I don't think Conservatives or Progressives correctly understand economics

First, I'm not sure you're correct about the views of the population. Left wing parties, for example, saw their vote share plummet when they supported austerity (and therefore cuts in welfare). We do also see significant change in attitudes over time (e.g. a majority of Brits do now report that they want to see tax increases to pay for welfare and public services). Second, I'd be careful with 'guaranteed access to above-poverty-level wages'. It is vital that there is genuine economic choice. If I do not want to work for a wage, I should have the genuine option to be self-employed. Welfare is key in allowing that. I can afford risk taking; my family doesn't have to suffer if my entrepreneurial decisions fail.

The problem is that the state can be bleedin useless at determining socially useful activity. You really need some quango (like used to fund university research) or independent bank (focused on social rate of returns in investment). Even then there has to be incentives. The entrepreneur must be encouraged to go the extra mile needed for the activity to mature. The market must still operate, otherwise we guarantee stagnancy (as we saw in State Capitalism)

Sounds a little like Murphy's 'People's Quantitative Easing': https://moneyweek.com/405224/what-is-qe-for-the-people/

 

they are trying that in Venezuela now.
1million%inflation and average adult has lost 46 lbs. If all 35 million people die that will bring socialism's total to 150 million. Only 50 million more to go to get to 200 million dead before socialists give up and try capitalism which just saved another 60 million from slowly starving to death under socialism in China.

 

Pass.... (I already know you are an ideologue).

 

Note the words underlined by me; If they are true, then Corbyn should be assured of victory in the next election, because the Conservatives sure as hell are not interested "paying (via increased taxation) for adequate welfare and public services".

Today I heard a business representative trotting out the tired old economic orthodoxy that the only way to reduce inequality and create jobs ("grow the economy") is to reduce taxation on both big and small business (in Australia we have legislated the latter but not the former, though the conservative government would like to do both). But of course she failed to address how to feed the un/underemployed - as public revenues sink following reduced taxation - while we are waiting for the economy to grow sufficiently to provide above poverty employment for everyone.

BTW apparently the underemployment rate in Britain is higher now than during the GFC:

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/...eat-financial-crisis-of-2008-2018-4?r=US&IR=T

I have in mind local communities presenting to the state their own plans for "socially useful activity", eg it might be in assisting the elderly to remain in their own homes, or for those liking the outdoors, rubbish collection and assisting maintenance of public parks, on a voluntary basis, as an initiative to solve local underemployment, given the carrot of a living wage earned by one's own activity, whether entrepreneurial or otherwise.

Of course the market must still operate; we know the market displays efficiencies in organising resources for production of consumer goods, but the market self-evidently cannot be the whole story.

Thanks for this link. Actually this scheme suggests money creation for real resource-consuming activity (eg, to build infrastructure) and hence there are concerns re inflation - although inflation would be a non-event if a world bank was able to oversee requests for funding infrastructure, in the context of sustainable global development.

I think it is more difficult for orthodox economists to argue that my scheme would result in inflation, since very little additional draw on (scarce?) resources is required.

[This is why I love the idea of free universal education for the entire world; we could quadruple the "resources" going into education - an activity in which the main 'resource' consumed is time and effort on the part of teacher and student - with minimal extra call on scarce physical resources].

But all your ideas - and Murphy's - ought to be front and centre of the political debate; instead of media promoting mindless ubiquitous consumer-junk advertising urging us to drink more booze and watch more sport...

 

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me ...

 

Yes...but I'll let you explain to James (please....) that the catastrophe in Venezuela has little to do with 'money printing' as described by me or Murphy, and much to do with the socialist government's reliance on the notoriously unstable price of a single commodity.

[The orthodox solution for Venezuela would no doubt have been to ask for an IMF 'bailout', but the effects of the austerity typically imposed on nations by that august body would be difficult to distinguish from the current situation].

 

South or Central America is not an appropriate place from which to take lessons. The people simply do not know how to manage a mixed-economy. And those that do most well have oil as an export - and yet they still screw-up their economy. Like the US, they have a "winner takes all" mentality.

There's nothing anybody can do - either in the North or South of the "Americas" - until the people themselves decide for change and start electing good leadership. Not the Right-people, but the right-people. Ditto for the Left-people who are just as incompetent at managing aptly an economy.

