Awen Yuan, Milgard School of Business

The people like Murray who want the UBI to come with abolish other sfatey nets are predicating that on promising it won’t raise Taxes. My proposal is we pay for it with a Wallstreet Sales Tax.

I’m not sure where you get the idea that I want to turn Britain into North Korea; I’m for the free market, not against it.

Wow. Turns out you don’t have to be smart to create a weblog. Who knew?

The books cannot be balanced when there is merely a £2billion surplus (2018).

Interest-only debt repayments are currently £53Billion (2019)

Does that not mean a surplus of £51billion is now needed just to balance the debt interest book this year? Merely to service the loan?

The rate at which the debt is increasing is now over £5000 per second.

At this rate there will be a further £147billion in interest added pushing the debt, and the repayments, ever higher.

Am I missing something here?

Thank you for the comment and the questions.

It is some months since I read the article and made my comment, so I have had to re-read it to refresh my memory!

Given Mr Corbyn’s history, I suspect that. IN THEORY, he probably does support greater consultation with the membership in terms of policy. However, as leader and having to balance the claims of a divided PLP, in which he has minority support, I think that he is finding the PRACTICE more difficult. In some of his statements, particularly about the constitution (i.e what passes for a constitution in the UK) he has shown gaps in his understanding – e.g ‘Scotland is part of England’, and ‘you cannot have different systems of law in the one country’ (Scots Law continued after the 1707 union.) He has vacillated on things like whether he would ‘permit’ another Scottish independence referendum – from being ‘sanguine’ about it to, in the words of his ally and leader of the Party in Scotland, Mr Richard Leonard, that even if the Scottish Parliament voted for a referendum he would ask that the Labour manifesto has a pledge to refuse this. So, you can have your democracy as long as it is OUR democracy.

Mr Gerry Hassan, who has often published on this site wrote a book “The Strange Death of Labour Scotland” in which he pointed out the excluding nature of many constituency parties, in which cliques use procedures to circumscribe any discussion of issues , such as candidate selection, within branches. He also indicated how conservative many are.

I was a member of Labour for many years, although I was not an activist, but in various walks of life I encountered councillors, MPs, and officials and, while, probably most, were fairly sincere and equitable in their attitudes, many wanted power for its own sake and could be pretty brutal in actions against any new ideas. It was “Do as you’re told, we know what is good for you.” I think that many of these still hold powerful positions and have a network of connections in the media, with trade unions (I was a career long trade unionist and a workplace rep for many years.) and, indeed, with Tories! They have power and intend to keep it. Such a long-held and deep mindset is hard to change. I think that the kinds of selection disputes and other ‘scandals’, such as the antisemitism row, are all examples of this resistance.

The intellectual voice behind Mr Corbyn is Mr John McDonnell and, in his speeches, he is a Labour tribalist and his recent speech in Airdrie indicates party democracy and the devolution of power should be pretty limited He prefers to reach out the DUP than to Greens, SNP, or PC. (There is much to be commended in the ideas Mr McDonnell is promoting with regard to the economy, but he sees these as distinct from constitutional issues. He wants to use the power of the UK STATE to implement his policies. But that state is designed to maintain the power of the public school/Oxbridge/landowning/financial/media ‘eiite’ 5% of the population (including ‘non-doms’) and will eventually and fairly quickly engineer a crisis which brings about the return of the Tories. Without changing the constitution, particularly the electoral system, they will not bring about the redistribution of power that is necessary to reverse the accretion of powers to Westminster and ‘the Crown in Parliament’.

The trouble with dogma is that it generates true believers – in this case, extremely rich and powerful believers. Even while the bulk of the mainstream press and media were displaying an inkling that the assumptions which had guided policy for the last 3 decades had been wrong, Neoliberals were already stammering out their denials: The most famous one being Allan Greenspan’s outrage that speculators and financiers had not behaved as the theory predicted. In other words, reality had got it wrong, not the theory. That was followed by Niall Ferguson’s slightly less hysterical but equally ridiculous claim that the crash had happened because the markets were over-regulated.

But the main reason that the narrative of Neoliberal failure quickly faded was that the the long term project of the Scaifes Mellons and Kochs to reshape the US’s economist and legal community was now maturing. Congress, the courts, the press and financial community were now well seeded with the output of Virginia Tech, GMU and other such ideologically based institutions. Incoherent mediocrities like Arthur Laffer, Phil Gramm and Dick Armey had become the go-to “economists” of the day and were backed up by prominent lawyers, bankers and journalists from the same stud farm. At the same time, Koch’s astro-turf Tea Party movement was acting to prevent any wavering by progressive (ie less reactionary) Republicans towards Keynesian or post Keynesian responses to the crisis. With all these pressures, it didn’t take long for the very cause of the problems – the translation of an incoherent economic dogma into policy – to be hailed as the solution.

There’s no mystery about it.

The best method of amending taxation i believe is by altering the method of taxation for multinational corporations or subsidiaries outside of the UK. If you are solely a UK business with no external interest or shareholders outside of the UK, your average small to medium business you pay tax based on our current system.
If you a multinational corporation or a subsidiary of a multinational company you operate under a different system, in this instance you pay tax on every item you sell in the UK, essentially paying tax on revenue not profit. multinationals in this instance can always increase their purchasing price to for this method of taxation but, in doing so they also have to compete with companies who are solely based in the UK and pay tax based on our net profit system.

The implementation of this system will stop the likes of Starbucks, Apple and others moving profits outside of the UK to pay less tax, it will ensure that companies like Google and Facebook who sell advertising on platforms visible in the UK pay tax on this in the UK.

Next in this process I would make it a requirement for major infrastructure service provision such as Hinckley Point C and NHS New hospital development etc in the UK, must operate on a not for profit basis in order to tendor for contracts. It will stifle foreign investment for sure but, what good is foreign investment if we as tax payers end up paying more for the provision of vital services only to see the proceeds leave the UK.

Being a renter in the UK is incredibly insecure. I lived in a property I like to call The Mold Palace. It was everywhere: walls, ceiling, carpet, bed, sofa… I mentioned it to the landlady a few times, but was scared to push it any further in case she kicked us out. I suffered with severe allergies for 2 years (didn’t realise it as it came on slowly), and ended up with asthma which hasn’t gone away.

Being a lodger is worse. My landlord/housemate kicked me out a couple of years ago because he wanted to move his gf in. 4.5 years living together, 3 weeks notice. I ended up homeless.

Now I live in a housing cooperative (~85 people). We each own a share in the co-op, so we’re both landlords and tenants, and most of us contribute to the co-op in some way. (I put together and type up agendas and minutes for general meetings. It’s really good to feel useful. Anyway.) Barring some kind of severe behavioural nono, I can stay here for the rest of my life. I may just do that. Of course, I’m sharing a house with 5 other people in my 40’s, but I like having people around. I’m disabled, can’t work, don’t get out much, and was very, very isolated before I moved here. 🙂 It’s also incredibly cheap: half the price of any other place I could live here!

While I know that co-operative living isn’t for everyone, I think that co-operatives would be a good thing to invest in. We preferentially take in people who are homeless, in danger of homelessness, on benefits, etc. Of course, one could have a co-op that involved everyone having their own flat, so they could live “normally” if they wanted, but with a central house for big events, things like workbenches, storage, etc. It could still be co-operative in many ways.

I should go to bed. Sorry if I’m babbling.

They’ve been doing it for four decades with the blessing of some of the most eminent economists. Thieving, lying bastards, one and all. It’s the only rational conclusion to explain such bizarre behaviour.

Since the current ‘constitution’ was set up by the Conservatives and their various predecessors to govern the country, largely, in their own interests, the Conservative Party will not support change – or only support that, such as Brexit, which changes things further in their favour.

So, unless Labour commits itself to constitutional change, it is unlikely to happen other than by extra parliamentary action. Labour, despite various noises, such as in an article by Mr Jon Trickett, recently, on this site, is not going to do that any time soon. It is an Anglo-British (to use your terminology) party and its principal allegiance is to the Anglo-British state. The current leadership plan to be economically redistributive in a way not seen since 1945, but it wants to have the powers which the Anglo-British state has to direct the change which it ‘knows’ people need to have.

I have a friend who has held senior positions within the Labour Party – now retired. He has sincerely egalitarian views, but these views are coloured by egalitarianism being what a Labour government provides. His view is that Bodger Broon had to work with global finance, because the realpolitik is that they have the power and that any Labour government has to work within these constraints.

You speak of the sovereignty of the people in Scotland and Bodger Broon’s mendacious Vow of 2014 was supposed to further entrench this sovereignty. However, in the Smith Commission which followed the 2014 referendum, it was the Scottish Labour team led by Mr Iain Gray who opposed most strongly any further empowerment of the Scottish Parliament.

The Labour Party is composed of people, most of whom have a stake in the Labour Party as a vehicle for them and theirs. Many of these people are not going to release their few scraps of power and deploy it to ‘the people’. While many of the post Corbyn influx are more open-minded, they will be ground down by the ‘standing orders’ tactics of the old lags.

Guardian (2018), “The Finance Curse: How the Outsized Power of the City of London Makes Britain Poorer”, 5th October 2018. [Nick Shaxson]
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/oct/05/the-finance-curse-how-the-outsized-power-of-the-city-of-london-makes-britain-poorer

email: jamin at writerbeat com
password: writerbeat

The login is in the upper right hand corner.

Why? Who made such a rule and who elected them? This does directly damage the economy. It is therefore a net cost.

“High bonuses and profits might make finance less competitive relative to finance in other countries, but it is not a cost to other UK industries.”

They are a cost to other industries for a number of reasons: Not least is the fact that the profits of the financial “industry” are extractive. They are bled from the real economy.

Financial industry is the same. You have to posit misrule directly damaging the rest of the economy, not just a more highly valued exchange rate making manufacturing less competitive. And some of your costs are laughable. High bonuses and profits might make finance less competitive relative to finance in other countries, but it is not a cost to other UK industries.

Leave a reply here with a link to your site.

Thank you for the kind words!

I was trying to deal with one specific point you had raised.

In my answer, I touched on land reform and I think that if that were to be dealt with in a serious way, then it could have a significant effect on the balance of the economy.

The land-owners (which are as much multi-national, offshore corporations as the likes of Mrs Samantha Cameron’s father-in-law, Lord Astor, the Duke of Westminster, the Duke of Buccleuch, etc.) have been very successful in getting land reform off the political agenda, virtually since the second World War. Things like the land register are now significantly out of date. The landowners, through their patronage of Westminster and Whitehall have managed to keep this off the agenda and have sneaked through legislation to bolster their powers.

There are few politicians who know much about the labyrinthine complexities of land law. One of those who does is the Green Member of the Scottish Parliament Mr Andy Wightman, who has written extensively on this (“The Poor had no Lawyers”. etc) He is currently the subject of litigation by agents of the Scottish Landowners, essentially in an attempt to bankrupt him and thus have him disqualified from Parliament.

If brownfield sites, which are currently exempted from taxation were subject to local taxation, which increased exponentially with the length of time the land was undeveloped, they would quickly be brought back into the local economy. The increased supply would reduce land prices. Small parcels would become more affordable for ‘ordinary’ people, who would then be able feasibly to consider self-buiid or co-operative build. This would probably result in better quality housing since the land price was swallowing far less of the buyer’s money and more could be spent on the actual design, bricks and mortar. (Glasgow City Council’s City Building and the social enterprise, the WISE Group have developed housing designs which are to the highest energy and eco efficiency standards.) Such building would stimulate local economies.

Finally you raise the issue of the wider economy. The economy of almost all of the United Kingdom is being strangled by the rapaciousness of the financial market in the City of London. It is diverting money which, in years past, was used in vibrant local economy centres like Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, etc. It is sucking in huge amounts of public money. The metropolitan media scornfully brand people in the North East of England, Wales, the West Midlands etc ‘subsidy junkies’ whereas the real subsidy junkies are in and around the City. Per capita public expenditure for London is far in excess of the more economically weak areas. There is a book called ‘The Upas Tree’ by Stanley Checkland, written nearly 50 years ago which describes the effect far more accurately than I can.

One of the main reasons why I support independence for Scotland is to take some degree of control of our Scottish economy, because Westminster’s is almost wholly controlled by the City. Rhetoric about the Northern Powerhouse, is just that – rhetoric. Manchester was, indeed, once a global economic powerhouse, but, like others it was destroyed by the hyenas of London, abetted, sadly, by a centralising Labour Party, many of whose leading figures were seduced (sometimes literally sexually) by the wealthy and powerful. Look at the ridiculous figure Ramsay Macdonald became.

In response to your second point: when Mrs Thatcher’s government introduced the right of tenants of council housing to buy their homes at fairly cheap prices, she initiated the rigging of the housing property market.

Selling council houses to tenants is defensible, provided that the price reflects the public investment in the building of the house (although a discount is reasonable to take into consideration the amount of rent paid).

The rigging of the market came in because Councils were not permitted to use the receipts to build more council housing. These new houses would have had two price effects – they would keep the supply of houses high and thereby curtail the huge property price inflation we have seen in the past 4 decades, and they would also keep the rents for private rentals at a reasonable level.

Some of the council houses which tenants bought were in areas which were not seen as ‘desirable’ and so, were difficult to resell. Many of the purchasers were also unable to afford the maintenance of the fabric. Within around two decades, many of such houses were in poor condition and a burden on the owners, who sold them cheaply to property speculators who demolished them, thus further reducing supply and forcing prices higher.

Finally, you express some scepticism about buying houses and keeping them empty. This does, indeed happen. There are many unoccupied houses in London and our cities, which are simply being kept off the market, to make the property market ‘buoyant’. There are many brownfield sites in our cities which could be used for house building which are simply left by the owners, many of them house building companies, who are not developing them and preventing potential self-builders from having access. This introduces an artificial land shortage and forces up land prices, thus further excluding self builders from participation. Undeveloped land is exempt from council and other taxes, so there is no running costs accruing to the speculators. Indeed, when such land suffers problems such as burst pipes which cause localised flooding, the public purse usually has to pick up the cost and is unable to recoup it because ownership is usually obscured via a web of shell companies, usually offshore.

The Scottish Government introduced a right for Councils to double Council tax on unoccupied ‘second homes’, as a way of forcing such houses back on to the market. It is also reestablishing the land register, which both Conservatives and Labour had allowed to fall into desuetude, so that beneficial owners can be identified. This is part of a wider policy of land reform.

Ambitious and redistributive land reform would go a long way in dealing with the power inequalities which the author has so clearly set out.

There is no fee, I’m simply trying to add more content divewrsity for Writer Beat and liked what you wrote. I’ll be sure to give you complete credit as the author. You can learn more about the site by checking out my Disqus profile (my email and the website address are in the upper left hand corner) or just reply “sure” and I’ll handle the rest.

More generally I agree that measures of one country’s wealth relative to another are distorted by relative supply of goods by the state vs by the private sector, and other factors. But few are really concerned with that. Rather the argument is that people in capitalist societies receive what they produce, and that is generally true except where state power has distorted the market.

Opportunity O costs 5 per attempt. O is risky, and only 1-in-5 attempts will be winners, but one winning attempt has a payout of 30. So with 100 attempts at O (total cost 500) you would expect ~20 winners (total payout ~600) for a net payout of ~100. On average, the expected value of O is ~1 per attempt …

… but only on average. You might easily fund 2 losers (total cost 10) before funding a winner. In fact, the probability of two-losers-before-a-winner is about 64% (0.8 first loser x 0.8 second loser) and the probability of three-losers-before-a-winner is 51.2% (0.8 x 0.8 x 0.8). So … more often than not … if you start funding O, you’ll pick at least three losers before you pick a winner.

Now, if you start with 500 … it’s extremely likely that you will profit by funding O, because your risk-of-ruin is very small.

But if you start with 15 … it’s more likely than not you’ll go bankrupt by funding O, because your risk-of-ruin is very large.

When free market ideologues say the current system “rewards risk-takers,” they mean the current system rewards people with enough wealth that their risk-of-ruin is very small. And that creates a near-gravitational wealth effect.

If those who suffer a loss of opportunity are not compensated by those that cause it, we bake in excessive inequalities and resource misallocation.

This is why we pay wages and for goods and services. We all argee now that slavery and theft are a bad idea.

Yet this logic is not extended to natural resources. As land is supplied for free by nature/God, when it becomes valuable, those excluded from its use suffer a loss of opportunity equal to its rental value. As we are all equally excluded, we should therefore be entitled to an equal share of the total rental value of all land.

As this does not current happen, there is a net transfer of incomes from those that own little/no land by value, relative to the taxes they currently pay, to those whom the opposite is true.

There the selling price of land is but a measure of economic injustice. If there was no net transfer, it’s selling price would be zero.

So not only does a typical working household have to pay much more to by a house, they need to do so from a reduced disposable income.

Furthermore, as the incomes of some in society are higher than they should be, this leads to over consumption and misallocation of housing.

The housing crisis is just one symptom of economic injustice. It along with many other issues can in principle be easily solved by the application of a 100% tax on the rental value of land.

It just needs enough people to stand up and say so.

I think your second paragraph is just glossing over the problem and is a variation of ‘the perfect market’ myth. There is, indeed, an ‘anomaly’ – the people who are producing the goods and service are not receiving a fair return for their input and have a powerlessly precarious position within the company. The ‘fast correction’ is usually the extraction of large amounts of capital and transferring them overseas, without investing to grow the business. The ‘fast correction’ is usually lay-offs, outsourcing and transfers of the business to different countries.

With regard to ‘Capitalism’ it is a human construct: it does not say anything. It is a system operated by people and many of the most powerful people within it routinely rig the market in their favour. They are, indeed, ‘greedy’, and they do say it is ‘good’, because it is good for them and they have little sentiment for others.

Much of the preliminary and exploratory work for processes are usually done in government funded research facilities, either stand-alone or in universities, such as Glasgow University’s Science Park just along the road from where I am now of Ninewells Hospital in Dundee (an NHS Scotland facility) There are contributions from businesses, often quite substantial. However, it is the public purse which is bearing the bulk of the risk and it is also the public purse which has paid for the education of the workforce, the transport and utilities infrastructure. When ideas become viable, there are then spin-off companies from these university research facilities. A good example is the computer gaming industry around Abertay University in Dundee.

Finally, some private entrepreneurs are indeed gambling with their own money as my father often did, fruitlessly, on nags at Ayr or Ascot or Kempton Park! However, as we saw with the financial crash, it was the public purse which bore the cost. As Mr Mervyn King warned with his euphemistic phrase, moral hazard, the speculators had their hand around the government’s testicles and were threatening to squeeze.

But when there are returns above 10% it normally means there is some anomaly that should be corrected, and the high returns stimulate fast correction and thus are good.

The role of Greed is another question. You can have an economic system that depends on people not being greedy, e.g. Socialism, or you can have one that recognises that people in fact are greedy and nonetheless obtains good results. Capitalism doesn’t depend on greed or say it’s good, it just is a system that can work even when people are greedy.

As for civil servants picking winners, there are countless examples – such as Concorde – of they’re being a dismal failure. Yes, capitalists make mistakes too, but it’s with their money not ours.

I am not against investment and over the centuries there have been many ethical investing approaches, which have encouraged wide share ownership and modest, but reasonable returns. Employees, who are the people who actually produce the goods and services should be given a proper stake in the equity and be paid a good wage, which is not dissimilar from those in the enterprise who have greater responsibility.

The myth about ‘civil servants’ not being able ‘to pick winners’ is a myth. It has been public investment which has provided the seed corn which the privatisers flogged off, just as they did with natural monopolies like water (in England and Wales).

There are many examples in the ‘first world’ where there is substantial public ownership and employee share ownership, with representation at board level via trade unions and other elected representatives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_to_GDP_ratio

The alleged problem with the state simply spending money without a corresponding amount of tax being collected is that the effect could be too inflationary. Normally that point has considerable merit. However, in the case of a household or firm which finds itself flush with funds because it has not had to pay much tax recently, but knows that IT WILL have to pay tax in a few months time, is it really going to go on a spending spree with that money when it knows full well it will need that money in a few months time to pay its tax liabilities? Unlikely! Ergo, I suggest that if the state (i.e. government and central bank) just ignored short term shortfalls in money flowing in from tax, and created and spent money anyway, it wouldn’t really matter.

He then moves on to say that businesses like taxation because they like the government expenditure that results from it. While the latter part is true, that expenditure would take place even if the people who earned the money spent or lent it instead. Again, the idea that government spending is somehow “better” than private sector spending is a twisting of reality. Redistribution of wealth should mean precisely that: government should not spend money as they see fit, they should give it to citizens to spend as the citizens see fit.

The most curious thing about economics is that most models ― Walrasian, Keynesian, Marxian, Austrian does not matter ― do NOT contain macroeconomic profit in explicit form. And when it appears occasionally it is misspecified.#1 This is why economics is a failed/fake science. MMT is no exception.

In John Weeks’ post about the mistreatment of public debt as perennial problem instead of a long term benefit, the word profit does not appear once. The bottom line of his argument is that the public debt is not as massive as everybody thinks and on closer inspection, not a burden but, on the contrary, has a lot of advantages for WeThePeople. In detail he argues:

• People are told that public debt 1) must be repaid, 2) threatens the country with bankruptcy, and 3) is a burden on future generations. All these arguments are wrong.

• The British government can never default on its debt.

• A good portion of the national debt is held by the public sector, i.e. Bank of England, this is what the public sector owes itself.

• The interest paid on debt held by pension funds is income to retired households.

• At the end of 2016, private corporate and foreign gilts holders owned 41% of the UK’s national debt. Only the £524 billion of gilts held by foreign creditors could be considered a “burden” in that the associated interest payments are from UK taxpayers to non-UK creditors.

• A fair and progressive taxation system could ensure that interest payments to domestic bond holders don’t have negative redistribution effects.

• Sound management of the national debt means more public borrowing for investment and current expenditure, which is justified by the modest size of the effective debt.

The whole argument boils down to a plea for more deficit spending/money creation. This is what MMT policy guidance is all about.

Fact is:

• MMT is a macroeconomic theory that is refuted on all counts.#2

• John Weeks does not mention once the profit effect of deficit-spending/money-creation.#3

• From the scientifically correct Profit Law follows (I−S)+(G−T)+(X−M)−(Q−Yd)=0 which boils down to Public Deficit = Private Profit.#4

• MMT economic policy boils down to the permanent growth of public debt which is nothing else than the permanent self-alimentation of the oligarchy.#5

• All the social benefits MMTers promise are paid in real terms by WeThePeople themselves via stealth taxation.#6

• Public debt is deferred taxation of WeThePeople which is simply pushed beyond the time horizon. Public debt is NOT an asset but a time bomb.

MMT claims to push the agenda of WeThePeople but in fact pushes the agenda of WeTheOligarchy. MMT is failed/fake science and the proponents of MMT are NOT benefactors of humankind but quite ordinary political swindlers.#7

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 For details of the big picture see cross-references Profit
http://axecorg.blogspot.com/2015/03/profit-cross-references.html

#2 For the full-spectrum refutation see cross-references MMT
http://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/07/mmt-cross-references.html

#3 Keynes, Lerner, MMT, Trump and exploding profit
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/12/keynes-lerner-mmt-trump-and-exploding.html

#4 Down with idiocy!
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/12/down-with-idiocy.html

#5 MMT: Redistribution as wellness program
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/10/mmt-redistribution-as-wellness-program.html

#6 MMT, money printing, stealth taxation, and redistribution
https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/11/mmt-money-printing-stealth-taxation-and.html

#7 MMT: academic snake oil for the people
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/02/mmt-academic-snake-oil-for-people.html

http://www.openthesis.org/document/view/603834_0.pdf

Week’s article features on an MMT site (link below) and there’s a comment by Andrew Anderson saying much the same as me, i.e. that there should be no debt of the interest yielding variety.

http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2018/09/john-weeks-why-public-debt-should-be.html

I was asking about the opportunities for ex-offenders, and more specifically for the rapidly increasing number of people who have been convicted of a sexual offence which drastically limits their chances of any job at all. Many SOs are highly skilled/highly educated people who are forced to either spend many years unemployed, in occasional menial tasks or attempting some form of self-employment (the prospects for which are severely blighted by such a publicly-accessible label as “former SO”). The JG is touted as “jobs for all” when, truthfully, most employers – private or public – could not even be paid to take on anyone convicted of a sexual offence.

In my case, I have not worked since 2010 and I see no possibility of that changing. I have a friend in a similar position: formerly, he was a top professional classical musician, arranger and teacher; now he picks up occasional work in house painting. So this problem is related to the JG, but is more about societal attitudes to people within one highly-stigmatised category who would, in all likelihood, be the largest group to be excluded from any JG opportunities.

https://www.patreon.com/independentdocumentary

Well not as bad a chance as you might think. Firstly, as I said above, a proper JG should be tailored to the individual. Secondly a JG naturally boosts the ENTIRE economy (indeed this is its primary purpose). Since JG wage earners spend their money, which creates more demand for goods and services, which in turn boosts the income of the entire private sector. In meeting that demand, the private sector hires more staff, including many professional people such as yourself. Thus a JG is a very clever macroeconomic tool. See more here…

http://elliswinningham.net/index.php/2016/12/06/job-guarantee-understanding-fundamental-concepts/

…and nice short video here…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=187&v=eec9iFfmxbw

The JG is tailored to the individual, so hopefully it would be far from awful, but something you would want to do. yes the work would be in sectors that the private sector sees no profit, but there’s more to life than profit and the bottom line is society will benifit from JG worker’s contribution. That fact alone – that people will see their locality being improved by JG workers – kills the resentment they might feel towards the scheme if recipients just got a check in the post for doing nothing. A critical problem with UBI.

I don’t know enough about the law, but feel surely its a big mistake excluding ex-offenders from society. This US article specificaly states it would be open to offenders… https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/federal-job-guarantee-universal-basic-income-investment-jobs-unemployment/

Since my release from prison in 2017, apart from looking for paid work I’ve tried the following and been permanently excluded from them:
– a poetry reading group in my town library (vulnerable adults present, in the form of elderly people)
– a talking newspaper for the blind (they won’t take anyone who can’t provide references)
– becoming a member of the Green party (no former offenders wanted)
– taking adult education classes with the leftish Workers’ Education Association (no former offenders wanted)
– going to church (no former offenders of my specific kind wanted)

It would be lovely to think a JG might work, but it would not for the rapidly-increasing number of former offenders in my particular category, which you can easily work out. Also, it sounds far too much like forced labour for my liking. I’ve done the awful jobs. I prefer not working at all.

The government. And with open arms. That’s because a JG, with emphasise on the word “Guarantee”, is open to anyone who wants one Thus it assures that NO ONE will be denied access to a job if they need it, just like no one can be denied a visit by the fire brigade in case of fire.

See faq here… https://www.pavlina-tcherneva.net/job-guarantee-faq

Why not test both ideas simultaneously by issuing fully funded per capita grant’s to state and local governments, letting them decide whether to use the funds for one, the other or both?

I would prefer that we eliminate payroll taxes and increase Social Security and Medicare benefits, making the latter universal and expanding the former by lowering the retirement age to 60. Combine this with a federally funded and locally administered job guarantee with a $15 wage and with federal incentives for local and state LVT to replace all other taxes and to fund a Ctizen’s Dividend.

Such a combination policies would probably lead to trully full employment and be the type of agenda that gives the left a real chance at political success rather than the usual implosion.

Re the above claim that JG workers would displace regular workers, that is BOUND to happen to some extent: it happens with most employment subsidies. So the important question is: exactly how much displacement is there? Displacement can be minimised by keeping JG jobs relatively short term: employers value PERMANENT skilled employees, not temporary low skilled employees. I explain that in more detail here:

http://kspjournals.org/index.php/JEPE/article/view/1237

Re the possible inflationary effects of JG, that depends on how generous the wage is: clearly if it’s too generous, the regular jobs market will be starved of job applicants, which would be inflationary.

Re “the fiscal cost could be daunting”, well that would certainly be the case with the latest Levy Institute JG proposal: that involves a wage DOUBLE the existing minimum wage. Barmy.

“People need time to search for jobs they are prepared to accept…” Actually the average unemployed person spends very little time per week job searching, thus a JG job (certainly a part time one) is perfectly compatible with job searching.

