An advert for the RNLI caught my attention because it indicated that the majority of their income comes from bequests in wills. The pitch was that, after you provide for your loved ones, you should leave money to the RNLI. I have no problem with this, having generations of lifeboatmen in my ancestry, but it tied in with criticism I had seen recently on X of “boomers” for hoarding wealth.
It appears to me simply true that those of my generation were able to acquire wealth, often largely invested in residential property, simply in the normal course of our working lives. It also is true that succeeding generations do not appear so easily to do this.
It is not that wealth is no longer created. It is that my generation benefited from a social democratic consensus in which wealth was much more equally spread around society. I lived through and witnessed in real time the destruction of the social democratic system that produced that outcome – the advent of neoliberalism and its mechanisms of deregulation and globalisation.
This framing is misleading, however. The establishment narrative is that extreme wealth concentration and inequality is the natural order of things and that deregulation is the removal of artificial constraints. But actually the opposite is the truth. The entire economic structure is unnatural. The very concepts of capital itself, of company structures, of banking systems, of taxation are each a carefully manufactured construct.
Extreme concentration of wealth is produced by design, not by accident. Hedge funds, family offices, share dividends, banking bonuses, massive salaries – none of this is ordained either by God or by nature. It is a construct which is becoming unworkable.
The chief executive of a FTSE 100 listed company now earns over 130 times the median UK salary. Listed companies are themselves the less extreme end of capitalist excess. I am struck that this median salary itself is about £38,000 pa. I was earning £38,000 as a muddling diplomat in about 1995, 30 years ago. Wage stagnation for ordinary people is stunning.
In 1985 I bought my first home for £32,000. My salary was £14,500. Those same little terraced houses in Abbey Wood now sell for over £400,000. They have gone from twice a normal salary to ten times the average salary. I have no idea how a normal person can buy a house now. But the housing market is only a symptom of the distorting effects of the extreme inequalities of late capitalism.
Foodbanks, benefit dependency, lack of career progression opportunity, the collapse of social mobility. This is all incredibly unhealthy. The rise of the world’s first trillionaire and of incredible concentrations of wealth. I stood for election in Blackburn – a city with pockets of real deprivation and, incredibly, seven billionaires.
Wealth is largely digits in laptops. Some of it translates into physical control of property or productive units. All of it needs to be fundamentally rebalanced in favour of those who actually produce the wealth. The accounting tricks of Jim Ratcliffe do not amount to wealth creation. In fact asset stripping and dismantling of productive capacity is much more often the path to riches than producing material things.
The world is deeply sick. Society needs a thorough and imaginative re-engineering, with altruism as a founding principle.
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Maybe, with your expertise and experience, and your concerns, you should write a book on implementing “supply side” (re-industrialisation with co-determination) and “social democracy” reforms for future leaders, which might exert an enduring and good influence, even outside the country, e.g. the next generation of American leaders, such as Zohran Mamdani and AOC, particularly if it builds on an international range of examples?
Alternatively, carry on as you are doing. Good luck with court cases or appeals.
Yes, am sort of scribbling down notes with that in mind.
Mr. Murray, it may be of interest to you to consider holistic approaches such as those of the Buckminster Fuller Institute and Open Source Ecology – maybe not a silver bullet but certainly could be part of the solutions for our future. Another could be an approach similar to that of Ryan Donais in Toronto.
The People’s Andy says he’s going to radically rewrite the political and economic model of the last 40 years … while vowing to stick to Sir Keir’s 2024 Labour Party manifesto.
Ha, ha, ‘Keir’s 2024 Labour Party manifesto’. Is that the 10 lies he never delivered on. The peoples Andy has to finance Israel and Ukraine as well as fund the MIC, only crumbs for us. Words are cheap.
I think he may have been told to deliver some small domestic reforms. The British ruling class knows that the system described by Craig is getting close to breaking point. They have manouvered the People’s Andy into No. 10 as a vehicle to protect them from emerging forces on the left. If he does break with Uniparty neoliberal orthodoxy in some ways let’s not get too excited.
He has a 10 year plan. He must be confident that he will stay at No.10 for the next 10 years, given the history of the occupants of the previous 10. That’s optimism!
Still, I say, give him a chance.
Is this latest charade making the loss of Lindsey Graham a little less painful?
