UPDATE
Exactly as predicted, the broadcast media this morning are hailing Cameron’s patriotism in opposing a financial transaction tax and “Protecting the City of London”, as though this were the Blitz.
Both the BBC and Sky News have featured economists “explaining” what a bad thing a financial transaction tax would be for the City of London. Both were employed by institutions which would have to pay the tax – a fact which was not pointed out.
Despite the fact that a large majority of academic economists, the European Commission, 23 European governmnets, the Obama administration, and Vince Cable before he got his ministerial chauffeur, all believe that a transaction tax is an essential step towards preventing the banking speculation that caused this whole mess, the media are not presenting anyone who believes in the transaction tax.
No, the media narrative is simple. It’s fighting off the Johnny foreigner, Batting for Britain.
What a load of crap.
End of update: here is yesterday’s piece:
The xenophobic yaah-booing of the Tories over the demand for Cameron to show the “Bulldog spirit” is Europe is quite sickening. It is astonishing that the broadcast media have universally bought in to the spin that Cameron is “Defending Britain” by opposing the banking transaction tax, that all other major European powers want.
Cameron is not defending Britain. He is defending his banking paymasters. A transaction tax is essential to discourage multiple speculative transactions and other banking practices which have shown they can wreck entire national economies. Cameron’s opposition to the transaction tax should be vilified as reckless and a blatant pursuit of class interest, not universally lauded as “patriotic”.
Our schadenfreude at Germany’s difficulties is misplaced. Germany remains a much better economy than the UK. They manufacture a great deal more and thus have a much better balanced economy. Despite having swallowed East Germany, German GDP per capita is once again higher than that of the UK, by about 3%.
Crucially, as shown in the recent OECD report, income in Germany is much more fairly distributed than in the UK. The UK in fact is twice as unequal. In the UK the top ten per cent of the population have an average income that is twelve times that of the bottom ten per cent. The same figure for Germany is six times. What is more, inequality in Germany has been falling for the last six years, whereas in the UK it is accelerating.
Yet the German economy has outgrown the UK economy in the same period. That is impossible, according to every TV pundit I have seen in the last month. “It is massive reward for thrusting executives that encourages them to put the dynamic effort in, that leads to economic growth and drags the low paid mere mortals along behind them. If the gap between rich and poor is not colossal and widening, the economy cannot perform as well. Otherwise these vital high earners will desert us and move to Singapore.”
The mantra that economic growth must entail a widening wealth gap is scarcely challenged in the mainstream media narrative. But it is plainly untrue. In Germany in 1990 the top 1% of income “earners” received a staggering 11.1% of total national incomes. By 2007 that figure was – still 11.1%. By contrast in the UK in 1990 the top 1% took 9.9% of national income. By 2007 that figure had shot up to 14.2%. And all the indications are that in the last four years it has accelerated still faster, almost certainly now over 16%.
So if those braying conservatives are right about what makes economies grow, our economy should be streaking ahead of Germany. But it isn’t, quite the opposite. Meanwhile the “right wing” Merkel has overseen a greater drop in inequality than Britain has seen in two generations.
A period of humility from Britain is called for. Those braying Tory MPs are fools.
FTSE +0.83% at Close.
Biggest movers/winners today: Lloyds,Barclays,RBS between 5-6.34%
Addendum – I should clarified that, in my view, the *political* addiction to using welfare payments has come about because the socially just alternative – excellent schooling and health for all – is several times more expensive. One needs to bear in mind that there is a significant minority in the UK who think that social disparity and inequality of opportunity is a good thing – it reinforces the status quo. Such people are usually those who are wealthy already, and wouldn’t want any “sharing of the wealth” to spoil their riches.
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Which largely explains the tax-avoidance of that well known leftie corporation Vodafone, I expect!
Jives, re: “Other than vague sloganeering references to “stupid lefties” “silly bastards” and “lefty bollocks””
Well it got your attention!
@Canspeccy
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“Jives, re: “Other than vague sloganeering references to “stupid lefties” “silly bastards” and “lefty bollocks””
Well it got your attention!”