As I never tire of saying, "As regards politics, the best-solutions for a mixed-economy are most often somewhere in the middle." Neither too far to the Right nor the Left - and the only barometer worth looking at is the Gini Index. Wherever it's the highest is where there is the greatest rip-off of Wealth profiting a select few of the total population ...

PS And, let's just watch Brazil under the leadership of its New President, who will be just as effective as the Socialists were that ran an oil-rich country until recently. All talk and no professional mental acuity.

 

???Everyone with an idea is an ideologue: Hitler Jesus Jefferson Plato Marx etc. You prefer people without ideas?? Do you know why?

 

totally mistaken as usual. Thanks to Republican capitalism China, for example, now has billionaires and 100's of millions still living at subsistence but is infinitely better off than when all were poor starving and socialist. You want the promise of huge wealth for the few who invent the cure for cancer and other products that can employ millions at higher and higher wages.

 

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There is such a thing as truth, even if acquaintance with ultimate truth is and may always be an ongoing quest for mankind.

[You mention Jesus: obviously given the Two Great Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus would want to see a UNSC minus veto).

On the other hand, ideology (political, economic, or religious) claims its own ideation as truth, in spite of evidence to the contrary, leading of course to conflicting "truths", which is a logical impossibility because truth is not in conflict with itself.

eg Netanyahu claims Jerusalem is the 'eternal, undivided capital of Israel', despite the fact that the most iconic building on the Jerusalem skyline is the 1300 year old Dome of the Rock with its golden dome; and you claim that money cannot be created to fund public expenditures (within the terms I have outlined), despite the fact that if a teacher is funded to teach a student ('ex nihilo', which is how banks presently create money when they write loans for credit worthy customers), there is minimal additional draw on scarce resources (since postulated teacher and student are already consuming the basics to stay alive; and the time and effort required from both is 'free').

There are ideas and ideas, some more ideological than others.​

Do you understand?

 

"And other products".....I see you are still promoting the junk consumer society, whose sole aim is profit.

Of course "the few who invent the cure for cancer" and other price-less benefits for mankind are not often rewarded by "huge wealth" and even Bill Gates was certainly not motivated by that but by following his interests, passions and strengths, as all of us should do for a truly rewarding life.

As for the CEO of Amazon, now the world's richest man, he is little more than a glorified retailer with access to the global market enabled by the internet. Then you have Trump drooling over those $billions obtainable from sales to the merchants of death in Saudi Arabia……..

 

Unfortunately, that isn't necessarily the case. Factor in the media bias (leading to people herded to a party that is against their interests). Then refer to the first past the post system. The Tories can get in with 40% or so. Its likely to have been made easier for them through boundary changes to MP constituencies.

Keynes wrote: "Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back". That sums up the nature of the problem. Policy making was originally corrupted by the false debate spawned by the Phillips Curve. The 'free market' economics that was created proved to be a flop. Supply-side economics just fed growth-harming inequalities. Monetarism proved macroeconomic destabilising. We then had to go through a period where they avoided economics completely, spouting utterly ridiculous austerity. The issue is whether they can keep it up. Perhaps that's one reason why the mainstream is giving such an easy ride to the growth in the fascist cancer? Easier to maintain the status quo if they're busy using nationalism, racism and xenophobia to look for false boogiemen.

Thatcherism has guaranteed labour market failure. Its of course a lot worse, as you also have to factor in underemployment caused by taking jobs that do not utilise your skills set (e.g. graduates no longer able to enter primary job markets)

Failures in social care certainly describes the cretinous outcome generated by just focusing on productivity enhancement. You get insufficient wage, reliance on exploitation of foreign labour and abuse of human rights. That does mean a change in understanding of the split between private and public sectors. Key industries (from social care to education) should be left in the public sector. These sectors also need to be stripped of poor management techniques from the private sector (e.g. NHS problems can be traced back to Tory introduction of contracting-out methods, where short term cost minimisation replaced long term efficiency).

Inflationary issues rest with overheating. In reality, our biggest problem is structural deficiency in the economy. There are problems with relying on private sector investment. Low market concentration and firms don't have the resource. High market concentration and firms don't have the incentive.