Lindsey Graham, not long before he died, told the US that they needed to heed Ukraine as a leader in drone tech applied to warfare, which expertise Ukraine was forced to develop by necessity, and became a leader in. Graham may have thus helped secure NATO’s Eastern border as well as that of Ukraine. The UK could also benefit from in the future, not only a member of NATO but also because it has been a consistent and staunch ally of Ukraine in the war.
Give him a chance, what for ? Why ? He’s a zionist grifter, who was assigned the role of PM, he wasn’t voted in ‘democratically’. His role is to save the labour party, not to help the people. Keep up MJ.
For one thing, give him a chance to improve housing and particularly help people living rough, so that they don’t have to.
You’re conversing with a Lindsey Graham apologist here, who thinks NATO is a defensive alliance and the Ukrainian cause is sovereign & just.
Just saying…
We don’t have any choice but to give him a chance, do we?
Which is probably just as well for now, seeing as a general election would likely result in a Reform government right now.
Fine words from our new PM about overturning forty years of neoliberalism and rebuilding the country.
But what’s the point in rebuilding the country if, like Starmer, you intend to lead us into a war with Russia?
A surefire way to literally destroy the country.
I think the point is to deter Russia from being led into a war with us. An important component may be robotic technology developed by Ukraine.
M.J., I keep seeing you support Ukraine, but you omit the context.
Statesmen going back twenty years have said that Russia would invade Ukraine if Ukraine joined NATO, and there’s a Wikileaks cable regarding talks with officials of Russia saying that if Ukraine joined NATO, Russia would be “forced to make a very difficult decision” about whether to invade. Zelensky tasked the Ukrainian military with retaking Crimea, which would be against the will of the majority in Crimea, after which NATO held training exercises in Ukraine with Ukrainian troops, to “develop interoperability” between Ukraine and NATO. Some NATO member troops trained with the ultra-nationalist Azov battalion – in WWII Russia lost tens of millions of citizens helping defeat Nazism. Russia’s buttons have been danced all over.
The Russian government insists that Ukraine must be neutral, not in NATO, and seeing how badly NATO has behaved for a quarter century – e.g. Afghanistan, Libya, Operation Timber Sycamore to install a predominantly Salafist government in Syria, NATO countries supporting Israel and helping the unprovoked attack upon Iran – they have a very serious point. When the Ukrainian government was prepared to accept this condition, Boris Johnson flew out there and insisted that they carry on fighting.
Kier Starmer said that military spending is good for the economy and increased “defence” spending. I see it as a transfer of public money to the most inhuman part of the private sector. NATO is advised by and has a revolving door with the arms industry.
The Western propaganda is that the madman Putin is not serious about negotiations, but I do not believe, for instance, that the USA and the UK would do nothing about Russian federation military stationed in Mexico or Ireland.
It sickens me; it seems that NATO will fight until the last Ukrainian.
Here is a good one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck2s7dXEvIE
Fortunately there’s zero prospect of Britain going to war, as the actual wretched state of the armed forces and widespread public cynicism of the regime totally precludes that. Nor could they be halfway rebuilt at any point within the near future.
At any rate the current polity is slowly rotting for reasons a soft Blairite like Burnham can’t fathom much less fix.
Most of this extreme wealth inequality arises from manipulation of fiat currency. Would you sit down and play monopoly (the board game) with someone who had a printer under the table that could generate them new notes at will. National currencies like dollars, Euros, pounds, etc can be created at zero cost to the issuers in essentially unlimited quantity. Those closest to the money printing mechanisms (whether its created by central or commerical banks) benefit from the effect of that extra fiat money via inflation of their asset prices and/or having those asset prices supported by bail outs when things go wrong. Those who get hold of the newly created money later suffer the effect of already inflated prices reducing their ability to buy – Its referred to as the Cantillon effect. Without the fiat money printing and manipulation of interest rates there would not be the same incentive for a small portion of the population to endlessly vacuum up as many assets as they can (eg houses) because sometimes they would fall in price. In that world people who had borrowed heavily to buy assets would get wiped out and the assets would be redistributed amongst more people. So basically stop printing money and stop bailing out people who’ve made bad investment decisions and this extreme wealth inequality would rapidly go away. Ideally we would move to a hard money standard based maybe on a currency convertible to Gold to prevent governments and banks from arbitrarily increasing the quantity of currency; of course governments’ won’t accept such a loss of power and control at the present time. Naturally to the socialist mindset the solution to the extreme wealth inequality will be seen as more new taxes, higher existing taxes, more redistribution to the poor, more regulation, creation of a social credit system and other micromanagment of every individual’s life. Which is the same set of solutions a socialist proposes to every issue.