But the absence of foreign denominated debt does not mean a currency such as the pound cannot be subject to sustained speculative attack.
Pretty much limits the “sustained” part. The attackers would be cutting their own throat “trashing their own savings”. I’m sorry to break it to people, but the pound does have some solid value behind it. As does the dollar, the renminbi, the yen and the chocolate-backed Swiss Franc. They’re not going to collapse. So any possible depreciation won’t and can’t really cause inflationary spirals. Just a price bump, at worst. Depreciation boosts exports and shrinks imports and so is self-limiting. So the pound goes down a little. It did after the Brexit vote. Did the sky fall?

the experience of other radical social democratic governments in Europe (France in the early 1980s, Sweden in the early 90s) as well as the not so radical Wilson/Callaghan government of the mid-1970s suggests that any future Labour government should be worried about the money-markets.

This is based on a fabricated, but common history. First, calling France or Sweden “radical” then is more than a trifle overdone, for “conservative” could be a better word. Sweden & France were trying to return to the successful postwar policies – but after they had been declared unfashionable. The nonsensical story is that these governments were forced to abandon their traditional “conservative” 😉 “Keynesian” policies, or that the UK was forced to beg from the IMF. The reality was that these were choices, very bad ones. “Doing nothing” would have been a far superior choice. For instance, France commissioned a report from US economist Robert Eisner on its expansionary policies. His recommendation was to continue them as they were succeeding well and to ignore the not very meaningful currency depreciation. Mitterrand, as the so-called “left” does so often, decided to destroy his own program for no economic reason. Or from an irrational obsession with fx currency values, grossly disproportionately to its economic importance. Around the same time Austria, under Bruno Kreisky – followed the same policies – quite successfully, but nobody remembers that. Alain Parguez & Bill Mitchell have also written about France’s entirely self-inflicted destruction back then.

Stephen Ferguson’s link is very, very good. IMHO the best and clearest explanation and reply to common objections to MMT & international worries are the two relevant chapters in Abba Lerner’s 1951 Economics of Employment. As Lerner comments, the basic possible negative systematic effect of expansion on exchange rates is depreciation due to rising imports, due to prosperity. But he notes how absurd this argument is, as it is an argument against prosperity from any cause whatsoever. (And is therefore only made against government led expansion in favor of the general populace, never against the usual crony capitalism for the rich). For a rich developed country, the benefits of functional finance expansion dwarf the self-limiting and only speculative effect of depreciation. In general, countries like the UK are obsessed far, far beyond reason with matters of foreign exchange. It just is not that important, compared to the domestic economy that austerity blithely wrecks with wild abandon.

The best thinkers in the Marxist tradition always understood that socialism in one country was not a sustainable option.
No, that’s Trotsky, who was wrong. All he had was rhetoric, backed by no rational arguments. Socialism in one country most certainly is not only economically sustainable, but economically superior to, outcompetes non-socialism. By the way Abba Lerner, (MMT grandfather) first met Hyman Minsky, (MMT father) after he returned from visiting Trotsky to unsuccessfully convince him that his one country stuff was wrong.

“the MMT principles apply to all sovereign countries. Yes, they can have
full employment at home. Yes, that could lead to trade deficits. Yes
that could (possibly) lead to currency depreciation. Yes that could lead
to inflation pass-through. But they have lots of policy options
available if they do not like those results. Import controls and capital
controls are examples of policy options. Directed employment, directed
investment, and targeted development are also policy options.”

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/02/mmt-external-constraints.html

But with respect to your specific point about Turkey and Venezuela I agree of course that having a considerable debt denominated in foreign currency is a serious problem which makes a falling exchange-rate far more devastating in its consequences (as evident in the East Asian crises of 1997-8 or repeatedly in Latin America). One could also refer to Greece with debts denominated in euros which only the ECB could produce, giving the ECB in particular a chokehold over the Greek state evident within days of the election of the Syriza government in 2015.

But the absence of foreign denominated debt does not mean a currency such as the pound cannot be subject to sustained speculative attack. That won’t be a response to full employment as such but to a government which threatens to raise their taxes and regulate their activities. There doesn’t have to be collusion – just a recognition of what works to their advantage. If there coiuld be a run for the exits which would devalue their assets the issue for them is who gets through the door first.

Your other substantive point is that real physical capital cannot ‘flee’. That’s also true and worth noting but not relevant to my argument. My point was about the impact of a falling exchange-rate on inflation via import prices. That I would argue is where the fault-line becomes a gaping crack.

Not that you – and Meadway, Wren Lewis et al – are not entirely right in this debate with Murphy and the MMT ideologues. The latter are not living in the world as it is, but in the world as they hope and believe it could be.

But, politics. You did this, disingenuously, to other Labour economists. So therefore you also own the disappointed anti-neoliberals.

What SWL, JP and James Meadway seem to miss is that both training and depreciation are current spending items (where they are placed is via international accounting standards so not open to debate).

So with training it is going to mean you can build hospitals but not staff them under this rule.

Secondly with depreciation being a current spending item means just to keep up will need more and more investment, this is a bridges to nowhere policy.

Is it Neoliberal? No I don’t think so but it’s certainly neoclassical (neoclassical econ isn’t necessarily neo-liberal but all neoliberals are neoclassicals). This rule comes from a time before the welfare state, it appears the above 3 mentioned do not realise that.

I see you are fully signed up to the Murphy/MMT snake oil. Let me point out some of the (various) problems with MMT.

MMT states that a country can print as much of it’s own currency as it wants, and therefore never default. This is not a new observation. Because MMT relies on the economy being a closed system – with no leakage – it ignores the possibility of a technical default through exchange rate weakening. In real terms, if you knew the government was printing money many people will do something with that money before it devalues. Either convert it into another currency or buy something with it, driving inflation even higher.

MMT then decides to assume away any risk of inflation by saying inflation will ONLY ever occur at full employment. This leads to two observations. The first is that it is obvious that inflation can and does occur without full employment. The second being that MMT does not have a serious model for inflation (it assumes an L-shaped Philips curve).

Now, given that MMT has now got rid of monetary policy (by substituting fiscal policy, and printing money at 0% rates rather than issuing debt) and wants increased spending through far increased M0/M1 money supply, you would have hoped that they would have a detailed model at least of what that would do to inflation. Instead, we simply get the assurance that inflation simply won’t happen. This, as they say in the industry, is horses**t.

Ask Murphy himself for a definition of full employment is and he won’t give you one – mostly because MMT is used as a cover for ever increased government spending and control of the economy. Despite unemployment being at 40 year lows and sitting at the NAIRU level, Murphy still claims unemployment is a huge problem and we are nowhere near full emplyoment. Despite not being willing to give his definition of what full employment actually is. Ask him for an inflation model and you will simply get the “it won’t happen” argument.

The MMTers then argue that tax will be used to control inflation – whilst steadfastly refusing to detail by how much. yet again we can make a few observations. By not having an inflation model, MMT doesn’t really have a good idea about how much taxes would have to rise to control inflation – so controlling any inflation would be a hit or miss affair at best. But taxes would have to rise significantly if you are talking about the 50bn or so extra spending Murphy suggests, unless you are willing to accept significantly higher inflation, and that interest rates will be set to an effective zero. MMT also ignores the basic PV = MQ velocity of money. 50bn of extra MMT money printing would flow through the economy and multiply the broad money supply up by many times that amount, requiring even larger tax rises to counter, because again, you’ve got rid of monetary policy. Of coure if you raise taxes to that extent, you choke off growth at the same time, so any extra investment is likely to be choked off regardless. There simply is no free lunch.

You could also argue that if MMTers were worried about low growth, low inflation and unemployment the easier way to achieve their goals would be to simply lower taxes, but this does not seem to fit in with their government centric view of the economy – so higher taxes and printed money it is.

It is at this point worth noting that “traditional” QE is simply not the same as MMT style money printing. QE is in real terms an asset swap and does not increase the base money supply, or reduce the amount of government debt held (again something which Murphy quite incorrectly claims). QE works by increasing liquidity and lowering long term interest rates. When the debt bought through QE matures the QE has to be unwound or the debt rolled over – typically by issuing new debt into the market.

MMT money printing simply prints money, with the idea that more money = more wealth = more shiny things the government can buy. MMters are very keen to ignore any potential drawbacks of this tried and tested road to economic ruin.

As a (real) economist and a pension fund manager, we wargamed our response to Corbynomics before the last election. We actually used Murphy’s proposed 50bn a year of “people’s QE” money printing as a starting point.

Our initial reaction would be to reduce our holding of Gilts to the legal minimum and then hedge the rest with interest rate swaps. The cash would be reinvested in offshore assets, or in the FTSE (which derives 90% of its revenues from outside the UK, and acts as a decent inflation and currency hedge). We estimated a 25-40% drop in the value of the pound were no action to be taken to control the extra inflation generated.

To control the extra spending, we estimated the basic rate of income tax would have to rise to close to 40p in the pound. The higher rate close to 75p. The effect on growth of these wholly experimental policies would be to send the UK economy into a severe recession – there simply would not be a growth boost. Inward investment would dry up inflation would likely be a problem and higher taxes would kill the economy, all due to the irresponsible policies of the government, which would pose a huge risk.

Simply put, there is no free lunch. If you want the government to spend more, you could simply argue for higher deficit spending or increased taxes. And be honest about it. MMT simply will not provide a land of milk and honey with no negative consequences. Murphy and the other MMTers are either in denial, delusional or more worryingly, actively misleading people if this is the claim they are making.

MMT (itself not new, just a rebadging of chartalism) is as close as you can get to economic snake oil, and this is why it remains very much a fringe economic “theory” and there are many serious economists from across the political spectrum out there who have pointed out the various, gaping holes in it.

Why not try Murphy, and ask him if he can give you:

1. A detailed, numeric definition of full employment
2. A detailed inflation model for MMT
3. How much taxes would have to rise for each X amount of increased MMT spending.

My guess is he will be unable and very unwilling to provide you with such answers, bar in some form of rhetoric. I get the distinct impression that he is simply an MMT hanger on, and doesn’t really understand it, or much of economics in general. He likes it because it fits his worldview, however disjointed and fantasy filled that may be.

We also get your hand waving, speculative drivel about ‘money markets’ denominated in UK£. Apparently according to you these present perfectly willing holders of UK£ Gov (savings!) Bonds will suddenly decide en masse to trash the value of their own holdings. All of them, all together, in micro second synchronicity.
Leaving aside the extraordinary, illegal collusion that would take in a market regulated by *Gov*, are you seriously trying to tell us that these stg£ asset holders will do all that, risking massive losses, just because UK decided to operate its economy at full employment? Because UK Gov spent, in the long run, a few percent more of GDP into the economy, and created the growth, instead of private business/banks spending that money via investments?

And just supposing they did manage to cause some fluctuation/dip in exchange rates, so what? Real physical Capital cannot simply ‘flee’. Do you really think the parties on both sides of *real* trade, with substantial investment and mutual interests won’t spot some speculative capital account trading screwing with their investment returns, and not know that such speculative trades cannot be sustained for long absent any change in underlying fundamentals?

Your whole piece is riddled with the most implausible hand waving nonsense pretending to be ‘economics’. You are a disgrace.

One place we might want to start is pharmaceutical capture of government agencies.

http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/digital-culture-media-and-sport-committee/fake-news/written/73097.html

http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/digital-culture-media-and-sport-committee/fake-news/written/76219.html

It is easily imaginable the benefit to the public purse of having agencies which were not completely in bed with the pharmaceutical industry, not least because of the manifold harms which might be prevented by independent monitoring. Sadly, when I wrote to Tom Watson and Jonathan Ashworth (shadow Secretary for Health and Social Care) neither replied (I got an automatic acknowledgment from Ashworth).

This, of course, would not in traditional terms be a left measure but a pluralist measure – but there is no visible will to represent the public interest in the face of global corporatism. My MP – also Labour – said she would ask a question, but I am not sure whether she ever even got round to it. These are issues which could not be more fundamental either to democracy or the long-term viability of the British state, but are not on the agenda – not as far as writing a polite acknowledgment. By contrast, back c.2000, I wrote a letter to Theresa May when she was shadow Secretary for Education and Employment and got the most detailed and courteous reply. Now we are not even trying: we are just floundering in cynicism and rotten institutions.

The welfare state pays a lot more money in unemployment benefits over in the US than it does here in the UK too, but that’s a totally separate issue.

I think you’re so used to living in the wealthiest country in the world that you’ve lost perspective on what “just enough to survive” means.

Isn’t it a happy coincidence that, after years and years of private company investment in the Parisian water infrastructure, when the state took over the bills could fall. No doubt they could do the same over here now that loads of work has been done but, as sure as eggs are eggs, the investment will not be maintained when funds dry up elsewhere and that money is needed for the NHS, or public transport, education, roads, social services etc etc. Then the rot will set in once more.

This is an ideological, socialist argument dressed up to pull on the anti fat-cat sentiments of jealous individuals. It doesn’t stand up to scrutiny and completely ignores history and human nature. The real problem is that the market is not allowed to operate properly – it is regulated by OFWAT, who are, quite frankly, useless. Do we want £1 a week off our water charges, or £500 million invested in fixing / preventing leakage? Ofwat has repeatedly gone for the £1 a week option. Since privatisation, it has repeatedly failed the consumer and has incentivised the wrong behaviours.

How about a real value being put on water – such that it becomes a valued commodity that people won’t recklessly use sprinklers on their gardens or won’t flush 2 gallons down the loo to get rid of half a pint of urine? Nobody blinks at £2.50 a day for a latte, £45 per month for their mobile phone, £70 a month for Sky TV and £200 a month for a brand new lease car – but £2 a day for unlimited water and waste water disposal? Never – it’s a rip off Tory thing and must be nationalised…really?

Be careful what you wish for.

With regard to Labour, my scepticism is down to the fact that Labour is pretty severely riven, with a very large number of MPs openly hostile to Mr Corbyn’s leadership and the agenda he and his colleagues have set. In Scotland, he has made a number of statements which have been sympathetic to the aspirations of the Scottish Government, or, at least, not hostile to it, only to be very quickly forced into a retraction by the Scottish Labour MSPs, most of whom, with the exception of their leader, Mr Richard Leonard, are opposed to him. Devolution is further advanced in Scotland than elsewhere – indeed, it is close to 50/50 regarding independence – but, of all the Scottish parties, including the Tories, during the Smith Commission consultations, Scottish Labour was the most hostile to further devolved powers.

There is still amongst Labour MPs (yes, MPs) an attitude that they know what is best for the rest of the UK. Harriet Hartman and Yvette Cooper, for example were opposed – contemptuously – to devolution of powers on abortion being devolved to Scotland.

So, what you say might well be true about Labour’s stated policy, but I fear that when it comes to governance, they will revert to the dirigiste, ‘WE know what you need.’

I hadn’t heard about the Glasgow Corporation, but this sounds fascinating and is definitely something I’ll look into.

Municipalisation of water is undoubtedly a feasible way of having public control. The example of Glasgow Corporation in the 19th century is an excellent example of municipal initiative.

Although water, per se, is an important case for public control, it is but a part of the wider issue of the constitutional reorganisation that is required in the UK, with powers located irreversibly at local levels and devolved as far as feasible to even more local communities. This also has to be accompanied by a change in the voting system.

I am not convinced that the Labour Party and the central management of the major trade unions wants to see Westminster ‘lose’ powers to local areas. They are as determined as the Tories to be able to exercise Westminster’s powers, albeit from ostensibly different value perspectives. I was a career long trade unionist and my father was a member of the old boilermakers’ Union, and, while I am a strong supporter of TUs, I am wary of the goal displacement which occurs in all large organisations from such as RBS, via trade unions like GMB, to third sector bodies like Oxfam.

While I think that water and sewerage should be a public utility, I feel irritated by the tacit assumption that the experience of someone in London is the same as that for everyone else in England, and those in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

I really do hope we can kickstart the debate Hettie O’Brien as I do feel the water industry is going down the tubes.
Take Paris for example now publicly owned though i do not know what the water infrastrcture leakage rate is.

I don’t know if anyone will see this but it could do with a note. People need to understand that if the government isn’t borrowing it, they are.

While we are on it, the ownership and use of intellectual property is another key pillar of social control. It helps define and limit what gets into the marketplace and who owns it. But that needs be a subject of another discussion.

I felt that the author was spending a lot of words describing something which could be summed up in two.

This article goes nowhere near far enough to describe the disgusting behaviour of Bezos and how he acquired his dirty wealth — probably because the author is afraid of possible legal action. This is the abusive situation that now prevails across global capitalism — and openly supported by all our governments.

The reason I believe this, is because I have never been convinced by the Brexiteers promise of a promised land outside of the EU, the economic case was always flimsy at best. We’ll go into this semi-detached status that the Chequers agreement proposes, and chug along with that for a decade or so, but throughout that time, there will be a pro-EU case made (just as there has long been a leave EU case made), and we will eventually move closer and rejoin, the problem will be that the terms won’t be as favourable (with all the opt outs etc) as we currently enjoy.

And what does the Chequers Paper offer ? Asking “frictionless access at the border”, “participation by the UK in those EU agencies that provide authorisations for goods in highly regulated sectors” and “a new Facilitated Customs Arrangement that would remove the need for customs checks” yet “Free movement of people will end as the UK leaves the EU”.

In other words, the UK want to cherry-pick some freedoms but not the fourth. That level of disregard of the other party’s core stance, spelled out again and again for more than two years is nothing near generous, it’s plain insulting.

Therefore, I cannot concur with your comment. The institution is not clearly disintegrating, but the biggest problems concern the incompetent political design of the eurozone (against expert economic advice) and the far right governments that refuse to allow a common European asylum system (CEAS) to function properly, with appropriate distribution of refugees across the EU. This has now deteriorated to not even accepting the principles of the 1951 Refugee convention, in the case of Hungary. In reality, the fascist Orban is closer to the UK Tory party anyway — which has failed to treat refugees and immigrants with the rights and respect that they are entitled to.

Yet here we have one of the EU’s fundamental “core principles of a political institution” already diluted. Do you think that might be why “that institution starts to disintegrate”?
.

As regards the struggle for global justice I am sceptical of all strategies which only attempt to moderate and modify globalisation and capitalism. Deglobalisation is the only solution given the seriousness, danger and urgency of our historical situation. I would like to draw readers attention to a very interesting recent essay about globalised localisation which makes the case:

http://longreads.tni.org/localisation-solution-authoritarianism/

2) Furthermore, the author refers to the “inadequate constraints on the dissemination of fake news”. That is a very interesting perspective. Is the author encouraging corporate censorship of speech? The news outlets most affected by attacks on “fake news” are left/progressive alternative news sources.

I find it worrying that someone publishing in Open Democracy would not be available of the above two points.

Nor, contrary to today’s conventional ‘wisdom’, is there anything inevitable about capitalism. It is also extremely questionable in my view whether capitalism can be ‘socialised’ in the way advocates of this strategy suggest. Dispossession, exploitation, environmental destruction, growth, hierarchy, materialism, alienation driven by the need for profit are not incidental, or accidental, features of capitalism – they are its inherent design features. Pointing out examples of western social democracy as counterfactual evidence doesn’t wash for me – it was/is only something possible within an overarching system of brutal capitalist exploitation – a good life and apparent freedom bought at others expense – and the expense of nature.

Capitalism can only *appear* to be socialised – underneath it will always remain a beast and destroyer of men’s bodies and souls, other creatures, and the earth we depend on. Is this what we really want? If some of us actually managed to get it would we, like all victors before, obliterate knowledge and memory of the misery and destruction on which our comfort was built?

The second course is to construct communities and businesses today that embody our preferred ways of doing things, building the relational social fabric that we want in the here and now, dismantling the agit-prop culture that has paralysed left movements for a century, and accepting the world-wide evidence around us that methodologies based on concentrations of power produce outcomes characterised by concentrations of power.

These are the two options that have confronted left movements since the 1890s. Having opted for the latter for the last 130 years and watched concentrations of capital, wealth and power grow steadily over that time, perhaps it is time for the left to concede defeat for that strategy and try the alternative.

You can see more of it here:

http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2017/838-paul-mason-and-the-grand-propaganda-narratives.html

All the rest of his suggestions would either be more easily introduced or rendered unnecessary if we could simply restrict the flow of capital to that which supports the real economy and curtail it otherwise.

Land value tax would have been a reasonable idea some decades ago: it is now no solution at all. You can call it implementation, if you like , but the fact is that we do not start from a hypothetical zero. We start from where the UK is now.

Pseudo-leftist radicals like Mason need to be called out – they are insidious because they not only appeal to the right wing activist and politicians of course but, because of their fake radical reputation, might also fool many/some left wing inclined. Unfortunately Mason is being given a lot of space to propagate his conservative and dangerous liberal views and, as far as I know, he is not being publicly criticised even by intellectuals I respect. I think it’s a typical English thing – open, clear criticism of those seen as close in some way is seen as impolite. Thus their views dont’ get challenged or confronted. Sad …

I agree with you, it looks like Mason is hellbent on shaping the national policy of a prospective Labour government, and he’s been making many moves to the right on various issues, from migration to defense policy. Here he’s doing the same but on wealth distribution and internationalism.

All the marxist references are only little side dishes to the main course which isn’t progressive at all, more like a bold leap into the status quo, which clearly is in need of solutions to its expanding crisis.

As Paul Mason makes clear it is the power of big finance to terrorise a country (see Greece) that is the significant external non-democratic Controller. How can we take back control of our own money from these shadowy rootless institutions who will fight dirty, and don’t give a fig for the hardships they impose.

Can I suggest TWO policies that would shrink the banks (given that Positive Money’s Sovereign Money proposal might be too dangerous to implement)

1. Increase the rate of George Osborne’s Bank Levy, a neglected yet highly intelligent Tax brought in by the Coalition Government.

2. Introduce Land Value Taxation on housing as fast as is practical. This will deprive the banks of most of their mortgage lending opportunities, and force them to look elsewhere to make loans to productive enterprises.

Both of these policies will shrink the banks’ balance sheets, and consequently their power to terrorise. Neither policy need be trumpeted in advance and could be brought in swiftly during the first Crisis.

I wonder why you think Shenzhen, Bombay and Dubai would accept that and let Wigan, Newport and
Kirkcaldy get away with it. Doesn’t appear very realistic to me.

Some thoughts in no particular order:

1) Getting gig economy back into the Labour force is not the answer. The Uber drivers themselves report that they prefer their flexible working style. An agile, flexible labour force is a positive thing for both people and trade. It gives people control over their lives (a very under-rated driver of wellbeing) and it gives businesses flexibility to expand and contract. Presently, the transaction balance between producers and employers is uneven because of the power of the Corporation. This article proposes re-tethering this agile workforce to the Corporation but surely this is equivalent to putting You-tubers on the News International payroll. Stifling for both sides. The question for the Left (and Right) is what is the future of the Corporation? Most global technology companies are run with skeleton management teams with production outsourced to users or free agents. What happens when the managers become dis-intermediated by AI? What is a Corporation then? The question for the Left is how to empower Labour in a post corporation world. To put it another way (sorry for this cultural reference): “there is no spoon”.

2) The dignity of work. Left thinking gets this all wrong. I like the idea of minimum wage and free services. It feels like an attractive baseline of human dignity in modern societies. But what’s the point in an education or healthcare if the Left is just using this as an opiate? Surely health and education without meaningful employment is one of the things that’s so wrong in our society. Why did we ever think that health, housing and welfare would be a decent substitute for working class, blue collar employment? This is what is killing communities and family life. The lack of secure, stable, dependable blue collar employment to sustain relationships. The State has become our mother, father, husband, wife and while that safety net is a damn sight better than the poorhouse, when did the Left give up on employment? About the same time we decided to outsource Labour to third world countries.

3) Cost of Labour. This seems to me to be the crux challenge for Left policy making and the reason for all the cognitive dissonance in the Labour party today. One side of the party says: globalise, trickle down, lots of social liberalism. The other side says: medicate the poor with benefits, old fashioned Labour supply and demand, more regulation and protection. All this misses the message of the Nationalists : bring back jobs, cost in the unfair advantages of third countries by using tariffs, give working people real work. This is EXACTLY why populism is so persuasive. Why can’t the Left in Europe see this? When we outsourced cheap Labour to third countries and got rid of tariffs, we systematically lowered all our prices. Great, we think. Except this is why we have had salary stagflation. Because we will never get our Labour costs down to the cost of children shelling prawns in Thailand or an online chatbot answering customer queries. So how do we price this in? Probably through tariffs on third countries and taxes on global corporates. Actually, I don’t know the answer but it isn’t through unregulated global trade and it isn’t through benefits and raised Labour regulation. This is what Trump sees and channels. Higher prices are what will empower the Labour force (author’s ‘skin in the game’). Prices rising will force up wages – or there’ll be a mass recessions as businesses fail. This is how you reset the balance.

Plenty more to say on this but I really have to rush …

This
is a question not just for the Western left, which Mason speaks to, but
for the global left, which clearly needs rebuilding and reorienting,
with a large role in this for its non-Western parts. The momentous
current crisis which is ecological as much as it is economic and social,
requires a strategy at that level, to create a sane mode of production
which is both sustainable, and offers socio-economic freedom, good
standards of living and non-alienated work. Capitalism as opposed to forms of working class democracy can only worsen our ability to deal with all of these questions, as it excludes workers from all levels of decision making which affect their lives.

It seems clear that
Mason’s strategy can only result in doubling down on a distorted global
system where a huge mass of unproductive consumers (in the West, but not
exclusively) depend on global domination, robbery of resources and
exploitation in all other parts of the world. We need to break with the
system that has created this, instead of stabilising it yet again for
another round, and even presenting that stabilisation as something the
left should take upon itself.

Incidentally, could someone help me out here and tell me if the above is an example of the concept of *projection* or *splitting*?

Two questions/concerns:
1: assumptions about need for, and impact of growth in the economy. Is this compatible with impact on climate change- can ‘growth’ for majority come from great equity and redistribution?
2: that we have to put Wigan ahead of Mumbai ( Bombay as it used to be!) Can we achieve what works for UK by supporting greater global equity- why does it have to be at the expense of?

democratic institutions and values in the developed world by reversing
the 30-year policy of enriching the bottom 60% and the top 1% of the
world’s population.

It is a programme to deliver growth and prosperity in Wigan, Newport
and Kirkcaldy – if necessary at the price of not delivering them to
Shenzhen, Bombay and Dubai.”

An absolute waste of time that will lead to nowhere while exacerbating the environmental crisis.

I am surprised this sort of ecologically ignorant zombie-social-democracy still passes as serious thinking.

We face a system crisis. Mason’s proposed solution is to deny the problem by breaking part of the system. It reminded me of this parable : https://sufiways.com/2017/08/13/questions-terrorism-and-nasruddins-beard/

We have to leave this zero-sum game mindset. Sustainable and humane living requires the end of international economic competition. That may need the end of capitalism. In any case it will necessarily means the end of growth. This is the discussion we should be having.

Those capitalist bastards, eh. “Enriching” the bottom 60%.

An absolutely remarkable comment. Socialism in one country lives.

I think you are wasting your time with articles on oD, but there is a deficit of serious places to post radical left thinking.

I’m not rationalising anything. Again you live in a fantasy world.

Well… the use of the word is owed to lefties (and some others) reminding the Mont Pelerin Society that they were the first to coin the term. The fact that MPS members and supporters have ditched the word because of its unpleasant associations with its howling failures ( eg Thatcherism and Pinochet’s Chile) is interesting in itself.

I’m fascinated as to how you rationalise the hoards of people risking their lives to cross Central America and the Arizona and New Mexican deserts or the hundreds of thousands drowning in the Mediterranean to escape African poverty. Or the people of Port Au Prince who eat mud pies to stave off the pains of hunger? Presumably this is a lifestyle choice? Or perhaps they need to see your graphs so that they know that while they may lack food, shelter, medical care and education, they’re actually doing fine according to the statistics?

How about looking at the issue in a social psychological perspective? What is it that most economists do for a living? What are they being trained for? What is their role in society? What is their peer group and work milieu? in Britain, a year after graduation in economics, of those who are in employment, about 50% have become business, finance sector and associated professionals, with a further 12% becoming commercial, industrial and public sector managers. In contrast only about 1% are to be found in the arts, design, culture and sport, another 1% in education and slightly less than 1% in social and welfare jobs.

Among other things this will powerfully determine the lived experience of economists, their social milieu and its motivations and the world view of their colleagues. The peer group of economists is to a large extent that of the corporate managerial elite. And that makes a difference to their theories in all sorts of ways.

Someone like Eleanor Ostrom who researched how natural commons worked was a very unusual person indeed (in fact she was not really an economist ). The idea that people might actually co-operate is barely theorised.