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Well yes,it got my attention insofar as i recognise vague sloganeerring when i see it :)…some reasoned and referenced stats/facts might been more interesting perhaps?
Jon Re: “no, the wealth of the nation was demolished by the flight of manufacturing, and a price race to the bottom of the market for most goods and services”
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That’s an important part of the story which I have written about at some length. E.G.
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But that’s not what Craig Murray is talking about. He never talks about it, which leaves the distinct impression that he’s a global free trading liberal, which amounts to being an advocate for the impoverishment of the British working class.
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Another thing CM never talks about is the way in which the British lower class have been trapped in a system that teaches them “how to put on a condom, how to maintain a high self-esteem despite almost total ignorance and illiteracy, how to parrot the catchphrases of the politically correct and how to yell “share the welf.” That maybe shorthand, but it’s not “sloganeering” as Jives seems to think.
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And what’s also not, as far as I am aware, been discussed here is how the British lower class is held in an economic trap that pays them as much or more not to work as to work. So naturally they become an increasingly vicious useless burden, feeding on the crumbs from the bankers table, while they are quietly replaced by people from elsewhere with a less corrupt view of the world.
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The interesting thing about the political situation in Britain now is that it provides Cameron an opportunity to shed the incubus of the looney liberal left with their windmills and politically correct bullshit. So the question is, will he force a split in the coalition, go to the country with a promise of an EU Referendum and restore the Thatcherite agenda without Maggie’s streak of lunacy.
Canspeccy,
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“how to put on a condom, how to maintain a high self-esteem despite almost total ignorance and illiteracy, how to parrot the catchphrases of the politically correct and how to yell “share the welf.” That maybe shorthand, but it’s not “sloganeering” as Jives seems to think.
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Wasn’t referring to this as vague sloganeering more the “stupid lefties/lefty bollocks/silly bastards” stuff.
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“And what’s also not, as far as I am aware, been discussed here is how the British lower class is held in an economic trap that pays them as much or more not to work as to work.”.
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Is this really true? There may be some,yes,but it must be a small demographic,i’d imagine.
Jives, Re: “And what’s also not, as far as I am aware, been discussed here is how the British lower class is held in an economic trap that pays them as much or more not to work as to work.”.
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Is this really true? There may be some,yes,but it must be a small demographic,i’d imagine.
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You have a real unemployment plus underemployment rate of about 20%. How do you think those people live if not some kind of welfare? They’re certainly not all living off capital.
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You have youth unemployment alone running at over one million. Some small demographic.
And in any case, even if it were a small demographic, which it certainly is not, what are you saying? “Fuck ’em?” That’s what the liberal class as a whole seems to be saying.
Canspeccy,what i’m trying to ascertain is whether those unemployed are better off not working.That’s my issue.I don’t doubt the unemployment stat but with minimum wage compared to average benefit i cant see how it’s more profitable not working?
Re: “what i’m trying to ascertain is whether those unemployed are better off not working”
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A subsistence income for zero work provides a better return on one’s time than any paid employment you could find.
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And obviously those who threaten to beat-up doctors should they refuse to write a “sick note” think that “sharing the welf” is better than working. As a national strategy, it leads to ruin. For the British it actually means being replaced by millions from elsewhere. Autogenocide, one might call it.
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But the important question is not whether work pays better than welfare, but what people actually do. Given the extraordinary encouragement that the lower class in Britain receives to be idle and ignorant, they naturally chose to be idle and ignorant. That’s what’s wrong with the whole stinking liberal-left agenda. You tell people they are exploited and robbed by the toffs, then you have a moronic mass indignant at the idea of working for a piddling minimum wage when the toffs are pulling down millions.
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What this mentality ignores is that many of the toffs were plebs a generation or two ago who by dint of ambition and work raised themselves to a position of prosperity, providing in the process jobs and opportunity for countless others.
Canspeccy,
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“A subsistence income for zero work provides a better return on one’s time than any paid employment you could find.”
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I would wholly disagree with that.I’ve been unemployed and employed and know that’s not the case.
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“As a national strategy, it leads to ruin. For the British it actually means being replaced by millions from elsewhere. Autogenocide, one might call it.”