Redshift, while some of the effects you describe are real your solution is deeply flawed. A return to the gold standard would not solve the problem of wealth inequality – it would lead to the hoarding of wealth and widespread economic depressions.
The problem is not fiat currency, rather it is the fact that western governments have been captured and act in the interests of the ultra-wealthy (mostly financiers) rather than the people they purportedly serve. Fiat currency is merely a tool, and were our government acting in our interests it’s a tool that could be used to end the deprivations caused by the inflated asset bubbles you rightly decry.
That this is possible is shown by China. The house price bubble there has successfully been deflated; the fact that the renminbi is a fiat currency made no difference. What matters is the interest served by government.
Yes, but without fiat currencies governments can’t be captured anywhere near so comprehensively by those elite special interests. If governments have to balance their budgets they have to make tradeoffs in their spending, they can’t direct so mjuch money towards or bail out the special interests because the quantity of money is finite. The argument you make for fiat is that governments can expand it in a crisis to stop economic depressions by injecting money. However the effect is to dilute/debase the existing fiat unit and ultimately inflate asset prices so we’re back to the start (eg in 2020 due to the covid shutdown UK GDP fell by the greatest % in 300 years but house prices went up 14% that year because of the money supply increase). In a fiat system you’re relying on the central bank and government to run policy sensibly which they might do for years or even decades but ultimately the system eventually normalises loose policy as normal business, corruption entrenches and so you get the endless series of crises and emergencies we see. Again the socialists will then say raise taxes which means government spending becomes an ever larger proportion of the economy so that means more available to direct to the special interests. There are worse things that having occasional recessions that will redistribute assets from those who have recklessly borrowed to buy them to those who have very little but can then afford to buy the offloaded cheap assets.
Crypto is about the most fiat a currency it is possible to imagine.
Crypto is actually a computer simulation of non-fiat token money that, just like fiat, has zero intrinsic value. However, if Reform ever get their way (Heaven forfend!) you might have a point.
Either way, it’s a scam.
Redshift, my argument is that fiat is a tool that should be under democratic control (ideally a true and fully open democracy, not the sham one we have now). I would not discard that tool merely because it’s currently being misused by governments in thrall to the ultra-wealthy.
Taxation is also a tool that should be used wisely. Again, misuse is not an argument against it. (Note that its primary function is to control inflation by cancelling the money that fiat creates, not to raise revenue for government spending.) Both tools are necessary in a properly governed economy and can be deployed in such a way that the chance of your “occasional recession” is virtually eliminated. Conversely, a return to the gold standard (especially if “the quantity of money is finite”) would absolutely guarantee a deep economic depression.
I’ll address a couple of your points that suggest you don’t fully understand how the system works:
“In a fiat system you’re relying on the central bank and government to run policy sensibly.”
Well, partly, but at least they are (in theory) under some sort of democratic control. You seem to miss that fact that by far the largest tranche of new money that enters the system is created by the commercial banks. Forget quantitative easing, the money they create has a far greater effect on inflation and the economy, and, of course, they are not under our control. Where they direct that money has a big effect on the economy and – guess what? – the bulk of it goes to inflate asset bubbles rather than build productive capacity.
“The socialists will then say raise taxes which means government spending becomes an ever larger proportion of the economy so that means more available to direct to the special interests.”
Government spending (something that is absolutely vital for the well-being of both the people and the economy) does not depend on raising taxes in a fiat system. As I said earlier, taxes control inflation by cancelling fiat money. They are also a tool that can nudge economic activity in a desirable direction.
The last thing we need is the gold standard; what we actually need is good and honest government that uses its fiscal tools for our benefit. (Little hope of that, I know.)
Nothing in this world is perfect and can remove all problems associated with human failings. My point is just that in my view fiat currency is worse than the alternative. Hard currency helps limit over-centralisation thereby allowing for a more decentralised society. You make comments like “don’t discard because its currently being misused”, “taxation is a tool that should be used wisely” and “taxes…can nudge economic activity in a desirable direction.” When you provide a fiat system, taxation, law making power and anything else to a state they will eventually definitely be misused and absent a major crisis or collapse there is generally no way to reverse them back to being reasonable. It will only be after some stage of spiralling collapse, when people have lost faith in unlimited government control being able to provide them with bread and circuses, that they’ll accept the hard money idea I’m suggesting to constrain the state. Then at some point beyond that loose policy will start over again and decades later we’re back where we are now. Cycle of life, fourth turning model, call it what you will. History repeats.
