I was asked recently to comment on a suggestion made to a friend of mine by a friend of theirs that socialism would always and inevitably destroy any society because it destroyed all incentives for any constructive human behaviour whereas capitalism did the opposite. I agreed to write to their friend explaining why I did not agree with either suggestion. This is what I wrote:
Dear Friend
I am told by a mutual friend of ours that you have a problem with socialism. You think that a system with that name means that everyone in society has to be treated the same, be paid the same, have access to all the same things, and I presume live in the same way.
And I suppose you think that some extreme examples in history (China at the time of the Cultural Revolution, perhaps, or maybe Soviet Russia in its early days) justify this perception on your part.
In that case I have to tell you, if that is what socialism is then I would want no part of it. I am not even sure the few Trotskyists I know (and I do know some) would go near such thinking. And that's not surprising. It's because the vast majority of people on the left are democratic socialists, or even social democrats (although that term feels somewhat discredited these days).
Democratic socialists come in a wide variety of forms. They even pop up pretty prominently in the US right now. Watch this interview of Stephen Colbert interviewing Senator Bernie Sanders on CBS in the last week or so to get some flavour of what he and his colleagues mean by democratic socialism as your starter in this discussion.
Note too how popular what he had to say was. Now, I admit, that's a New York audience and not a Mid-West one, but you have to admit he went down well. And he would have been my choice for US President right now.
So let's get clear what he did not say. He didn't call for the overthrow of capitalism. Nor did he demand equal pay for all. And he did not call for the confiscation of private property. What is more, state prescribed uniforms for all never got a mention. That's because they don't amongst those who debate modern democratic socialism.
What we do argue for is a mixed economy. You are familiar with what they look like. Pretty much most people on earth are. We live in them.
In mixed economies governments play a fundamental role. They set the rules. That includes the rules that protect private property. Note that this means we wouldn't have modern capitalism as we know it without government. It's an important point.
But let's also be clear that the stereotype of capitalism that so many want to believe in is as simplistic, and as wrong, as that of socialism I have noted above. That stereotype is widely taught by economists as if it is true.
It assumes that all markets are ‘perfect'. That means there are masses of firms engaged in the supply of any product and each competes only on price because consumers have all the information they need on all of them to know that the products are indeed identical.
Those same consumers, it is also assumed, could also at any time set up their own business to compete in this market if they wanted to because it us assumed everyone has equal access to all the capital they need, and at the same cost, whoever they are.
But if instead they decide to work for someone else they will join a labour market where everyone i paid exactly the value of what they produce: there are no standard wage rates in this market. Each gets paid their own worth, and what is more everyone can work that out, without cost arising to do so.
Oh, and by the way, there is no advertising to persuade anyone to buy anything in this market. All advertising that there is provided just for information as everyone already knows exactly what they want, even if it has not been invented yet.
Maybe you haven't come across this world? Nor have I. Just like the socialist stereotype, it does not exist. But as my friend Steve Keen showed in his book ‘Debunking Economics', unless these conditions exist those supposedly efficient markets that allocate resources to ensure the optimum well being of all do nothing of the sort. In fact they can go horribly wrong.
So we get monopolies that squeeze out competition, and they are aided and abetted by copyrights and patents that make sure that consumers actually can't get a range of real choice of things they want to buy. Just look how few consumer facing tech companies there are now to realise how quickly that situation can develop. And then remember it's more than a century ago that the USA realised just how destructive monopoly power - which we now see all around us - was to markets.
So what we have in the real world is nothing like what many economics professors (who have, almost without exception, never run a business between them) teach that capitalism is. And nor is actual capitalism remotely like the popular stereotype of the brave entrepreneur setting out on their own. Some exceptions do of course feed that myth, but we note them precisely because they are so exceptional.
Instead we have malfunctioning markets where without regulation some pretty unpleasant things can happen. So, cheats would prosper without regulation, which is why we have trading standards and regulators to enforce them. And the cost of what economists call externalities would ensure that businesses that create harm, as many do by polluting or by creating products that we now know are dangerous, would not have to compensate society for the costs that they create. And monopolists and monopsonists (who are sole buyers rather than sole sellers, which is what monopolists are) could force their competition out of business, so crushing the essential competition that underpins fair markets. And tax cheats (and they do exist) would get an unfair and unjustified competitive advantage over those who do not cheat. And that would leave a market made up solely of cheats. Can you imagine how beneficial that would be?
But worst of all, because imperfect markets have an inevitable and massive tendency to concentrate power in the hands of a few businesses those people (the majority of all people) who work for a living could find themselves in poverty, because nothing would require employers with monopsony power to pay anything else but poverty wages: after all, the worker would have nowhere else to go to improve their lot as competition for their labour would not exist. The market would have failed, again.
Right across the political spectrum I would suggest that wise people have realised this. The reality is that unfettered markets only work in theory. They never work in practice. So the question is what do we do about that? That is, presuming you don't want to exploit people, profit from creating and create the most massive inequality where everyone (including the wealthy) live in fear.
