Even Labour's own supporters are saying it's time for them to deliver some policies. I agree. And I'm not asking for the sort of thing that promises a VAT reduction on replacement windows. I'm asking for substance.
Substance is a tough ask. The Guardian is interpreting it as relating to economics and of course it does, but only, I'd suggest in part.
Substance means tackling the issues of real concern and they're deeper than froth this time. When Clinton reckoned all elections 'were about the economy, stupid' the world was very different from the one we live in now. Economics was about growth and growth was about having more and the winner was the person who the voter thought could deliver the most more.
Post 2008, and especially post 2010, I think that has changed. I think something I have argued since 2008 is now key, and tat is delivering freedom from fear.
People are frightened, of being jobless, homeless, sick, elderly and just destitute. Morrisons supposedly think one third of their customers are one pay check from bankruptcy. What people fear is that the safety net that made life possible has gone
Of course people turn that fear on others: the EU, immigrants, social security claimants and more. But that's what frightened people always do. That does not mean those people are at fault or that they need be blamed by politicians because that fear is the symptom of the problem and not its cause.
The cause is the collapse of security and with it the demise of hope.
The offer that has to be made is of security once more.
So there have to be homes. New ones. And affordable ones. Where people want them.
The NHS has to be guaranteed, and be taken back from those who undermine it.
Schools have to be there - provided by the state, not Govian empires.
Pensions must be paid.
But most of all people must know they will survive if through no fault of their own they cannot work - and most people do not work through no fault of their own. And that means that the mechanisms of state used to oppress those not working must be removed.
And of course there has to be work. But commit to housing, to ensuing that the state provides for the young, the sick and the elderly, and to investing in the infrastructure we need and the change will happen.
And where does the money come from? Increases in corporation tax because the cuts have not worked. Increased wealth taxes, because they can and must deliver to reduce inequality. From beating the tax gap which could deliver tens of billions of done properly. From Green QE of £20 billion a year. From requiring pension funds to invest £20 million a year in new job creating projects in exchange for the £40 million of tax relief they get each year.
So, yes it can be done. The circle can be squared. This is entirely plausible. But it requires politicians who have themselves freed themselves of fear to deliver it.
And that's the problem. I'm not sure we have them.
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I fear the Labour party, they seem to be incompetent.
They cant even arrange a balls up in a tennis court.
I agree that politics should concentrate on providing security for all rather than fabulous wealth for the 1%.
My question for economists is this: do we need full employment in order to produce all the goods and services we currently consume? The power of technology means that, for example, a farm that formerly employed 10 men now needs only 2 to produce the same quantity of food.
I accept the argument that in “developed” countries we consume far too much to be environmentally sustainable. What’s wrong with the Keynesian idea of working 20 hours per week and/or implementing a citizens’ income to ensure security for all?
Part time working is an obvious idea
The French cap on the working week made complete sense
Mind you – I would never stick to it
Neither do most employees.
The EU working time directive, incorporated into English law as a health and safety measure, was promptly visited by the opt-out, which allowed employees to sign-away their right to work lower hours. They were then limited to a maximum of 48/wk. Of course, if you insisted on that right your job prospects were, and still are, grim. No chance of working at amazon, since 40 hours is a part-time length of work there!
No chance of getting a job if the application opt-out is not signed.
Lots of people in this country work 60 hours minimum, with no choice.
Services and artistic creation are also work for which there is an almost insatiable demand. They don’t necessarily require much in the way of consumption of natural resources, so are sustainable.
So far as citizen’s income is concerned, we have nowhere near enough revenue to provide all the public goods and services we would want, including a decent pension system which does not involve the predatory finance sector – something like SERPS in fact. That, for a start, will take up a large chunk of national income.
A citizens’ income could replace the existing arrangements for welfare benefits and retirement pensions.
Additionally, if you give it to all adults you can remove the nil rate band for income tax. This would mean that workers would get the CI but pay income tax on all their income from employment.
I accept that more theoretical work is required on the citizens’ income but it could potentially deal with some big perennial problems – unemployment and inequality are only two that spring to mind.
A citizen’s income funded by anything other than LVT would just feed into land values.
Sorry Mr. M. / Chris, just got to reply by asking:
“What’s wrong with the Keynesian idea of working 20 hours per week….”
Gonna pay me a full time wage for that 20 hours? You see, the problem I’ve got is that my competitor isn’t Mr. Smith from just down the road, it’s Mr. ‘X’ in another huge industrial plant in Birmingham, Alabama and Mr. ‘X’ at the Wakayama Works in Japan and Mr. ‘X’ who works at SSAB and…..
So if you can convince them to take a step back and not try and force their products on to the market and so threaten my job and if you could find a way keeping major customers happy, I’d be delighted to get full pay for 20 hours of work per week….after all who wouldn’t….
…..but then you also have to employ someone else on full pay for 20 hours per week which means that you’d then be paying two people full wages do one persons job……
….which isn’t going to make the product any cheaper and if my competitors aren’t keen on going down the ‘2-for-1’ route and their products remain the same price….
You ignore why we work 40+ hours a week
Most is to pay rent and interest
We work to shift wealth
Suppose we stopped shifting wealth?
Mind you — I would never stick to it
But that is because your interests (in the sense of enthusiasms) are entwined with your work, sadly an all too rare occurrence.