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Disagree,this is an example of the European free market and it’s a bi-directional paradigm.Is this point some kind of code for immigration being the problem?
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“But the important question is not whether work pays better than welfare, but what people actually do.2
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I agree with this point and it ties in with the first point and,in a way,contradicts your first point,i would argue.
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On the other points i guess we’ll have to disagree.Right,i’m off for a pint.Cheers.
“this is an example of the European free market and it’s a bi-directional paradigm”
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Love that euphemism for Europe’s new genocide.
Re: “A subsistence income for zero work provides a better return on one’s time than any paid employment you could find.”
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I would wholly disagree with that.
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That’s another reason to love this blog.
It’s completely crazy. People swear black’s white.
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But let’s try to get one small thing straight. Any payment divided by zero hours of work comes to an infinite amount per hour, i.e., “a better return on one’s time than any paid employment you could find.” It’s just simple math. But I suppose they don’t teach a lot of that in Britain today.
Living on benefits is a bit cheaper than in a job with less transport cost, cheaper clothing, cheaper friends, more time to shop and scavenge for bargains, time to do odd jobs yourself, and less retail-therapy necessary to feel ok with life after a crap job.
I found a great fraction of unemployed people add a LOT of value to other peoples lives (without renumeration), and a great fraction of people who earn pay, get payed for activity which is *supposed* to add value to others yet it doesn’t in practice, and ‘earners’ can be as disrespectful and unhelpful to other people as the worst of the unemployed bunch can be.
I think people do practically no harm at all claiming whatever they can to survive from their distorted, predatory ‘state’ -shelter, security, food, clothing, a little more for communication and socialising – These basic demands would be extremely easily supplied to everyone (as a birthright) given humanities amassed technologies and the enthusiasm of all of us who *feel like* working. In a healthy, non-denigrating system – almost everyone would feel like working on something…
What is cutting everything to shribbons is not the weight of the inactive or unpayed on the rest of us, it is these wars and the estates of the mega rich and the destruction and distortions required to maintain those things.
I agree that it should be better financially to work than not to. Solution – increase the minimum wage to a living wage. If Vodafone paid its proper tax bill, and ditto all the other corporations getting away with similar “agreements” with the tax office, then we could afford to do so. Maybe benefits could be tapered so they continue for a while into stable forms of employment? (In all seriousness, I wonder if that has been tried elsewhere? You never know.)
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But then if you consider my suggestion, you might consider that the “liberal left” agenda of maintaining a large welfare bill is in fact a right wing one. Since, as I say, it (a) is cheaper than properly investing in public services like education, and (b) risks increasing mass civic and political engagement and (c) may result in a political force that would demand more financial and opportunity equality. The elite political classes, consciously or otherwise, do not want that.
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> You tell people they are exploited and robbed by the toffs, then you have
> a moronic mass indignant at the idea of working for a piddling minimum wage
> when the toffs are pulling down millions.
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What is moronic about being indignant at working for a piddling wage? Especially since the “toffs” class that is “pulling down millions” is bugging phones, breaking the law, bribing the law, bombing people, killing people, wrecking the economy, putting people out of jobs – then using the violence of the law to maintain their position.
“No, the media narrative is simple. It’s fighting off the Johnny foreigner, Batting for Britain. ”
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this is nothing .. just wait for Britains Nuremburg Olympics .. next year complete with military outfits for the ‘volunteers’ and ‘ambassadors’
Canspeccy looking to drag in his “immigration = genocide” line again. For the seventh or eighth time.
God give me patience … THIS HAS ALL BEEN THRASHED OUT BEFORE, but Alfred/Albert never gives up.
“increase the minimum wage to a living wage”
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Except the minimum wage is already above what most unemployed youths are worth — which is why they will be unemployed whether they want to be or not.
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Or perhaps you are advocating a wage subsidy and abolition of the minimum wage, in which case, I’d agree with you, that that is the way to go.
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What that means is a free labor market but the government to pay a subsidy to the low-paid employed so that they have a bare subsistence income.
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There are some technical problems about how to do this, although there are ways around them, as I have discussed here.