What is theorised is how the elite takes decisions – and to a large extent it is a theorisation of psychopathic behaviour, where the motivations and purposes of decision makers are guided by what psychologists call “extrinsic values”. These are values that are centred on external approval and rewards e.g. wealth, material success, concern about image, social status, prestige, social power and authority.

Social psychologists have studied people like this, who they describe as “marketing characters” .

“Marketing characters experience themselves as commodities whose value and meaning are externally determined.” Such characters have the following traits:
… eager to consume; wasteful of goods, disposing and replacing them frequently; having conventional tastes and views; uncritical of themselves or society, un-insightful; agreeing with the statement “having makes me more”; a tendency to publicise and promote themselves; experiencing themselves as a commodity whose value is determined by possessions and the opinions of others;
and with values portrayed in television advertisements. (Oliver James, Affluenza, 2007)

Studies show people like this are more likely to be “materialistic, conformist, unconcerned about ecology, expressive of anger, anxious and depressive.” A subsequent study by Saunders, again cited by James, explains how marketing characters:

… place little value on beauty, freedoms or inner harmony. Their main pursuits are social recognition, comfort, and having an exciting life. They are extremely individualistic in their social values and do not regard social equality as desirable. They compare themselves obsessively and enviously with others, always having to have more and better things than others, believing inequality to be man’s natural state. (James, Affluenza, 2007, p. 66)

Economists and economics is a theorisation of this value system as if is all human behaviour is of this type. But this is not true – what economists are describing what they themselves and their peer group are like. it is an illustration of this principle, that I first read in a book by the psychotherapist Dorothy Rowe>

“We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are”. (Sometimes attributed to the Talmud, but probably first written by Anais Nin

In this sense economics is not a science it is a belief system that simply asserts that everyone is motivated in this way., Given that economics represents a value system, it is not surprising what psychological experiments have found when comparing economic and non-economics students. The research in 1993 by Frank, Gilovich and Regan found that most people learn to be more co-operative as they get older – but that learning economics slows this process of social maturity. (Saka, 2011)

So, we could describe economics departments as departments for the promotion of anti social behaviour?.

Where then does this leave the main role of economists.? Here is a description of a US economist, Robert Nelson, who worked in the US government.

“If economists had any influence—which they sometimes did, if rarely decisive—it was seldom as literal “problem solvers”. Rather, the greatest influence of economists came through their defence of a set of values. Much of my own and other efforts of Interior (Ministry) economists were really to persuade others in the department to act in accordance with the economic value system, as
compared with other competing priorities and sets of values also represented within the ranks of the department.”

This is in a book in which Nelson compares economists to a priesthood and economics to a religion. (“Economics as a Religion” 2001)

It’s a good fit. In this quasi religion the role of original sin, THE problem facing humanity, is now seen to be “scarcity” and the job in hand is to overcome with a new set of quasi virtues – efficiency, economic growth, technological innovation brought about by creatively disruptive entrepreneurs. And the role of economist is that of a quasi priesthood – and what priests do is explain and defend orthodoxy for a value system that is essentially anti social (but hidden behind a plausible narrative)

There is nothing scientific about this and in my book I show where these ideas came from and contrast them with ideas held in other societies – particularly indigenous societies who manage their relationships with each other and with and in their eco-systems.

All this and more is explored in chapter 2 of my book Credo which is available for download from http://www.credoeconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/credo.pdf

Your (McDougall) ridiculous theoretical
postings are what I would expect from first year undergrad students
without much ability. They bear no relationship to reality and you cite
no sources, no statistical data, nothing — because there is nothing to
sustain the fraudulent claims that you are making.

Your ridiculous theoretical postings are what I would expect from first year undergrad students without much ability. They bear no relationship to reality and you cite no sources, no statistical data, nothing — because there is nothing to sustain the fraudulent claims that you are making.

(also, “after Brexit” seems wrong too – Brexit hasn’t happened yet)

Otherwise great article, thanks! 🙂 (but I’d’ve liked more links to the projects/ initiatives mentioned to more easily be able to follow them all up 🙂 )

Your ridiculous theoretical postings are what I would expect from first year undergrad students without much ability. They bear no relationship to reality and you cite no sources, no statistical data, nothing — because there is nothing to sustain the fraudulent claims that you are making.

I don’t know an awful lot about the history of economics but didn’t the classical liberals subscribe to the labour theory of value? In which case, Neoliberalism is not the same at all.

A Modest Proposal was a satire which could well have been applied to Thatcher and Blair’s governments but it predates Liberalism, let alone neoliberalism.

I referred you to examples of what Blair actually did. Academies and stealth privatisation of public services are concrete neoliberal policies. What he believes (nothing much) is irrelevant.

You have to be kidding. Corbyn and McConnell are the most obvious examples but I’ve seen the term used for Nicola Sturgeon(!) and several SNP MSPs and MPs.

By and large though, it is true to say that most Marxists are honest about their affiliation while most Neoliberals are not. Having said that, Neoliberals are damned easy to spot so it doesn’t really present the problem you say it does.

“…while a lot of the people called “neoliberal” by others have relatively little in common, hence the difficulty.”

They will certainly have differences – as Marxists do. But what they do have in common is fundamental – a preference for market over democratic solutions.

Your ridiculous theoretical postings are what I would expect from first year undergrad students without much ability. They bear no relationship to reality and you cite no sources, no statistical data, nothing — because there is nothing to sustain the fraudulent claims that you are making.

Negative and positive liberties are frequently confused, However, this binary distinction is nowhere near sufficient in a modern world where the power of the State is essential in order to protect citizens’ economic rights, especially with regard to global monopolies, abusive cartels, banking, employment issues… the list is endless. These issues were perhaps less compelling at the time Hayek wrote his key texts, but unlike Marx’s writings they proved far from prophetic. They share with Marx the misfortune of having been put into practice by political crooks and idiots — roughly half a century later than the implementation of communist ideology.,

That’s irrelevant. In common with most of his contemporaries he accepted their dogma – his NHS “reforms” and tax policies are pure neoliberalism – because he thought it would serve him well personally.

“…and your two examples most certainly are not applications of that society’s ideology. ”

What a peculiar claim! You are saying that neither James Buchanan nor Margaret Thatcher subscribed to the aims of the MPS? Buchanan was one of its most prominent and influential members. As pointed out in the text, Thatcher actually declared that the Constitution of Liberty “is our programme”. Are you suggesting that someone made these facts up?

“You are shifting from a narrow definition to a broad definition well illustrating the slippery use of the word by Leftists…”

Its definition and scope has broadened as its adherence has grown. This is one of the many ways in which it increasingly resembles Marxism.

“Hayek rightly said “You can have economic freedom without political freedom, but you cannot have political freedom without economic freedom.” ”

He said it but that doesn’t make it fact. The economic freedom he and his associates advocated for the benefit of the rich would effectively cancel out political freedom for the rest of us. This is what I meant by “making ideologically loaded and contentious assertions as if they are empirically proven facts.”

I am not aware of any Mont Pelerin Society members ever resiling from the conclusion that Pinochet’s brutal Chilean regime is their greatest achievement so far. Neither, to my knowledge, have any of them ever condemned Thatcher for the brutality and perfidy of her regime with regard to the miners’ strike.

“…if that’s part of your concept of neoliberalism then I don’t understand your definition.”

I define neoliberalism as the ideology adopted by the Mont Pelerin Society. I have given you two examples of the application of that ideology here. There are plenty more. What’s not to understand?

Taiwan, Korea and China did not develop as a result of neoliberalism at all. Their economic success involved extensive state interference in business and industry and a great deal of regulation. “Debatable”? Really? Why?

Hong Kong is an artificial niche economy – able to take advantage of a unique relationship to both China and Western nations and simply too small to extrapolate from. It is absurd to attribute its success to neoliberalism.

As far as India’s neoliberal policies are concerned it is simply too soon to tell but I would bet on an impending social and economic disaster accompanied by extremely dangerous political turmoil. More in common with their old imperial masters than they ever bargained for, perhaps.

You are confusing statistics with fact. Statistics are abstractions and mask the fact that overall increases in living standards are often accompanied by localised grinding poverty and that the increased prosperity enjoyed by an individual may well be fleeting as production moves elsewhere and family and communal support is broken up by workforce mobility. It is a mistake often made by intellectuals whose only knowledge of the lives of ordinary people comes from books.

Quite simply, the fact that there are superficial differences between Chicago Neoliberals and (say) ACLU Neoliberals does not nullify the common thread to which they belong any more than the differences between Allthusser and David Harvey mean they cannot both have been Marxists.

“Be clear whether you mean social democrats abandoning state ownership but still decidedly statist, or whether you mean libertarians wanting a very limited state role, and the word might be useful.”

Neoliberalism does not involve “a very limited state role” by any means: Buchanan’s Chilean constitution gave the armed forces the right to intervene in government at their discretion; Thatcher’s government broke new ground in terms of the state spying on trades unionists and political activists and of course using the police to break the heads of strikers and then frame them with criminal offences. A brutal, politicised and democratically unaccountable state is central to Mont Pelerin Society ideology.

And I do not need to read anything again. If you failed to express your intentions clearly, then you need to write it again.

The recent articles regarding Neoliberalism are in response to Ed Conway’s laughable assertion it doesn’t exist. He’s not the first to make the claim, right wing “libertarians” were at it ten years ago, too.

Marxists regard the myriad distinctions between Capitalist models merely dancing on the head of a pin. It’s all “Capitalism” to them.

Don’t quite see how a Marxist can be a neoliberal – or perhaps I’ve missed something!

At any rate I rather agree with Dillow’s questioning whether neoliberalism exists. In fact neoliberalism is arguably just one example of several allegedly wicked ideas thought up by lefities so that lefties can portray themselves as saints by comparison and so as to provide lefties with an evil monster which lefties can be seen to valiantly fight.

Another classic example of this delusion is “hate”. The truth is that it is extremely difficult to prove what anyone’s motives are for doing or saying anything. But lefties are not bothered by mere trifles like the truth or proving evil intent before attributing evil intent to anyone. In the eyes of lefties, anyone disagreeing with a leftie (especially on immigration) is motivated by hate. End of.

Even the IMF calls itself “Neoliberal”: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2016/06/ostry.htm

Mark Sapsford refers to the dispersal/fragmentation/outsourcing of aspects of the production process, into smaller units where communication between individuals is restricted by draconian management methods (with the toilet example being one). With irregular working hours it is difficult for working people to meet together, as they would often do in the pub after a shift, to discuss work issues.

Social media seems to me to be one way of enabling these separated individuals to initiate, sustain and develop arguments. On its own it is not THE ANSWER but, it facilitates debate and organisation. Strikes and demonstrations have places too, as do electoral politics. However, as it currently exists, the Labour Party is not the vehicle it was around 1900 (even I was not around then!). It is undergoing some kind of seriously contested realignment since Mr Corbyn arrived, but, it is still substantially tribal. Parties like SNP, Greens, PC, SF are better organised, as are LGBTI+ groups, and feminists and various ethnic/religious organisations. However, Labour wants them ‘to put aside foolish things’ and join Labour and, as a result, they might, but only ‘might’, get some of the things they desire, but only if these are consistent with what Labour deems to be the ‘true path’.

Breaking the UK will result in breaking the vehicle of the financial interests of the City of London. Labour does not want that as can be inferred from Mr John McDonnell’s overtures at Davos.

The main difference I can see is that at some point in the past this may have all been done under one or two roofs with lots of workers in one place together and possibly organising into unions etc etc.

Let me stress our pay was low, our working conditions were poor( the air vent above the solder bath was tiny compared to the much larger one in the bosses office, Signs on the toilet doors about loitering and to hurry up back to work etc.

I used to think of it as an extended production line across borders in a trade union free zone but where we any less Working Class? Ablsolutely not. I remember their being a strong feeling about the NHS due to the nurses strike that happened at the time but beyond that politics were just not raised at all.

I see a similar pattern today with many zero hours care workers etc working individually against unscrupulous bosses making money out of a care system and the many small workplaces and retail in its that litter our out of town areas.

In this case in my opinion getting caught up in looking at it electrorally will always make you think that socialism is as far away as ever. We may have reached peak Corbyn as things stand but only if we don’t try to reach out to the unorganised working class

On the other hand, as I’ve made plain previously, I’m no fan of Mason’s theory of the ‘networked individual/generation’ either. If not primarily in the workplace or online networks where then should the emphasis of organising and struggle lie? In my opinion, to make it as broad, deep and potentially radical as possible, it should primarily be based in real world social movements formed around reproductive and inclusionary struggles e.g. around housing, education, culture and leisure, public transport, public and community health, non-employed income/UBI, and, more broadly, community development. It is not that class should be overlooked or ignored in these movements – indeed the class aspects of their struggles should be constantly emphasisedwhile their ‘membership’ should be broadly conceived and aim to be as open as possible. Connections between such movements and workplaces/trade unions should be constantly sought and developed. But for pity’s sake let’s stop being dogmatic about the leading role of the organised working class in the workplace!

There are two distinct struggles: one is the socialist struggle to replace the political systems that involve power wielded by a ruling elite, no matter how benevolent they may be, and their replacement by systems that are egalitarian and, above all, fair “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” The other struggle is that of the working class against economic and social exploitation by a moneyed, property and business owning class. There is clearly a huge overlap between the two, but they are not identical and should not be confused.

One example may make this clearer. At the 2016 Labour Conference a GMB spokesperson enthused about the Hinkley C project and the very large number of jobs this would provide for their members. This was clearly their job, to organise labour with collective bargaining to get the best deal possible for their members. Most socialists are, however, alarmed at the prospect of such a large investment in nuclear fission power when, arguably, a much better result, including a comparable number of jobs, could come from spending the same amount on renewable energy systems. Not to mention, of course, the potential problems of such a nationally sensitive part of our infrastructure being effectively controlled by foreign governments. Even if all Trade Unions saw the class struggle as a part of their brief, their overriding concern must always be the best deal for their members. Game theory shows us that when individual players try to maximise their return, the overall result for everyone may well end up far from ideal.

We are entering a period of profound change in the way we work. Despite the many contradictory statements, nobody knows the extent of job losses due to automation, or whether UBI or its equivalent will become essential to maintaining a stable society. The only certainty is that change will come in copious quantities! Trade Unionists, like everyone else, will want to emphasise the continuing requirement for workers and their representatives; others will emphasise the properly managed move to shorter hours, part time work and alternative mechanisms for contributing to society. What remains vital is the concentration on the core of both struggles which is the removal of the unholy cabal of bankers, bosses and landlords who currently run society for their own benefit and their replacement by governments in all countries who are prepared to work democratically with everyone to build something better.

Thank you for the reply. I note your two criteria.

Sadly – and I consider myself to be a socialist (whatever that means!) – your second criterion has often been the one which a number of self proclaimed leftists, gave, as the last hurdle was reached, as the reason for withdrawing their support. What was being proposed, hey claimed, with finger-jabbing raucousness, was a ‘sell-out’ or ‘there were better things to be got’. As one of the soixante-nuit generation, I have met plenty of such people, in my career-long years as a trade union member.

I do not intend to imply that you are insincere in your views. I accept your argument as honest.

However, there are many with pretty strong left wing views who support independence for Scotland, clearly believing that an independent Scotland offers a better chance of socialist or democratic socialist or social democratic policies being enacted.

Personally, I do not think we should be going into any second referendum on a policy of creating a ‘socialist Scotland’. The question we have to face is do we want an independent, democratic, pluralist Scotland, in which we can decide for ourselves how we want to organise our affairs? It is up to socialists in that context to argue their case.

We have seen recently who the donors to Scotland in Union are. They are certainly not the horny-handed sons of toil. But, these are the people from whom Labour in 2014 took ‘the Queen’s shilling’ and with whom Labour members celebrated when the NO result was announced. It was this betrayal which turned many long term Labour voters permanently against Labour in Scotland.

The United Kingdom no longer serves any useful purpose for the great majority of its population. It needs to be ended. The people of Wales and England need to work out what their concepts of Wales and England are.

the coercive and invasive nature of markets;
the unfairness and rising inequality;
the lawlessness and tax evasion of the rich;
the perennial resort of elites to wars of aggression;
the persistence of racism, sexism and homophobia in a world where they’re supposed to have disappeared;
the return of fascism, xenophobia and ethnic nationalism;
the unaccountability of elites; and
the precariousness and often pointlessness of work.

It is uni-dimensional. It merely takes the C19 arguments and updates them; it is about class and money. I’m afraid that the ‘left’ needs to get away from that and look at what ‘citizens’ need to be doing for their future by looking at the planet: what use more work and money if it continues humanity’s unsustainable activity wrt the planet. Climate change is happening with a vengeance and Labour is counting the proverbial deck-chairs. It is not good enough to be mildly sneering about the Greens – Labour can only survive by beating the Greens at their own game.

The amount of the UBI becomes the fee for entering the capitalist, monetary economy. At best, the UBI changes nothing (after setting off an explosion of inflation) So UBI is at best worthless, in reality highly destructive. The real idea is to replace genuine, beneficial welfare state structures with fake ones, while enriching plutocrats. Then when the unworkable bullshit illusion fails, plutocrats and their politicians cry crocodile tears over the plight of the lesser people they just crushed.

1) Democracy. The Scottish people must have the right to self determination. There can be no working class/Socialist unity on any other basis.

2) Is it in the interests of Socialism?

Therefore I cannot but agree with 1) but it doesn’t follow I would campaign for independence.

Scottish Socialists should support the right to self determination, but they should assess the situation according to its impact on the interests of Socialism.

If there were the prospect of a Socialist govt in Scotland, that could act as a beacon ,set an example for the UK and beyond, I would campaign for independence.

But is that the case now? I suppose it depends on your assessment of the SNP.

If Scotland won independence now, there would be an SNP govt. Is the SNP a Socialist Party? Avowedly not. Some are and some are not.

Without Scottish Labour MP’s, a majority for a Corbyn led govt at Westminster (the nearest thing to a beacon we have in prospect at present) would be highly unlikely

To me – and more importantly, to Corbyn – I think that is the decisive thing.

It is not accurate to compare the Scottish Labour Party of today with that under Kezia Dugdale. Brown disgraced the Labour Party when he guaranteed Cameron’s bouncing cheques re Devo Max and Dugdale should have been sacked on the spot for advocating Labour supporters vote Tory to keep the SNP out in the General Election.

As far as I know, that is not the situation today, although I take your point about Unionism in the Labour Party.

As I understand it, Corbyn’s position is that Scotland should have a second referendum if it wishes. Whether Scottish Labour should decide its line and campaign accordingly, is another matter.

That would be my position, let the Scottish people decide. No repeat of the great Unionist Tory/Lab united front with the Tories like last time. There again, it would be impossible for Labour as a whole to not have an opinion, but, unlike last time, Labour should let the Scottish Labour Party campaign as it sees fit.

No repeat of the last time!

I agree that Brexit is a factor, particularly given the votes in Northern Ireland and Scotland in the EU Referendum.

When the EU results were declared I felt then that Brexit and the UK would find their greatest existential threats in Ireland.

The demographics of NI have changed. No longer is there a Protestant majority in the population. Protestants (self declared) remain the largest group, but, I suspect that by the 2021 Census that might have changed. Many residents in the north of Ireland now hold dual citizenship. Immediately after the EU referendum, although he personally was a LEAVER, Mr Ian Paisley Junior, advised his supporters to avail themselves of their right of dual citizenship. The economies on either side of the ‘border’ are so intermingled that it is clear Mrs May and her team have no idea how to solve it. It will probably help break open the crack in the Tories. Either there is a border in the Irish Sea – anathema to the DUP – or there is a customs union and access to the single market. However, rationality has never been in good supply in the north of Ireland, and there is a chance that ‘the Six Counties’ shrink to three, with accompanying ethnic cleansing and a permanent British Army presence.

Although the term Conservative and Unionist Party has been in greater use, we must remember that much of Labour is a Unionist and English colonialist Party. The Labour Party in Scotland were eager to work with the Tories during the Scottish referendum, and, in the subsequent Smith Commission were far stronger opponents of any further empowerment of the Scottish Government than were the Tories. Indeed, many Scottish Labour supporters have far more admiration for Ruth Davidson, than they ever had for Richard Leonard, Kezia Dugdale, Jim Murphy, Johan Lamont, Iain Gray. Having rejoiced with the Tories over the NO vote, I think a fair chunk of Labour voters have realised they are Unionists first and that Ruth Davidson articulates their (small ‘c’) conservatism satisfactorily. There is some evidence of some direct and long lasting switching as well as tactical switching, for example to allow the Tories to regain Eastwood constituency.

I think we are seeing an overt Unionist/BritishEnglish nationalist/anti immigrant/ racist ethos emerging in places and, people like Mr Rees Mogg and several of the recently elected Scottish Tories at Westminster are keen to go along with that. At Holyrood, we have the ‘Queen’s eleven’ Rangers fanaticism of such as Murdo Fraser and Adam Tomkins.

I think some, are, indeed, playing with fire. I am a bit more sanguine than you about violence. It is possible amongst some in Northern Ireland, but I think the majority have enjoyed peace too much to let it go. In Scotland, despite the historic sectarianism – now substantially in decline – in the Central Belt, we did not experience ‘Troubles’ as NI did. So, I do not think we will experience violence. However, I think there will be an increasing polarisation of views: people will, increasingly, have to decide on whether they want to be in the kind of UK Mrs May and her party represent, or whether, to ‘work as if they are in the early days of a better nation’ and vote for Scottish independence.

I agree, there are strains and I do not think there will be a consensus for the kind of nasty unionism that is evolving.

Labour has no real answer.

It is not fanciful to think that within 5 years, due mainly to Brexit, there may be pressure for a united Ireland, independence for Scotland (possibly even Wales), not to mention regional govt.

In these circumstances Unionism is bound to find a new lease of life. Is it just me who has noticed the Tories’ renewed use of The name “Conservative and Unionist Party”?

They are playing with fire! It is no exaggeration to forecast a possible renewal of civil war in Ireland and possibly Scotland too.

The fact that members of the above social category’s material economic resources, class bases, and therefore interests are so diverse and the existing manifestations of their political consciousness have tended to be individualistic, issue and usually identity based, and ultimately quickly and highly politically mutable and short termist and short lived – and very clearly low in any clear socialist and communist orientation (other than a vague, temporary, kitsch solidarity that Mason often mentions) – is no problem for Mason because he argues that (a) it needs to mature politically as a subject – with the help of political parties (in the UK led by Labour) and (b) communism is passé anyway – the ‘argument’ seeming to be that it was never Marx’s goal in any case – which was apparently individual human freedom! Mason’s freedom apparently doesn’t rest on anything as authoritarian, constraining, and in other words naff as a communist societal form! All it needs is the *network*! An example of Mason’s highly idiosyncratic self professed leftist worldview (and don’t get me started on his neo-con, western neo-imperialist like views on foreign policy which frankly I find dangerous and abhorrent! Incidentally the only left wing writers I’ve aware of to publicly call him out on this aspect of his views are the couple from MediaLens. The silence is quite shameful!).

To go back to the problems with this idea of the networked generation/individual Mason gives us very little reason in my opinion to see it/them (as he puts it) as NOT ‘a degenerate offshoot from the proletariat but as an improvement on it’. The material root of Mason’s belief in the inherently emancipatory potential of this category is the ‘network’ which he argues is inherently non-hierarchical and opposed to, indeed incompatible with, ‘hierarchy’. I’m aware that some very good critiques on this subject have already been written including one on this website called ‘Mason’s Postcapitalism – are networks actually part of the problem?’ (see https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/david-beer/masons-postcapitalism-are-networks-actually-part-of-problem ). Beer argues that in fact networks often contain hierarchies and that ‘[d]ecentralization, then, is not necessarily equivalent to empowerment or democratisation.’ It is even worse than this Beer suggests – referring to the work of (real) leftist political theorists like Jodi Dean (and David Hill) – that networks are in fact central to the functioning of neoliberal capitalism not inherently, or maybe even potentially, antithetical. I quote from Beer:

“Jodi Dean is even more negative in her understanding of these decentralised networks. Her argument is that the there is a lot of noise and very little listening going on within social media. She calls this ‘communicative capitalism’. Her point is that the communications we engage with in these networks are all part of the capitalist system of which those networks are a key component. Even where we appear to be resisting, questioning or, as Mason suggests, ‘rebelling’, Dean’s point is that we are merely contributing to the maintenance of communicative capitalism. What we say has little value other than to the system to which we are contributing content. Here the network is not seen to offer any alternatives, it merely serves to reinforce neoliberal capitalism. And then we can add to this David Hill’s recent observation that such communicative capitalism promotes precarity, fragility and exacerbates individualism.

“The question this poses is that if networks are indeed both hierarchical and central to contemporary capitalism, then how do they fit into a vision of postcapitalism? What if, rather than offering opportunities for alternatives to be fostered, these networks are in fact cementing existing social hierarchies? …”

Damn good question!! Any responses or answers??

Thank you for the reply.

The ‘Labour Party’ I am referring to as a potential dodo, is a composite. It contains the branch in Scotland, particularly, the section comprising its MSPs, who are still from the small exclusionary clique which controls many constituency parties. It contains the Blairite MPs at Westminster and their friends in the media and who are particularly hostile to Mr Corbyn. Having failed twice to dislodge him, they are using the antisemitism issue as a third attack, coupling it with his principled (if, in my view, outdated) hostility to the EU. It contains many right across the political spectrum in Labour, who are, at root, English nationalists and completely disinterested in constitutional and electoral change.

The ‘revival’ of the Tories in Scotland is complex. Most of the constituencies which they gained, were, historically, Tory seats and the SNP interregnum in these seats was due, I think to three factors. Firstly, the electors in these seats were genuinely disgusted by the conduct and attitudes of the cadre of MPs such as Nicholas Fairbairn. Secondly, seeing the growing power of Labour in the Scotland of around 20/30 years ago, many Tory voters switched to SNP to keep Labour out. Thirdly, the quality of SNP candidates in these areas, such as Alex Salmon, Angus Robertson, was very good. When the SNP came to power and came pretty close to gaining independence, these voters returned to the Tory fold and, joined by permanent converts from Labour (following the referendum), and tactical voting by LibDem and some Labour voters, with a fair chunk of SNP voters staying at home (the SNP 2017 Westminster campaign was poor) they were able to win back these seats. They probably got a boost from the EU referendum result, because these areas are agricultural and fishing communities and there was hostility to the CAP and the CFP. It is pretty complex!

It is clear in England that there has been substantial recruitment to Labour and Corbyn supporters are in influential positions. This is one of the reasons for the Blairite revolt. In Scotland, Labour has gained members, but is far behind SNP in numbers. In addition, many of the more affluent, higher educated former Labour voters in Scotland are drifting to the Greens. At a Council level, many of the old Labour dinosaurs have retired and the newer councillors are more open minded about alliances – they have to be, since council elections are multimember constituencies elected under STV, and overall majorities are unlikely. Holyrood is also elected by PR, but by a different system, and the SNP overall majority of 2011 was a statistical ‘freak’. The 2016 outcome was no overall majority – SNP just 2 seats short – and more accurately matched the voting patterns. So deals have to be made. At present, Labour at Holyrood still finds this difficult, whereas all the other parties have been able to make policy gains by horse trading. Labour is not being principled; it is motivated by hatred.

To use the term ”market’ to describe the Tory Thatcherite privatisation fraud is a totally unacceptable use of the word or the term.
Shame on you!

This is why mass deselection has not taken place, lets hope the membership is patient long enough to give the rebels a chance for redemption.

It’s clear that the two Bs did great damage to the traditional labour party and it’s supporters, Blair is still one of the most hated men in the UK, the surprise Scottish independence referendum played it’s part well for the Tories (the Tory plan worked well for them then, do you think that this success which helped them win the election by dividing the Scottish labour voters, encouraged the Cameron government to give the EU referendum? And,or the May government to call a general election?) and helped them to almost virtually destroy labours roots in Scotland many years ago, since then and with the new leadership we say they are returning in droves.

Certainly, now that more of the electorate is realising the dangers of the Tory ideology, causing many to live a painful life waiting for their NHS operations and the realisation that most of their money and property that sustained their high standard of living is about to become history because of the Tory Privatisation fraud, there is a real possibility that even traditional Tory voters will abstain at the next ge.

On the international stage, one can only assume things must be getting ten time worse.

The question I have is: how can UBI succeed in these goals when we have inelastic scarcity of a universally necessary resource … like housing! ?