I’m well aware the vast majority of what is usually referred to as money (eg M2/M3/M4) is created in the commercial banks which is why I specifically mentioned them alongside central banks. The central bank money can be more damaging though because they create and use that to buy government bonds thereby supressing the interest rate signal that would otherwise rise and force government to borrow a more limited amount. Central banks also support and bail out commercial banks thereby allowing them to be less conservative in their behaviour than they would otherwise be.
Fundamentally the point is that a debt based money system will always result in centralised tyranny just as the monopoly game player who has a note printer will eventually own everything on the board. The natural state of a free market system should be for prices to fall as entrepreneurial activity drives prices for everyone towards zero (get more for less monetary units). But in a debt based system the system needs inflation rather than deflation so that the debts debase. Hard money can work and drive everyone’s wealth upwards whereas a debt backed fiat money must drive increasing centralisation and inequality.
“Yes, but without fiat currencies governments can’t be captured anywhere near so comprehensively by those elite special interests.”
A brief study of history would show that statement to be completely wrong. Just in Britain, the country was run for almost a thousand years almost entirely by the “aristocracy” and if they weren’t an “elite special interest”, I don’t know what is.
The aristocracy was still a mixture of opposing views and policies, sometimes directly physically fighting each other (eg war of the roses). Although far from perfect I would still say it was a less centralised system than what we have now. There are of course many factors at play when trying to compare then and now eg technology and constitutional/legal norms (eg separation of church and state, slavery, etc). Hard money which died away over the course of the 20th century is just one of those differences.
Very much agree with all this – and the wonder is that of al lthe people living on the dege, even more don’t end up independencies (drugs/alcohol gambling) as their inablity to achieve simple basic life goals becomes clear to them, and that so many actually do tough it out and have children – often in 2 parent families.
One of the con tricks you may recall from the 70s/80s was “Stag Flation”. This was said to be a terrible thing and the cost of wage push inflation from Unions and terrible things like that which lead to inflation (bad) and low growth (bad and weak stock markets (disastrous)
Of course what Stag Flation was really a symptom of was a much much healthier distribution of wealth, leading to wages rising, strong unions, strong demand from large numbers of newly improved wealth (consumer inflation) and a challenge to the rich to stay ahead.
Growth has never been a problem – Britain has always been extremely wealthy. 5% less growth for 10% of redistribution is a fantastic trade.
Governments are allowing big corporations and super rich individuals to suck out as much as wealth for a nations as possible via all sorts of contracts and subsidies, the politicians are in return given backhanders and shares in companies and the masses see public services cut, whilst the corporations stagnate wages – or employ staff, with top up from the DWP, or they employ the young of whom they can pay lower wages such as minimum wage, with high responsibilities.
We’re roughly half-way through Klaus Schwab’s 2030 Agenda (now extended) – though Oxford will become England first 15 minute city at the end of this year, the overall plan is you’ll own nothing and be happy.
“Oxford will become England first 15 minute city at the end of this year, the overall plan is you’ll own nothing and be happy”
No job? Then stay in your zone and use your smart glasses to watch some hippy capitalists with goatee beards riding their Brompton bikes for a while … and then goodbye. Next stage of evolution and all that.
Brian.
Picture the scene (in the not too distant future) you are walking along the streets of a zone you don’t live in – and you are approached by the authorities and asked what are you doing outside your zone.
A wee bit of info on what will likely take place once its implemented. BTW, Utrecht in The Netherlands – is also a good bit down the line in becoming a 15 minute city.
“Oxford’s 15-minute city is being rolled out in stages, with full implementation scheduled for August 2026
The city is divided into six neighbourhood zones, separated by traffic filters monitored by automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras
. Residents must apply for permits allowing up to 100 days per year of unrestricted vehicle travel through these filters, with additional permits for congestion charge areas. Exceeding the allowance triggers fines, starting at £70 per breach, reduced to £35 if paid promptly
Physical barriers are not installed; instead, travel is digitally monitored and monetised, transforming vehicle movement into a regulated resource”
@RoS – Apologies if I sounded sarcastic. I meant to convey full agreement. It is hellish and I think it will soon be far worse than it will be in Oxford later this year. The day is coming soon when people won’t be allowed out of their zone at all…and then soon after that the walls will come in, as “the population issue” is addressed. “Oh well, shucks” will be the main permitted attitude among those who aren’t directly involved in enforcement.