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Wage subsidies would not be cheap, but neither is welfare. However, if you get people into the workforce, they become experienced and thus worth more. In time they become taxpayers. What’s more, by providing access to a large pool of cheap labor you create business opportunities that will generate tax revenue from business profits.
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You ask “What is moronic about being indignant at working for a piddling wage?”
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The answer is that it is moronic to expect to be paid more than you are worth. It’s life. There’s no free lunch — unless you can steal it, and the proceeds of theft are not really free because they are obtained only through cunning and risk that may lead ultimately to the guillotine or the firing squad.
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But in any case, the unemployed cannot steal, or not much, and in a well regulated society they would not be able to steal at all.
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As for the bankers and their enablers, yes they steal with apparent impunity, but who knows what their eventual fate will be.
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In any case, encouraging people to despise work, however small the wage, because others do much better, simply encourages them to miss out on whatever chance they have to rise to a degree of prosperity, by the only means open to them, which is hard work.
“THIS HAS ALL BEEN THRASHED OUT”
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Yes that seems to be the case. Certainly no rebuttal here from Nuid.
@nuid – I agree. @Canspeccy – you can raise that stuff if you wish, but it might be a better idea to discuss the things upon which we might persuade each other a little! The “genocide” phraseology just winds people up, as you may have noticed before :-0
> Except the minimum wage is already above what most unemployed youths are worth
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Aha, but there is an inconsistency here – aside from the difficulties of attaching a fixed sum to the generic concept of “unemployed youth”. The problem is that if the minimum wage is, say, six pounds an hour, your view of his entitlement depends largely on the relative value of money i.e. what “deserving” people are getting. They too may be underpaid of course, so we are not helping the “unemployed youth” by insisting he is not worth the minimum wage.
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In any case, we should be paying a minimum living wage partly to lift the minimum income one can get from a full-time job to that which one would receive on benefits. It is also a good idea to inject some purpose and dynamism into people who have been beaten down upon – and who have found that it is not worth making the effort.
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Lastly on that topic – the education system has failed the “unemployed youth”. For his poverty and his lack of opportunity, I don’t think punishing him for his actual labour value is going to be a productive step forward.
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I’d be deeply suspicious of abolishing the minimum wage, even if a wage subsidy would then be instated. I agree that it might have some beneficial features, such as decreasing employment and increasing the tax take. But I don’t think it would contribute to training, since the majority of jobs (in the service sector) are largely unskilled. So it wouldn’t increase the “value” of people any more, but would hugely subsidise corporate activity (and hence funnel public funds into private profits). Whilst I am not averse to government projects to encourage training or other long-term investment in the private sector, the private sector sponges off the state badly enough as it as (and greatly more than the unemployed youth). We need to redress that balance, which – again – comes back to large companies paying their fair share of tax.
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I note you cite Friedman as being supportive of the wage subsidy idea, which to my mind is enough to recommend against it. Hasn’t the free market been rejected by the bankers and the corporatocracy anyway? This may be the core of our disagreement 😉
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I am sure you will forgive me for saying that your charity towards the dispossessed and the downtrodden is, err, somewhat limited. But you also freely recognise that the bankers steal – on a much greater scale – but they do not suffer the same opprobrium. Surely they are much more deserving of being described as “overpaid”?
CanSpeccy,
Reading your posts, I can safely assume you have no fucking Idea about economics, and even less ideas about drivers thereof. The oodles of hot air, and slogans you have disturbed the peace of electrons for, are a mixture of mims set in place by the likes of Murdoch, and utterly baseless. Finally the Zero division use is just plainly preposterous use of mathematics, and to be expected from someone whom never understood mathematics past the high school algebra.
Alright, bored – calm down, no need to be abusive.
Addendum to my post – I support a living wage rather than a minimum one, since I think everyone is entitled to a decent standard of living. But I am not necessarily of the view that benefits need to be paid entirely in cash. Unless people could raise good objections here, I wonder if it might help if a portion of them were to be paid in vouchers? This might help discourage luxury purchases whilst receiving benefits and encourage take-up of extra training.
