2011 April » Tax Research UK

Libertarianism – a concept the left needs to reclaim for itself

Apr 302011

Polly Toynbee’s written a strong piece in the Guardian this morning, clearly inspired by her (reasonable) reaction to the royal wedding.

She concluded:

Few yet realise the scale of the conservative revolution in progress. Professors Peter Taylor-Gooby and Gerry Stoker have just revealed that by 2013 public spending will be a lower proportion of GDP in Britain than in the US. They write in the Political Quarterly: “A profound shift in our understanding of the role of the state and the nature of our welfare system is taking place without serious debate.” Can that really be done without rebellion? That will be the test of what kind of nation we are.

Let’s be clear: I don’t think Polly is inciting riot. The Oxford dictionary defines rebellion as:

rebellion |riˈbelyən|

noun

an act of violent or open resistance to an established government or ruler : the authorities put down a rebellion by landless colonials | Simon de Montfort rose in rebellion. See note at uprising .

• the action or process of resisting authority, control, or convention : an act of teenage rebellion.

ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French, from Latin rebellio(n-), from rebellis (see rebel ).

And yes, we do need to resist authority right now.

But not for the sake of it. We need to do so because authority has been subverted. The authority we now have is actively seeking to destroy rights, and that is why it should be opposed. I haven’t time to explore this in depth now, so let me borrow this instead, which seeks to explain the logic based on the work of Isaiah Berlin (and Kant, when you get back to basics):

Negative liberty is the absence of obstacles, barriers or constraints. One has negative liberty to the extent that actions are available to one in this negative sense. Positive liberty is the possibility of acting — or the fact of acting — in such a way as to take control of one’s life and realize one’s fundamental purposes. While negative liberty is usually attributed to individual agents, positive liberty is sometimes attributed to collectivities, or to individuals considered primarily as members of given collectivities.

The post war consensus was built on the basis of positive liberties. I am a positive libertarian on that basis, and proud to be so. Neo-liberalism and its vision of libertarianism is negative by this definition.

And what we’re seeing is the state – the agency that should enforce positive libertarian rights – being used to reinforce the negative libertarian rights of few.

That’s the core of this issue.

That’s the core of Blue Labour too by the way – as I see it. The collective is positive.

The imposition of the individual over the collective - and the denial that the collective exists - as Thatcher suggested – is what is threatening our society, destroying trust, undermining democracy, increasing fear and seeking to destroy the well being of the majority in the interests of a minority.

That’s what Polly is saying we need to rebel against. And she’s right.

And let’s not forget – it’s a libertarian act to rebel for our collective rights. Positively libertarian. In itself a word the left need to reclaim – with precisely the connotation I put on it.

THe NHS – a model of efficiency and good management the Tories want to destroy

NHS, Uncategorized 3 Responses »

Apr 302011

Look at this graph:

Growth in Total Health Expenditure Per Capita, U.S. and Selected Countries, 1970-2008

Look who is at the bottom of this pile: the UK.

I picked up the graph from Mother Jones in the USA and as they note:

The chart [actually] comes from the Kaiser Family Foundation, and it shows the growth in healthcare expenditures in five selected countries over the past 40 years. The United States, of course, has the highest spending, but it also has the highest growth rate.

The Kaiser Family Foundation also has this graph:

Total Health Expenditure per Capita and GDP per Capita, US and Selected Countries, 2008

That shows strong increases in spending in the UK.

But of the five selected countries we were still the lowest spending nation.

And we’re lower than OECD average.

Despite that health care outcomes are on track on the UK now to be at at least OECD average rates.

For most in the UK they’re much better than outcomes in the US.

That’s amazing since we’ve always seriously underspent on health:

Total Health Expenditures as a Share of GDP, Per Capita Spending in US Dollars and PPP adjusted

Of course there’s an easy explanation as to how we’ve managed to get away with such low spending. First, it’s been well spent. Second, because health care has been state run it’s been efficient. Third, our primary care system has massively reduced our cost of secondary care compared to places like France – who have got this seriously wrong. Fourth, we might have had to spend more, but that was catch up. And also, regrettably, wasted on introducing market mechanisms.