No apology needed Brian.
When we are forced to use CBDC’s – then their control will really kick-in, (FRC’s) Facial Recognition Camera’s are already being rolled out in England – and in Scotland the police force are using them to map peoples faces at demos, supermarkets have been using them for awhile now, so if you go to supermarkets to shop, your face is already on their database, and it can be tracked (your movements) if you receive several hits in any given day.
What a pair of conspiracy nutters you are.
– “Picture the scene (in the not too distant future) you are walking….”
– “separated by traffic filters monitored by automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras…”
You got wheels on your feet and a number plate on your arse?
@Craig – “The entire economic structure is unnatural. The very concepts of capital itself, of company structures, of banking systems, of taxation are each a carefully manufactured construct.”
…As is money.
…As is private property.
…And as is economy, which essentially means imposed scarcity.
Throughout history the ultra-wealthy, with their economic power, have sought political power and thereby protect and expand their wealth. They are not a coherent group (the interests of industrialists, for example, don’t exactly align with those of financiers and the rentier class) so there’s no overarching conspiracy but still, there’s one group with economic power (but not concentrated wealth) against which all the others are opposed – organised labour.
The periods in which workers made gains have been few and far between and the ultra-wealthy have always devised ways to reverse them. The post-war economy up until say the late 1970s in which workers “were able to acquire wealth simply in the normal course of our working lives” is, as noted by Craig, over.
The ultra-wealthy never rest on their laurels – they always adapt and work to defeat any threat that confronts them. Today they have a cast-iron grip on governments and their main problem is internal – the struggle to be the hegemon amongst them. Their defeat of Labour is better described as a rout, but still they don’t sit back and relax. AI and the manipulation of electorates through data mining, programmable currencies (CBDC) and other ecocidal big tech are next to “by-pass democracy” as Peter Thiel puts it. Not that democracy has ever been much of an obstacle in the past, but they are careful not to run the risk.
“Throughout history the ultra-wealthy, with their economic power, have sought political power and thereby protect and expand their wealth. ”
Indeed and, in the distant past one of the reasons that a government existed was to stop them doing it.
“The periods in which workers made gains have been few and far between and the ultra-wealthy have always devised ways to reverse them. The post-war economy up until say the late 1970s in which workers “were able to acquire wealth simply in the normal course of our working lives” is, as noted by Craig, over.”
That post-war socialism was made possible by one thing, which, one would hope, will not be repeated: The majority of the male working class had not only been trained to kill, but had killed and hence had surmounted a very large psychological barrier. The oligarchs realised that, if they attempted to overturn the socialist government there would be a revolution and they would very likely end up dead and that being a slightly poorer oligarch was better than being a dead one. Now all those men are dead or dying, that threat has gone and normal service can be resumed.
In passing.
A lot of people nowadays have little time for the RNLI as they are now seen as the primary taxi service for illegals.
One needs to exercise care with leaving money to charities since some tend to scan published probate data and then come demanding their money from grieving relatives.
Only by hard right wingers who would be happy to let people drown or die of exposure and only 4 or 5 of the RNLI’s 431 boats are involved.
Re: the last-but-one paragraph
Wealth is not largely digits in laptops: if all the laptops in Britain caught the blue screen of death tomorrow, the UK’s total wealth would be only slightly less than the previous day. In reality, around half of the wealth in the UK is land with residential property on it, or that has planning permission for such. Much of the rest is the value of companies that produce goods & services that people want to buy, e.g. Ineos. Ineos creates wealth largely because it manufactures saleable petrochemicals from crude oil, not because of any ‘accounting tricks’ by Jim Ratcliffe or anyone else. Asset stripping creates wealth if those assets are being transferred so that goods or services can be produced more profitably. However, since such opportunities are few and far between, it is rarely the path to riches.
“In reality, around half of the wealth in the UK is land with residential property on it, or that has planning permission for such. ”
Ironically, it was the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 that was ultimately responsible for a huge transfer of wealth from the middle classes to the rich of the country. By imposing a restrictive covenant on all agricultural land, it devalued that land, with the removed value then accruing to whoever got permission to turn it back into land for building on, this increasingly being large “developers” of land like Persimmon or Costain. In a fair world that value should belong to the landowner from whom it was removed in 1947 or their successors in title, or to the state, but not to the owner at the point when permission is given.