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I wonder also if cash benefits could be substantially increased for recipients willing to do useful community service, full-time. That would remove the stigma of “the workshy”, and the ones that are genuinely keen not to work would have much less disposable cash – a big incentive!
Crab,
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Re: “What is cutting everything to shribbons is not the weight of the inactive or unpayed on the rest of us, it is these wars and the estates of the mega rich and the destruction and distortions required to maintain those things.”
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What you say may be correct, and if some folks don’t want a regular job and can get by, that’s fine with me.
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But when youth unemployment is at 1.2 million then we can be sure that much of it is either involuntary or because many young people, corrupted by the welfare system, have opted for a life of parasitism. Either way, it is a disgrace and a scandal.
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Everyone who wants to work should have the opportunity to. This is what Tom Paine considered a natural right. Probably his philosophy was bad, but his political ideology was sound.
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As for how much aid the working poor should receive from the state, that is a matter of what is feasible and, within the realm of the feasible, what society as a whole approves. But based on my experience, there is no great hardship for those who are young and healthy to live on something close to a mere subsistence income. The experience can be a highly effective spur to industry and ambition.
Jon,
I don’t understand why, as a matter of principle, you reject the ideas of Milton Friedman who was one of the most competent economics Nobel prize winners.
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True Friedman was an advocate of the free, competitive market, perhaps the most effective advocate in the last half century or more. But so was Adam Smith, and so is anyone who is not for state or private monopolism.
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Free market capitalism is the most effective machine for raising the standard of living of ordinary people that was ever invented. Look at China since it adopted a market system: it is the fastest growing large economy the world has ever seen.
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“I am sure you will forgive me for saying that your charity towards the dispossessed and the downtrodden is, err, somewhat limited.”
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Why should I forgive you? What you say is the opposite of the truth. It is the bleeding heart liberals who have created a welfare system that destroys all incentive and opportunity for the poor to help themselves.
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I know all about poverty. one set of my great great grandparents were refugee to the English Midlands from the Highland clearances. During the Crimean war they lived mainly on bread and tea. My great grandmother in that line lost her mother when she was twelve and had to raise nine younger siblings while she worked in a factory. They received no welfare. The motivation to rise in the world must have been intense. Of the children of that brood, cousins of my father, one became the CEO of Britain’s largest book publisher, another became a school principle, the author of over thirty novels and a Booker Prize winner. Another became mayor of the Canadian city of Brantford, Ontario.
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Nothing, in my view could be more uncharitable or exploitive of the poor than to encourage them to lead lives of idleness and petty criminality of the kind many felt disposed to applaud at the time of the London riots.
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As for the bankers, the criminality of some seems self evident. I’d happily see them in gaol, but as Tony Blair would say, it just won’t happen, so why waste breath on them.
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Cheers, I gotta go.
Canspeccy,
Somewhere between your sloganeering and somewhat extreme examples of societal sanction( does anyone really,even the unemployed,get shot or guillotined for minor theft??)there is a curious lack of subjectivity.Your mathematical analysis singularly fails to consider individual variation-an essential element of all mathematical hypothesis.This curious meme of yours does not add up.
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The zero sum example is,frankly,absurd.Are you really arguing that nobody enjoys their job and that someone,say,earning a decent wage and who enjoys their job is really no better off than an unemployed person?I know plenty of people,well-paid and happy in their job who would just laugh at your argument.Your distorted dialectic completely fails to consider the subjectivity of all these questions-and that’s a big mistake.The prescriptively tortured logic you posit is arcane to the point of obtuse,in my opinion.The wholesale systemic values you employ debase the very culture of individualism that you would seem to try and champion.How strange,really.Finally,who defines a well-regulated society? Do we march in step,with a gleam in our eyes for the joy of homogeny at the expense of the individual,subjugating ourselves to the final omnipotent vision of bankers and their wholly-owned politicians? Well,i for one,would hate to live in such a place,full of guns and guillotines for the lesser victim whilst the real criminals run riot amongst us.
On the money.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/nicholas-faith-the-selfish-city-wont-repay-a-national-sacrifice-6275074.html
Cameron IS PATRIOTIC
to Israel and Zionism