Labour, mind you, also want to ensure greater involvement in sport. But that's about ending too much reliance on billionaire investment, often to the detriment of the local community.

 

How can we expose media bias? Perhaps public broadcasters could make it part of their mission to do just that, despite conservatives all around the world wanting to shut down public broadcasters.

[Trump simply labels media as "fake news", but a more serious approach to the problem is needed].

Thanks for the quote from Keynes, who was obviously a master of the English language as well as one of the great creative thinkers in the field of economics.

Note the words underlined by me; after the historical experience of a global competition between capitalism and communism (the "cold war"), it ought to be self-evident that a mix of elements from both systems are required (since communism did not arise out of a vacuum, and regardless of however poorly implemented it was in practice).

Participation in sport is a good thing, of course, as is also a celebration of excellence, but things go downhill when the media uses sport to promote tribalism, booze and gambling....

Speaking of conservative versus progressive ideologies: today Pamela Anderson (bless her) said the Australian Government should welcome Julian Assange back to Australia after his long imprisonment in the Ecuador embassy in London.

The new Oz PM (a conservative) scoffed at the proposal. He would be happy for Assange, whose 'crime' is the exposure of the lies and paranoia of governments and their so-called 'security' agencies, to remain locked up in the embassy.

[Obviously the path to elimination of national governments' paranoia, and reliance on their "spook" security agencies, is an international rules-based system, under the auspices of a UNSC without veto. Some time in the future, I am told....).
Absolute national sovereignty is obsolete in a global world - another topic for examination and dissemination by public media, if commercial media is too blinded by financial self-interest - which is after all the whole basis of conservatism - to examine the topic.

Meanwhile, a dispirited Left is limping on, with no guarantees it will defeat the Trump juggernaut tomorrow; and anyway Trump will in practice do no worse than the dispirited, visionless Left as it currently is (provided Trump does not actually end up firing on unarmed men, women and children at the Mexican border, in which case I will need to reverse that estimation)

 

NO COGENT REASON

Keynes put it quite aptly because, as an avid investor, he knew what he was talking about.

Which was the Natural Avidity of some people to make huge bundles of money to show-the-world how deft they are at becoming rich.

Money, money, money - that's all it's about to some people. In fact, most people who have far too much.

Which makes for a damn-fine argument for much higher Upper-income Taxation - say 90% of all income above a megabuck a year.

There is NO COGENT REASON WHATSOEVER by which anyone can justify that Humongous Wealth should be both accumulated and then passed on to siblings.

None. Zilch. Nada!

 

Puboic broadcasting doesnt help. Look at the BBC (recently found guilty, like the supposed quality press, of spreading misinformation over Corbyn and the Labour opposition). It's often said "as both led and right accuse it of being biased, it must be getting it just about right". I don't agree. The problem is that the BBC simple supports the status quo, generated by a lack of critique (itself fed by a cosy relationship between politician and reporter). That's particularly dangerous for democracy. In terms of economics, it's akin to Galbraith's analysis into the impact of oligopoly. The orthodox analysis inappropriately focuses just on issues such as price rigidity. It largely ignores how it impacts of private-public sector interaction (and detrimental consequences for Joe Pleb)

Just a shame that Keynesianism was taken over by centrists, enabling growth in monetarism and ultimately delivering a fake 'third way.

Market Socialism delivers the needed focus. There is understanding of market failure and the need for various interventionism policies. However, it also sees the need for the market and harnessing the creativity of the individual

Sport is a great case study. It can be highly complimentary for community action. It can be highly negative because of the profit motive.

The hypocrisy of government rarely goes challenged. We're currently seeing that with our selective morality caused by Saudi Arabian dosh. The economics is also ignored. British arms production is inefficient, reliant on bail out and the crowding out effects arguably stunts the economy.

 

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No cogent REASON, indeed, but here's the problem: most of us are REASON-able only at certain times and to varying degrees.

Why"?

Because we are all motivated by self-interest, based on (unconscious, blind) instincts for self-preservation and survival.

I presume the Right displays these characteristics more forcefully because there is always (or always has been until recently) the appearance of economic scarcity, and if you are able to gather more for yourself, even to the detriment of others, you will follow this course of action (for personal aggrandisement/ego) even when it is way past REASON-able or necessary.