I am extraordinarily lucky
I am paid to do what I enjoy
Not many people are
What is fair taxation when earnings are so disproportionately spread? Before defining how our government taxes us, should we not question how our worth is defined in the first instance, and by whom? The same leaders who richly reward their own mediocre performances can only do so to the detriment of those that the lead. The social bond is well lost. Disparity of earnings has become so perverse that visualisation of highest and lowest only makes sense if charted using a logarithmic scale for the Y axis.
Yes I agree, Labour need to define some meaningful tax policies, but how do we instill some morality in our business leaders in the meantime?
“but how do we instill some morality in our business leaders in the meantime?”
I admire the optimism of the idea but you can’t install morality into business leaders or a business itself….
….the only thing that stop business acting in a certain way and doing ‘X’ is that it will break the law and the business will suffer.
If you want to make business ‘behave’ then you need strong laws that also mean the leaders end up in the chokey too….it’s pointless to ask a business to ‘pay more tax because it’s good to follow the ‘spirit of the law’ because the business will just laugh out loud…..
….want business to pay more tax or be more ‘moral’ – then hammer the politicians to make them change the law.
I do not share your base view of business people
No one I knew in business thought the law defined their parameters for most actions
They used morality, common sense, empathy, good will and much more to decide what to do
You are simply wrong
People are frightened and indebted because this government intends them to be frightened and indebted. Increasing the ‘precariousness’ of the workforce is the neoliberal way to access cheap and more docile labour. Hence, dismantling of social security, the NHS, charging for higher education, housing shortage, high rents, anti-trade union legislation etc .. and the Mode 4 secret negotiations in the free trade agreements to bring in foreign workers unprotected by domestic employment laws.
Labour needs to be very brave… commitment to 200k new houses is good; Burnham on taking back NHS and funding social care sounds good; renationalising the railways sounds great but Balls committing to Osborne’s spending plans sounds like a betrayal.
I no longer allow myself to feel disappointed by Labour. It’s happened so many times in the past that I don’t have any expectation that they will be significantly different from the Tories.
“charging for higher education….”
Fair comment but how about getting rid of the charges and then to bring down the cost only let those with real academic ability go to Uni. to learn something useful like medicine, nursing, engineering, teaching, the sciences (yes even geography) and they get their course for free….
… and then say to all the others who want to go on the lash for three years to study ‘Media Studies’ or ‘Music’ or the ‘History of Art’ – pay for it yourself or get sponsorship from a local firm or patron.
Get rid of the idea that 50% of the population is capable of going to Uni. because we all know deep down it’s total garbage.
A society that does not value the arts is not a society at all
While the Labour Party sit navel-gazing they are losing the election. In the absence of an alternative narrative, coalition austerity myths, constantly regurgitated by the media, are coming to be accepted as facts by the electorate.
Isolated and insulated by their middle class lives those who run the Labour Party are unable to truly understand the reality for people out here in the real world. Figures for a modal average wage are difficult to find but a putative figure of £15-20k seems to be the general consensus. Those are the people the Labour Party used to speak to, at least until the death of the late lamented John Smith. Recent announcements by Ed Miliband , however, have opted to focus on the same narrow band of middle-class voters pursued by Cameron and Clegg.
The lack of a champion of working class society has led to the self-fulfilling myth of voter apathy. What we are actually witnessing is voter disaffection.
I take the opportunity whenever I can to engage with people at every level about politics. In the last twelve months even I have been surprised at the amount of anger, rage in fact, that is seething away just below the surface. It even surpasses the rage I remember in the 80’s. But who do people turn do when the choice is between neo-liberal or neo-lib lite?
Policies that begin with the working classes do not exclude the interests of the middle classes. As we have seen recently the same policies that deny jobs to the working classes rob the middle classes of the safety to enjoy their ‘roses round the door’ retirement without fear of losing everything to the annual floods.
And what better example to explain the crucial role of taxation in our society?
Labour has to talk again about society
And the need for redistribution
And Moral Authority. And our children’s futures. And job security. And Europe (need I go on..?)
Funnily [sic] enough the middle classes now seem to include housing association tenants!
After all, with many associations now converting to Ltd companies and refusing non-working tenants, and with an increasing amount of private lets refused to non-working benefits claimants, those in secure housing are getting to be the ones to chase. Never forgetting that private lets are usually on a 6-month period, so many of those tenants won´t be voting anyway (never forget the rampant gerrymandering at Westminster council, the so-called homes for votes).
One thing austerity has done, apart from redefining the meaning of the word, is to increase the amount of jobs paying cash-in-hand, usually at well below min-wage, but tax and NI free.
Never any problem finding a window cleaner in a recession!
“Where people want them.”
What happens when the people already living there say, “We don’t want any more houses near us. We like it our area the way it is…..”
What price democracy then?
Democracy is about reconciling freedoms
Feudalism is about riding over them
You appear to be in the second camp
Usually their opinions are ignored by planning departments, elected representatives or government inspectors.
I am presuming that you assume that all objectors are self-interested ‘nimby’s’ and that the various concerns raised over infra-structure, provision of services and facilities, the environment or climate change are simply spurious affectations?
The planning system in this country has become wholly undemocratic and is a major cause of voter disaffection.