Comments on: Framing the economy: how to win the case for a better system

By: StrawDog

StrawDog — Thu, 15 Mar 2018 03:38:00 +0000

The sample message used to illustrate Story 2 is awful. And I hope you don’t use “(re)programme” in production literature.

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.

By: MigT

MigT — Mon, 05 Mar 2018 12:26:00 +0000

Sorry but this is not new stuff and you will get nowhere with it while people still believe that “the economy is like a household budget” – a misconception these narratives do nothing to counter.

By: Moana

Moana — Sun, 25 Feb 2018 15:18:00 +0000

It’s not correct to say that 52 % of the British public voted to leave the EU. The correct statements should read”37 % of the public voted to leave” because abstainers are part of the public and they did not vote for leave.

By: Robin Wilson

Robin Wilson — Sat, 24 Feb 2018 10:39:00 +0000

This is good and responds to a real need. But where the message needs several paragraphs to explain it in each case, we’re in difficulty. The five key points progressives need to address are:
1) the justification for austerity (‘Labour maxed out on the credit card’). When businesses and households retrench, it’s time for government to invest, not cut, so the economy recovers. Such investment brings future returns and brings the debt down, whereas printing money instead merely fuels asset prices and private wealth.
2) the justification for welfare cuts specifically (‘strivers versus skivers’). Universal welfare states work better, because everyone contributes as they should and everyone benefits when they need to. Means-testing just means meanness and costs a fortune to police, whereas generous welfare systems make for a good society with greater gender equality and better work-life balance.
3) the justification for privatisation (‘competition and choice’). Health, education, energy, transport and so on are public goods on which everyone depends, so should be provided by accountable public agencies, not private monopolies. Polling data show the public recognise this.
4) the justification for capitalism (‘management’s right to manage’). Employee participation and ownership makes companies work better and allows them to meet their social and environmental responsibilities too. They invest in their workers and their productivity, rather than money simply being siphoned off by private shareholders.
5) the justification for nationalism (‘take back control’). We can’t say ‘stop the world, we want to get off’. Globalisation is today’s reality and the British empire history. Only through European collaboration can we begin to solve the big problems of today’s world, like climate change.
We also need an encapsulating phrase which is no more than three words, like every progressive 20th century milestone: ‘National Health Service’ ‘the People’s Home’, ‘the New Deal’. ‘The Good Society’, which is a notion the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung has been working up across Europe for the last decade, is the best candidate–partly because it implies it is the society we should focus on, in which the economy is an instrument, rather than the latter being an end in itself.