There are lessons to be learned from this.

First we need to eliminate those wasteful market mechanisms.

second, we need to ensure we maintain state control of health care in the UK.

Third, we need to reinforce the integration of primary and secondary care in this country, rather then divide and separate them.

Fourth, we need to be seriously proud of what we’ve done and sing its praises.

None of which the government is doing.

They are copying the US model – the epitome of waste and inefficiency.

There’s only one explanation – they want to help their friends make money – paid for in four ways. First, by giving them the benefit of your taxes. second, by selling them the NHS at an undervalue. Third, by forcing you to pay additional fees because they’ll be cutting what the NHS does for you, even though you’ll pay more for it.

That’s the Tory approach to health care.

Remember that on 5 May. Local councillors will have a big say in the future of the NHS, and Conservatives will screw you if you give them a chance.

Don’t give them the opportunity is my suggestion.

A good day to close down some websites

Ethics 19 Responses »

Apr 292011

Whilst lots got excited by the royal weeding more than 50 Facebook pages were shut down against their owners will.

The full list is here.

So much for freedom of speech in this country. Do you note any right wing ones in there?

It was no doubt ‘a good day to do it’.

It’s a bad day for democracy as a result.

But I guess it was always going to be that, so they decided to rub it in.

Free banking harder to get – well we have all got to pay for the bonuses, haven’t we?

Banking, Barclays 15 Responses »

Apr 292011

The FT’s reporting free banking is getting harder to find.

Bonuses cost a lot, you know.

And you’re paying for them.

Obama backs country-by-country reporting

Country-by-country Comments Off

Apr 292011

The Wall Street Journal has reported:

The Obama administration is lobbying European allies to adopt anticorruption laws that require energy companies to disclose payments to foreign governments, officials said. The effort builds on White House support for a controversial U.S. law that compels companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges to disclose payments overseas for the “commercial development” of oil, natural gas, or minerals.

To put it another way: Obama backs country-by-country reporting.

Wolf: why expect an investment surge in an economy 13 per cent below its pre-crisis trend

Economics 8 Responses »

Apr 292011

Martin Wolf in the FT, today:

To eliminate the fiscal deficit, without another recession, prolonged economic weakness, or both, the UK must generate a surge in net exports and in corporate investment. To my amazement, conventional forecasters believe such huge shifts are even probable. Yes, they are possible. But why would one expect an investment surge in an economy currently some 13 per cent below its pre-crisis trend?

Well worth reading.

As he makes clear, the chance that Osborne has got things right is the square root of something very close to zero.

Hospitals to cut services by 3% to pay for VAT increases – blame the Tories when people die

Conservatives, NHS 7 Responses »

Apr 292011

The FT has reported:

At the end of last year, the health department asked hospitals to make efficiency savings of 4 per cent a year as the first step towards £20bn of productivity improvements. But Monitor, the foundation trust regulator, calculates that hospitals must make savings of 6-7 per cent a year to be certain of balancing their books.

Monitor told hospitals applying to become foundation trusts that the bigger efficiency challenge resulted from higher-than-expected inflation and changes to the way hospitals are paid.

Let’s not beat about the bush. Health experts have said saving 4% a year is nigh on impossible: the pace of change is too high. Now it is to increase.

And it’s to increase for purely financial reasons. Most importantly inflation is not going to be covered. I should be explicit about what this means when uncoded.

The unanticipated inflation is the result of an increase in VAT. Unlike most businesses hospitals pay VAT, and quite a lot of it, because what they supply is VAT exempt but what they buy still has in many cases (including on agency staff) VAT charged on it.

So what has happened is that the VAT paid by hospitals has increased and as a result frontline healthcare in the UK is going to be cut, significantly, to the point of reducing hospitals to a state that experts predict will be chaotic .

Blame the Tories when people die as a result, as they will. There’s no one else at fault.