I keep hearing calls for Plan B for the UK - that there is a need for an alternative economic strategy.
That is a strategy for growth.
A sgtraegy for jobs.
An energy strategy.
An industrial policy.
A tax policy.
A debt reduction policy.
A plan to get round the stranglehold of banks in our economy on financing new enterprise.
It's a draft.
I will improve it. But it's already on the table.
Now would anyone (serious) like to debate it?
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Richard,
Now would anyone (serious) like to debate it?
I would suggest either Paul Staines or Tim Worstall. Both are highly competent, both are serious and both run blogs with a higher readership than TR-UK.
Georges
@Georges
The ability to write abusive blogs appealing to trolls who delight in that abuse does not make you a serious commentator.
In fact it destroys credibility – and those two have none.
@Georges
Paul Staines has a reputation (which I my own opinion only is deserved) for making unsubstantiated and malicious gossip into news.
Are you joking?
Only if I am allowed to point out that some of your so-called “facts” are nothing of the kind.
@John77
I asked for someone serious
Who are you?
“Paul Staines has a reputation (which I my own opinion only is deserved) for making unsubstantiated and malicious gossip into news.”
You may find it malicious but it is rarely unsubstantiated – he broke the Prescott affair, the Peter Hain resignation, the Damian McBride scandal and the William Hague story and they were all correct. The guy’s clearly well connected, and most bloggers would die for his readership figures.
@Rob Horton
he [Staines] broke the Prescott affair, the Peter Hain resignation, the Damian McBride scandal and the William Hague story
Ho-ho! Even if these were somehow earth shattering events – and they’re not – then they are examples of gossip and tittle tattle, not of serious debate.
And Tim Worstall certainly isn’t serious. Has Mr Worstall ever been right? About anything? And looking at Worstall’s blog, he certainly seems unhealthily obsessed with this Blog’s author.
‘The wealth of this country is built on the back of the labour of those who live and work here’ needs qualifying.
It is built on the labour of those who live and work here, who build lives and spend their earnings here, and pay tax and NI here. So – not workers who come in from overseas to earn, often undercutting workers here, and don’t pay NI or tax, and then send or take money out of the country.
Face up to this, and the scale of it, especially as we head into trade agreements that allow corporations to bring temporary movement of labour to a fine art, in fact as it becomes fixed in international trade law.
And face up to the degree to which this actually undermines ‘The wealth of this country’ being ‘built on the back of the labour of those who live and work here’ – via job displacement.
If the ‘Green New Deal’were to deliver jobs, those jobs would, under current structures, go, for the most part, to overseas workers coming in – AS THE ONS HAS SHOWN OVER AND OVER.
It is omonous that the Greens leader Caroline Lucas not only fails to address this, but has kept her privileged knowledge of labour liberalisation in trade agreements to herself, failing to warn the UK public of what is coming. (She was privy to this information as a member of the European Parliament’s International Trade Committee)
I would expect that you are spot-on regarding unpaid corporate tax, but don’t make claims on ‘jobs’ based on evasive false assumptions. It’s counter productive and does nothing for your credibilty on other issues where its important that you are credible.
Let’s have some reality.
@linda kaucher
You repeatedly make these claims
Can you please provide statutory basis for them and evidence that it is happening with what impact?
And what is the problem with migration? My family came as economic migrants to this country. Your issue with that is what?
@Richard Murphy
I am serious. I have a maths degree, a postgraduate diploma, half-a-dozen professional qualifications, two of which involved passing exams in Economics, and have been a student of politics since childhood (which is now over 50 years). I have paid income tax from the days of the earned income rebate up to the present day.
Is that good enough?
@John77
As far as I can se you’re John 77
Everything else you claim is utterly unsubstantiated
So no, it’s not good enough
@Richard Murphy
Whether or not I am serious can be observed from what I “write” (type to be precise). If you have access to the web-server data for your own website you can note my email address and look me up on Google or any one of three professional institute websites (at least one, and arguably two, of which outrank any accountancy body in professional status) – you may feel like sneering at my recent running performances but note that it takes a long time to recover from a torn hamstring.
Nothing on the internet is substantiated – that is a fundamental problem with the internet – so I fail to understand why you find my truthful statements “not good enough”. How do I know that you are an accountant or even called Richard Murphy.
Richard, please don’t dismiss Linda’s comment. This has nothing to do with normal migration, it’s the ability of multinationals to bring in cheap casual labour to undermine our whole economy.
The debate about this issue is deafening silent and our MEPs are not serving us well, including the Greens. When I raised this issue at a Labour fringe, with a panel of EU ‘experts’, last year only the ex Europe Minister knew anything about ‘Mode 4’ and tried to reassure me that ‘they were on the case’. I am not reassured.