It’s well known that, because of housing shortages, competition between house-hunters will raise prices up to the very limit of affordability.

Surely, after the introduction of a UBI, won’t typical monthly housing costs soon rise by approximately the amount of said UBI, making everybody no better off (except for those who already own the most expensive home they’ll ever have) ?

Therefore could people really attain the option of freedom from full-time work?

If there’s a known answer to this point, please let me know, as I haven’t yet thought of one.

https://antinational.org/en/what-wrong-free-money/

Things are happening on a world scale which the western working class are having little, if any, influence on

The rise of China alone is revolutionising the world. Some will say it is Capitalist, but that is to confuse the form ( market mechanism) with the content (publicly owned land, banks and large scale industry that give China the ability to do what no Capitalist country can do – plan).

Since the Deng reforms from 1978, China has pulled more people out of absolute poverty, more quickly, than anything that preceded it. Ditto with the rate of growth of the economy.

So what I am saying is there have been advances towards Socialism over the past 15 years or so, but not in the West. This is hardly surprising as the whole rationale, from the point of view of the Capitalists, of Social Democracy, was to buy off sufficient numbers of the upper strata of the working class to buy relative social peace at home.

2007/8 has made this a very difficult project – hence ‘centrist’ Social Democratic parties across Western Europe that have given up trying to buy off the upper sections of the working class have faced electoral rout.

At the most fundamental level what use to the workers (or networked individuals) is Social Democracy if it can’t or won’t deliver reforms for the workers?

This is where Corbynism in Britain comes in.

First the perspective has to be clear. Corbyn doesn’t have, nor will have, the numbers to form a radical left Socialist govt. This is just a fact. He couldn’t fill the cabinet posts on that line, let alone command a majority in Parliament.

What he CAN do – and would be a huge step forward from the shit of the last 40 years – is modernise Britain by pursuing his policy of public led investment and some public ownership of the natural monopolies, modernise Britain’s view of its place in the World away from being the 51st state of the USA, and unite people around a modern view of the UK which celebrates diversity.

Were Labour to have some success along those lines, probably needing two terms, there might then be a ‘market’ for trying a more radical program. For now, I will be delighted if we can get a Corbyn led govt in!!

Independent management accreditation is required to achieve this

Thank you

There is a great deal with which I agree.

Where I have concerns is his contention that the solution for re-empowerment for the increasing number of disempowered people lies within the Labour Party. Perhaps he has written this article for the Labour Party.

As he indicates, and has recognised on a number of previous occasions, the Labour Party is, itself, a problem. For someone like me – born into the industrial working class, well-educated and having held a number of high level professional positions, now retired, and living in Scotland – the Labour Party in Scotland is a serious impediment to progress. I was a trade unionist, I was a member of the Labour Party and had, until the advent of the current century, voted in every possible election for the Labour Party. But, in the 1990s, with the advent of ‘new’ Labour, I became increasingly uneasy about the way in which Labour and its policies were developing. Like many, Iraq was for me a significant error, which made me recognise explicitly the Thatcherite nature of the policies it was enacting. The farcical premiership of the ridiculous Bodger Broon and the defence of his class by ‘Lord’ Darling, released the bitterness lurking in the destroyed communities of industrial England. These communities contain people whose histories are much the same as mine and whose humanity and decency match my own concepts. But, for them ‘new’ Labour destroyed hope. At least, in Scotland we had the option of an alternative of creating an independent country: in the Greens and in the SNP we had parties who are more in harmony with the kind of ideas Mr Mason has set out. The creativity of the campaigns since 2009 has been exhilarating!

The conduct of the Labour Party in Scotland during this period was appalling and continues to be, mainly within the deadwood inhabiting its benches in Holyrood. It is a classic example of an organisation that has undergone goal displacement or ‘producer capture’ – the Labour Party existed for the people who considered themselves to be the Labour Party. As Mr Gerry Hassan demonstrated in his book, ‘The Strange Death of Labour Scotland”, it had become a small, excluding clique, and, despite the election of Mr Leonard as leader, it continues to be, particularly in Holyrood and in some local parties.

The point I am trying to make is that ‘Labour’ is reified by these members – Labour is they/they are Labour. So, if anyone wishes to join Labour they have to submit to what ‘those-who-define-Labour’ deem it to be. These newcomers have to comply. This is quite contrary to what Mr Mason is proposing – that the people whom he is asking to join the Labour Party and use it as a vehicle for empowerment determine what the Labour Party become, determine what its policies are, and determine how it will campaign.

The Blairites, whom he rightly excoriates, are determined this will not happen, but so too are the cliques which are in with the bricks of many local parties. For many of the latter ‘Labour is they’ and it can only be what they want it to be. They are as likely to destroy Labour as the Blairites are.

Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have many views with which I and, probably, ‘the 100 000 old men in the west of Scotland’ (as A former Labour Lord Provost of Glasgow sneering condemned those of us who voted YES in 2014), actually agree with. But, both are creatures of the Labour Party: when pushed their loyalty is to it rather than the re-empowerment of the majority of the population. When Jeremy Corbyn in his decent way in the early days of his leadership indicated a relaxed attitude towards ideas of independence in Scotland, the troglodytes in the Scottish party went berserk. Now, he sounds pretty much like Mrs May with regard to any power outwith London/Westminster.

I think that social media has unleashed new ways of communicating and campaigning in which movements for change have developed and can develop. Having had the experience of the referendum in Scotland and the seen the sheer enthusiasm of so many young (and not so young) people, I am a bit optimistic. I think Brexit will result in substantial change (and I think that Ireland will be the spark), I think that the sheer nastiness of Mrs May’s government and I think that the rent-seeking management of the economy will all produce sufficient pressures that change will come. I do not think that the current Labour Party can withstand it. It might well become like the dodo.

You were, perhaps, generously, extending the principle of charity towards the Times leader published in February, by describing it as a ‘misunderstanding’. I would say, they understood very well and saw the threat to the venal rent-seeking of their paymasters. To head this off, they began circulating the myth of ‘land grabs’ to frighten those who have been struggling with inflated house prices and mortgage payments (albeit these are at ridiculously low interest rates).

The current land regulations were written on behalf of the wealthy landowning class (i.e. those who own vast chunks of Westminster, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Yorkshire, Merseyside, Antrim, etc.) and were designed to facilitate the transfer of public money to the private sector and to create a rigged market.

The attempt to bankrupt Mr Andy Wightman MSP is an example of the nastiness to which they will resort.

At present, in Scotland, at Holyrood, with the SNP, Greens, and to various extents, Labour and Lib Dems there is a significant Parliamentary majority in favour of some kind of land reform. I think that the Parliamentarians are still rather ‘tim’rous beasties’ in their approach. Part of the problem is the lack of an up-to-date land register which would enable public authorities to identify who owners are. Not only is the register incomplete, it is also difficult to follow the dense web of ownership links which are designed specifically to obfuscate.

However, as you indicate, with your generous praise of the Times for seemingly changing its stance with regard to land reform, even many within the Conservatives are realising that the current system of land ownership is creating serious problems which impinges not just on the ‘lumpen proletariat’ but also on the so called ‘aspiring middle classes’ and on the fairly well-heeled middle classes who, by comparison to the super-rich, are simply larger specks of grit on the floor of the living rooms in which these modern Bourbons now live.

While it is welcome that they have ‘seen the light’, I think we should also ‘sup with a long spoon’ in our dealings with them.

The Times and other of the ‘papers of record’ are pretty poor shadows of what they once were, but compared to the shoddy lie sheets that The Herald and Scotsman have become, there are still a few sparks of independent thought. However, a few of these (often former student “revolutionaries”) journalists are still keen to sustain the comfortable niches which they have created for themselves.

http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2018/04/23/ipprs-new-macroeconomic-report/

“IPPR is right to tackle macro. And they have got People’s QE right. But
social and economic justice requires that we break the hegemony that has
created the injustice we are suffering. This report does not do that.
As such it fails in its goal. I hope it might be revised.”

Re the point that governments (i.e. politicians) are clueless when it comes to getting the deficit right (i.e. suffering from deficit bias or surplus bias, as pointed out in the above article) the solution is to remove the decision as to how large the deficit should be from politicians, as suggested by Positive Money and others at the link below, while politicians retain the right to take clearly POLITICAL decisions, like what % of GDP goes to public spending and how that is split between education, defence, etc.

http://b.3cdn.net/nefoundation/3a4f0c195967cb202b_p2m6beqpy.pdf

That Positive Money work, incidentally, also avoids the above bias towards investment spending in a recession: that is politicians are free to spend stimulus money any way they want. If they opt for very big gyrations in investment spending, with resulting ineffeciences, they’d likely be voted out of office.

Probably an old Marxist dinosaur as George Lukacs should be read again.

One quibble. The hammer line is often spoken as “if you ARE a hammer everything looks like a nail.”

Lemmings like George Selgin (who just testified before Congress) say:

“None of this would matter if the Fed acted as an efficient savings-investment intermediary, as commercial banks are able to do, at least in principle.” And: “This is nonsense, Spencer. It amounts to saying that there is no such things
as ‘financial intermediation,’ for what you claim never happens is precisely what that expression refers to.”

Or take Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator at the Financial Times writing in his book:

“Charles Goodhart of the London School of Economics, doyen of British analysts of finance, responds to such suggestions as follows:

A problem with proposals of this kind is that they run counter to the revealed preferences of savers for financial products that are both liquid and safe, and of borrowers for loans that do not have to be repaid until some known future distant date. It is one of the main functions of financial institutions to intermediate between the desires of savers and borrowers, i.e., to create financial mismatch, to make such a function illegal seems draconian.”

But there are important distinctions for credit. Both banks and non-banks create credit. One expands both the volume and turnover of new money (which is inflationary). The other matches savings with investment (which is non-inflationary, completing the circuit income velocity of funds). However, only investment in real things produces a contribution to both labor and materials, e.g. housing.

Savings never equals investment. Take the “Marshmallow Test”: (1) banks create new money (macro-economics), and incongruously (2) banks loan out the savings that are placed with them (micro-economics).

Thus, all DFI held savings are lost to both consumption and investment, indeed to any type of payment or expenditure. An increase in the proportion of time/savings accounts within the payment’s system destroys money velocity. This is the sole source of both stagflation and secular strangulation. The remuneration of IBDDs exacerbates this disequilibria.

Outside money properties (Central Bank liabilities) aren’t synonymous with inside money properties (DFI, deposit taking, money creating, financial institutions’ liabilities).

IBDDs, interbank demand deposits (a DFI earning asset after Oct. 6, 2018), are not just an asset swap. IBDD’s are assets defined by economists to be outside-of-the properties typically assigned to the money aggregates. IBDD’s are not a medium of exchange. They do not circulate outside of the inter-bank market. They do not require Basel regulatory capital. They are not subject to reserve requirements. In their present state, IOeR’s are a *Romulan cloaking* device, a quasi-tiering of DFI vs. NBFI available credit, a pseudo-credit control device.

Paradoxically, IBDDs are not a member bank’s tax (as the McCarthyites and American Bankers Association speciously hype). They are “Manna from Heaven”, digitally manufactured ex-nihilo, cost-less to, and rained on, the
payment’s system — by Simon Potter’s Market Group “trading desk” (money laundered helicopter drops, ergo: sterilized debt monetization).

The FRB-NY trading desk’s open market operations, its “smoke and mirrors” (where the 12 District Reserve Bank “smoothing” procedures were consolidated forming our effective Centralized bank in 1933), has flip-flopped – inverting from a tight money policy to a semi-percolating one (just prior to the 3rd seasonal inflection point).

Digressing note1: Dis-intermediation for the commercial banks ended with the numerous reforms in the Glass–Steagall Act; also ending: “pushing on a string” as only applied prior to the nominal legal adherence to the
fallacious “Real Bills Doctrine” when terminated in 1932 – due to a paucity of eligible (hopelessly impaired), commercial and agricultural paper for the 12 District Reserve bank’s discounting purposes.

The prior deceleration in money flows, in its proxy for 1st qr. R-gDp, has abruptly bottomed with the 2nd qtr. R-gDp currently appears to have flat lined (but money growth and velocity have at the same time accelerated), coinciding with the trough in “real-time gross settlements”, oscillating paycheck to paycheck systematic rotation (which reflects the Treasury’s TT&L receipts, prior to its re-depositing payments at one of its master accounts, its General Fund
Account, just before making Congressional outlays) as postponed to bank squaring day, April 11th (a surreptitious: on-again, off-again, accounting trick, the injection and draining of IBDDs).

Stephen Goldfeld labeled this type of: “instability in the demand for money function” (Keynes’ liquidity preference curve) as a “case of the missing money”, whereas it was simply related to, e.g., the “monetization” of commercial bank time deposits (ending gate-keeping restrictions), the daily compounding of interest, etc., all of which occurred within the payment’s system. It supposedly “presented a serious challenge to the usefulness of the money demand function as a tool for understanding how monetary policy affects aggregate economic activity.”

This misdirection charged that “advances in computer technology caused the payments mechanism and cash management techniques to undergo rapid changes after 1974. In addition, many new financial instruments (e.g.,
proliferation in the use of repurchase agreements) emerged and have grown in importance. This has led some researchers to suspect that the rapid pace of financial innovation since 1974 has meant that the conventional definitions of the money supply no longer apply. They searched for a stable money demand function by actually looking directly for the missing money; that is, they looked for financial instruments that have been incorrectly left out of the definition of money used in the money demand function.”

“Conventional” money demand functions over-predicted money demand in the middle and late 1970s; and under-predicted velocity since 1981, and not just (PY/M), or income velocity, Vi, but Irving Fisher’s transactions velocity of
circulation, Vt. Thereby M2 was substituted for M1. However, “broad money” substitute measures (vs. “narrow money” or “near money”), or highly liquid assets, “additional variables which do not accurately measure the opportunity cost of holding money”, conflate STOCK with FLOW.

The rapid pace of financial innovation was “validated” by monetary policy, and déjà vu, predictably precipitated
the GFC. Economists haven’t found their “missing money”, viz., “the search for a stable money demand function goes on”.

“The recent instability of the money demand function calls into question whether our theories and empirical analyses are adequate. It also has important implications for the way monetary policy should be conducted because it casts doubt on the usefulness of the money demand function as a tool to provide guidance to policymakers. In particular, because the money demand function has become unstable, velocity is now harder to predict, setting rigid money supply targets in order to control aggregate spending in the economy may not be an effective way to conduct
monetary policy.” SEE: “Empirical Evidence on the Demand for Money”, Chapter 19

Note2 aside: The Treasury’s General Fund account has increasingly become a policy lever. Whereas FED-wire transactions were once uncorrelated nettings / settlements prior to the GFC, they have become increasingly an economic modeling variable, a plug in “missing money”.

Note3 aside: It is inaccurate (for the cataloguer of economic statistics) to exclude the Treasury’s General Fund Account from the assets included in M1 (with the exception of WWII). No one has established any unique price effect
of federal outlays, as compared to state and local government outlays, or expenditures by the private sector. Of course, the shifting of funds to and out of the Federal Reserve banks has a dollar for dollar effect on member bank reserves, but that is another problem that can be, and is dealt with through open market operations.

M3 combines money with liquid assets. Liquid assets don’t meet the all the functions of money, such as (1) a medium of exchange, (2) store of value, (3) unit of account, (4) standard of value.

A liquid asset generally means that money has already been spent/invested. It represents a transfer of ownership of existing money within the payment’s system, conflating stock with flow.

Thus, all DFI held savings are lost to both consumption and investment, indeed to any type of payment or expenditure. An increase in the proportion of time/savings accounts within the payment’s system destroys money velocity. This is the sole source of both stagflation and secular strangulation. The remuneration of IBDDs exacerbates this disequilibria.

“Why Genetically Engineered Foods Are Scientifically Unacceptable and Uniquely Unsustainable – and How Their Extraordinary Risks Have Been Systematically Misrepresented. American lawyer Steven Druker will launch his new book, Altered Genes, Twisted Truth: How the Venture to Genetically Engineer our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the Public.”

Please see link:
https://agroecology-appg.org/event/appg-meeting-the-science-of-genetically-engineered-foods/ March 4 2015.
https://beyond-gm.org/altered-genes-twisted-truth-media-resources/

Beyond GM facilitated the press launch of the book “Altered Genes, Twisted Truth” in London on March 4 2015.

“APPG Agroecology Meeting: The Science of Genetically Engineered Foods
Event Navigation
Room: Committee Room 2
Chair: Countess of Mar

Why Genetically Engineered Foods Are Scientifically Unacceptable and Uniquely Unsustainable – and How Their Extraordinary Risks Have Been Systematically Misrepresented
American lawyer Steven Druker will launch his new book, Altered Genes, Twisted Truth: How the Venture to Genetically Engineer our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the Public.

Meeting Aim
Steven Druker is an American public interest attorney who initiated a lawsuit against the US Food and Drug Administration that forced it to divulge its files on genetically engineered foods. This revealed that the agency had covered up the extensive warnings of its own scientists about the unusual risks, lied about the facts, and then ushered these products onto the market in violation of explicit mandates of federal food safety law.

His new book, Altered Genes, Twisted Truth: How the Venture to Genetically Engineer our Food Has Subverted, Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the Public, is being released during March with a foreword by Jane Goodall hailing it as “without doubt one of the most important books of the last 50 years.” It has also received high praise from several other scientists. For instance, the molecular biologist David Schubert, a Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, has called it “incisive, insightful, and truly outstanding”; and Joseph Cummins, Professor Emeritus of Genetics at Western University in Ontario, has termed it “a landmark” that should be required reading in every university biology course.

Mr. Druker will present some of the major points established by his book and explain why, from the standpoints of both biological science and computer science, genetically engineered foods are inherently and unacceptably risky. He will also reveal how their survival has been crucially dependent on the protracted misrepresentations of the United States government and of eminent institutions such as the US National Academy of Sciences and the UK’s Royal Society – which renders them ethically unsustainable, because they cannot endure an honest airing of the facts.

Speaker
Steven M. Druker, J.D. Executive Director, Alliance for Bio-Integrity

Steven Druker is an American public interest attorney who initiated a lawsuit against the US Food and Drug Administration that forced it to divulge its files on genetically engineered foods. This revealed that the agency had covered up the extensive warnings of its own scientists about the unusual risks, lied about the facts, and then ushered these products onto the market in violation of explicit mandates of federal food safety law.”

Some readers of this article might be interested in GM Freeze’s campaigns and important information on Brexit.
The Campaigns are:
“Don’t Hide What’s Inside”
“Safeguard our Farms”

Important not to forget Gene Editing because of Gove.
Here is the GM Freeze link, please note the important reports, papers and briefings that maybe of use when responding to the consultation referred to in the article (the deadline is 8 May 2018) or when writing to other policy makers including academic policy makers such as The Royal Society*.
https://www.gmfreeze.org/why-freeze/new-gm-techniques/
*https://www.soilassociation.org/news/2016/may/soil-association-response-to-gm-plants-questions-and-answers-the-royal-society/
Time is running out.

Clicking on this link leads to a list of 25 organisations who are concerned but there will be many more (and scientists) here in the UK and outside the UK.
https://www.gmfreeze.org/publications/defra-multi-agency-response-to-gm-camelina-trial-18-r8-01/

Brexit
https://www.gmfreeze.org/brexit/
“The UK’s departure from the European Union could bring GM crops to our fields and our food. Find out why and what you can do to stop it.”
Some feel that the EU regulations although providing some safeguards are not in fact strong enough. It’s a complex (changing) situation which more people need to understand but it takes time to absorb……a constant learning curve…. but time is running out!

Pesticides
Please consider the issues raised by the UK Pesticides Campaign if responding to the consultation and please consider signing the petition. Thank you.
https://www.change.org/p/the-prime-minister-rt-hon-theresa-may-mp-ban-all-crop-spraying-of-poisonous-pesticides-near-our-homes-schools-and-playgrounds
Please write to policy makers regarding adequate regulation for rural residents….Gove must not sweep this under the carpet.
Time is running out.

Agroecology
Please ignore the sensational “headline” and consider the arguments. Thank you.
https://agroecology-appg.org/event/appg-meeting-the-science-of-genetically-engineered-foods/
Time is running out.**

**https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/feb/17/revealed-us-uk-rightwing-thinktanks-talks-to-ditch-eu-safety-checks
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/31/legatum-libertarian-free-trade-brexit-government-liam-fox-doward-whitehall?
https://www.tradingstandards.uk/news-policy/brexit/a-brexit-think-tank-will-consider-the-details
https://www.greenhousethinktank.org/precautionary-principle.html
https://agroecology-appg.org/ourwork/appg-briefing-on-the-precautionary-principle-lords-and-the-eu-withdrawal-bill/
http://www.etcgroup.org/

This is important because I feel some of the Environmental groups and “Food and Farming” groups are not picking up on ALL of these issues, partly perhaps because of the complexity and layer upon layer of related factors including geopolitics and understanding why scientists disagree (funding and over specialisation?? (2012 https://www.cfgn.org.uk/2012/10/agri-industry-meets-ministers-to-push-for-return-of-gm-crops-to-britain/).
Consumers will therefore have to take some of the responsibility for their future food/environmental choices and those of their children.
https://www.writetothem.com/

What we have is government (“governance”) by the owners of the transnational corporations. To produce a different outcome, government has to be recaptured by national political governments who answer to voters; rather than answer to shareholders.

Neoliberalism – stripped of its cloaking ideology of “free markets” – is neo-feudal rule by owners of the corporate oligopolies that own the productive economy (industry); the commercial economy (global transportation and buying-selling of goods); and the money system (commercial banks who create the payments money in the form of bank deposits; and the globally-integrated central-commercial banking system that operates the payments system).

The first step toward political government regaining some governing power, is for governments to gain some power of money issuance. At present, governments issue interest-bearing bond debts and sell them to primary dealer commercial banks who create new spendable bank deposit account balances (bank deposits – which is our main form of money) in the government’s commercial bank deposit accounts to “pay for” the banks’ purchases of the government’s bond debts, which are the banks’ interest-earning assets.

If governments gain some power over money issuance, then all socially and economically beneficial reforms will be possible. As long as the commercial banks’ monopoly of money supply issuance — as repayable loans of bank deposits to private sector loan account debtors and to government bond debtors — stands: no beneficial reforms will be “affordable”.

In the tradition of monetary system reformers since Irving Fisher, I described how this could be done in a book I just published on Amazon: The Money Problem and How to Fix It.

In other respects, this interview consists of a stream of correct facts without a credible story linking them together. I hesitate to propound a “crisis of advanced capitalism”, but it is plausible. When the value of money (as measured by interest earned on deposit accounts) is stuck near zero for a decade, and governments refuse to spend money on demand management either because they cannot raise it, or ideologically refuse to countenance the idea (e.g. Germany), one wonders how developed countries will recover. The obvious answer is that they will not, remaining content to reside in zero-growth, low-pay and high income/wealth inequality.

In this general context, Brexit has nothing to offer and a lot to lose. Bootle fails to address either of these issues. If this is the best economist that Brexiteers have on their team, then the UK is well and truly fucked.

Do you have any evidence to support this statement?

There has been a huge number of corporation tax anti-avoidance measures introduced in the UK (and indeed worldwide as part of the OECD BEPS Actions) which has made a real impact on base erosion and profit shifting in the corporate world – the most significant of which have been introduced in the last year or two. I believe these anti avoidance measures are the main reason why UK corporation tax receipts have risen so sharply despite the drop in headline corporation tax rates.

To name but a few:
– BEPS Action 2 anti-hybrid arrangements
– BEPS Action 4 interest restrictions
– Restriction on the utilisation of carry forward losses
– Other loss restrictions eg in corporate partnerships, sideways loss relief, donations, pre-entry conditions etc
– Various anti-avoidance on specific financial arrangements and changes to the loan relationship rules
– Targeted CFC anti-avoidance rules
– Diverted profits tax
– Published tax strategy – which had brought tax compliance and tax risk squarely into the boardroom. I have seen a genuine shift in the UK corporate boardroom on approach to tax risk. (this probably applies to Europe too although I feel the US is still lagging way behind)

From an avoidance perspective I believe a wide and shallow tax base is far better than narrow and high tax base as corporate decisions usually come down to a cost/benefit analysis.

From a quick bit of research on HMRC statistics show corporation tax receipts in 05/06 as £42,355m and y/e Feb 2018 (latest published) of £54,556m.

Or to put it in another way corporation tax receipts have increased by 28.8% from 2005 to 2017.

Statistics haven’t been this dodgy since someone wrote £350m on a red bus. What were you thinking Grace.

Much as I
applaud the Single Tax idea of Henry George for having great ethical principles
at heart, I find that its introduction is simply not practical. Apart from use
of the word “Tax”, which in any case no politician wants to propose, we must
eliminate the offense that our proposals for LVT causes to landlords. Obviously
they will strongly oppose the proposal for having to pay a new tax (or anything
else we might like to call it). The problem then is not to have to fight them,
nor try to convince them on moral grounds, but how to make them want to pay for
land access rights or revenues.

To achieve this there should be introduced a gradual change in the way that land is being
owned, which should be introduced by new laws. Whenever a site or prospect of
land is being offered for sale (possibly with its buildings, etc.,) and
whenever ownership of such a site is being transferred between family members
(and on which an inheritance-tax would normally be paid), the change is that
government automatically buys the land at its current normal nominal price.
This is done simultaneously when the buildings are sold in the usual way or
their ownership is being transferred. (The courts shall be empowered to settle
the land-value, if/when doubt is expressed–land-value maps being publicly
accessible.)

The previous landlords or their heirs will no longer have any political objection, since the
money from the land sale will greatly exceed the subsequent annual lease-fee
(see below) for access rights to this land. This change will also eliminate the
(hated) inheritance-tax. It is imagined that this process of land sales and
governmental purchases will be spread over at least 40 years.

Immediately when the site belongs to the government, this land must be offered for lease to
the new or bequeathed owner of any buildings thereon. The lease-fee should be
set according to normal amounts of rent for other similar sites, (and again the
courts should decide when there is disagreement.) The above “first refusal” for
this leasing offer is most necessary, because any buildings of practical use
and value on the site, will still be sold or bequeathed as items of durable
capital goods, as before.

However,access to the site and its buildings should be denied by the government until
the site is leased by someone who can then (and normally would) have purchased
(or been given) the building in the usual way. All taxes that are applied to
subsequent building developments should be abolished at this time.

A new owner would acquire the building property more cheaply than before, because it is now
without the price of the land under and around it. Such a buyer can then give
for hire (rent-out) any building for access and use, as if it were any other
item of durable capital goods. In the unlikely event of the leaser not owning
the buildings, his/her incoming land rent (from the building owner), shall not
exceed the out-going lease-fees by more than 2% (say). Should nobody initially
lease the site and its buildings (if any), because of there being no demand for
their use, the buildings may be pulled down by the next (eventual) leaser, who
will be free to re-develop the site (and would naturally want to do so).

The government should borrow the money for site purchase, or can even offer
national redeemable bonds to raise money for it. As the lease money begins to
flow to the government, it uses this to:

a) repay part of its loan for site purchase, which may be extended,

b) purchase more sites as and when they become available,

c) cover the interest on the loan and on the new bonds and their eventual redemption, and
eventually

d) reduce other kinds of taxation.

It will beappreciated that over the long term the lease fees are equivalent to LVT, but
due to the greed of landlords (who behave as if they were capitalists), their
income from land sales will satisfy them better than their being taxed.
Eventually nearly all the land would then be leased from the government.

Nationally leased land, in countries like Hong Kong, is close to 100%. This approach is
known to be most successful, for the rate of growth of prosperity. Also when
the previous landlords have more money to spend, most of it will be invested in
durable capital goods, making production costs lower as obsolescent durable
items are more easily replaced and so the national prosperity will grow also
from the government’s investment in land values.

This proposal is not land nationalization (at least no more than what currently
applies), since no additional regulations are placed on how the land is to be
used.

Because the selling of land is a natural process which is (if anything) encouraged by the
land returning to public benefit, the resulting lower priced buildings will
become more easy to sell and this will not place such a limitation on their
owners who wish to better develop the sites.

A well argued contribution. I should like to suggest one addition. After “redistribution of wealth” add “and power”.

Story 2 isn’t unfamiliar. Story 1 can work so long as it is closely identified with the policies of the last 8 years. The object must be to have voters constantly referring back to the frame of a sabotaged economy. Whenever they hear of Brexit, social housing, NHS crises, defense cuts, child care, homelessness, police numbers & crime, their frustrations should return to the system responsible.