I was born and raised in Glasgow. Both sets of grandparents lived their entire lives in flats provided by the corporation. None ever owned a car and none would have been of any interest to the RNLI or any other charity as their sum total of wealth at death amounted to less than £20,000. My point is this: those of us born in the 1950’s and 1960’s must’ve done something right to be where we are now; what was it and could it be done again? Let me throw in a couple of ideas. We joined trade unions and went on strike for more pay when necessary. We understood what inflation was all about (real inflation not the CPI version) and we knew the value of defined benefit pensions.
I might be able to answer your question in two words; work ethic. No doubt your grandparents worked hard for what they had and were proud to have done so. These days people want everything handed to them on a plate. In 2019 3 million people, 2% of the population claimed disability benefit, as of last year that had risen to 6.9 million, nearly 11%. Most of the rise has been in mental health issues such as ADHD and whilst I’m sure there are genuine cases and better diagnosis might be in part responsible for the rise it seems more than probable that many are fraudulent. Only 10% of assessments are carried out face to face and mental health issues are easy enough to fake.
You might be on to something there. As a student at Strathclyde University in the 1970’s, I worked part-time as a barman. I have to say I learned much more about life from behind the bar than I did sat with my notebook in any lecture theatre. One memory stands out. Nobody I served got up in the morning and went to work for the love of the job; they all worked out of necessity. No work meant having no money in those days.
“work ethic. No doubt your grandparents worked hard for what they had and were proud to have done so. ”
In those days you could work hard and have something to show for it. Now you can’t, unless your work is speculating with other people’s money and skimming a bit off the top. As Craig points out “In 1985 I bought my first home for £32,000. My salary was £14,500. Those same little terraced houses in Abbey Wood now sell for over £400,000. They have gone from twice a normal salary to ten times the average salary.” What’s the point of working hard if all the money you earn is taken off you in taxes and rent or interest payments on a mortgage.
Quite, the country is obviously in the shitter.
Also the system is rank with corruption and everyone knows it, so why not game it for a few paltry pounds?
When the relentlessly lying spivs at the top are funneling billions to their mates for kickbacks etc.
“These days people want everything handed to them on a plate. In 2019 3 million people, 2% of the population claimed disability benefit, as of last year that had risen to 6.9 million, nearly 11%. Most of the rise has been in mental health issues such as ADHD”
The above amount of money used – doesn’t even come close to what consecutive English governments have stolen from the taxpayer to give to the private sector in bungs and subsides, then of course there’s corporation tax which consecutive English governments have failed to collect in the correct measure, I’m sure a few years back I read that there were around 20 people working on chasing up the payments on corporation tax, but 700 people were working on collecting benefits that might have been overpaid.
Not only that English governments are/were mainly made up up of Oxbridge people and the front bench is usually populated by millionaires – who have businesses and their interests at heart.
Yep. No luck involved. Hard work from age 14, six days a week for many and several jobs on the go at one time to support a family. The results of that honest effort were a home and a better lifestyle after 45+ years of working. And what rewards do you get from the state ? Worst pension in Europe, no healthcare and your home stolen by the care sector and accused of stealing the futures of so called 20/30 year old ‘children’. No luck involved, just hard work.
“No luck involved, just hard work.”
It’s always been all luck and nothing else. Nobody is born lazy or demotivated. Some people are born stupid, but that’s luck, too, or lack of it. Everyone who makes a lot of money does so because they are lucky: they have had both the opportunities and the ability to make the most of them, or, increasingly these days, the lack of scruples to do so.
Luck may well be the most important thing for success in professional life, or in life generally.
OTOH, how we play our hand, that reveals or creates, our character, may be the most important thing in the end. Alexander Pope wrote in his Essay on Man (Epistle IV, lines 193-194):
Honour and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part: there all the honour lies.
Yup..we believe you..
At Sands Films in Rotherhithe, London, we’ve released an independent feature film & political campaign (indirectly) addressing these issues. The film (directly) considers the 1942 Beveridge Report, the comprehensive and radical vision of the plan, and how we might reconsider it today. Tour dates for screenings, Q&As and events across the UK have just been announced, starting in September. A relevant quote from Prof. Michael Marmot, Public Health academic & campaigner for health equity, in the closing act of the film: “We need to rediscover the public good”. More here: https://www.sandsfilms.co.uk/the-man-with-the-plan.html
This looks very interesting. After the theatre showings, will you bring out a DVD eventually?