@Carol Wilcox
I didn’t
I said present the evidence
That’s an invitation to do so
@Richard Murphy
The idea that you want to have a wide-ranging debate about your Plan B, but that you want to chose who you debate with is a little weird. One (pssibly unfortunate) downside of democracy is that you don’t get to chose your political opponents. You can only chose your debating partners if you stick to the confines of your private club or of a dinner party.
Regarding the substance of your plan, it looks like it has all been done fore. Forget about the crude comments about the Soviet Union or North Korea. It looks more like France after Mitterrand’s election in 1981 and his “reign of terror” until 1983. Like much of Europe, France was coming off a period of painful stagflation following the 1974 recession, which the socialists/communists coalition thought they could solve with expansionary fiscal and monetary policies, nationalization of the financial sector (and more), centralization of resource allocations, wealth taxes and punitive marginal income tax rates, government intervention in all matters of wage and price settings, etc. etc. (there was no “green” agenda at the time)
The reslut was not pretty; within 2 years, France had a public deficit well into double digit, out-of-control inflation, a currency devaluation, a balance of payment crisis, and a brain exodus that saw 50,000 people cross the border to Geneva and a few hundred thousands move to the United States, Canada and London. Inm 1983, Mitterand sacked its entire economic team and went 180 degrees in reverse. He imposed austerity, but France lost a decade (or more) in the process. Compare GDP growth for France and the UK over the period, and the difference is striking.
Those with memories long enough to remember this expereince will be very skeptical of your “Plan B”, because it feels very much like a second serving of the same, failed, policy.
Happy to discuss.
A debate on Mr Murphy’s Plan B would be interesting.
Presumably, Mr Murphy having presented one side of the argument, at least some of the debate would have to consist of people who disagree with Mr Murphy on one point or another, if not totally.
Now here’s a problem. Where can we find someone who disagrees with Mr Murphy but is regarded by Mr Murphy as a serious figure?
Any ideas?
@John77
Anyone who can write so often without even engaging with the subject is clearly a prevaricator with time to waste – especially mine
Which clearly means you have nothing useful to add
So, if you want to comment set up your own blog to do so is my suggestion and tell me when you’ve done so and if I then feel like engaging I will
@Million Dollar Babe
But that’s not debate
That’s polemic without substance
So you clearly don’t understand the rules of engagement either
@stephen
As ever though you just engage me – not the issue
So of course there’s no point in engaging with you
Candidly – so far you’ve in combination managed a pathetic response
Is there a discussion to be had when you have no an argument between you?
Which claims do you want evidence for?
Its time to get away from ‘my family came here as migrants so it must be the way to go forever’ especially when such a view means undermining the very country to which your family came for help.
Evidence – the ONS repeatedly does its job in pointing out how the great majority of jobs over the last few years have gone to people born overseas. Yes, this is an imprecise and catch-all categorising, but the most recent information does for instance give a number value to the number of Polish people getting jobs – which just about matches the number of UK people getting jobs. The Polish labour phenomenon on a big scale is a recent one, stemming from EU free movement of workers and services (the latter whereby EU firms bring their own workers.
Data collection re NI certificates and place of residence doesn’t work because an NI certificate establishes the person as ‘UK’ straight away.
In terms of evidence of the ‘Mode 4’ movement of temporary skilled labour aspect of trade commitments, the EU/India Free Trade Agreement is being fast tracked. Fact.
The Trade Commission chief negotiator has made it clear that India will not sign up without Mode 4 access, allowing its transnationals like Tata to bring in own labour. Fact.
The Trade Lawyer from the Trade Commission has said that this is the sole thing that India is asking for. Fact. This is an indication of how important it is to India, and just how much those megafirms expect to get from it.
But those profits come from being able to offer cheap labour set-ups, outsourcing in particular, onshore, here, without the hassles of offshore. Who loses out? UK workers, displaced broadscale, with working conditions pushed down here forever. Trade commitments are effectively permanent so these effects will continue through generations too.
In a recession – there can be no pretence that these are extra jobs being created. In services economies, it is wages that are the main cost. This is huge transnationals getting their hands on that, taking control of who is employed with them, ensuring that they get to cream off the main part of the profit from the wage differential between cheaper wage economies and the UK.
And further evidence from the EU shows that of the 27 Member States, the UK govt is prepared to take a huge share of the commitment on this, in fact limitless. Fact. So what seems like an EU Agreement is effectively a UK one, which none of the other states will object to. Its just that people in the UK arent told about it. It is hidden by ‘EU’.
The govt recently exempted Intracorporate Transferees from any limits. Fact. So UK national policy is now wide open ready for this aspect of this trade agreement.
Who is going to collect the difficult-to-collect evidence of effects of labour liberalisation now, and projecting to when this is a trade commitment? Not the government, serving the interests of Financial Services London.
You need to look to the evidence in the existing comparable structures – EU free movement of workers and services and existing UK national labour migration regulation.