And it's not only economic matters in which reason is fragile: look at the uproar in Pakistan over a (Christian) woman who has been cleared of blaspheming the Prophet by the supreme court.

Believe it or not, the fundamentalist mob (millions strong), baying for the blood of this poor woman, are of the species 'homo sapiens'.....

The Left must stop being side-tracked by so-called identity politics etc and demonstrate continuous facilitation for all of just and sufficient access to the world's vast resources.

Only then will fragile reason increasingly gain sway in politics, economics and religious affairs.

 

FAIRNESS OF INCOME DISTRIBUTION

Because people like you are ignorant of American history and why there was a revolution.

How did Pennsylvania get its name, Because the elder Penn won a war for the British King and was literally "given" the woods to develop? Which he did along with his son, and which became the state bearing the family name. (The Penns remained an immensely rich family.)

Or because the Louisiana Purchase was made with a European monarch (who had crowned himself "Emperor") and was in desperate need of money to pursue his wars.

And it was these monarchs in control of both the British colonies and French-ruled Canada that bothered the original Revolutionaries. (Lafayette himself escaped imprisonment by the French king and fled to the US, where Washington welcomed him because he had military experience and became key in defeating the British.)

But, if you've never take a history lesson, then you can never ever really understand that the underlying reason was not the MASSIVE ACCUMULATION OF WEALTH that mattered. But the fact that only a select few benefited from that Wealth!

People like you who don't "get it" are blind to the ugly economic-effects of Income Disparity (namely extreme lifetime poverty). Because it was never ever taught in high-school - and only at the university level if one is taking a course in Economics.

If you were ever taught the origins of monarchic rule and how it came to a definitive end ONLY AFTER WW1, then you cannot understand either why Communism became the major Opposite Extreme. Both are extremes - too much money and too little to live decently. Fairness of Income Distribution happens somewhere in-between!

Both a Monarchy of the Rich and Totalitarian Regime of the poor are WRONG, WRONG, WRONG in terms of political management of a nation. And we, in the US, without proper Upper-income Taxation have become a pseudo-Monarchy of the Rich.

And that fact aint nuthin of which to be immensely proud ...

 

Your response to my post is an important lesson to me, at least, in demonstrating the apparent limitations of language.

Eg, your subsequent statement that "People like you who don't "get it" are blind to the ugly economic-effects of Income Disparity (namely extreme lifetime poverty)" is absurd in relation to me, since I have been arguing for eradication of poverty around the globe since I joined this forum, and I'm well aware Oxfam has revealed that the 10 richest people in the world have as much wealth as the poorest 3 billion, and that Picketty has warned about increasing inequality and its effects on economic growth. [Note: one of the Right's criticisms of Picketty is their assertion that inequality per se is not a problem, but we both know this is nonsense, at least while poverty exists).

Now your assertion that I know nothing of US history is totally beside the point, which is that in a global world we need global rules to achieve an economy that works for everyone, because if you don't, you will still have to deal with refugees and asylum seekers.

Now we know Trump's morally indefensible method of dealing with this problem, ie, by sending the army to the border.

OTOH, Merkel's career has been wrecked by her failure to face up to the real solutions to this same problem of refugees; her policy of opening her country to all who seek asylum was infinitely more ethical than Trump's, but in effect she ignored the subsequent reality for 2 million+ unemployed in her own country. (And you do seem to be blind to EU poverty; despite more reasonable taxation policies, poverty is a reality in the EU, eg, I got off a train in Munich a month ago, and was accosted by a dozen beggars within 30mins. Similar in Paris).

Even granting that the US itself can eradicate poverty and student debt by reasonable taxation policy, that still leaves the pressing problem of poverty and lack of education in the rest of the world. It's no good blaming my ignorance (or "people like me") for Americans' disinterest in a reasonable taxation policy; and in any case the idea that knowledge of their own history will suddenly make Americans more amenable to reasonable taxation policy is laughable.

You got me thinking, what nerve did I touch, that resulted in such a strange response from you - the type of response I would expect from the Right.