Yes, I believe plans are for a DVD and paid on-demand streaming. 2027 or beyond, most likely.
That’s obvious – the tough question is “How?”.
“That’s obvious – the tough question is “How?”.”
War, as JFK explained: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
I’d suggest that taking the engineering approach, first ‘society’ needs to discuss and agree on what sort of world they want for themselves and their children – the requirement. Once, agreed then plans can be made to achieve it. Simplistic maybe but how many actually think about what they really want ? And, what political party would ever support it ?
Burnham may talk about a 10 year plan, but when he is removed in two years time then some other idiot will step in and change everything and here we go again, never progressing, no continuity, no change. We keep doing the same thing expecting a different outcome ! Groundhog day for ever.
In the Discussion Forum is a thread. “AI and protecting people from its misuse” OK, it links to a papal encyclical, but it is not about Catholicism. I hope some of you will contribute and promote a fuller discussion.
My early conclusions on AI lead me to believe there is going to be a major cull of white collar jobs. A cull of a magnitude that will make the devastation of blue collar and unskilled jobs from the 80’s onwards seem trivial.
Some ‘comfortable’ jobs will be done easily by AI. Put this question to your own AI portal.. “which jobs are under threat from AI”
Then duck.
Some related videos on this subject:
One by Robert Reich about the AI bubble.
A good video short by Robert Reich on the dangers of AI, and another one on the effect on jobs.
Frank Schaeffer has made a video essay on a wider cultural perspective that includes AI in the form of a long conversation that may be of interest.
“Society needs a thorough and imaginative re-engineering, with altruism as a founding principle.”
Sadly, I think that is impossible without some sort of civil war, probably following an economic meltdown.
It’s so good you’re raising the issue of housing. (BTW this is the topic that would have brought you to Parliament should you have chosen it as your campaign theme).
Despite what banks and property developers are tryig to make us believe, there’s no shortage of houses in the UK.
The problem is houses have been turned into a commodity. An investment.
The problem is about the unbelievable level of corruption, where developers have to bring suitcases of cash to council officials to secure best plots for new houses.
Construction costs in the North East and in London are the same. Why does the final price differ? Who pockets the difference?
My thoughts about the way forward:
– Invest billions to build social housing stock. Develop housing standards, set targets and allow construction to be funded through government bonds.
– In parallel, consider nationalising private properties where the total amount of government subsidies over years (including esp. tax benefit) have exceeded their initial construction cost adjusted for inflation and depreciation.
– Intoduce new tenure models that would offer housing guarantee for tenants, including the ability to sell the social housing unit (provided it’ll become the buyer’s first home) and pass the lease on to children/successors. Social housing cannot be a temporary benefit to a person/couple – it should grow into a default, self-funding housing model for families.
– As the availability of social housing stock increases, gradually redirect housing benefit from the private sector (where it essentially serves as a government-funded rent guarantee for private landlords) to the social sector. Use a mix of taxation mechanisms and central goivt subsidies/guarantees to make renting from the social sector more viable and financially attractive than renting privately. To put it simply, taking out a mortgage should be more expensive over the lifetime than renting a housing unit of similar standard from the council.
Banks will hate it, but I see no other way of breaking this cabal of banks and developers who fleece the nation with the help of corrupt officials.
BTW, interestingly, UK has no institution or force whose role would be to monitor or prevent corruption on the local level.
Where are you going to get the trades people from to build these houses? Nationalise private property? Redirect housing benefit, What are you smoking ?
Which corporate landlord do you represent?
“Nationalise private property?”
Sure. Do you have a problem with that? British Steel has been nationalised, railways are being re-nationalised, Thames Water may follow the suit. Hopefuly your business will also be in the line.
“Where are you going to get the trades people from to build these houses?”
I hope at least plumbers come from abroad so that our plumbing no longer looks and works like in the 19th century lol
Seriously – I’m talking the same clonstruction companies as are building for private landlords today, except they’d be building council-owned homes. I’m not worried about skills in the slightest – there is no skill shortage in the construction field; there’s only a shortage of land.
But of course your capitalist mind will object to anything that may benefit the nation long term, right?
What is the solution. Ruinous tax rates ? Any sensible ideas that the voters will support ? I doubt it.
