Ed James

UK based Accountant specialising in turnaround situations for eCommerce, SaaS and Marketing companies. DM me for details.

[Ed James @2__JEH]

@FT This should be played on a loop and pinned at the top of X with an 18 month timer starting now

[Ed James @2__JEH]

@spectator Ouch

[Ed James @2__JEH]

@inkbyteltd @andyburnham I did ask AI, and this is what it said: I can't weld steel from a cloud sandbox, so a literal locomotive is out of reach. Didn't get that far to be fair

[Ed James @2__JEH]

@inkbyteltd @andyburnham Why don't you ask AI to build a working train and see just how far it can get

[Ed James @2__JEH]

@DanielPriestley I agree, but step 6 overlooks that before paying 39.35% in dividend tax, the owner would have already earned 50k at a marginal rate of about 10% and then a further 75k at a marginal rate of approx 35%. It's still all too much, but the scenario above assumes earnings of >125k

[Ed James @2__JEH]

@RupertLowe10 Feel like this one is an own goal - could have picked a better subject to make ones point about people being free to do more of what they please under a restore government, deregulation of smoking inside just sounds repulsive - most don't want smoking anywhere at all.

[Ed James @2__JEH]

@AaronBastani That's a ridiculous amount of people to have in a meeting, the sort of thing which is outright banned in private companies focused on efficiency.

[Ed James @2__JEH]

@andyburnham is likeable. If he can unlock business growth through lower taxes and reducing regulatory burden, he could be on to a winner with both the electorate and businesses alike. He has a fleeting chance to right the ship, or otherwise be consigned to status quo dustbin!

[Ed James @2__JEH]

I’ve been saying for years that the answer to Britains productivity and growth challenges is a £2 cap on bus fairs

[Ed James @2__JEH]

@andyburnham Tinkering

[Ed James @2__JEH]

@Catniptwoshoes "sequestered away" - please explain what you mean by this. I am genuinely interested. Where do you think this wealth which has been sequestered away has been sequestered away to?

[Ed James @2__JEH]

@kircero @DanielPriestley You're bananas mate

[Ed James @2__JEH]

@FortressOfDong @DebsNorman @antonliubich And I will jot you down as someone who doesn't know what it is like running something as small as a lemonade stand and someone who believes businesses are a net negative for society and humans. Good work.

[Ed James @2__JEH]

@FortressOfDong @DebsNorman @antonliubich What you miss is you think businesses intentionally cut corners to increase profits, what you are not seeing (because you have never ran a company) is that to comply with all regulations at all times is nearly impossible, because there are too many and they are too complex.

[Ed James @2__JEH]

@FortressOfDong @DebsNorman @antonliubich @FortressOfDong The Titan CEO felt he was being innovative using carbon fiber and had so much conviction he went on the dives, drove the sub and died. This is a very bad example. We'll take your answer to having ran a company = no.

[Ed James @2__JEH]

@FortressOfDong @antonliubich Have you built and run a business yourself? You should try it and then, through the eyes of the founder, you will find that founders are nothing of the sort to exploit workers, customers, suppliers or anyone in betwen

[Anton Liubich @antonliubich]

For most of my professional life, I have been connected to agriculture. First I farmed. Then I financed farming — including building what became Europe's largest milk producer. Here is how I see it.

A company produces milk and lists its shares on an exchange.

Someone buys those shares, believing people drink milk and will drink more of it. Someone else buys the milk itself. If milk becomes unaffordable, sales collapse and the company goes bankrupt. So the company prices its milk above cost — but low enough that people can still buy it.

Meanwhile, trading happens on the exchange. Small parcels of shares change hands. The price of the very last trade — even if it involved a single share — becomes the quote you see. And through speculation, that quote rises fivefold.

Does this mean I, as a co-founder, could sell 5% of the company at that price without crashing it? No. Does it mean milk got five times more expensive and less affordable? Also no.

So what does it mean? Three things.

First: someone made modest money speculating with a small block of shares.

Second: I acquired "wealth" that exists only on paper. It bought me nothing. I hold the same shares, sold none of them, and received nothing to spend.

Third: a monetary bubble keeps inflating. The money printed by the Fed and the Bank of England — and multiplied by commercial banks through fractional-reserve lending (the Fed cut reserve requirements to zero in 2020; the Bank of England never had binding ones at all) — hangs over the economy like a giant sack. If a large share of this empty money, backed by no goods — no milk, no grain, no circuit boards, no wrenches — were not absorbed by stock speculation and real estate, it would instantly turn into consumer inflation.

The economy's problems are not the mythical "rich getting richer." They are two things: we produce fewer goods than we could, thanks to a pile of absurd regulations. And fiat money is printed in enormous quantities, warping every market it touches.

But that is too complicated, or too unpleasant, to accept. Blaming the rich is easier.

[Ed James @2__JEH]

@antonliubich Such an excellent post, distilling the crux of modern economic problems

[Ed James @2__JEH]

@ONS Sends out hundreds of long surveys to businesses, demands they are completed by X deadline, threatens fines for non-compliance, and private businesses are supposed to comply, for free. A complete distraction from growth. @UKLabour @Conservatives @HMRCgovuk

[Ed James @2__JEH]

In my opinion, PMI is completely exploitive, a colossal waste of money for the average healthy individual

[Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin]

This is because the anti-capitalist left is not actually against people being crazy rich. They're against certain types of people being crazy rich.

Artists and athletes make sense to them because they've played music and sports and because their success can be explained by "luck" and "talent". Messi's wealth is not offensive to them because they understand Messi is much better at football than they are.

But when it comes to business, the anti-capitalist leftist has no framework for understanding why Jeff Bezos might be super rich since 99% of them have never ever created a product, business or service that was of value to other people. They've never taken entrepreneurial risk. They've never employed people and felt the burden of responsibility that comes with that. They've never pick up a business and given it a play in the way they've picked up a ball or a guitar.

They *literally* don't understand wealth creation. They think there is a fixed amount of money and the only thing a business does is split it unfairly.

It's why they rage at Elon and other successful business leaders. Because they genuinely don't understand why they're wealthy.

Also, and this is just as important, athletes and artists are disproportionately young, attractive, "diverse", left wing etc. Business leaders are "evil" middle aged white men whose success offends the average anti-capitalist leftist because they don't understand a) what it is they do and b) that Elon Musk has the same talent advantage on them as Messi does, it's just harder to measure.