Fortunately, the profligacy myth is well past its sale by date. It doesn’t seem credible if the economy stagnates as is expected, and the Tories force themselves to raise spending (for the benefit of the few), which is what Philip Hammond now intones.

Besides which, localised energy using renewables ISN’T green. It would entail building masses more storage facilities, interconnectors, etc, etc. to make it work.

A far better option is to use ‘monolithic’ nuclear, with which France decarbonised its grid more than a quarter of a century ago in a little over a decade and a half.

But don’t let considerations such as the actual facts of physics and engineering get in the way of this happy-clappy nonsense.

The way history is uncannily echoing the 20th C these days perhaps ‘new’ social democrats might sadly once again have the opportunity to help lead the mass of people into the slaughterhouse, betray socialist insurrectionaries, and participate passively or actively in the return of extreme, non-democratic right wing regimes. Why do we never learn?

However, I think that the words ‘populist/populism’ could benefit from a bit of analysis by self-proclaimed ‘progressives’as to why such ‘populist’ policies are ‘popular’. I think that a fair number of the left ‘thinkers’ are intellectually arrogant and, at best, condescending towards people who are attracted by so-called ‘populist’ ideas.

Separately, Mr Mason refers to a ‘motley tribal alliance’ as possibly the way forward in putting in place something to replace neoliberalism. I think the language is perhaps self-defeatingly disparaging. We do need a union of groups coming from the various ‘issues’ which he identified – feminist, ecologist, cosmopolitan nationalist etc.

The big stumbling block is the predominant tribalism of the Labour Party. Labour members still see themselves as the only way to ‘nirvana’ and that all other parties should ‘come to their senses’ and join Labour and they might well get some of the things they are hoping for. This was the bombast behind Mr Owen Jones recent admonition/order to the Green party. It was on show at this weekends Scottish Labour Party Conference (which could not even spell Keir Hardie’s name correctly). Messrs Corbyn and McDonnell are tribalist to the marrow.

Until Labour can examine itself and hold out the hand of comradeship to anyone other than the Tories (you think I am joking? Look at Labour’s best friends during the Scottish referendum. Where did all those votes that elected Tory MSPs and MPs come from?) and recognise that these parties have sincere and valid lines of argument the better. Sadly, I think that Mrs May will support independence for Scotland, Wales and the reunification of Ireland before Labour’s tribal arrogance will subside.

Improvements in workplace rights and the return of public services to public control are welcome in the short term. As human workers are replaced by robots and control of many activities, including those same public services, are ceded to AIs what will have been gained? If we look at Amazon and the fuss about working conditions there, we should realise that the model used by Amazon in their warehouses is perfectly good, it is just designed for robots, not humans. Because Amazon, like most companies, is controlled by money people, they see that for the moment human workers are still cheaper than robots, so they employ humans as robots. The solution will come soon, not by improving conditions for the humans but by replacing them by the robots for whom the system was designed.

The way that the elite will maintain their position in the future will be by their control of technology and information and, as always, by the fragmentation of opposition. We see this happening already as net neutrality disappears and our personal information becomes someone else’s marketable property. UBI, or some equivalent, is a fine idea that could help promote equality but is most likely to be introduced as a means of maintaining a docile population of consumers. We will not see any major change without a really radical redistribution of wealth and the use of technology to ensure that it becomes impossible for new elites to form. There will still be plenty of scope for enterprise and entrepreneurs. It may well be that Elon Musk is the best person to send spaceships to Mars, but it should be as the head of a public body with public oversight and because he proves himself as the most suitable candidate, not because he had a good idea and took our money by overcharging for services in order to spend at his whim with no oversight or control.

If we want to be able to change our countries, we must find ways to help find solution to this crisis, help solve the environmental crisis set off by global warming in these countries, promote effectively a more just political and economical system, appease conflicts… The task is immense and I wish I had an idea how to begin it, but I don’t. I’m not supporting any specific approach in particular, and I totally
agree that international bodies, dominated by national politics
determined, as of today, by special interests and a neoliberal mindset,
are probably not the right tools to begin the job. All I know is that any collective reflection on how to change politics in our countries should include also these aspects, otherwise it’s doomed to fail.

I think you are supporting an ‘internationalist’ approach, which requires strengthening bodies like the UN and the many ‘third sector’ organisations through which they undertake much of their work. It also means making these bodies much more transparent, accountable and democratic.

But it also means dealing with the freebooting nature of many of the large and powerful nations, like the US at present and like the UK and France in earlier eras.

However, the authority to do that derives from the politics of individual states, which in many cases are the preserve of a few, such as the financial sector of the City of London – an international, indeed, stateless, confederation, if ever there was one. This requires the greater redistribution of power throughout each individual country, embodying the principle of subsidiarity.

So, as I indicated in my first post, I think that any policies from social democratic parties (perhaps, including Labour) have to put political and constitutional reform at the heart of a range of policies.

As he spends a good part of the article criticising those who say just that, that would be a curious conclusion. I certainly cannot see anything in the article which suggests what you say. And I certainly don’t see him suggesting curtailing freedom of movement as you suggest. Indeed, it is not clear that Corbyn did that in his Dundee speech either. In fact, nothing about Labour’s position on freedom of movement and the single market is clear – but that is outwith the scope of this article.

Interesting to se this article appear at the same time as Corbyn’s speech to the Scottish Labour Party conference yesterday. Both appear to be pulling back from the internationalist solidarity of the left Labour movement of the past 50 years. Mason seems to be arguing that the only way to defeat the racist, protectionist right is to give ground to them by this “limited reassertion of national economic sovereignty”. Markets free from the chains of protectionism and embracing the free movement of labour is the best way to redistribute wealth from the privileged to the poor. This is not limited to national economies but it is the best path to tackling international inequality and poverty. A revealing quote from Corbyn’s Scottish Labour conference speech is: “Theresa May’s only clear priority … seemed to be to tie the UK permanently to EU rules, which are used to drive privatisation and block support for British industry”. By “Tying the UK to EU rules” and “supporting British industry”, I presume he is talking about national protectionism and subsidising the industries that provide the union base that support the Labour Party. In his speech, Corbyn claimed: “We cannot be held back inside or outside the EU from taking the steps we need to develop and invest in cutting edge industries and local business to stop the tide of privatisation and outsourcing” “Or from preventing employers being able to import cheap agency labour [immigrants] , to undercut existing pay and conditions in the name of free market orthodoxy”. This blaming of immigrants rather than focusing on the corrupt companies who exploit that labour with the full support of the establishment parties (including Labour), is straight from the book of Farage and Trump. It would have been applauded at any UKIP conference. Corbyn and McDonnell have said on a number of occasions that they want out of the Customs Union and the Single Market to allow them to begin to subsidise UK industry, again. Their natural instinct is of protectionism and the hardest of Brexits.

This is the final struggle
Let us group together, and tomorrow
The Internationale
Will be the human race.

As an afterthought, the word “populism” has been twisted into a pejorative, now used by the neoliberals to describe popularity amongst the working classes. If you mean fascism, racism, nazism, sexism or conservatism, then don’t be afraid to use the words. The elites, particularly the Westminster establishment are corrupt, stating this does not make you “populist”, neither does criticising the billionaire media owners or the state broadcaster, the BBC.

Despite its failure for so many, the mainstream media substantially pump out the same message. In opinion polls, the Tories are still neck and neck with Labour and, a fair tranche of Labour MPs are still in the neoliberal camp.

Undoubtedly, neoliberalism has failed the majority and wrought havoc on the environment, but, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists are still alive.

Yes. That’s crucial, Alasdair. The strategy of the neoliberal project has been to irreversibly undermine democracy in favour of the market. We need to push back in the opposite direction – only harder.

I have read this only once, and will revisit it on several occasions, both to deepen my own comprehension of the arguments (whether I agree, will follow that!) and in response to the comments of other posters, which, for the last essay was constructive.

Two things from this first reading:

1. The need to strengthen government and the rule of law: the neoliberals mounted a strong attack on the state and have been quite successful in reducing its power to bring them under control in the interests of the majority. Given the growth of private security firms and the propensity of the ‘right’ (this is a shorthand, and an inadequate one) to violence, it is important that the governmental authorities (national and local) have sufficiently powerful, but civic controlled police and armed forces.

2. The need to devolve power to localities within nation states and to make democracy more participative and transparent. As someone who supports independence for Scotland, one of my strongest reasons for that is to have the powers in the hands of those of us who live in Scotland (irrespective of place of origin, gender, race, religious belief, etc – Alex Salmond’s ‘civic nationalism’) to make decisions which best suit the local conditions within an international context. Even if Scotland were not to become independent – perish the thought! – nor Ireland to be reunited and Wales to make its own decision, I think that Labour has to develop constitutional policies which legally and irreversibly (i.e. only with non-coerced agreement) devolve power to local levels. It has to facilitate the emergence of a generous and humane concept of ‘England’ and how that England is to be governed in relationship with the other three nations.

It is really important that the way 97% of money is created by the
private banks creating debt is widely understood. Thus thee banks have
an incentive to encourage personal borrowing. That creates calamity when
interest rates rise. And quantitative easing is useless if it simply
gives money to the banks. PFI is discredited as a costly device used to
avoid government borrowing. Sovereign money as proposed by Positive
Money is needed for much needed investment in transport infrastructure,
new hospitals and schools without borrowing.

Thank you for your prompt response and for the link which you have supplied.

My point was, as you appear to have accepted in your final paragraph, that the soundbite that ‘governments are not god at picking winners’ is just a soundbite with a tangential relationship with reality.

What you are deploying in the first paragraph is a false dichotomy. You are implying that there are only two options ‘getting everything right’ or ‘getting everything wrong’.

The decisions by the Wilson/Callaghan and Thatcher governments were political ones, probably motivated by a colonialist mindsets. They were also economic ones intended to benefit particular groups in society at the expense of others. In the case of Mrs Thatcher, she was clearly favouring the financial interests of the City and many of these people benefitted not just financially but also in terms of power to force compliance, by the weakening of trade unions. So, for a very large group of people, Mrs Thatcher’s government did NOT pick a winner, but for another not-as-large group she DID pick a winner.

Thank you for your participation.

In your first post and in this you repeat the statement about ‘governments/civil servants not being good at picking winners’. This is one of the privatisers’ slogans which does not stand up to close examination. For example, Ha-Joon Chang’s “23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism” deals with this. I notice, too, that the Norwegian Sovereign Fund has just had a $131BILLION return in 2017. Just imagine what Scotland’s fund might have been had it not been for the perfidy of the 1970s Labour Governments and Mrs Thatcher’s use of the revenue to destroy trade unions, substantially destroy manufacturing and to tilt the UK economy grossly towards finance and London and the South East.

Competition is not the sole driver of innovation.

The first is the implication, at least I think it’s the implication, that the UK and in fact all countries need to have an independent defence industry. I wonder whether that it either affordable or practicable? Perhaps for China, the US, and Russia (let’s leave North Korea out of the discussion!!), but for the smaller countries of Europe?

Then there’s the issue of just what is strategic. Steel and the railways, power generation, all used to be considered strategic, but now?
Is facebook strategic? Is Android? Cyber attacks seem currently to be more dangerous than nuclear / conventional, asymmetric warfare –
which is why we have GCHQ I imagine. What’s the next major threat going to be?

Governments have not shown themselves to be good at picking winners, nor at managing companies. Competition is a greater spur to cost-effective innovation – although I suppose you could argue that we’re competing with Russia, the US, and China!

Another recent discussion of this appears in “The Captured Economy: How the powerful enrich themselves, slow down growth and increase inequality” by Brink Lindsey and Steven M Teles.

They start from a different perspective but reach similar conclusions, describing the current IP laws as giving “intellectual monopoly rather than intellectual property”: “bad for economic growth overall, but … highly effective at showering riches on a favoured few.”

Yes, I think we can go further than this, both in continuing this thread and in setting out arguments for more equitable and progressive taxation, in addition to refuting the ‘axioms’ about taxation which are just assertions but treated as similar to the laws of electromagnetism or gravitation. You have done that with your paragraph regarding taxation in Sweden and reductio ad absurdum.

What people in the Nordic countries appear to do is to accept the state provision of high quality public services as a good bargain, both for themselves as individuals but also for society as a whole. They do not see a sharp distinction between individuals and society. In fact, I do not think that they see the distinction as particularly problematic.

Or the scale of folly in trading Czechoslovakia to Germany, when most of the rolled armour steel was being made in Czech factories.

Or to put a more modern twist on this. ..it is why the Sweden raided Thyssan Krup’s offices in Sweden as they rightly feared the recent takeover of their local Submarine business by said was being used to illegally export Swedish Submarine technology to Germany.
And why they have forcebly made Thyssan Krup hand over the yard to SAAB…..

Or say how the French have acted to prevent an Italian company taking over a France shipyard……

At least that would be the conclusion of such a position.
But not actually born out by the facts……

With regard to the independence referendum Better Together (Project Fear) warned continuously, that the kind of people to whom Howard green refers would leave Scotland for other places where they could continue to make money and so those of us remaining (who, by definition are incapable of innovation of creativity, since we have a ‘dependency culture’ and ‘want something for nothing’) would simply moulder. Therefore, we should reject independence and continue to take what trickled down.

The recent Scottish budget introduced a range of income tax rates which vary from those set by the Treasury for the rest of the UK. They introduce, amongst others) a lower rate of 19%. The net effect is that those earning less than £33 000 pay the same of less income tax than people on similar taxable incomes in the rest of the UK. Around 700 000 people on higher incomes pay more income tax. The levels have been pretty well judged and the additional amount is relatively small. But that does not prevent the Tories, amplified by most of the media and the BBC, from claiming that Scotland is the ‘highest taxed part of the UK.’ and so, these people will move to England or take their incomes in other ways. Thus, they continue, Scotland will lose the revenue they contribute and Scotland will face further austerity. So, the 70% of the population who pay the same or less are expected to give up the small gains they make so that the highly paid can retain more of their income. Of course, those earning under £33 000 will spend most of the tax gains and so continue to sustain the economy, whereas those who are high earners tend to save it, especially in ways that takes the money out of the economy. This latter, is what ‘austerity’ actual is – transfer of funds from the lower paid to the much higher paid, who take the money out of the economy.

Since Council Tax in Scotland is much lower than in England and since there are no University fees, those 700 000 higher earners would face a substantial tax hike if they moved to England. A fair number of those 700 000 have no problem with paying a bit more and also have a sense of place and community. So, I think they will stay because this has been a relatively small redistribution.

The spectrum of taxes available to the Scottish Government is limited – AS IT WAS MALICIOUSLY INTENDED TO BE BY WESTMINSTER AND, PARTICULARLY, LABOUR – and so its scope for being creative is limited in the short term and leaves openings for the political attack of ‘punitive’ and ‘destructive’ taxation. Providing the full range of taxes, and developing property and land taxes would enable Scotland to do things differently and in a more distributive way. Of course, assigning oil and gas revenues to the place where it is earned would make a huge difference. But, Westminster prefers these to go substantially to international energy companies.

To seriously misuse Churchill’s bon mot: Private ownership is the worst possible way forward, apart from all the others which have already been tried (such as nationalisation!). Governments have proved themselves poor pickers of winners and poor managers of industry / enterprise.

The piece conflates the principles and the practice of the competitive marketplace we have today. That large multi-nationals take advantage of systems which legally allow them to move taxable profits into low tax jurisdictions, is not per se a criticism of competition or of international ownership. It may however be a criticism of the current rules and their implementations (I note many countries scrambling to adjust their tax regimes).

Nor does the piece take into account the impact technology has had on the workplace. The decline in the number of jobs available is at least as much because of the increasing application of technology as it is because of asset stripping or moving jobs to low cost environments.

The benefits to consumers of much of the change which has been wrought are ignored. If it is more cost effective to make parts of mobile phones in China, assemble them in Thailand, and then ship them to market, then that means consumers gain access to products which they might not otherwise be able or willing to afford, which indeed might not otherwise be possible. And yes, major multi-nationals make a tidy profit too, without which they simply would not produce the goods.

It’s very easy to react emotionally to foreign ownership (noting that we should consider our response to foreign ownership per se, and the possible impacts of foreign ownership on eg work opportunities). It’s hard to see the ownership of British Institutions like Cadburys and ARM falling into foreign hands (does Dairy Milk taste any different?). But that needs to be balanced by an appreciation of British purchases of foreign firms, see http://bit.ly/2DurQx6, and foreign firms building factories in the UK eg Toyota in Derbyshire.

At the end of the day, it makes economic sense to have work done in the location which can do that work with the best price / quality balance. Repatriating work done overseas in such cases will by definition increase costs and hence prices in both the home and the export market, with the inevitable consequences. Each country, perhaps even each region, with have its strengths and weaknesses, it makes sense to exploit the strengths and minimise the impact of the weaknesses. It’s been a long term “complaint” about the UK that it is excellent, world leading, in innovation, but pretty mediocre at the subsequent exploitation of those innovations. Think of Frank Whittle and the jet engine . Which suggests that we need to focus on what we do well, innovation, and find innovative ways of profiting from the exploitation of those innovations, wherever it may happen.

Similarly, the UK has an enviable reputation for University education (which is where a lot of the innovation comes from btw.), but people worry that we train people from other countries who then return home to use the knowledge that has been gained to the benefit of “foreign powers”. If other countries can make a better fist of using the results of UK education than we can, what should we do? Haul up the drawbridge, or find ways (eg by FDI) to benefit in the longer term from the education we have provided?

The fact is that we live in the world, not just in our islands. As a country we have to compete with others, it makes sense to compete in areas where we are world class.

“Who owns Britain” is a call to the emotions, “Make Britain Great Again”, “Take Back Control” even! The issue is far more nuanced than that.

Even if 1,000 people show up for an Assembly (creating massive problems for democratic debate within the assembly, with very few people having a chance to be heard), in a typical community of 100,000 people that would leave 99,000 people not attending. If such Assemblies are granted power, as you propose, then the same battle for influence and control would take place.

This is why we have democratically elected municipal councils. Another approach to make democracy feel real and alive, which is so needed, is to reform the way municipal elections happen.

Maybe we need strict campaign finance rules, direct elections for the position of Mayor, as we do here in Canada, participatory budgeting, preferential voting for candidates, and regular public forums (similar to the Assembly idea) but without jurisdictional powers?

If the Assemblies were given jurisdictional powers, we would have two parallel systems of democracy – local councils and Neighbourhood Assemblies, both of which would be subject to political and partisan pressures.

The hopes for German Social Democracy, which were voiced at the beginning of the discussion, should not become too high. The SPD is currently split between a course which will continue to bleed them by a thousand cuts, by joining the government coalition, and the alternative of committing seppuku with one clear cut across their stomach, hoping for reincarnation in the future, by rejecting that coalition and going into new elections. They are traded around 16% now, not much more than the right wing AfD or the Greens. To become more populist, as Mason seems to advise, is no alternative because it is not in their character and therefore will always be beyond belief for the voters.

In addition to the points mentioned in your comment, I would like to add two other points which were not really touched in the discussion, although they are highly important for Britain and beyond.

Number one, the web of tax havens centered around the City of London Corporation and the crown dependencies and current and former colonies, which almost nobody in the UK seems to want to touch. Implementing a debt based “Radical Social Democracy” with such a network of tax havens and matching laws and rules is like trying to fill a bucket with water which has lots of holes in its bottom. Also, this network, in cooperation with U.S. and EU based ones, impovers and corrupts most of the countries of the world, adding fuel to migration and wars.

The second one, touched a bit by Anthony Barnett in regards to Scotland and Northern Ireland, is the question of decentralisation and local government. A centralized “Radical Social Democracy” would probably fail because old capitalist cronies like banks will be just replaced by new socialist ones profiting from construction contracts and similar. “Power to the Cities and Counties” should be the parole here.

On another level, I found the discussion itself very good, well balanced and an interesting format, well worth to spend time on during a quiet Sunday afternoon. Thank you for that!

– In the meantime, we are going mad from lack of meaningful work. Work defines us, and deprived of work we are prevented from living. If we see work as a burden, it is because we have changed its nature. For 90% of our history as humans work and play were intertwined*. Pre-agriculture, nobody had to ‘earn’ a living, they just lived, part of which consisted of feeding yourself.

– A lot of us are left scratching our heads and wondering what on earth we are here for if we cannot do anything for ourselves because the machines did it all for us already… the housewife identity was the first big casualty, but then housewives could reinvent themselves as ‘workers’. Now what can we reinvent ourselves as?

– Loneliness and obesity: Technology has made us need each other less and our own bodies less. Many people don’t seek out other people ‘just for fun’ or exercise ‘just for fun’; we do these things as part of feedback loops that reinforce these behaviours. Technology is short-circuiting these feedback loops and changing our lives in ways we never wanted.

So “Automation will set us free” from what? I think it is trying to set us free from living.

*https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200907/play-makes-us-human-v-why-hunter-gatherers-work-is-play

Also highly disappointing was that Mason was allowed to get away with his ‘neo-Bevanite’, ‘imperialist Labour’ bullshit without challenge at the end. At least he’s honest and coherent one might say – if one wants to retain capitalism and social democracy then – as in their post-war incarnation – one needs to retain imperialism (or neo-imperialism) and war! In my view nothing betrays the truth about self-professed leftists as much as as their attitudes towards imperialism and towards war! Imo Mason needs to be seriously called out on this nasty aspect of his ideology and belief system.

The latter point relates to my biggest disappointment about this discussion/debate – although the topic was ‘can radical social democracy save us?’ it did not include anyone openly or clearly standing outside this political economic paradigm to challenge the arguments, claims and suppositions made. No dispute that the aim should be – and indeed has to be – to save capitalism from itself; no one there to challenge this aim as the horizon, no one to seriously talk about the inherent nature and contradictions of capitalism and social democracy; no one to challenge the proposed reformist strategy. Given this absence I feel it might be useful to mention a few relevant, interesting essays that appeared on Jacobin recently: ‘The Keynesian Counterrevolution’ by Mike Begg (see https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/02/keynes-general-theory-mann-review), ‘The Left in a Foxhole’ (see https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/02/keynes-keynesianism-mann-economics-review), ;Beyond Social Democracy by Marcel Liebman and Ralph Miliband (see https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/01/social-democracy-socialism-ralph-miliband).

People’s Land Trust is just another species of Georgism. All Taxes Come out of Rents which ultimately settle in land prices. Marx was unable to see the distinction between land and capital. Henry George quite clearly saw this fundamental distinction.

When homeowners sink under negative equity the PLT will buy out their mortgage and take ownership of the land under their house at the same time.

Result!! Without the hugely difficult task of introducing Land Value Tax, financial exploitation and mortgaging is excluded, one house at a time.

Land Value and the revenue therefrom is vested in a mutual trust, which works to provide homes.

A brilliant yet eminently feasible way of cutting out the mortgage foreclosure route of Disaster Capitalism.

(Why didn’t I think of this? (see my blog at conall boyle.com)

Removing barriers that inhibit or prevent ordinary people from purchasing capital that pays for itself out of its own future earnings is paramount as an actionable policy. This can be done under the existing legal powers of each of the 12 Federal Reserve regional banks, and will not add to the already unsustainable debt of the federal government or raise taxes on ordinary taxpayers. We need to free the system of dependency on Wall Street and the accumulated savings and money power of the rich and super-rich who control Wall Street. The Federal Reserve System has stifled the growth of America’s productive capacity through its monetary policy by monetizing public-sector growth and mounting federal deficits and “Wall Street” bailouts; by favoring speculation over investment; by shortchanging the capital credit needs of entrepreneurs, inventors, farmers, and workers; by increasing the dependency with usurious consumer credit; and by perpetuating unjust capital credit and ownership barriers between rich Americans and those without savings. The Federal Reserve Bank should be used to provide interest-free capital credit (including only transaction and risk premiums) and monetize each capital formation transaction, determined by the same expertise that determines it today — management and banks — that each transaction is viably feasible so that there is virtually no risk in the Federal Reserve. The first layer of risk would be taken by the commercial credit insurers, backed by a new government corporation –– the Capital Diffusion Reinsurance Corporation (CDRC) –– through which the loans could be guaranteed. The CDRC would reinsure any portion of any financing risk assessed as reasonable and insurable but not already insured by the commercial capital credit insurance underwriters. In establishing the CDRC, the federal government would not be undertaking a new responsibility but merely simplifying and rationalizing an existing one. This entity would fulfill the government’s responsibility for the health and prosperity of the American economy.

The Capital Diffusion Reinsurance Corporation would function similar to the Federal Housing Administration, generally known as “FHA”, which provides mortgage insurance on loans made by FHA-approved lenders throughout the United States and its territories. The FHA insures mortgages on single family and multifamily homes including manufactured homes. While pay-downs on home mortgages require a separate source of income, capital credit for productive capital formation is self-liquidating, with the earnings from the investment the source of the pay-down.

I must say that given the following statement quoted below it is hard to see that it is not! And, if you are correct, I ask the question how could it not require land reform, and why not? I hope you will explain.

“Presently, EU subsidies of £3 billion go to landowners for doing nothing. The more land the greater the pay out. This money should go to many more people working the land.

“Some 300,000 additional land and farm based permanent jobs could be created by subsidising each one by £10,000 annually. Local farms could produce food for food service industries such as shops, hotels & restaurants, thus linking town and country.”

Who’s the ‘we’ here I wonder? … Well, no matter … such a scenario would be a clear impossibility! Indeed the trend is in the other direction – towards a smaller and more fabulously wealthy plutocratic elite, a smaller, ‘ordinary’ bourgeoisie, and a smaller, middling but relatively affluent and secure group of small business owners, managers, technocrats, technical-administrative-ideological workers and state functionaries (esp. in the repressive and ideological institutions) plus a few others necessary to the effective functioning of the high level economy and plutarchic state; below them (the majority of the population – even in the ‘developed world’!) an increasingly impoverished and precarious group of workers either providing less skilled functions for the higher tier economy or working in the lower tier economy that provides subsistence for the majority, and then below even them a fairly large group of destitute, permanently unemployed, homeless, struggling to survive on the margins of society. The emerging social structure is less a class-based one as we have grown to know it under capitalism, especially in the metropole and metropolitan social theory, as a caste-society.

I would argue that the above trend is inherent to the survival of capitalist society – or at least to an inegalitarian, elitist structure currently manifested in capitalism. I don’t agree with those – Paul Mason included – who believe that capitalism (as distinct from a market-based economic system) can be rejigged and (re)civilised for the benefit of all – it is based on a very selective history of the relationship between capitalism and social democracy, and a lack of awareness of the internal and external limitations that capitalism is running up against and which lie behind the present crisis. We are living in the midst of an epochal change as great as that from feudalism to capitalism (or, perhaps even more pertinently, from classical civilisation and empire to the early (‘Dark’) middle ages), but many self-professed leftists are desperately hanging onto the capitalist system and a nostalgic vision of social democracy as if their careers, perceived status, and other accumulated privileges depended on it. Ironically, I suspect that many more ‘thinkers’ on the right than the so-called socialist left actually realise that capitalism is fast passing away and are planning and already constructing its succession.

The reason I say all this is because to me the ideas of ‘chiefs and Indians’, ‘management’ and ownership, inequality and upward and downward ‘social mobility’, inherited *and* ‘earned* ‘privilege and power’ are ALL part of this decaying paradigm and to continue to believe in and use them is, admittedly unwittingly in some cases, to support a conservative, hierarchical vision of society. We (meaning those who believe in utopian ideas of freedom, equality, solidarity and universal love) need to start espousing and fighting collectively for these universal values. Moderate, half-way and half-hearted, liberal, social democratic type measures are not going to save us.

I admit that problematically, inequality seems to be extremely deeply embedded psychologically and culturally – even when equality is ‘believed in’ ideologically and espoused rhetorically, and it is arguably the greatest barrier to the necessary radical transformation we as a species need to make to survive and thrive in the fullest sense of the word. Even so, we must also see that a belief in equality – and desire for it is – deeply embedded in the human as well. History has shown that in certain circumstances this latent, dormant spirit and idea can be awakened through emancipatory-directed *collective* activity, radical religion, and sometimes through art, and inspire rebellion against authoritarian structures. *This* we need – *not* futile debates about rebuilding social mobility, relegitimising management, and how much inequality ‘we’ want to have.

