, DK only wants to win the point, or else he’d avoid displaying his ‘blogger most likely to have tourettes-syndrome‘ award. Unless Martin hasn’t noticed this, it also suggests that he was only trying to win a point in accusing you of spreading “lamentable misconceptions“.

However, claiming that it isn’t hypocrisy because DK is identifying it is still ad hominem – you can’t claim that it’s immoral to flippantly diagnose mental disorder and then do it yourself in a different context.

For one thing, it refutes any future argument.

Ben

Let’s get one thing straight. Chris Mounsey and his acolytes aren’t condeming me because they disagree with being flippant about mental illness – after all, they’re quite happy doing that with Brown. They only want to win a point over Mounsey, which is rather different. And yes, trying to psychologically analyse him would expose a whole range of other issues.

I wonder what chris mounsey would say if someone else addressed a point by a writer/blogger and put up a picture alongside referring to his “Jewish features”. Maybe it has editorial relevance – who knows eh?

Sunny,

DK’s quite right. If you condemn frivolous invocations of medical disorders then it’s hypocritical to use them. I think there’s a problem in your claim that DK acts like he has tourettes, because one would hardly wish to painstakingly transcribe the verbal tics that one suffers from.

DK,

Here you accuse Sunny of being a racist, Islamist cheerleader and ‘tacit anti-semite‘. The fact that you don’t remember it suggests that you were being pretty flippant, and it’s hardly surprising that the accused isn’t going to treat you with particular courtesy.

Ben

Not really, Gordon Brown is a public figure and constantly in the press. You’re a nobody. The point was about making light of mental illness in the press. And you behave like someone with Tourette Syndrome. By your own coverage of Brown in this context, it means the shoe fits for you too.

Lastly, on the anti-semitism, forgotten this?
http://devilskitchen.me.uk/2007/10/sunny-hundal-intellectual-pygmy.html

Funny, you also had to mention by “Asian features” alongside a picture of me, which had no relevance to the topic. Don’t worry Mounsey, I’ll come back to this. Your pictures are all over the web too.

I find it funny that he’s censoring out his own name on his blog – maybe he thinks his readers are that thick.

It is symbolic, Sun; yes, I am sure that the vast majority of my readers do know my name or, as you point out, could find it. But that is not really the point. So, I put up your picture to respond in kind.

Oh, and anti-Semitism? Where?

DK

“I could play that game too, Mounsey, but some of us are more grown up than others.”

So, when will you be apologising for the Tourette’s comment then, Sun?

DK

Anyhoo…Sunny, that Ministry link gives me a 404 error, any idea what’s up?

Stage 2: Sunny Hundal writes a post which unscientifically accuses a right-wing blogger of having a specific mental illness.

Got to love the consistency

Unfortunately, his last paragraph veers off into propaganda. Apologists for capitalism like to think that “all boats rise on the incoming tide” (of wealth generation) with its unspoken mendacious implication that everyone benefits equaly from it. The record does not bear that out – far from it. Even if it did, there would remain the issue of the utility of a marginal increase in income. One of the reasons the very rich get even richer is because they have more income than they wish to spend (playboys are atypical) – the argument for progressive taxation in pure economic terms is that the tax take should be arranged so that the income taken in taxes has a constant marginal disutility. Of course, in the real world, no one knows exactly what that is, because it depends on other factors too.

Finally, I should note that Hugo’s implication that there is a trade-off between wealth creation and redistributive taxation is also mendacious propaganda. If economic historians had been able to find a relationship between the two, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. But they haven’t and they won’t – too many other factors, not least the business cycle – occlude the data.

Fair points.

Ben

“You talked about inequality. Income isn’t really relevent in these terms: wealth is.

Compare and contrast a worker earning the median wage of £24k, and someone with a £1 billion Trust fund who doesn’t work but simply draws down the capital. By the measure that you favour, i.e. income, the worker is considerably better off than the playboy.

Which is why the measure of wealth is much more important.”

Is wealth more important than income? More important for what? Living standards, of course. So is wealth more important than income for living standards?

Who will have more money to spend? If the wealthy person just spends the capital, then there’s no problem because after a while they will no longer be wealthy. But of course no one really does that – everyone with lots of wealth has it invested, so would have a big income as well.

Mike said

“If I had capital of half a million, let alone a billion (other than the house I lived in) I would expect an income of £25k from it.”

You replied

“Which is why I specified a trust fund: any income would go to said fund and not therefore be counted as the playboy’s income. However, it would be perfectly possible for said playboy to simply remove a chunk of capital from said fund every six months, say.”

You specify a trust fund. Firstly, this argument doesn’t concern the vast majority of wealth, which is not held in trust funds. Secondly, even if all wealth was held in trust funds, the argument still doesn’t work. The trust fund makes money. The person gets money from the trust fund. It’s income to the trust fund. Saying that it is stored up as capital for a brief period of time doesn’t make it not the person’s income.

This is all silly anyway. Wealth generation is more important than wealth distribution. “From a dollars-and-cents point of view, it is quite obvious that over a period of years, even those who find themselves at the short end of inequality have more to gain from faster growth than from any conceivable income redistribution. A speedup in real output of only one extra per-cent per year will soon lift even the economically weakest into income brackets to which no amount of redistribution could promote them”

He has his real name all over the blog. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out, especially if you click on the prominently visible LinkedIn icon. I find it funny that he’s censoring out his own name on his blog – maybe he thinks his readers are that thick.

Given he links to the libertarian blog, and the party, where his name is prominent, it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. Again, like I said, maybe he has a lesser view of his readers.

The point is, he thinks he can swear like a nutbag at others… oh and also casually smear them with anti-semitism, and get away with it because his name is not attached to any of it. So he doesn’t have to worry. But since his name is all over the blog – why not start taking responsibility for his own words eh?

Also, a bit bizarre he has to refer to my “fine Asian features”, when it has nothing at all to do with the topic at hand…. and put up my pic.

I could play that game too, Mounsey, but some of us are more grown up than others.