Engineering construction is using free movement of services broadly. The result is trained workers in this industry out of work around the country while firms bring in own workers. No skills are being passed on. We are losing the skills for an energy industry, as well as the immediate effects on individuals and the national economy.
In IT, where ICTS are already brought in under national labour migration regulations, they are comparatively underpaid. IT degrees in universities here has slumped as a result.
Common sense says that jobs going to people who dont pay NI or tax, who send their cash home, who are employed in preference to those who would be supporting the earn/spend cycle we need, and in the process increase the welfare bill as people here are put out of work – does not auger well for the UK economy.
I think the onus is to produce the couterfactuals to this – that support the mantra ‘migrants are always good for the economy, and benefit everyone’. If there was open debate about this, rather than silencing by the phoney ‘cap’ process, and liberal sensibilities, it would be hard to make that case.
If you think this is a minimal economic factor – consider –
according to Polish academic research, in 2008 1/3 of all the remittances to Poland were coming from tiny Ireland. (Another 1/3 from the UK). Now look at the economic state of Ireland, while Poland is NOT in recession.
Is it really such a plus that the Olympics has been built to such a degree by cheap foreign labour, taking the cash home and undermining UK workers – even while the price to the public purse has trebled??? Now who would be pretending that ‘migrant workers benefit us all’? The financial services firms – and those who have shares in them…?
Everyday, in so many areas I come into contact with foreign people working in all sorts of jobs. Maybe its different in your village.
Simply – a UK person could be doing each of those jobs. The structures, as I have said, benefit the firm to hire foreign workers instead of UK workers – but not the national economy.
@linda kaucher
I know you’re keen to criticise me – and do often
But can I ask for evidence please?
I’m willing to take argument seriously – but this is polemic – not argument. Saying something is fact does not make it so
So, can you please tone down your rhetoric and give me what I asked for – referenced fact to sources that shows exactly what the problem you’re seeking to highlight is, and what the solutions are
Write it as a blog if you want – I’m open to that
But two things I stress – racism and implied racism is not allowed
And please don’t be abusive – because that just undermines your argument
I want to understand what you’re saying – anything and everything else does not help
If you can do that I’ll listen – attentively
Richard, you should know that Linda has something important to say when you see this comment on her Guardian article from Worstall:
“It is the General Agreement on Trade in Services (Gats) that is most relevant for a services economy like that of the UK — a deregulatory agreement, which forces economies to open up to multinationals while preventing governments from regulating them. And ‘services’ underpin all other forms of trade.”
How excellent! Free trade in goods brings us cheap goods, making us richer. Free trade in services will bring us cheap services…making us richer.
And of course those providing them will get richer too. Win/Win isn’t it?
@Carol Wilcox
I’m saying as clearly as I can I am willing to listen
All I’m asking Linda to do is to drop the aggression – which is the same as I do of anyone
The information about Mode 4 is fact; it is not public information because bilateral agreements are essentially secret (the texts and the offers) until the negotations are completed, and awaiting formal ‘assent’ from the European Parliament. In the EP, the only objections to this agreement are prompted by lobbying by paid devt agency workers – so concerns about how Indian people are affected. No one is raising the issue of the effects on workers here at the EP level.
The factual stuff I have included here on Mode 4 is what I have bothered to find out. I’ve been researching this for 10 years.
The EU/India Free Trade Agreement is likely to be at this ‘frozen negotiations’ stage, with negotations effectively complete, in 3 months or so. There is also a huge push in Davos, right now, to get the Doha deal agreed. In that, the EU offers Mode access to all 153 WTO Member States. That offer has been tabled since 2.6.2005.
I highlight the EU/India bilateral because India is the country pursuing this access hardest. Tata is one of the world’s 10 biggest corps now. That is why this agreement matters so much – enough to go to great lengths to keep it secret from the UK public.
So no one is going to give you page number references for this – but I have emails from key people, leaked documents, and have been in meetings in the right place at the right time to know what I am talking about.
If you can’t understand it at this stage – well I dont know…
Racism? Forget it. What I am talking about is a huge step forward in global corporate control, with a matching demise of democratic govt control, in this case over labour migration – which is a big deal. It’s a big step forward in the commodification of labour (Polanyi), using the reserve army of labour (Marx) but now of migrant labour, as well as the unemployed he was referring to, to attack working conditions and bring workers to their knees – in one of the few places in the world that labour conditions were established. It rebalances the power of labour and capital, probably irreversibly. How can we ever regain any balance with an unlimited labour supply? So whose side are you on?
The racism rhetoric has suited the purposes of transnational capital perfectly, with the (supposed) Left closing its ears and silencing itself, or calling other people names. Hasnt it worked well! ‘Supposed’ Left because of the failure – or laziness – re working out what is going on.