Hmm. I’m not so sure. If you trace the growth of neo-liberalism from the first meeting at Mont Pelerin through the Chicago School, Virginia Tech, UCLA and George Mason University you find a systematic political project which had the goal of replacing democratic accountability with market mechanisms and doing so in a manner which would be difficult or, better still, impossible to reverse. This is not a conspiracy theory. Nancy Maclean ( https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=democracy+in+chains&tag=mh0a9-21&index=aps&hvadid=8881055929&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_8eg151cm81_e ) happened upon a solid paper trail linking James Buchanan, Charles Koch and others in a relationship in which they referred to themselves as conspirators and, in the revealed correspondence, plainly stated their purposes amongst each other. So I think the author has missed out the point that Right Wing economists are largely dependant on contributions from oligarchs like Koch for funding and are therefore beholden to come up with analyses and forecasts which serve their purposes.

Thank you for the reference. I shall follow it up.

Is this plan predicated upon land reform?

I see churches at local, denominational and international levels and in ecumenical cooperation as great potential means of infrastructure and human, spiritual and natural resources. Imagine this: What if churches backed their own currency with the rental value of their properties and issued the currency as a thank you for voluntary service? In cooperation with locally owned and operated or member affiliated businesses, credits earned or given in gratitude or compassion could be used as discount coupons which circulate within the local and denominational community. Food banks, thrift stores, community gardens etc. which sell at big discounts or give away their products could accept payment with such a currency.

I would like to see something that weans us from our dependency on national, debt-based and violently maintained currencies. Perhaps bringing back bearer bonds in a non profit form would be a way to receive and invest Caesar’s coin and eventually transform it into a different kind of money.

An energy efficient, electronic means of utilizing and exchanging such a faith-based currency would be a huge blessing to the church and its mission, moving us away from paternalistic care of disadvantaged people and toward a more sustainable and mutually empowering model of ministry with one another.

Which sectors of the economy have they identified, who is working on the plans?

Let’s get it clear that the reason why things could get better after WWII was, in part, because much of industry had been wiped out across Western Europe and so British firms had markets to supply. These same firms ploughed little of the excess profits they made into new machinery and so hence when I was at college in the mid 80s and did some work for the West Mldlands Economic Development Council i found that, e.g., at the Nottingham TI Triumph bike company in Nottingham they were making bikes on machinery from the mid 1930s. It was the same right across Lucas in the West Midlands when I worked on a research project with the stewards at Great King Street. (a report incidentally that was blocked from publication by local Labour politicians and that was ‘old’ Labour) Britain now has a much reduced manufacturing sector, is it intended to reinvest in it under a Labour government? What about carbon capture and storage – which works perfectly well – to get some of the coal mines moving?

Paul has in his possession a book that might be worth reading as it does put forward a considerable plan to revive rural communities. It was a book rated highly by Open Democracy last year.

Here is the details:-

BREXIT AND FOOD, FARMING, LAND AND LABOUR

No major political party has a vision of how 70 million people will be fed after Brexit.

One man who does is Charlie Clutterbuck and his book BITTERSWEET BREXIT: the future of food, farming, land and labour has been widely welcomed.

‘Best political books of 2017’ openDemocracy

Dan Crossley, Food Ethics Council “very well written, covering hugely important issues.”

“Informative” Tom Rigby NW Rep on NFU Organic Forum

“ Challenges us to rethink our food systems and reconnect locally.” Pam Warhurst, co-Founder of Incredible Edible Network

Many people rely on food banks, demeaning rather than uplifting, and not providing fresh healthy food. Yet we can easily produce much more food – cheaply.

Presently, EU subsidies of £3 billion go to landowners for doing nothing. The more land the greater the pay out. This money should go to many more people working the land.

Some 300,000 additional land and farm based permanent jobs could be created by subsidising each one by £10,000 annually. Local farms could produce food for food service industries such as shops, hotels & restaurants, thus linking town and country.

This could bring food prices down, provide living wages, supply fresh local food, stimulate our rural economy and reduce Britain’s £30 billion annual food trade deficit

None of which is being debated by any political party, bodies such as the NFU or the national media.

Yet these issues are crucial as Britain faces an uncertain future when it comes to being able to feed everyone as other countries are also keen to find food from overseas for their own citizens.

Invite Charlie to speak

Charlie’s talk at Bradford Trades Union Council (BTUC) attracted its largest attendance for years. “Charlie explained Brexit will lead to a bigger change to agriculture than anything since the Corn Laws abolition in the 19th century…..the media obsess with the detail of the EU negotiations but we wanted to debate about the way we want to the country to change for the better. Charlie was ideal for this.” BTUC sec Mike Quiggin

See https://sites.google.com/view/bittersweetbrexit/home/book-news for updates & events.

More details from Mark Metcalf. 07392 852561 mcmetcalf@icloud.com @markmetcalf07 @clutterbuckcha1 and 07908 571612 and charlie@sustainablefood.com

To order copies of the book go to:- https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745337708/bittersweet-brexit/. Also available via all good bookshops. Special rates for multiple copies – contact Mark Metcalf

Thank you for providing this link. Mr Crewe has done sterling service in providing this very thorough history of the wilful attack on local government.

Both Conservatives and Labour at Westminster have fairly consistently attacked local democracy, because both are seduced by the accrual of powers and, via ‘outsourcing’ have substantially removed public services from public control other than paying out.

At the local level there are many doughty conservatives who are strong advocates of local democracy. For example, many Conservative councils were the strongest advocates and defenders of comprehensive schools. I am not implying that Labour and the Lib Dems were less innovative and assiduous at the local level. There is a broad swathe of people who know that local delivery and decision making, with revenue raising powers is the most effective way. The concept of a ‘national service locally delivered’ was and is a good one. The idea was that the ‘national’ aspect was establishing a continually rising baseline, but that councils could provide better than that. The example of Bermondsey having to reduce its health service when the NHS was established is an early example of localism being undermined in favour of dirigisme. And, the powers associated with dirigisme become seductive as ends in themselves: people at the centre want to accrue power because they want to accrue power.

One malign effect of this has been the disenchantment with politics and the belief that politics cannot solve anything. People complain about the failure of services but with even greater vehemence condemn any proposals to devolve powers to the local level.

I was heartened to read of the ‘tender shoot’ of the Queen’s Park Community Council in the borough of Westminster. In Scotland, the Community Empowerment Act of 2015 provides the opportunity of reversing the flow of powers to the centre back to local levels. The SNP group which is now the largest group on Glasgow City Council since 2017 has under the Act offered the people of each ‘ward’ £1 million of Council budget to spend on locally identified priorities. It is hedged around with various caveats, which is understandable since we are all learning about this. It remains to be seen how this will work out. But, I think it is an example of how communities across the UK comprising people with a range of political tendencies are beginning to explore ways of managing things on their own. Some of the ‘community buy-outs’ in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, such as South Uist and Eigg, have been running for several years now and practical principles are emerging.

Many MPs went to Westminster only after a long career in local government, now at Westminster, we have many who go straight there from university via a spell as a SPAD. There are others like ‘Strong and Stable’ Mrs May who had experience as councillors, but as the councillors who complied in the councils’ disempowerment.

To be charitable, I would say that as far as Labour, nationally, is concerned, it is 50/50 whether they will seriously decentralise. The way they hamstrung the Scottish and Welsh Assemblies from their inception, coupled with Mr Blair’s sneer of ‘glorified parish councils’ is indicative of the thinking. Post 2014 when the Smith Commission was set up to implement Mr Brown’s mendacious ‘Vow’ about transferring more powers to Edinburgh, it was Labour, and its spokesman Mr Iain Gray, who fought tooth and nail against the transfer of any meaningful powers.

Of the 111 powers to be ‘returned’ from Brussels to the devolved parliaments, because the devolution acts located them there, all are to go to Westminster, which will decide which will be returned. This is not even to be discussed in the Commons. An amendment has been promised, but has not yet been published, to be debated in the Lords, where, as a matter of principle the SNP has no members. This is a serious power grab which can only further disempower local politics. And Labour’s response? -To sneer at the SNP at having to ‘crawl’ to friendly lords like the former Liberal leader, mr David Steel. Perhaps my charitable 50/50 in the previous paragraph is a bit optimistic.

Truly poignant,

Thank you.

I think this is but one aspect of a wide range of transformative things which need to be undertaken. There are several ‘micro’ energy generation schemes which could be used at the local level, such as ground or water source heat pumps. Better building standards would reduce the too-large burden energy costs have on
domestic budgets. Glasgow City Council’s City Building a.l.e.o., for example has a couple of very good housing design models which can be built with existing technologies, which are pretty much carbon neutral and have very low recurring energy costs. But, of course, Councils have limited scope for housebuilding, although changes by the Scottish Government make things much more feasible for housing associations.

It really is a matter of political power and it has to be diverted from the land-owning rentier/financier class.

What young people want in those regional “towns of despair” is not hand-outs but jobs – go and ask them!
And as the article points out, it’s not like there is a shortage of things that need doing, why not generate living wage jobs to initiate “… the fabric of their local communities restored: youth clubs, adult social services, mental health facilities, green space and thriving high streets.”

Five times as much doesn’t sound particularly imbalanced by current standards, Alasdair – though all credit to you for seeing it as such. All too often these days the poor to impose sanctions is often taken as a reward in itself with the opportunity to bully being considered a perk of the job.

“For my Dad’s generation, it meant something different. It meant being able to do well by working hard, while seeing your town, your community, its built environment and its commercial vibrancy rise with you.”

Not so much a scramble to rise to the top of the pile as putting in the effort to play a more significant part is moving everyone forward.

Thank you.

It is quite difficult to change our language when an idea like social mobility has been around for so long. The concept of ‘dropping down’ the social strata is one which is immediately meaningful to me and has me nodding in agreement, despite the fact that I think we need a different paradigm.

Undoubtedly there are cases of the offspring of ‘good’ families or wealthy ones ‘going bad’ and losing both wealth and status. However despite the myth of working hard, getting a good education, abiding by the rules, increasingly many of us, particularly those below 35, are not upwardly mobile. But, despite the ‘meritocracy’ trope which those in power like to use to validate themselves, they ensure that their offspring do not fall down the ‘social ladder’ by sending them to private schools, Russel Group Universities or Sandhurst, using their connections to get them ‘billets’ in the BBC, financial services, high status third sector groups like the National Trust for Scotland, etc, thus blocking ‘social mobility’. There is no ‘room at the top’ for the assiduous young person from a less materially comfortable background.

The ‘chiefs and indians’ trope is one which I, too, have used often. However, the benefit of articles like this is that we begin to look at what it actually entails – to use a phrase that makes me gag: we ‘deconstruct it’. Having been a ‘chief’ for most of my career, it became increasingly clear to me that I was really only playing one role as a member of a team, most of the others of whom, were the ones actually delivering the key service. I would have liked to have thought of myself as ‘primus inter pares’, i.e. that my ‘primus’ role was because of my ability to deal with strategic issues, with to which the others consented, because I did things reasonably well. However, I was paid five times the level of remuneration than the lowest paid, I had powers to impose sanctions, etc. There was an imbalance in the power relationships.

However, I think that management approaches have improved considerably in many sectors of the economy and that there are constructive relationships with trade unions, which can be of benefit to all, because, it is not, as the upper strata like to imply, a zero-sum game. We have, indeed, added value.

But, at present with the rentier class in power, in so many sectors, the benefits are heinously inequitably distributed. Those who actually produce the surpluses are often dismissed so that ‘shareholder value’ can be ‘optimised’. As ever, the use of euphemisms mask venal greed.

Mr Mason has indicated broad areas where change can take place. However, there has to be a political will to bring about the change and that entails the redistribution of power and changes to the law and to the constitution. We have to address the loci of the power of the rentier, which is substantially in land and property.

The Brazilian Marxist educator, Paulo Freire, used the term ‘conscientisation’ as a key factor in bringing about change. It entails getting people to reflect upon their condition and its causes, and having appreciated that they can then empower themselves to bring about change. Of course, the military and the small power class in Brazil acted against the people of the favelas who had begun to articulate their case. The dismissal of President Rousseff and the persecution of former President Lula are current examples of this vicious response.

1) Luddism – halt technical advances to preserve wage-based capitalism in its current form.
2) Cashing out – keep laying off workers and paying out to shareholders until there aren’t enough employed people to buy anything and the system collapses.
3) Make-work – invent useless jobs in order to keep people employed, because it’s much more important that everyone spends forty hours a week on activity they don’t particularly want to be doing than that they actually achieve anything.
4) UBI.

Obviously there will be necessary big projects, currently neglected by government, that will provide the opportunity to employ a lot of people. But they will be temporary, and will need fewer and fewer people as technology advances.

I endorse the points made by Mr Jeremy Fox in his response, particularly his second and third ones.

Because of the scope and because other articles are planned it is difficult to make an overarching response and so, at this stage I will make a couple of disparate poits.

Firstly, Mr Mason begins by raising the issue of ‘social mobility’ and for people like me and millions of others born shortly after 1945 it exerted a powerful hegemony and Mr Attlee’s government made epochal efforts to make it possible, as it proved to be, for millions of us to have a quality of life of which my parents and grandparents could only dream. I still think that a class analysis of society and the economy provides the best description of how things are and how they were. So, it must be used and be used unapologetically by political parties which aim to be redistributive of wealth and power, and the Labour Party is only one of those – and the most arrogant and exclusive of those – and it still has within its MPs and Councillors many who were rather contemptuous of such discussions, following the lead from, principally, the oafish and disastrous Mr Gordon Brown, whom I recall in an interview, snorting dismissively, when asked if he still had any socialist beliefs.
However, one consequence of using a class analysis is the concept of ‘social mobility’ and the language of ‘getting on’,’moving up’, etc. It was predicated upon a concept of people as a heap, with those higher in the heap being by a number of criteria, ‘better’, including morally so. Neoliberalism is based on that, and, indeed, has embarked on steepening the gradient, while deliberately forcing increasing numbers to lower strata. It can be pictured as a Gaussian curve, with a wide base and a sharply tapering very tall peak. So, to change the hegemony, I think we do need to change the model and I think this is why many reject the idea of ‘mobility’. It really is about redistribution of wealth and power and not about one’s place in some construct of a heap, up which one can climb.
I think the old parody of the Red Flag: “The working class can kiss my arse, I’ve got the foreman’s job at last..” encapsulates somewhat cynically one very severe consequence of the social mobility concept. Sadly, I think that many in the last Labour Government, not least the former chairman of the Social Mobility Commission could be said to exemplify the parody.

Secondly, the article mentions nothing about land reform. This has been successfully kicked, not into the long grass, but into the Challenger Deep, by the landowner class. We really must address the issue with determination, for it can solve pretty quickly much of the housing crisis and begin to repopulate the rural areas. The landowners will, of course, fight like wildcats. The Green Party Member of the Scottish Parliament, Mr Andy Wightman, a long-standing campaigner for land reform, is being sued by the landowners association for initiating the early stages of land reform in Scotland. The intention is to bankrupt him and have him removed from public office. Surprisingly, the seemingly brain-dead Labour Party in Scotland actually made a budget proposal to this effect in the current Scottish Budget debate. I hope it is a good sign, but I fear that it prefers tribalism and internal fighting as the current fuss regarding alleged racist comments from within the party about Mr Anas Sarwar, MSP.

Thirdly, Mr Mason mentions nothing about constitutional reform and redistribution of effective powers to subsidiary levels of governance. I would prefer the United Kingdom to be dissolved and for Scotland, England and Wales to become independent countries and for Ireland to be reunited. However, even without there are other options such as a genuine federalism. Labour talks about it – indeed, Mr Gordon Brown in his infamous and mendacious ‘VOW’ prior to the Scottish Referendum in 2014, claimed it was ‘the nearest thing to federalism’. Mr Corbyn makes vague noises about it, but does not really understand the issue, since he is on record as saying ‘Scotland is part of England’ and ‘We cannot have different laws in different parts of the country’, demonstrating his ignorance of the fact that since the Union of 1707, the separate Scottish legal system has continued. There could be genuine regional government. Again this is a failed lukewarm Labour policy. In legislating for devolution to Scotland and Wales, Labour actually did leave England with a democratic and governance deficit. While the Good Friday Agreement was a genuine triumph for Mr Blair’s government and offered hope and an empowering way forward for both parts of Ireland, that is in jeopardy at present and not just from Brexit. There should be powerful, strategic regional authorities in England, Scotland and Wales (whether independent or federated) and there should be several other, empowered layers to enable local people to take meaningful decisions about their areas. These should include the right to tax. The powers should be enshrined in a formal constitution.

Finally, Mr Mason refers to the attacks on trade unions. This was undoubtedly a seriously disempowering attack by neoliberalism on the rest of us. Again, Labour failed to rebalance things after the departure of Mrs Thatcher and Mrs Major, and, indeed, was happy to help the neoliberal approach by ‘light touch regulation’. Having been a lifelong trade unionist, I am not blind to the appalling and ultimately self-destructive conduct of many within the trade unions up until the 1980s; indeed, they enabled Mrs Thatcher to create a plausible narrative. However, without doubt, on balance the trade unions made my life better. There were and are many sincere and unselfish people within trade unions who would accept the kind of framework within which say, the German trade unions operate. Labour must start articulating such ideas.

I look forward to other comments and to Mr Mason’s further articles.

PS when I am visiting my daughter, I use the gym and cinema at Goldsmith’s, but I am not angling for an invitation to the round table!

Firstly, I think the author is right to single out the responsibility borne by Bodger Broon for the disempowerment of a huge swathe of the UK public, by his ‘light touch regulation’ and his ‘saving the world’ (an interesting and hubristic Freudian slip) by transferring shedloads of public money to the very financiers who ruined the economy. Rather than the adverb ‘supposedly’ to modify the adjective ‘left-wing’, it would be more accurate to use the term ‘mendaciously’.

Secondly, and more importantly than I venting my spleen, he has correctly identified that companies are ‘social constructs’. They are not natural phenomena as the current neoliberal hegemony would like us to believe. They are not ‘how things are’, they are what the rentier class invented to maximise the income for their insatiable greed. And, the regulations governing them and the operation of the equally socially constructed ‘free market’ are not about the state mediating between competing interests but about the empowerment of an oligarchy to the detriment of all others.
The control by this group over much of the media and increasingly over the depressingly grangrindian facts-based curriculum in our schools means that ‘the company’ is an unexamined construct implied to be equivalent to the laws of electromagnetism or gravity. By these means, the hegemony is perpetuated and strengthened.

Of course, there are alternative constructs and the list of things the author lists are found in the UK, and to a greater extent in places like France and Germany, as well as in many places across the world. Most of the empirical evidence on these alternatives indicates that even by many of the measures used by the hegemonic concept, these companies usually have superior outcomes and all stakeholders benefit.

However, outside of academic circles, trades unions and a few geeks who seek out information, this is given very little publicity. We are continually presented with allegedly good information about ‘increased profits’, ‘stock markets at record highs’, ‘buoyant property markets’. That these things are unquestionably ‘good’ is that these goods ‘trickle down’ to the extent that even poor people have shoes! Thank you for that pearl of wisdom, Mr Portillo.

Sadly, Labour is not going to be able to bring about such changes as, say, Mr John McDonnell would like. He has too many opponents in his own party as a timeous recent book shows. And, if Labour were radical enough to have significant policies, the notorious ‘run on the pound’ and other well tried actions would take place.

The UK has to end. Scotland and Wales have to go their own ways and Ireland should be united again. The metropolitan areas of England have to develop their local powers, such as Manchester and Birmingham did in the 18/19th centuries to rebalance the distribution of power across England. Without Scotland’s oil, gas and renewables and its huge slice of territorial waters, the underpinning of the City will be gone and the ridiculously distorted economy of England will collapse because the disproportionate balance towards the financial sector will be destroyed. It will not be pleasant, but, then, it’s not going to be pleasant to continue as things are. The crash, allows the possibility of renewal, the present simply, to put an Orwellian 1984 twist on ‘New’ Labour’s cynical slogan, means ‘things can only get worse’. That is the true legacy of Mr Blair and Bodger Broon.

The bedrock of neo-liberalism is that the state is broke. That false premise leads to the equally false conclusion – that money ‘grows on rich people’. Yet nothing could be further from the truth…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDL4c8fMODk

Many – perhaps most of us – have experience of this craziness. Herewith a simple local example. Where I live, rubbish collection has been outsourced. On collection day, after the garbage truck has trundled off, our street is littered with fallen rubbish, and the bins are usually left either blocking the pavement (a nightmare for the disabled or parents with prams), or left just inside entrance gates as a perfect signal to burglars that no one is at home. It would take a little extra time and care to deal with both issues. But time and care cost money: public service sacrificed on the anvil of private gain.

Neo-Liberalism is the transfer away from democracy into the corporate state where international corporations have total power, that is happening each time the government sells off another part of the public sector into private hands. Under funding has been the tool to achieve that end.

The world economy stagnates in the process, what needs to be recognised that we need to produce what we need in our own individual countries, rather than talking about world trade, that is the domain of international muti-national companies and only serves their interests.

If we just see ourselves as their slaves, that is where we will all end up, and it will end badly.

Also there is no acknowledgment that the creation of money can be a state monopoly, thereby cutting out the parasitic activities of rent-gouging commercial banks, and at the same time making available at nil cost all the funds which are needed for socially beneficial investment.

I’m someone who didn’t study economics at school or university, but who has since studied finance and economics through books and online courses. The majority of people are right to think that economics affects them. What’s sad is that a significant proportion realise that the field is important but fail to see how GDP affects them.What they do know is frequently understood just from a single newspaper source, and all tend to have their blind spots. Some Tory-leaning papers tend to focus on fiscal responsibility and paying down the debt, ignoring the many experts indicating that particular forms of (mainly infrastructure) investment get a greater return than their cost and would be beneficial to spend money on even when increasing national debt. Meanwhile, some Labour-leaning papers attack globalisation and business, ignoring where the trade opportunities it creates may be creating jobs, particularly when attacking the financial services industry as ‘fat cats’ without recognising the extent to which the sector props up the government finances. Meanwhile, most of the papers fail to call out failings in tendering which allow government contracts to regularly go to foreign companies as the cheapest option when analysis that included the indirect money returned through increased employment, income tax receipts, lower benefit receipts, etc, would give a fair preference (on a non-discriminatory, purely financial basis) to on-shore suppliers.

The question is not just how economists can build trust and communicate better, but how our education system should balance its priorities. We leave school having studied a European language that may be completely useless but without having any understanding of how flows of money necessarily affect our lives. We study plate tectonics and rain systems but not our statutory rights and responsibilities. We learn various things we’ll never use again and miss whole areas that almost certainly will impact our lives. Surely that can’t be right.

Enclosing and accomplishing the various transport, energy, utilities, and communications in a secure and controlled environment. Suggest itself as being an evolutionary step.

Enclosure does pose itself as being the most ecologically and environmentally sound way to achieve them. However it also appears to be by far the cheapest, most efficient and capable way these processes could ever hope to be achieved as well.

In a secure and controlled environment and opened to the ability to begin employing that full array of existing abilities.

Its seems that most if not nearly all of thier current consumptions in time, energy, and resources can become reliably removed. All through the new found ability to begin reliably applying these numbers of existing abilities.

Surprisingly. My own attempt to understand what kind of values of cost and benefits may be at work in such a practical change in structure. Shows that the cost is not only a few Percents of what exists today. But the values of the other efficiencies and enhanced abilities will truely dwarf the cost in accomplishment.

Is my modern society? And indeed in time, that all of our humanity standing at the edge of taking its most revolutionary step EVER.

And it amounts to little more than modernizing its infrastructures into those vastly more efficient and capable processes that they so need to be and can so reasonably may become.

Its not a structural, technological, or financial problem.

The cost of enclosure and the values of benefits are very discernable.

Its not the disruptive innovation it seems. As the physical accomplishment in the enclosing network of connected structure cannot be reasonably achieved in any short period of time. Its merely a vastly more efficient replacement for the very antiquated processes of today. Whose beginning incremental and ever increasing achievement will truly revolutionize the populations abilities. So much so that it seems we could then begin getting beyond most if not nearly all of today’s social, economic, environmental and ecological problems.

Care to consider that accomplishment of a more acurate feasibility analysis study.

According to a 2010 Federal highway study. 200B was spent on highways. But we incurred 300B in just accidents on highways. Failed to mention the 1.7T spent on energy in order to get the 200B in fuel tax revenues.

Non of which do we want. Not the short lived high energy and resource consuming highways, accidents, or energy dependency.
Transport can be achieved with out all these things.

The question is how to fund the development and accomplishment that will allow it to become that reality it so needs to become.

There are plenty of incentives.

Spot on

“– fooling nobody.”

Oh! If only that was true…

Of course, an additional problem is who funds research. Most research funding comes from the EU, the UK government funding bodies, and big business. Occasionally the EU funds innovative and critical research, while the other two sources are clearly politicised and promote the interests of neoliberal ideology and big business. So, judging research “quality” by how much money is collected is obviously going to marginalise any challenges to neoliberal thinking. I didn’t see any of the UK academics twigging onto this and complaining when the RAE was set up, and I didn’t see any organised complaints from the overpaid university heads since. Basically, it’s structurally promoted propaganda dressed up as academic “scholarship” — fooling nobody. The UK academic sector is now a joke.

I remember many years ago on the radio just before the news, there was a short report ‘from the stock market, by exchange telegraph’. There then followed a clearly enunciated piece, in which I recognised every single word, but had absolutely no idea of what was actually being communicated.

It was a private language from which I, and I assume, the vast majority of us were excluded. (Billy Connelly once did a comic sketch on it). And, I assume – cynically, I admit – that it was intentionally incomprehensible. It was to exclude us from understanding what was actually going on.

When I read economics texts, or articles or listen to verbal reports or lectures, I get the same feeling that I am being deliberately excluded from this subject matter.

My first degree was in Natural Philosophy (now called Physics) and Mathematics. Both of these disciplines have very specific vocabularies – words mean very precise things, even everyday words, such as ‘work’, have clearly defined meanings, which are understood by all physicists and mathematicians across the world. In my (biased, perhaps) opinion, scientists strive to convey meaning to the wider population. I had a tutor who was a great one for epigrams and one of his was that ‘any subject is capable of being explained rigorously to any person at an appropriate level of maturity’, i.e. you can explain to a toddler some concepts of evolution or gravity or astronomy. Many university science and mathematics faculties now have staff whose job is ‘the public understanding of science’. While I think there are still problems of conveying the meaning of quantum physics – even amongst quantum physicists! – I think that the scientific community has done a very good job.

I cannot say the same about economics. Now that I am retired and have time to read more slowly and deeply, I am still struggling to get traction on many concepts. Partly, I think this is because so many of the writers are not really aware of what the terms they are using actually mean. They are applying scientific and mathematical language and concepts to things which are pretty much just assumptions, and sometimes, pretty idiosyncratic ones at that. Undoubtedly, there are some economists who have a pretty rigorous understanding, and convey their views pretty well – JK Galbraith was a good example – and I think they also have a clear understanding of how tentative and inferential many of the concepts are. They are really not testable in the way scientific hypotheses or mathematical theorems are.

So, to be blunt I think there is a lot of waffle and smoke-and-mirrors about much of economic writing and speech. I think many of its proponents are a priesthood/shamans who use mumbo-jumbo to exclude the rest of us.

Finally, I mentioned JK Galbraith and I think part of his success as a communicator is that he had a wide and deep intellectual hinterland in which he could locate his explanations of economic ideas and it is this which rendered him comprehensible. There is a genre called ‘science fiction’. It is indicative, I think, that there is no genre ‘economic fiction’: it resides in the textbooks on the Economics departments’ library shelves.

So, I agree that we should move towards a national publicly owned pharmaceutical service.

There will be a proportion who do not wish to work, but while there is not full employment the question is how to fill the jobs available, and you could argue that it makes more sense for a company to hire those that want to work than those that don’t, leaving little benefit to pursuing penalties for not trying to get work. The reward should be in terms of having a higher income, and at present there are certain times where there is little to no benefit due to multiple benefits being withdrawn and a universal payment would avoid that.
In general it would likely be supported by a higher level of income tax and withdrawal of the tax allowances. After all, the current personal allowance is about helping ensure low-income workers have enough to live on and this would be providing that instead. The basic tax rate would probably need to be somewhat higher as well, along with the top rate of tax, and should probably aim to be fairly neutral in terms of overall cost. High earners would almost certainly be expected to pay a somewhat higher share.