You don't like the idea that we are all ruled, to a greater or lesser extent, by blind instinct, and that the solution lies in teaching
(via universal education), the political, economic and religious realities that affect everyone?

 

Germany has been the most successful of all European countries in finding employment for the refugees.

It has Europe's lowest unemployment rate at 3.4%; which is better than even the US (at 3.7%).

What happened to Merkel is what happens to all politicians who stay with it until it becomes obvious that their time is up.

It is a shame Germany does not have someone like her (she is very, very intelligent) as a replacement ...

 

That is more an excuse than a good-reason.

The destiny of a nation does not depend upon any one individual but all of them. Which is why a democracy is determined by popular-will. Like it or not.

Well, we haven't liked it that way since the 12th Amendment passed in 1812 that permitted states to manipulate the popular-vote by means of the Electoral College. And that is so patently obvious that for more than two centuries it is difficult to understand why there has been no outcry against it.

The Amendment was wrong, wrong, wrong from the very beginning because states wanted to benefit from nationhood (meaning common protection) but on their own terms. (As decided by a PotUS who was to their liking.)

Nothing in the recent history of democracy has been so cravenly obvious a refutation of a True Democracy based uniquely upon the popular-vote - without Gerrymandering and without the Electoral College.

When the presidential vote comes in, it is reported in the total number of popular-vote. Then - five times in the history of the US - the Electoral College "rectifies" the vote to produce the alternative whereby the loser actually wins!

Nothing can so patently glaring, and yet - here we are - voting once again based upon an electorate that has been heavily gerrymandered so as to produce Replicant majorities wherever possible throughout the nation ... !

 

SPD is a good example of what happens to a party which caves in on principles due to centrism corruption...

 

Excuse? But if it's true, you will have to deal with it.

And nations are made up of individuals; among them a growing minority especially among the young who no longer see democracy as necessarily the best form of government, partly because these young people are especially imperilled by a dysfunctional world financial system (with house prices increasingly beyond reach, secure employment disappearing in the Gig economy etc, a totally different experience than that of their parents) - a financial system that seems to be beyond the reach of democratic elections.

And you did not mention the centrality of the issue of immigration in today's dysfunctional global economy, an issue largely responsible for the silliness of Brexit (and the Left in Britain is split over the issue), the success of the Right in Hungary, Poland and the rise of the AfD in Germany - and Merkel's demise.

Note: In the absence of a properly managed international rules based system, people everywhere want control of their countries'
borders for obvious reasons (increasing burden on existing infrastructure, congestion, increased competition for jobs etc), apart from the racist/nationalist views that typically infect the Right.

And this is the issue which may well save Trump - we will see in the next few hours - because playing the immigration card is surely the only issue that can save Trump (since the majority of Americans have not directly benefited from his tax cuts, which mostly benefitted the rich).​

 

''The poverty rate in Germany reached the new record level of 15.7 percent in 2015, according to the report, entitled "Human dignity is a human right," by an alliance of organizations called the Paritätische Gesamtverband.Mar 2, 2017
German poverty rising - despite economic growth | Germany| News …''


I'm beginning to doubt your grasp of international affairs...

 

Yes, and so what? The rate for the entire EU is 17.3%!

It has an unemployment rate comparable with most developed EU countries where the value is somewhere between 20 % and 25 %!

THAT is what counts. What is "relative" or "comparative" matters, not absolute number non-comparable.

My Point: Poverty is something that is defined differently in different countries. At what income does the "Poverty Threshold" begin? Economists would do better to have a definition that was unique to all developed nation. And, there should be a generally applied method for defining the Poverty Threshold of developed countries. It is not even worth the effort of knowing comparative weights in countries that are not comparable economies. One cannot compare an oil-rich Saudi Arabia with a comparatively rich France, for instance. Because the sources of "income" are very different.

 

I could care less about the above.

All that is important, to me (and in the context of My Country), is that the political system should be fair and equitable. And since 1812, the US electoral system has been rottened by Gerrymandering and the Electoral College. Both warp the popular-vote in order to obtain a politically favored election result.

And Americans have thought all along (despite the factual evidence) that theirs was the Greatest Democracy on Earth. Instead, the electoral manipulations are manifestly evident!

What planet intellectually do they live on? One of bombastic superlatives, that's what ...