Burnham has spoken in general terms of reversing Thatcherism.
It was Friedmanism – neither Regan or Thatcher invented it.
The dummy run for the West’s neo – liberalism was conducted in Chile.
If you were a capitalist you needed a Far Right Dictatorship to implement it
after Allende was and his left of centre government was killed of .
I am no economist but, I read that after this experiment ended more ex State
Privatised companies had to be re-nationalised than were nationalised when
Allende was president.
Of course, prior to all this if you had the US intervening – as they have a history of in Latin America
as they still do any progress is countered by coups – regime changes etc.
Nothing ever changes and the poor world is getting worse – not better.
The middle and upper working class electoral bribes in The West are few and far between these days
and even if Burnham means all that he says, he may find himself not quite under Allende style attacks
by greedy capitalists – he is already being parameterised economically by the MSM and of course The
Blessed markets.
The idea that Weapons making is a growth driver of incomes and the economy in general is untrue.
Infrastructure investment in education – Social Care and the NHS just for starters is much more productive
than building missiles that, when used just explode and kill people is a waste of time and money.
You have to remember that most of the people wailing about the cost of ‘ all this ‘ sanguinely Bailed Out the
Rich without a blink of an eye or an apology when The Financial Sector failed and we all bailed ourselves out
for the cost of Covid.
Milton’s current capitalist didn’t make a contribution – they just took – they were too big to fail.
Capitalists only sing about the benefits of capitalism when they are winning.
They are still winning now – whether Burnham will reverse Thatcher’s gains from the workers and poor
will be difficult and like Corbyn ( but nowhere near as left) he will come under severe economic and political
pressure.
Apart from Corbyn, he is the only Labour party Leader who has talked about reversing so called ‘ Thatcherism ‘
Of course there is big gap between words and deeds.
We shall see.
Maybe what the country needs is a leader who looks forward, rather than a second rate manager who continually looks backwards.
You can’t change the past but you can influence the future.
Is he going to build council houses ? Is he going to reopen the coal mines ? Has he got any idea ?
Charities behave like any capitalist organisation. They use hard sell to drain off your excess income while you are alive or dead and invest the proceeds. A proportion of the money certainly might be spent on whatever cause they represent, but much of the rest goes on executive salaries equivalent to those of other corporate organisations. The more money from wills the more money to invest and the higher the executive salaries. Meanwhile the real work of the charity is done by unpaid volunteers or staff whose pay structure is based on the national minimum wage or commission from “chugging”. Many charities, but not all, are part of the problem described here.
Fine post, Craig. I think we need as much philosophical thought/reflection as we do political
” Where are we going? “. First we need to ask ” where are we now? ”
We see the Grand Guignol grotesquerie acted-out on the World Stage; Thanatos rampant in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine and other Theatres of War and try to suspend our disbelief at the sheer horror and senseless waste of it all; the moral vacuity and profound stupidity of those who incite, invite and delight in the dismembered limbs and decapitated torsos: even now, even as the stench of the 20th Century orgies of mass death are still detectable, the fields and seas still tainted with blood from that carnage: even now they want more. More death
When do we ever hear a Politician, New Tech Titan or * Philanthropist Plutocrat * even say the word ” Peace ” these days, let alone do anything to actually achieve that condition?
I have a sense Politics – as conventionally understood – has reached it’s nadir; has hit Rock Bottom and no 7 Steps will lead to it’s redemption. Though, maybe, surrender to a Higher Power could lead to some kind of salvation for Humanity.
The question then is the ‘ nature ‘ of that Higher Power. It might be closer than we think. As close as we can imagine
” Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin’s bow,
which draws *one* voice out of two separate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song. ”
Rainer Maria Rilke
In Germany even under Merkel there was still some reporting about the fact – for instance – that the very offshore tax havens Merkel was publicly attacking and seeking to dry out (garnering much public praise) had originally been installed under her leadership – of course outside public awareness or scrutiny. Same logic applies for most examples of “the natural order of things”.
Chomsky has always been very helpful in pointing at instances of when in history this order was not established yet. And how it had to be enforced first against much resistance with even more violence. This happened over and over and over again.
Re the growth of inequality, with the UK per capita GDP PPP stagnant, the “Joseph Stiglitz Curse” (as I call it) will work. That is, in the absence of economic growth, the rich will still get richer by redistributing the wealth from the middle class and the poor. The best the government can do is to block this process by proper regulations.