The major risk would seem to be that of a population explosion, where unemployed numbers grow significantly faster than productivity to support them. Automation again may be necessary to support this – as Japan is exploring with its relatively older population. However, there may also need to be some consideration of limits to discourage large families. For example, if universal basic income is available from birth then a non-working couple could choose to have many children and live in an only slightly larger home, using the per-capita housing cost savings to have a more comfortable lifestyle. This would be something of a perverse incentive. However, not providing any income for children could fail to provide reasonable support for families under the plan. What’s then the right option? Limiting the number of under-18 recipients in a household? Reducing the basic income for children?

Universal services would be one answer – ensuring a meagre flexible allowance but providing accommodation options, soup kitchens and other facilities at no cost. We’ve some way to go before we can advance that, though, since we struggle to rehouse the homeless in a timely manner already, not to mention how we’ve fared at providing for the survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire. A start might be to look at providing parts of this, though – free subsistence fare like a soup kitchen, provided by the government, which may help the working poor, struggling families, the homeless and impoverished students while building a framework for something more grand. I don’t have a particular problem with having a proportion who choose not to work. However, accommodation may be a more difficult issue to resolve, just as it is now, with many workers priced out of London for buying their own home while a lucky few on benefits have council properties in areas that few workers can afford.

Undoubtedly, may people within the NHS and in the Civil Service are examining this and have mapped out potential ways forward, but, it is the detachment of the bulk of the population from the consultative and decision-making process that is a problem. A large part of this is our appalling media and too many punch-and-judy type politicians, who focus on trivia such as failures to attain targets AS ENDS IN THEMSELVES, blaming, making generalisations from particulars by focussing on individual bad examples, such as someone spending 16 hours on a trolley (It is terrible, but not typical, and probably can be explained).

We need to start by looking at what our own responsibilities for maintaining our own health are. We need to look at which parts of the NHS are the most appropriate to seek assistance from, i.e. self-filtering, we need to look at what can be achieved within our local communities, such as the provision of care to facilitate more rapid usage of acute hospital beds. We also need to require employers to assume greater responsibility, beyond mandatory H&S for promoting healthy behaviours in the workplaces.

I agree with you highlighting the simple fact of spending being a political decision, but the solution is more complex.

I strongly contend that economics should be more logically and scientifically based and that our present unfortunate intuitive methods are able to result in selecting different policies at the same time. These confusing methods began with John Bates Clark, when he claimed (for political and commercial reasons) that capitalists are also landlords when it is perfectly clear that the dynamics of value of the durable capital goods (capital) and of the useful sites (land) are driven by completely different forces. From that time in about 1900, there has been confusion in logical thinking about macroeconomics from which we have never recovered.

Although this critical view for more science is wide-spread among many hetero-economists, they are doing very little to change it. To make a step in the right direction seems to throw them into a panic, because the thinking processes are different. Their minds are insufficiently open despite their fine words! The reason that I became interested in the openDemocracy is because I was hoping to find some broader minded thinkers here who might appreciate my original way of making macroeconomics into a true science. My recent book “Consequential Macroeconomics–Rationalizing About How Our Social System Works” presents the sensible, logical and analytic way for getting down to a better representation about our society. I offer an e-copy for free to anybody who is academically honest enough to be concerned and share the claim that by this kind of thinking we can better learn about good government, when logic is applied with analysis to common sense.

Write to me for a free copy: chesterdh@hotmail.com

Primary legislation (the statutes enacted by sovereign legislatures, such as the British Parliament) provides a framework which is complemented by secondary law, in the form of rules drafted by government agencies and court rulings which establish legal precedents. The best primary legislation does no more than establish an overall purpose, along with constraints on the ability of secondary law to violate that purpose, without dictating exactly how it should be achieved. Primary legislation is very much harder to change than secondary law and when it’s too specific it nearly always causes problems.

You don’t seem to have taken in that the clauses I drafted in my inheritance page are only a first step; their purpose is to change the dynamics of how the system works without imposing immediate substantive change (which would be highly disruptive). As such, they’re designed to be as flexible as possible and broad enough to allow current ownership patterns to be challenged, without immediately putting them outside the law. That first step would merely remove an existing obstacle to fair distribution of land ownership; the second step (which I outline in my Land Currency pages) would put in place a process that would allow people to claim their fair share.

‘But HOW does the law provide for that?’

Those clauses you quoted provide for it by a) altering the way the courts (and lawyers drafting contracts) will interpret existing law; b) instructing government bodies to act in ways consistent with those aims (while giving them considerable flexibility in deciding how best to meet them); and c) giving members of the public the power to mount a legal challenge if they are denied any one of those options.

The phrase ‘as far as is practicable’ (along with the possibility of people leaving their birthright unclaimed) would make the new law compatible with the existing situation and, in principle, allow it to continue indefinitely. However, the near certainty that members of the public will demand a way of claiming their birthright will ensure that the government does work out a way for it to operate. The system I outline in my Land Currency page is a practical way of doing that but it might not be the only way, and I see no reason why primary legislation should impose it.

‘what in CONCRETE terms does it mean to say “All holders of agricultural land in excess of their own fair share shall be deemed to hold it as trustees for those who have left their shares unclaimed.” ‘

One thing it means, in concrete terms, is that if a holder of agricultural land sells that land for non-agricultural use, they can’t take the whole proceeds of the sale for their own private benefit. It doesn’t specify exactly what should happen with the part they can’t take but that’s something which can emerge, through trustees developing their own solutions (or through case law when trustees’ solutions are challenged) or through government-initiated secondary legislation, as the new ownership framework beds in.

Another thing it means, in concrete terms, is that the decision to sell could be challenged in court. So, if a farmer agreed to sell a large tract of land on the edge of a village to a property developer, against the wishes of the villagers, they would be able to challenge the sale as a violation of the farmer’s trust. Currently, they wouldn’t be able to.

When it’s sold as agricultural land, the trusteeship will simply be transferred to the buyer, who will knowingly be taking on a responsibility which had not previously been recognised. In practice, therefore, the price will reflect that – so a reduction in the price of agricultural land will be another concrete effect.

Those are three fairly obvious examples. There are probably many more situations where the possibility of a legal challenge would affect what an owner decides to do but it’s very difficult to envisage them all. That’s why primary legislation tends to be very general.

‘Well, you go on, “Trustees shall give due regard to the principle that nobody should be deprived of means of subsistence.” ‘

You’ve cut that sentence short there, Dan. As I wrote it, it’s concerned with the specific circumstance of a trustee ‘considering whether to hold or relinquish their trusteeship’. I’m not very happy with the current wording but what that clause will do is constrain a farmer’s right to refuse to sell land to someone who doesn’t have any. What constitutes ‘due regard’ is something that will emerge through case law; there are likely to be many circumstances where it would be reasonable for a farmer to refuse to sell and many where it would not. That’s exactly the sort of situation where too specific primary legislation causes far more problems than it solves.

One of the ways trustees might protect themselves from being forced to sell would be for them to enter into explicit relationships with non-farmers, either individually or in groups. Such relationships might be based on rent payments or profit-sharing or, in more compact communities, they might be based on the kind of arrangement that Community Supported Agriculture schemes already use, where it’s the produce that’s distributed.

There’s a variety of ways in which it might operate including, no doubt, many which I’m not in a position to envisage. With my Land Currency page, I’ve outlined a process that would allow everyone to inherit a fair share of land-market-value. What I’ve aimed to do with that is show that there is at least one way in which a fair distribution of rights could be achieved, without unnecessarily compromising the flexibility of the market, but all it does is provide a framework in which processes that are well-established in the current system would deliver a fair outcome.

“When you try to actually build a model to enforce your glittering generalities, you will run into all manner of problems that dwarf the things you are complaining about here”

I don’t need to build any such model because there’s already one in place: a legal system which is well accustomed to interpreting general laws and applying them in all the multitude of specific circumstances that legislators could not hope to properly anticipate.

We’re aiming for a transition from a centuries-old system of landowner privilege to one of fair distribution and that’s a hugely complex task. That’s precisely why the route should not be specified in too much detail. The reforms I’ve outlined require the public to actively claim their rights but it provides a legal framework clear enough and flexible enough to allow the transition to happen relatively smoothly.

‘In our system, such trustees compensate those without land directly. In yours, they are just “deemed trustees.”‘

As I said, you’re overlooking the fact that the clauses you’ve quoted are merely a first step, which is specifically designed to allow a relatively smooth transition. That makes your comparison invalid: you’re comparing the anticipated result of a first step reform in my system with how you anticipate your own proposals working once they are all in place.

If you have any more questions about how my proposals would work, I’ll be happy to answer them. But please understand that I’ll find it very hard to take you seriously as long as you continue to ignore the criticisms I’ve made of LVT – particularly the points about it being a perennial political football, and rentier profits deriving primarily from control over the use of land rather than simple possession of it.

You say,

“The law shall provide, as far as is practicable, for everyone to:

“*claim all or part of their birthright;

“*leave all or part of it unclaimed, in the stewardship of others;

“*dispose of all or part of it, temporarily or permanently, by
contract or gift, once they have reached an age and condition of full
discretion.”

But HOW does the law provide for that? How, for example, what in CONCRETE terms does it mean to say “All
holders of agricultural land in excess of their own fair share shall be deemed to hold it as trustees for those who have left their shares unclaimed.” In our system, such trustees compensate those without land directly. In yours, they are just “deemed trustees.”

Well, you go on, “Trustees shall give due regard to the principle that nobody should be deprived of means of subsistence.” So, how do you enforce “due regard” concretely? If you are holding my share of land, wouldn’t “due regard” obligate you to pay me rent, the same as anyone who holds land today that legally belongs to someone else? If not, what is the exact mechanism by which their “due regard” is manifested?

Like I said, you have no concrete proposal. When you try to actually build a model to enforce your glittering generalities, you will run into all manner of problems that dwarf the things you are complaining about here.

If you look again at my original comment from four months ago, Dan – the one you responded to, drawing me back into the thread – you’ll find that I outlined the first two steps there, with a link to my website where I discuss it in a bit more detail.

This is not a roundabout way, and it is a way that clearly works. There is nothing more direct than, “replace other taxes with a tax on the value of land.”

If it would be “perfectly feasible to institute laws” that do it your way, whatever that might be, why don’t you give us a concrete proposal. I have seen many such proposals, and all of them suffered from unintended consequences. My proposal, stated above, is ten words, which is pretty simple and straightforward. Yours can be much longer if it is an actual proposal, but it should be concrete and specific.

Since it would be perfectly feasible to institute laws that explicitly allow everyone to inherit a fair share of the land market, I see no sense in a reform aiming to do it in a roundabout way – a way that might not even work, and might have undesirable consequences. Why exactly do you prefer a roundabout method of trying to achieve a fair distribution, rather than tackling the roots of the problem?

I documented several sources to show how that statement was false. Once you admit that your statement was false, and that land value tax was proposed from the outset to give people a right of access to land, we can proceed further. However, it seems that your strategy is to glide past one false objection by making another one. Such a tactic could take us around in circles forever.

That’s a novel approach. Generally the onus is on the seller to convince people what he’s selling is worth buying; there’s not usually an obligation on others to justify why they don’t think it is.

I’m not trying to convince you of anything, Dan. I’ve crossed words with enough committed advocates of LVT to know that I can’t expect them to look critically at how their proposals compare to more radical reforms – they only ever make the case that it would be better than the status quo (which might well be true). In my comments here, I’m merely stating why I think the proposal is inadequate as a solution to inequality, for the benefit of anyone else who might stumble across this 4-month old thread in this relatively obscure, UK-centred online publication. They can judge for themselves what value our arguments have.

“Land value tax was proposed over and over again as a way to insure that everyone has a natural right to, actually, a per capita share of land”

Unfortunately, the good intentions of would-be legislators don’t count for much if the laws they propose don’t have the effect they desire. The reforms you advocate will not, in themselves, give people an equal right to land; they’re simply designed to mitigate, through the invisible hand of the market, the ill-effects of more fundamental laws of ownership (laws which have become detached from their own roots and are blatantly incompatible with generally-accepted, uncontroversial principles). As far as I can see, LVT can only lead to reasonable equality if a) other measures (citizens’ dividend and scrapping of other taxes) are also introduced, and maintained through all the centuries to come, and b) your understanding of how markets will operate, in the changed conditions you are proposing, is both correct and complete. I don’t think we can count on either of those conditions being the case.

My attitude is that adding layers of mitigating law on top of blatantly flawed foundations is not a sensible way for a mature society to govern itself. At some point, we need to examine those fundamental laws and re-draft them in ways that do genuinely give everyone a right to a fair share of their nation’s natural resources. When we do that, I think it’s very unlikely that there will be any need for Land Value Taxation.

“It absolutely forces them to let go of land they are not using”

The conversation with your own landlord, that you quoted below, shows that isn’t the case. He bought vacant lots, in the full knowledge that he would pay tax on them until such time as he builds on them. It’s a price he thinks is worth paying in order to achieve a future gain. Others will also hold on to land they have no immediate need for, as long as they don’t find the cost unacceptable, in anticipation of using it in the future.

“Your later argument that they could put it to use instead of letting shows an ignorance of just how much land they are holding, and how inefficient they they are at putting land to use.”

I’ve been well aware just how much land rich people hold ever since I read Kevin Cahill’s book, ‘Who Owns Britain?’, fifteen years ago – and his estimate that 70% was owned by less than 1% of the population did not come as a surprise to me.

As to how inefficient ‘they’ are at putting land to use, that’s hard to judge when owners are under no pressure to use it efficiently. I recognised, in my comment 4 months ago, that LVT “might shift control of land to a ‘better’ (i.e. more entrepreneurial) class of owner” but it’s quite likely it would also galvanise existing owners to use it more effectively. Without other measures to ensure that active owners don’t benefit unfairly, I don’t see it being much help in reducing inequality.

“Perhaps you are unclear that this is not just a tax on unused land, but a tax on the value of all land, with an untaxing of the various uses.”

No, I do understand that it is a tax on all land, and that your intention is that it will replace other taxes (I assume that’s what you’re referring to with the phrase ‘untaxing of the various uses’ but please do explain it if you meant something else). However, I’ve no confidence that it wouldn’t simply be treated as an additional tax, nor that it would be levied at a high enough rate to significantly reduce rentier profits. Nor am I convinced that it will have much effect beyond bringing idle land into use, because I don’t see how any process for attributing a rental value to land being used by its owner would work without distorting values and/or disadvantaging unusual uses.

“Those who can do more on less land have a competitive advantage over those who simply profit because they have a great deal of land.”

Yes, as I said “It might shift control of land to a ‘better’ (i.e. more entrepreneurial) class of owner”. But, since those people will also have a competitive edge over people who are less efficient at using land (or have different ideas of what constitutes good use), it’s hard to see how it will lead to equal access unless there are also significant constraints on individuals’ ability to use land indirectly. Your plan would have to include banning corporations from owning land, otherwise those who are able to squeeze the most economic value out of it will be able to expand the amount they hold, at the expense of those who are less economically efficient.

In my book, that doesn’t constitute giving everybody a fair share. Basically, rentier profits don’t come through holding land out of use, they come through having control of how it’s used. I don’t see any anything in LVT that would prevent a relatively small proportion of the population from controlling a majority of the stock of land. Their dominance of the socio-economic landscape might be less extreme than it is currently, but it will still be a major source of inequality.

What exactly is your objection to tackling the roots of the problem by introducing sensible ownership laws?

Your assertions here are dishonest. Estonia’s lease system is a leftover from communism, and it now has a land value tax that it levied after being visited by Georgists who advocated exactly what you said would not pass.

Hong Kong levies a 16% land value tax, qua land value tax, based on a periodic reassessment of of the land’s rental value. Hong Kong’s lease system was not a “reform” as you mischaracterize it. It is a holdover from Britain’s settlement with China, whereby they leased the land as a nation, with a concession to turn over that land after the specified period of time. The lease charges are problematic, as a lease negotiated 70 years ago pays a trivial rent compared to a lease negotiated more recently, and even when considering two leases of the same age, disparities arise because some land has gained far more value than other land. In short, the Hong Kong reform that you tout was not a reform, and the results of that dysfunctional compared to their land value tax, which actually was a reform.

Singapore’s lease system is also very old and has nothing to do with Georgist reforms. The earliest lease issued in Singapore was
999 years
. No
such 999 years tenure was issued after 1831.
99 years
leases were granted since 1838.
Freehold
titles were issued from 1845 for agricultural land
outside the town but were not issued since 1886.
In 1886, a series of ordinances were passed. Crown Lands
Ordinance created
“Statutory Land Grant”
which was a
grant in perpetuity, subject to conditions and
covenants. Statutory Land Grants have not been issued since 1919. The present land tenure situation in Singapore comprises a mishmash of rreehold leases
– mostly residential and commercial; 999-year leases, mostly residential and commercial;
99 years leases
– mostly residential and commercial; 30 or 60 years leases
– industrial, and15 or 30 years leases
– recreational. Again, these leases have fixed rents negotiated at the beginnings of the leases, and one can imagine how inegalitarian it is to provide public services to all on lease rates that were negotiated for some over 200 years ago, for others quite recently, and for others still who own their land outright. Singapore does levy a substantial real estate tax, but it is on both land and buildings.

So, all three of your examples are false, and the examples of Hong Kong and Singapore are also irrelevant, because neither country is substantially democratic. The only country you mentioned that is substantially democratic is Estonia, and the only pertinent reform they adopted since they became democratic was to levy a land value tax.

So, please, quit blowing smoke.

Your first statement was that LVT “creates significant scope for corruption.” That is simply false, as it reduces the scope for corruption.

Your statement that LVT would allow the rich to consume more land is also simply false, and your error goes way beyond the semantic argument over the word consume. It absolutely forces them to let go of land they are not using. Your later argument that they could put it to use instead of letting shows an ignorance of just how much land they are holding, and how inefficient they they are at putting land to use.

Perhaps you are unclear that this is not just a tax on unused land, but a tax on the value of all land, with an untaxing of the various uses. Those who can do more on less land have a competitive advantage over those who simply profit because they have a great deal of land. This was documented in the realm of farming by economist Mason Gaffney, who showed that small full-time family farms in the US have higher proceeds per dollar value of land than larger corporate farms as well as hobby farms that rich urbanites work on the weekends, with a hired hand helping them during the week. The same is true with regard to retail, where it gives neighborhood businesses a competitive advantage over WalMarts and Home Depots, family restaurants an advantage over chain restaurants, and so on.

“Land Value Taxation […] treats our relationship with land as
essentially economic, and it doesn’t address the fundamental problem
that the law doesn’t recognise us as having any natural right to occupy
sufficient land to sustain life”.

That is also false. Land value tax was proposed over and over again as a way to insure that everyone has a natural right to, actually, a per capita share of land, which is far more than what is necessary to sustain life. That was John Locke’s argument in “On Property” from his *Second Treatise*, Adam Smith’s argument in “On the Rent of Land,” from *Wealth of Nations*, Thomas Jefferson’s argument when he wrote to James Madison, saying, “Another means
of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt
all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the
higher portions of property in geometrical progression as
they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated
lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of
property have been so far extended as to violate natural
right,” and Tom Paine’s exact proposal in “Agrarian Justice,” where he wrote, “Men did not make the earth. It is the value of the improvement only that is individual property. Every owner of cultivated land owes the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.”

The fact that we make economic arguments to those who are concerned about the economics does not make this a merely economic proposal.

“I don’t think the price will ever fall below its utility value, which would only be zero on land that isn’t much use to anybody.”

That is also false. The margin of production is only pushed down to subsistence land when better land is held out of use. When people hold only the land they are using and all the other land becomes available, the margin is pulled up to the point where land with plenty of utility has not only a zero purchase price, but a zero rent.

” it’s odd you assume I’m unaware of the role of land monopoly as the reason for the disparity of wealth.”

I made no such assumption, but it is becoming increasingly clear that you are unaware of the economic dynamics underlying that monopoly. Of course your opinions could be right, and the opinions of those eleven Nobel economists, of hundreds of renowned philosophers and reformers from across the political spectrum could all be wrong. However, as you have offered no analysis, but only empty assertions, I can only say that it is not everyone else’s job to convince you. Rather, it is your job to make some kind of case to support your opinions. I have not seen anything that stands up to scrutiny.

By avoiding the class-warfare approach, and focusing on how to make this a win-win for most landlords, we have won enough landlords over to our side to show that our approach is viable. If you have your own approach, show us where it has ever been viable. Show us where government’s buying up land and putting itself in debt to do so has been better or more popular than just shifting taxes and not adding to that debt. Show us where government’s buying up land by meeting the seller’s price has not driven up the price of land, or where their simply taking the land through eminent domain at the government’s own price has not incited more opposition from landowners than a revenue-neutral tax shift.

“You frankly have no idea how much corruption is involved in government officials looking the other way when sales and income taxes are evaded”

I’m not interested in how much corruption there is in existing societies – because I can see that existing societies are fundamentally flawed. What I’m interested in is how a healthy society would govern itself. From that perspective, I don’t see Land Value Taxation as a sensible method either of resource allocation or of paying for government. Nor do I see it as a worthwhile transitional reform because I can’t see how adopting it would help us move towards laws which would be healthy.

LVT involves the state taking from individuals value they should never have been granted in the first place, but which they think of as rightfully theirs. I see that (combined with the level of ‘disinterested’ assessment it would involve) as likely to foster corruption. The fact that current methods of raising government revenue also have scope for corruption is irrelevant, particularly if LVT were introduced alongside those other methods. In any case, my concern here is primarily about unequal access to land, which is what the original article is about, rather than tax.

“there is no such thing as consuming land”

Not in the narrow sense of using it up but, in the broader sense, of course there is. Someone with a large house consumes more land than someone with a small one. Someone with a house and a factory consumes more land than someone who only has a house.

” the tax […] forces rich people to let go of unused and underused land”

No, it forces them to either let go of it or make use of it themselves. If your goal is to ensure that no land is allowed to lie ‘idle’, then LVT might well achieve it. But what I’m primarily concerned with is social justice and, from that perspective, I regard LVT as hopelessly inadequate – as I said in my initial comment, “It might shift control of land to a ‘better’ (i.e. more entrepreneurial) class of owner, but it’s a poor substitute for giving people a proper right to land”.

“If the tax on the rental value is high enough, the price falls to zero. At that point it is available to everyone on equal terms”

I don’t think the price will ever fall below its utility value, which would only be zero on land that isn’t much use to anybody. As for being available to everyone on equal terms, of course it’s not: if one person inherits large amounts of land while another inherits none, they are clearly not starting from a position of equality, because the person who inherits can choose to use it rather than give it up.

And, in practice, the level the tax should be levied at is going to be a hotly-contested political football. In the absence of a profound political transformation, there’s very little chance of it rising to the point where owning land ceases to be attractive to the rentier class – and still less of it staying at that level.

“Those who inherit land inherit the tax, which reduces the advantage”

Sure, it reduces it. But, as I pointed out above, it doesn’t come close to making things equal.

“The value of land is entirely a social product”

The primary value of land lies in the fact that we can’t live without it. Its relative price derives from the fact that people compete for it; their competition might be based on social factors but isn’t invariably and certainly wasn’t originally. As I said in my initial comment, “Land Value Taxation […] treats our relationship with land as essentially economic, and it doesn’t address the fundamental problem that the law doesn’t recognise us as having any natural right to occupy sufficient land to sustain life”. You regard access to land as a benefit society confers on its members, I regard it as an absolute right which needs to be administered.

From my perspective, what you’re doing, with LVT, is advocating a clumsy device to mitigate the ill-effects of fundamental flaws in the way natural resources are allocated – a device which even you recognise won’t work properly without also implementing a citizen’s dividend. As far as I’m concerned, to build a healthy society we need to fix the underlying flaws, and that means having sensible ownership laws.

“virtually all the classical liberals and at least 11 Nobel Laureates in Economics disagree with you. I suspect you haven’t read their reasons for their positions. I suggest you start with Tom Paine, who pinpoints land monopoly as the reason for the disparity of wealth in the first place”

I don’t generally get my opinions from reading other people’s, Dan. I’m also not at all worried by the fact that others disagree with me; I’ve read enough, over the last forty years or so, to know that many respected thinkers haven’t thought any more deeply than I have, and often start from assumptions I think are unjustified.

Given the fact that I described LVT as a flawed method of tackling inequality and a poor substitute for giving people a proper right to land, it’s odd you assume I’m unaware of the role of land monopoly as the reason for the disparity of wealth. I assure you I have understood that for many years.

There are lots of people who have something hypothetical that they insist is better, even though it is more convoluted, is full of unintended consequences, and, in the final analysis, cowardly. To use a phrase that Henry George coined, it is like “trying to get on the good side of God without angering the Devil.” But, whenever you actually have a success that dwarfs what we have done, get back to me.

My comments are neither ridiculous nor unfounded, but they are appropriately insulting. Those three adjectives are not synonyms.

Unlike your foolish claims, my statements have not been to oppose LVT but to offer something better, that is likely to be more acceptable to many landlords in other parts of the world, as well as in your precious Philadelphia, the state of brotherly love. I know that Georgist efforts there have been made to introduce the “two rate” system of property tax, but from the way your news is presented it would appear that your Association of Realtors have not done sufficient to eliminate the taxation of buildings (or durable capital goods) and this must be due to the opposition (as evidence which you deny) about which I claim still exists and can be avoided by the introduction of my proposal.

You have failed to reply to the last point I made in my previous comment, it is my impression that you fail to appreciate its significance. So to summarize, your grasp of the actual situation and of my suggestions is abysmal and it seems to be too much for your addled mind to get down to properly understand. So as a smoke-screen, you deny and ridicule what I claim. And worse–in order to hide your state of misunderstanding you add unnecessary insulting personal remarks.

No, it reduces the scope for corruption. Land value tax is the only tax that is based entirely on public information. You frankly have no idea how much corruption is involved in government officials looking the other way when sales and income taxes are evaded, and even the property tax on buildings involves confidential information about the interiors of the buildings. And if you don’t limit your idea of corruption to public officials, you will find massive corruption in people not charging sales tax if the person pays cash. (The buyer avoids the sales tax and the seller avoids the income tax.) Then there is the corruption of declaring bogus deductions or hiding other forms of income. More than that, there is the avoidance that comes from shifting from domestic production to foreign production or to buying non-productive assets.

“No it [a citizen’s dividend] doesn’t [ensure that everyone has access to land] – not unless you also introduce reforms to ensure that everyone starts off with more-or-less equal amounts.”

The effect of land value tax is to encourage large landholders to let go of land they are not using, because the tax on unused and underused land becomes more and more burdensome as the shift continues.

” ‘if you introduce measures to make land cheaper, but continue to treat
it as a commodity, the rich will be able to consume more of it”

No, there is no such thing as consuming land. (Resource extraction is another matter, and it should be taxed through extraction royalties.) You *hold* land, and the reason the tax makes land cheaper for ordinary people to hold is that it forces rich people to let go of unused and underused land. If the tax on the rental value is high enough, the price falls to zero. At that point it is available to everyone on equal terms. Even smaller shifts to land value tax make landholding less concentrated.

“That ensures that people who inherit land have a significant advantage over those who inherit none.”

Those who inherit land inherit the tax, which reduces the advantage you are talking about.

“To my mind, taxation exists to match the contributions that society can
reasonably expect from its individual members to the costs of running
the state.”

To my mind, people should be taxed on the benefits society and the state give them. The value of land is entirely a social product. All individual members of society either own or rent land, and a land value tax falls on them in proportion to the benefits they receive.

“Taxation and resource allocation are two distinct functions; the fact
that relatively undeveloped societies integrated them doesn’t make it
sensible.”

Well, virtually all the classical liberals and at least 11 Nobel Laureates in Economics disagree with you. I suspect you haven’t read their reasons for their positions. I suggest you start with Tom Paine, who pinpoints land monopoly as the reason for the disparity of wealth in the first place.

“The life of an Indian is a continual holiday, compared with the poor of Europe; and, on the other hand it appears to be abject when compared to the rich. Civilization, therefore, or that which is so-called, has operated two ways: to make one part of society more affluent, and the other more wretched, than would have been the lot of either in a natural state….

“But the fact is that the condition of millions, in every country in Europe, is far worse than if they had been born before civilization begin, had been born among the Indians of North America at the present. I will show how this fact has happened.

“It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, cultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal….