Here’s a bit of evidence for you. Look around the Underground for rather strange posters that say how wonderful it is that Tata took over Jaguar. Subliminal preparation for the Agreement, if workers ever get the chance to find out about it.
Yes I am certainly critical of people who silence this important material, especially when they have enjoyed a lot of privilege and set themselves up as trustworthy, like Caroline Lucas. We all expect Mandelson, Cameron and Cable to trick people – but they dont play goodie 2 shoes while doing so.
As for the evidence you demand, of effects on employment and the national economy of the current overseas worker situation – with the evidence all around, alongside the unemployment figures, and the ONS evidence, the onus is now on anyone who refuses to see all this to justify and provide evidence that putting lots of people here out of work is good for us.
And for all the free movement of labour – the economy here doesn’t look too clever – so prove that foreign labour is so beneficial. Agreed, the negative effects were not so noticeable when things were booming – esp in the Irish housing market!!
We are the most liberalised country in the universe according to Gordon Brown, so we have endless foreign labour, and every investment opportunity goes to overseas investors – irreversibly, whether its private or public services. That’s what liberalisation is. Who says that is ‘normal’? Why should other views have to prove otherwise? I don’t know anyone who think its great that Tata is the biggest owner of UK manufacturing. Or that kids SATS are marked overseas. Etc etc. So prove that it is.
The solution is, for starters, public information on what is really happening, esp in terms of trade commitments. No one talks about trade in the media – its a black box never to be questioned. Trade agreements are not just a developing country concern, and not just about agriculture and manufactured goods, they are about services and now very much about jobs.
You have enough public platforms to be useful in this. The smug BBC, missing tricks on this every day, needs to be forced to become informed and start asking some relevant questions. No good just reporting what politicians say that day, when everyone is keeping it off the screen. Mode 4 is for temporary skilled migrant labour – graduates. Graduates here, with high unemployment, should have the chance to know about this.
Whew! as they say in the Beano
@linda kaucher
The problem with your post is which facts or right or wrong? For starters, Tata Group is not even close to being one of the worlds top 10 corps (by either market cap or revenue, the two most typical units of measurement). With such basic errors, it is difficult to use any of your post to form an opinion.
Dear Mr Murphy, I think you must be confusing me with somebody else when you write:
“As ever though you just engage me – not the issue
So of course there’s no point in engaging with you
Candidly – so far you’ve in combination managed a pathetic response”
This is, I think, only the third time I’ve posted to your blog: so your brusque dismissal is, I’m sure you’ll agree, a little premature. Maybe I should alter my name to avoid future confusion?
And I did raise a serious point, which addressed the issue: that issue being is that you have a draft plan for reducing the deficit, you think it could be improved, and you want to debate it. But you only want to debate it with someone who you identify as serious.
Now, nobody would blame you for not wanting to debate with Guido, the result would be unlikely to be constructive. But in a serious debate, one normally deals with opponents with whom one disagrees. Who do you regard as serious but of a different opinion to yourself?
Million Dollar Babe obviously disagrees with you, and argues that your Plan B has distressing similarities to Mitterand’s initial economic policies, which failed. If you were debating the matter, a useful response would be along the lines of “No, that is a false analogy, because my Plan B is very different from Mitterand’s policies in such-and-such ways, and would not run into his problems because …”
Note: I’m not saying you couldn’t reasonably make such a reply. I would, as I wrote earlier, be interested in reading a debate on your plan, which deserves consideration.
But when you reply to Million Dollar Babe’s analogy saying
“that’s not debate. That’s polemic without substance. So you clearly don’t understand the rules of engagement either”
you do rather give the impression that Rule 1 of engagement is agreement with Richard Murphy.
I’m sure you can debate at a higher level than that.
@stephen
@stephen
Well why not tell us who you are and make a serious suggestion
I note your email address
I can see as a result that you should be qualified to make a seriously more informed comment
But a) you did not choose to disclose your identity – why not?
and b) you chose to make a comment that as I said played the man, not the issue. Why?
If you want to engage with me do so – but don’t do so from behind a veil of secrecy
You might note I’m not keen on them
@Richard
I only just noticed this post and possibly I can help with some evidence on some of the tax side of the mode 4 problem that Linda mentions.
For instance, the national insurance exemption is in the Social Security (Contributions) Regulations 2001 section 145(2):
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2011-03-22a.154.0&s=laird+national+insurance#g154.1
The silly example given by Lord Sassoon in the above parlimentary question/answer is irrevelant as someone coming for a few days is unlikely to be put on the UK payroll and Class 1 NIC would not be paid. The exemption is mainly for posted non-EU workers coming to work in the UK. When the source country has minimal equivalent payments (e.g. India’s Provident Fund payments are minimal in comparison), then the exemption saves the employer 12.8%.
Perhaps you should also read this:
http://www.mediafire.com/?6st7jdaqwz78wak