“But the earth in its natural state, as before said, is capable of supporting but a small number of inhabitants compared with what it is capable of doing in a cultivated state. And as it is impossible to separate the improvement made by cultivation from the earth itself, upon which that improvement is made, the idea of landed property arose from that parable connection; but it is nevertheless true, that it is the value of the improvement, only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property.

“Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community a ground-rent (for I know of no better term to express the idea) for the land which he holds; and it is from this ground-rent that the fund proposed in this plan is to issue….

“Cultivation is at least one of the greatest natural improvements ever made by human invention. It has given to created earth a tenfold value. But the landed monopoly that began with it has produced the greatest evil. It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance, without providing for them, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss, and has thereby created a species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before.

“In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right, and not a charity, that I am pleading for….

“Having thus in a few words, opened the merits of the case, I shall now proceed to the plan I have to propose, which is,

“To create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property:

“And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.”

http://geolib.com/essays/paine.tom/agjst.html

Jefferson also advocated real estate taxes, not to raise revenue, but to prevent the monopolization of private land. Note that this is not about rural land, either. A square yard of prime Manhattan land is worth more than an acre of typical NY State farmland.

You have always been an opponent of land value tax, and you have always pontificated out of ignorance. I am speaking as someone who has been directly involved in political campaigns to get land value tax passed, and has worked directly with landlords on this issue. Your statements, as usual, border between ignorance and dishonesty, for stating things as fact when you have no evidence is dishonest.

There may not be any technical problem but, as I pointed out above, it creates significant scope for corruption.

“A land value tax coupled with a per capita dividend or universal basic income guarantees that everyone can have equal access to land”

No it doesn’t – not unless you also introduce reforms to ensure that everyone starts off with more-or-less equal amounts. That means reforming inheritance law to ensure that everyone inherits a fair share of land-market-value (which is a core part of my own proposal). If we did that, LVT would only have marginal benefits, capturing externally-generated uplifts in value (which is only relevant in periods of rapid development), and it probably wouldn’t be worth the trouble.

In one of your replies to Macrocompassion you say that “land value tax has the effect of making [land] less expensive”. As I pointed out, in my first reply here, ‘if you introduce measures to make land cheaper, but continue to treat it as a commodity, the rich will be able to consume more of it – effectively preventing the cost from dropping significantly’. That ensures that people who inherit land have a significant advantage over those who inherit none.

To my mind, taxation exists to match the contributions that society can reasonably expect from its individual members to the costs of running the state. Resource allocation, on the other hand, is concerned with ensuring a) that all individuals have access to the natural resources they need to survive and thrive, and b) that the community’s natural resources are used effectively and respectfully. Taxation and resource allocation are two distinct functions; the fact that relatively undeveloped societies integrated them doesn’t make it sensible.

However where my land sales and leasing plan were to apply, many of them would rather live greedily for today, and are willing to sell. What they fail to appreciate in the way we do, is that land ownership is the most powerful means for controlling national progress.

My plan will continue to support the way that competition for the cheapest leasing of sites naturally works. It will encourage more business activity, and not the reverse as you seem to think. With more sites available the competitive pressure for them will fall as initially will their lease values. Can you please explain why you make a bald statement to the opposite effect?

A land value tax coupled with a per capita dividend or universal basic income guarantees that everyone can have equal access to land. That is, it becomes your choice whether to hold the land and pay as much rent as your dividend provides, or to just rent from someone and keep the dividend.

I said, “You might not like it. I advocate land value tax.”

He said, “That’s the best thing that ever happened to this city!”

“You do know that you pay more, right? I mean, this building saves, but you own vacant lots in the Strip District that pay a lot more.”

“Yes, but I got a very good price on them because the previous landowner didn’t want to pay the tax. I intend to build on those lots, and when I do, my taxes will be lower.”

And again, the Philadelphia Association of Realtors not only endorsed land value tax, but spent money campaigning for it.

I don’t know how many landlords you have talked to about this, but I expect it isn’t many. When we advocate for land value tax, we make a point of talking to those who would pay more. It is not so much to win their support as to weaken their opposition. Some of them see the benefits and support us, and others just acquiesce. The few who remain vocal opponents are then isolated in their opposition.

Landlords value stability, and the states that relied most heavily on real estate taxes had the fewest foreclosures in the last crash, while the states that had exceptionally low real estate taxes (particularly California and Nevada) were the hardest hit.

AS for your plan, as soon as government becomes a force on the demand side of the real estate market, land prices will rise because of it. Your program has the market effect of making land more expensive, while land value tax has the effect of making it less expensive. Then, when government has to give up on this wild scheme, land prices will collapse.

Go fuck yourself, retard: nobody else would want to.

And BC’s point is about the old-age dependency ratio: the proportion of people retired to those in work who have to pay for their pensions. Immigrants work and pay taxes to support UK pensioners: got it now?

And your questions make no more sense, either. Policies are enacted locally. Perhaps you mean how are policies created. A totally different question. So, no, nobody from the age of 10 can answer a meaningless question — whatever you think.

As for people not knowing what the EU policies are, this is a reflection of the low level of education on the matter across the UK and the lack of proper coverage by news media and schools. One of the chief protagonists of Brexit (Piggy Johnson) was engaged as a second rate journalist a decade ago, and spent his time writing lies and scurrilous anti-EU propaganda, as indeed he also did in the Brexit campaign. So, why are you celebrating UK ignorance? You should be ashamed of it.

What dark money has funded the Left? Or do you mean New Labour?

The reason for the name change and the land purchases by the government, is to get the landlords on our side. Their powers for lobbying against LVT have always been too strong for any serious change in our proposed system of the Georgist ethical means, for obtaining our national income. However, once these greedy speculators have gained the value of their sites they will no longer treat them as being a capital investment and find they can gain by restraining the opportunities of the land right of access. More sites will become available, which will ease the opportunities that entrepreneurs have to provide jobs and consumer goods. This will reduce and eventually eliminate the incoming rents from land value speculation in the growing land values, which themselves are created by the taxes we pay today, being partly used for the necessarily improving of the infrastructure.

For a government to borrow and print sufficient money to be able to buy up all the land will take many years, but as soon as it begins to do so it will have more income from leasing, to more easily continue this process, and other kinds of taxation can be gradually reduced. This will have the effect of slowly redistributing national income tax and placing it onto leasing revenues. Landlords may even be inclined to invest their returning sums into “Land Bonds” by the government for further investment, because now the amount of uncertainty is reduced for a steady income in a more stable national economy .

“It is in vain in a Country whose
great Fund is Land, to hope to lay the publick charge of the
Government on any thing else; there at last it will terminate. The
Merchant (do what you can) will not bear it, the Labourer cannot, and
therefore the Landholder must: And whether he were best do it, by
laying it directly, where it will at last settle, or by letting it
come to him by the sinking of his Rents, which when they are once
fallen every one knows are not easily raised again, let him consider.”

We see evidence of ATCOR all the time in the United States, where most taxes are local. The more people’s productivity is taxed in one municipality, the faster the more productive people move away to another. This drives down both rents and the tax base itself in the high-productivity-tax municipality. Philadelphia’s wage tax is over 4% for both people who live there and people who work there, while most of the suburban communities only charge 1%. As a result, both high-income residents and high-volume businesses continue to move out of the city. Even the city’s largest newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, is no longer produced in Philadelphia. The situation has become so bad there that the Philadelphia Association of Realtors ran paid advertisements in city newspapers urging people to support a shift from wage taxes to land value tax. Does Macrocompassion believe that the Association of Realtors would advocate something that is “very unpopular with the landlords”? Of course, it is unpopular with a few people holding prime land out of circulation, such as the landholder who, for decades, sat on a large parking lot the in most valuable location in the city – across the street from Philadelphia City Hall. He and a few people like him are the targeted beneficiaries of Macrocompassion’s very micro compassion, while the flight of workers and businesses continues to depress city land values overall.

Just across the border from Philadelphia is the tiny borough of Milbourne. Milbourne was a terribly depressed municipality until it began to gradually replace all of its building taxes with taxes on land value. Things began to turn around, slowly at first, until Philadelphia came to Milbourne’s rescue. Afraid of its worst land speculators and desperate for money, Philadelphia council decided to discourage smoking by levying a heavy local tax on tobacco. Since then, four tobaccos shops opened in Milbourne, and about the same number closed in Philadelphia neighborhoods near Milbourne. Then Philadelphia decided to tax sugary soft drinks, and two large discount beverage shops opened in Milbourne.

Macrocompassion, what do you suppose the Philadelphia landlords who lost their beverage and tobacco-shop tenants think about land value tax as an alternative to these taxes? And do you suppose people smoke less and drink fewer sugary beverages when they travel to Milbourne and buy their cigarettes by the carton and their sodas by the case?

And why do something complicated and involved when replacing other taxes with land value tax is so simple and straightforward? Shall we ask Macrocompassion that question? I think not. The great Clarence Darrow has already answered it:

“Now, there are some methods of getting access to the earth which are
easier than others. The easiest, perhaps, that has been contrived is by
means of taxation of the land values and land values alone; and I need
only say a little upon that question. One trouble with it which makes
it almost impossible to achieve, is that it is so simple and easy. You
cannot get people to do anything that is simple; they want it complex
so they can be fooled.”

http://savingcommunities.org/docs/darrow.clarence/landtopeople.html

Seriously, this is a most excellent article, making many good points that my own blog was making as long ago as 2013 and for the past year linking Brexit to billionaire disruptors and the white crusade…. Sadly I have an average daily readership of roughly less than five, but we’ll ignore that.

Where do I sign?

No. You’re not. The author floats this as a possibility.

“I’m interested in facts, not baseless speculation by somebody with a political axe to grind.”

But you’re not interested in the fact that £450 million was laundered through the DUP by an unknown donor. Nor are you interested in the fact that the government refuses to investigate the source of this money. You’re very selective about your “facts”, aren’t you?

“Facts like Open Democracy being funded by George Soros for example.”

Oh! Here we go. The great Jewish conspiracy theory. Soros hands out grants like sweeties. The amount he gives oD is relatively small. He has no input into content whatsoever and I doubt if he’s even recognise the name if you mentioned it to him.

We have an ageing population and that is what is not sustainable. Without immigration, the productive part of the population will be too small to support the economy. Most people understand that.

So a static population is NOT sustainable. Get it?

We don’t know who it was. That is the point. Why won’t they tell you?

It was proven in 2008 when the banks crashed. This was the cause of austerity by the way, not supposed Labour Party profligacy.

“…but, even if it were, then the EU is at least as much in thrall to its tenets as the UK. ”

Simply untrue. The UK and the US are the centres of neo-liberalism. In the the US there are 41 million people living below the internationally recognised poverty line with 8 million having no income at all. This is considered to be a good thing because it keeps wages down and profits up.

The country cannot lose all it’s money. It has a sovereign currency.

No. It’s called realistic and credible analysis – of “Fake News” if you support Donald Trump.

As far as the Tories are concerned, it is sometimes difficult to tell the difference between incompetence and corruption or economic self-interest. But this is a political phenomenon well-known in the Third World and is actually a device to maximise the theft of a country’s assets. The Tories have introduced several Third World political practices to the UK, so this is no surprise.

AS for your hilarious and sad claim that “the UK has been a beacon for.. workers’ and human rights”, obviously you occupy a world of propaganda and nonsense. The UK since 1979 has systematically removed all workers’ rights and has done nothing to promote human rights: on the contrary, the Tories want to quit the European Convention on Human Rights. Of course, after 1945 the UK was as you describe — usually under Labour governments and is in a different universe now. If anything, the UK is the least supportive of workers’ and human rights in the developed world, along with hte USA. People in Britain rely on the protection of the EU legal framework — which they have now voted to abolish. This is mass suicide for the common people of the UK — and very useful for the billionaires and other crooks.

“We will implement what you decide”
At the bottom of page 20
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/517014/EU_referendum_leaflet_large_print.pdf

“Racist” Brilliant! You see, anyone who says that now shows more about themselves than anyone else possibly could. You just can’t help but show your ignorance, can you. You’ll exhibit it with every opportunity offered.

There is no second referendum on the agenda because it would be meaningless. The EU themselves confirmed that today. It wouldn’t be impossible, but 35 territories would have to agree, each with a veto, and there would be major conditions that the public would not accept. We need to accept Brexit reversal is off the cards.

Many EU countries see Brexit as a great opportunity for them, especially France and Germany who wish to replace London as the financial capital of the world.

Both campaigns promised/threatened things that have not happened or are unlikely to. The campaigning is over and now the government need to implement Brexit with a long term agenda. It will be impossible to please hard brexiters, remainers and soft brexiters. There seems to be limited strength and consistency from our side and I fear that we will end up with the worse of both worlds (in without the power to input anything towards policy)

AS for your ignorant remarks about immigration, this merely indicates that you are economically illiterate. AS well as being racist. Typical Brexit voter.

What rubbish you do talk.

“Surveys confirm that enough people have now changed their position that, if there was a second referendum, a majority would now vote to remain in the EU.”
A total lie. Simply go to the YouGov website where they actually explain it. Even the pollsters who carried out the poll for the Independent’s inglorious headline this week have had to state a disclaimer.

The FACT is that our population is rising by 400,000 a year, and that is NOT SUSTAINABLE! We can do nothing about the birth rate, nothing about the death rate, so the only tool we have left is that of immigration control – which is exactly what we will now have. Germany and France will not! Watch what will happen to them in the next ten years.

I say again (for those who can’t figure it all out): It doesn’t matter if Brexit cost a million jobs, it doesn’t matter if it seriously harms our economy, it doesn’t matter if it causes massive wage increases…a 400,000 people a year population rise is NOT sustainable. Get it?

So no, this is not paranoia: this is reality. Your complacent nonsense about muddling through is typical Tory incompetence. You know where you can shove it.

“If it’s inevitable then why aren’t all capitalist economies showing US/UK private debt ratios?”

Indeed. This not only applies to Germany but to the UK and US in the post war years. Both countries had policies in place which prevented such a state of affairs. Accordingly, finance capitalists fought back and were successful in capturing the political system in both the UK and US with their parodies of democracy and weak unions.

Germany on the other hand has a robust and effective democratic system which has prevented the ascendancy of advocates of Neo-liberalism. The Free democrats, who are the ideological equivalents of the the Tories and the US Republican Party, have never been more than junior coalition partners and are currently utterly irrelevant.

It is certainly the case that Merkel has attempted to move the Christian Democrats to the right but she has only managed limited success. Another factor in the German situation is the fact that German banks are too busy munching away like hungry caterpillars at the economies of Greece, Spain, Italy, Ukraine etc and don’t have the same need to rob their own population.

So the answer to your question is that some countries have fought back against the depredations of the finance sector and have achieved varying levels of success – for the time being.

“Or could it be that there is in fact little that is “inevitable” about capitalism since it exists in an institutional and social context that modifies the behaviour of economic players?”

Well yes. But the neo-liberal project is to reverse that statement so that the powerful economic players modify the institutional and social context in their favour. Look up James Buchanan.

There are capitalist economies that are not debt-driven, and have shown no rise in private debt to GDP ratios during the period of so-called neo-liberal economics.

Ergo, your first statement looks like dogma, unsupported empirically. If it’s inevitable then why aren’t all capitalist economies showing US/UK private debt ratios? How long do we need to wait? Or could it be that there is in fact little that is “inevitable” about capitalism since it exists in an institutional and social context that modifies the behaviour of economic players?

Nope. They are sitting on assets which are making money for them. That is not the same thing. The wealth is created by people, not property. It is then transferred to property owners by the processes described in this article.

Do you have some evidence for this startling claim?

I have no idea what this has to do with my comment or with that of the comment I was replying to. I suspect that you don’t either.

“Tell me again what is “inevitable” about capitalism”

OK. But you could just read it again from above:

“As a minority accumulates the surplus value created by others it generates demand for “investment opportunities”. When this is combined with squeezing the purchasing power of the real creators of wealth the only avenue for profit is the kind of usurious lending you describe: effectively renting the surplus back at ruinous rates to the very people who created it and creating temporary demand which is structurally unsustainable.”

“…other than tired Marxist dogma that it still seems to attract.”

To be “dogma” it would have to be a belief without foundation. Perhaps you could tell me which part of my description of this process is without foundation. Describing Marxist economic theory as “dogma” just as it has been completely vindicated by the events of the last decade is something of a dogma in its right.

This is about the beginning of a revolution in politics, not a change in economic dogma.

The reason we have our elected representatives go to the house to vote and debate on our behalf is because we can not all go, we can not all debate. Technology has changed that, we can all go, we can all debate, we don’t need representatives anymore, we can now represent ourselves.

Sure there are problems, we could do something incredibly stupid like leave Europe, but we could also do something sensible like realise our mistake and change our minds. Yes our choices could have huge economic impacts, but then again so did all the middle east wars we waged.

We will make mistakes, but they will be our mistakes, instead of power being concentrated down into a few hundred individuals, all of whom, like us are open to persuasion by the lobbyists, most of whom choose to obey the various whips and do what they are told, not what they think is right. On a grander scale, we can all be persuaded, we can all choose to obey the whip, just because the power is now diluted, instead of 600 you now need to convince 60,000,000 the potential for abuse through the acts of whipping and lobbying are eliminated. If there was a puppet-master controlling things, instead of 600 strings to pull there are 60,000,000 and the task is impossible. Our people are very diverse, diversity is not weakness it is strength, unity does not exist, there is always someone somewhere who disagrees.

It would of course become a model form of government, we could see other countries abandoning democracy and adopting this method, if people ran the world instead of corporations and governments, we would do something about the problems of the world.

Could politicians still survive? Yes,we could still have representatives, people who we trust and to whom we can give our proxy vote for the day-to-day. BUT we can also take it away from them and use it ourselves if we want or give it to someone else, indeed we could choose on each category of issue on each individual vote where our vote is cast or which proxy can have our vote, we can be the puppet masters, politicians would need to continuously canvass support in the form of proxy votes, there would be no need for general elections, if a government started down a course of action that we collectively did not like, then they would loose support, the opposition would gain support and the action would be defeated.

Politicians could cease to be generalists, they could become specialists. We could choose one politician to be our proxy for economic matters, another for environmental, for social security, education, housing, local government, defense and so on.

The more proxies a politician holds the better they are heard. The fluidity in the system allow for a free market of political ideas when outdated ideas can loose ground to modern fresh alternatives, where new ideas can garner support and grow be debated more and potentially come to the fore and become mainstream.

This is the kind of revolution we should be seeing in politics, not some tinkering with economic views but a radical overhaul of the entire corrupt system to take power from the hands f the privileged few and deliver it into the hands of the many.

Diversity is strength, long may we all rule.

As a first step I suggest a new subject be introduced into education curricula named “Integrative Improvement: Sustainable Development as if People and their Physical, Social and Cultural Environments Mattered”. This could be done by setting up self-funding Integrative Improvement Institutes to conduct courses in the subject. The courses would cover the relevant theory and tools including Integrative Problem Solving and science-based Integrative Thinking.

Re low interest rates being undesirable, there are obvious short term negatives from interest rate cuts, however Warren Mosler and Milton Friedman argued for a PERMANENT zero rate of interest. So long term, low or zero rates might be optimal.

I agree that the deficit and debt should never be a TARGET. Keynes said as much.

Re the idea (which I think is implicit in the article) that an increase in demand is possible, the economists charged with answering that question, the BoE MPC, think big increases in demand are just not possible due to inflation being above the 2% target.

Looking on the positive side of the madness that transformed Britain and many other western countries into even more overpopulated, multi-racial and multicultural societies, it is no longer possible for them to continue posing as nations, at least, not without becoming every more Orwellian, and notwithstanding how Orwellian things have already become, with the Native or founding majority, white population of all western countries now expected to celebrate their own ethnic decline and ultimate demise by celebrating DIVERSITY.

Once the ideological blinkers have fallen from one’s eyes, Britain can now be seen for what it actually is, and of course, always has been: a mercenary “patron state” deceitfully posing as a nation it is not, whose primary purpose is to facilitate society’s self-exploitation, to the personal advantage of its ruling elites and favoured (esp. wealthy and academic/formerly priestly) clients, at the expense of society at large and its long (now even medium) term survival.

We can’t save ourselves without first knowing ourselves, our society and the state that rules over it.

The academics we look to as authorities in understanding society and the state have failed to do this, because, like their medieval predecessors and counterparts, they are themselves privileged clients and employees of the state, with a massive personal self-interest (subconscious more than conscious) in rationalising and defending its role, self-image (as our “nation”) and ideologies (social, political, economic and racial, formerly religious), on which the state bases its claim to moral and knowledgeable authority.

I elaborate on these ideas in my blog: http://philosopherkin.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/political-implications-of-evolutionary.html

The author has misunderstood the concept that the underlying reason for property values to rise is not due to land values as being the source, but on economic activity around the land. If for example google decided to locate its head office in a small town (a totally unrealistic scenario but polarises the point) then property values would increase – the increase is not due to the land increasing in value magically as the author has indicated, but due to the economic fundamentals of the location (hence why you hear the phrase location location location for property)

The second major reason for property increasing is due to global (and domestic) investors viewing property as an alternative investment – it is safe and can offer a high return.

In London, the above are the two major factors why property has bubbled so high – this is ofcourse the major concern of brexit. If there is a hard brexit and lots of financial services are forced to leave (an unlikely scenario in my opinion, or well, not as dramatic), then the fundamentals of the economy would be at threat and so there will be a forecast of lower demand for the future which would cause prices to fall. Additionally, investors may no longer view property in london as a safe haven and will also depart. The impact would be the bubble bursting. However, it would reopen the doors to property to people who could not afford it before. The economy would eventually find a new equilibrium.

The author has taken the perspective of blaming capitalism for the problem of house prices. But I find it absurd to ignore all the real economic reasons as to why this has occurred. It is ofcourse true that investors are sitting on assets that are creating wealth for them, but these investors took a risk by investing in property and they are entitled to a return for their risk. The concept is no different to opening a new shop which later becomes successful and the owner can just reap the return. This is the fundamental of capitalism.

Ofcourse capitalism does go too far where it does not really draw a line for the accumulation of wealth. If you think about it, countries around the world are mainly measured by GDP growth; so investors that are able to continually benefit out of this continuous growth will reap rewards until there is no more gdp growth (from a macroeconomic point of view). Ofcourse, it is rare to hear of a country experiencing negative GDP growth and wealth globally just keeps on rising.

In terms of property, Government policies like inheritance tax help to spread the wealth but there are always loopholes. Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others.

You could not devise a more evil and dysfunctional system of housing if you tried. Thatcher’s sobriquet of “witch” is well-deserved.

Nope. The main issue is that the housing crisis has transferred wealth upwards and is exacerbating the very inequality which it results from.

I’m not sure however we’d be in this state, drowning in debt from cradle to grave, if we’d held on to our manufacturing base – after all, the mass production of the consumer goods we used to make has served the Chinese frighteningly well for the last 20 years.

But HEY apparently – we’re a ‘post-industrial’ economy now – it’s all financial services, real estate, coffee shops and hairdressers.

We don’t need nerdy scientists and engineers making stuff (‘touch labour’ as I laughingly heard one management consultant refer to the process of actually making product), do we..?

The magic money fairy and her everlasting credit tree will continue to provide! And if she doesn’t – well my parents will just have to stump up, innit.

You’re quite right but this is an inevitable consequence of capitalism. As a minority accumulates the surplus value created by others it generates demand for “investment opportunities”. When this is combined with squeezing the purchasing power of the real creators of wealth the only avenue for profit is the kind of usurious lending you describe: effectively renting the surplus back at ruinous rates to the very people who created it and creating temporary demand which is structurally unsustainable.

“…but suffice to say history shows it generally doesn’t end well. ”

Right again. The neo-liberal dogma maintains that any economic activity which generates a profit is wealth creation so the squeezing of real wealth creation is not a problem. In fact, many of them would agree with the basic premise of this article – but would not think it a bad thing. For them , the wealth transfer the author describes is just “how it all works”: Irresponsible borrowers paying the morally correct penalty for living beyond their means.

* Yes the residual element is now the majority element in Britain.

http://markwadsworth.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/we-dont-have-housing-crisis.html

Do you by any chance enjoy British privatised railways, too?

I’ve proposed something similar with a super-safe lending arm as I think you’re aware.

https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/opinion/topic/2017/04/15/making-the-reserve-bank-peoples-bank/14921784004504

http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/central-banking-all-modest-case-radical-reform

A simple rule for international banking will include each in the process of money creation, distribute to each adult human on the planet an equal share of the interest paid on global sovereign debt.. all the money

This will not be given by a government, but earned as income from a secure sovereign trust account, holding a limited right to loan money into existence, exclusively to finance secure sovereign debt

Fiat currency is an option to purchase labor from any who are required to accept the money in trade

Fiat currencies are loaned into existence, governments, banks, those who control and own them, charge option fees as interest on the non existent money, for accounting, and to assure the value…

..the inequity in this is that governments nor banks own our labor to offer such an option…

..the interest paid to create money, to rent the option to purchase our labor, rightfully belongs to each

Each provides the full faith and credit supporting fiat currencies, and is ultimately responsible for the debt created

This is a human right, to be paid through banks, not governments, that governments must borrow their fiat currency from each, and the value of money will be equally supported by the pledge of cooperation from each

…https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tralfamadoran777, https://medium.com/@stephenstillwell?source=linkShare-46143b2857b6-1510116805

Thanks for your kind indulgence

In fact it’s not even called a Nobel Prize. It’s the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. People really need to stop calling it a Nobel Prize, giving it a measure of respectability it doesn’t actually deserve.

See more: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-economics-nobel-isnt-really-a-nobel/

Lots of people “support” basic income. Much fewer have actually modelled it in detail.

I have been to several meetings of the Basic Income Earth Network and its national affiliates. I follow the Citizen’s Income Trust. I have seen no “magic monetary theory”.

Several Nobel Prize winning economists have supported basic income. Of course, several have not. But I really don’t think these supporters are failing to do the math or are guilty of magical reasoning. Nor do I think they are plotting against the poor.

This is really beneath us.

The recent report from UCL on Universal Basic Services (igpspn.org) also looks into this. For the same cost as a £20/week UBI many public services could be expanded with a transformational effect on society.

UBI proponents that have done the arithmetic come to the point where they start advocating magic monetary theory because they understand that no society can withstand the tax burden of decent public services + UBI, so they are left to conjure up extra funding from previously unknown sources to pay for their UBI. And that’s without considering the inflationary impact on basic resources as highlighted in this article.

The idea that you could, today, introduce a UBI so large to replace all disability benefits is a strawman. In actual fact you’d introduce a lower rate which could be either topped up with conditional extra allowances (e.g. for disability or for job seeking), or the person could supplement their income with work.

F. Must try harder.

https://www.niesr.ac.uk/blog/three-facts-about-debt-and-deficits
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n04/simon-wren-lewis/the-austerity-con

The market mechnaism is also invisible. It’s also not a quasi-natural object. It is not even a singular object. Markets can take multiple forms because they exist in different institutional contexts of culture, law, etc. in whuch there are different political/social/moral comitments. Modern economics ignores this as it reduces all human action to utilitratian economic decisions. This is itself a moral/political commitment but not recognised as such.

The only tiny ray of hope is the recent award of the (not) Nobel prize for Economics to a behavioral economist. The one area where there is actual independent data on how people and systems actually work vs. work in theory or hope to/should work. And unsurprisingly, the results found by the winner are in great opposition to “mainstream” economic theory.

I will finally add that the “moral” and “economic” illiteracy of voters is a myth. The voters know full well when the fancy economic theories are crap – that’s why we have Trump as President.

Yes – but not just Tory. The “self evident truth” of an economic collapse caused by profligate public spending was never challenged by any of the Labour economics ministers at the time. To have done so would have shattered the underlying assumption of New Labour that Thatcher’s “reforms” were both necessary and positive. Its plan was to build on them rather than reverse them. This is part of the reason for the persistence of the austerity lie described in this essay.

It is quite remarkable that these people still hold to this absurd claim. They’ve been in power for 7 years now and it’s patently obvious that austerity policies are a thoroughly irresponsible adherence to an utterly failed ideology.

The original post by this guy was pitiful, but it is far from clear that it contravened oD guidelines. My impolite response was removed rapidly — despite the fact that it too was not contrary to the rules that supposedly oD is guided by.

As I and others have been commenting and complaining for years, oD “moderation” is not intellectually justified. It looks more emotional than anything.

And hey, I can upvote myself too. Cretin.

You really must think you are smart, and everyone else is a bit thick. Pity that it’s the other way around!