My answer is, of course, that we regulate. So how do we do that? And with what aim? Actually, both socialism and capitalism provide an easy answer to that question. Socialism presumes everyone should be equal. And the theory of capitalism that I have, albeit in summary but nonetheless accurately, outlined just now assumes that everyone must have equal access to opportunity. So both are theories of equality, albeit you can say one is of output and one of opportunity.
Unfortunately, neither of these is possible. Let's not pretend otherwise. People will do different things with similar resources and will inevitably produce different outcomes. And there is no way we could regulate that possibility away in its entirety, even if someone tried. Human beings are diverse: outcomes will differ.
But there are two things to note. One is we are empathic. We do care for one another, albeit not always as much as we should. It is no surprise all the world's great wisdom traditions build on this.
And there is no doubt that some aspects of private property massively distorts outcomes in the world. Accumulated private wealth does this most especially.
I am not opposing all private wealth when saying this. One of the most annoying tendencies of debate on issues such as this is the tendency for exponents of a cause to massively overstate the case of their own opponents in an attempt to ridicule it. I'll state my position then: I am not opposed to private property. It would be deeply hypocritical for me to be so. But, I am opposed to its excessive concentration in the hands of a few, and to the mechanisms that assist that concentration.
Let me also be clear, capitalists should also oppose this. As already noted, capital concentration can prevent capital getting to the entrepreneurs who need it at a price they can afford.
And excessive concentrations of capital mean that those who work for a living do not have enough to buy what they really need, let alone to buy the products that would result in the innovation and development that society and markets need to prosper. In contrast, the wealthy do not, of course, spend all that they have ( which is why they are wealthy in the first place) so that they do not make good this deficiency. The result is that excessive concentrations of wealth actually undermine dynamic markets, reduce profitability, remove the incentives for investment, and result in societies that exist largely in the payment of rents, and not on the basis of earning profits. That is where we are heading, and it is a long way from capitalism.
In addition, wealth concentration makes for sick societies. Everyone lives in fear. Those with wealth fear of losing it. Those without wealth live in fear of the actions of those who have it. Just about every health and social outcome is worse as a result. And the reality is that we know that. So we find compromises.
I am happy to live in a world of compromise. It works. It's a good place to be. I'd suggest that's what modern socialism is. It's the way to make societies work.
So we give people access to intellectual capital. That should be free education for all, to university level.
And we provide for the person. So that should be free health care for all, based on need. And we know that markets cannot deliver this: the US spends twice as much on health care as the UK does per head of population and produces worse health outcomes without delivering for everyone.
It also means we must ensure housing for all. Not necessarily grand housing: but respectable housing where the person can feel of worth.
And it requires a social safety net. No child should live in poverty: what did they do to deserve it? Child poverty is to deny the equality of opportunity that is inherent in the belief system that market economics appears to embrace.
Empathy requires that we care for the sick, the elderly, those with disability and those suffering hard times too.
And when markets fail (and they do, and we know that is inevitable and have done since the 1930s) then it is down to there being a state of sufficient size to bail them out. Small states can't do that.
To help achieve this the state has to tax, because it has had to spend. And in taxing the state not only should, but must, charge progressively so that those with more income and wealth pay a greater proportion of each than do those with lesser sums. That's not penal. That's to make sure that harmful concentrations of income and wealth do not happen. Because they do otherwise. That's what markets deliver. And in itself that concentration is a market failure.
So democratic socialism corrects for this.
But to prevent abuse it has to do so accountably. Which is why transparency - which is the very opposite of secrecy - is key to making sure it too cannot abuse. Because it could, of course. All humans can.
But in the process of doing all this then what democratic socialism delivers is the perfect condition in which markets can flourish. There are trained people. Who live without fear. So they can afford to spend. And business can take risk, because people have money to spend, which justifies investment. And precisely because the cheats have been eliminated by transparency, which weeds them out, business can afford to think for the long term which is otherwise impossible. In fact, what democratic socialism delivers is the prosperous foundation for a market economy. And nothing else does.
The two go together then.
But those in the market should never forget the fact. They did not make the foundations of their wealth. The state did that. That's true for every single wealthy person alive today. It's a relationship that makes wealth. And that's a relationship that needs to be nourished. It cannot be by one party pretending it does not exist, which is what far too many modern free-marketeers do.
So is democratic socialism a threat got to go to markets? No: far from it. It's the best thing that could ever happen to them.
I'd be very happy to hear your opinion.
Best regards
Richard
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Good reply. I hope ‘the friend’ gets the point. But I doubt he/she will. My experience is that once a certain prejudice / false idea is ingrained into a person’s subconscious, it’s very difficult to change it from the outside, unless they initiate the will to change.
It’s reached the stage when the entire political / economic debate needs to be ‘rewritten’ wherever possible, redefining emotive words like ‘socialism’, ‘capitalism’, ‘debt’ , ‘deficit’, ‘state’, ‘markets’, ‘welfare’, et al. It’s a huge challenge I know and not something that can be done overnight. But a start must be made somewhere or else we’ll be bogged down in the same old rhetoric for decades to come, making essential progress all the more difficult.
Bill Mitchell makes the point today: “The adoption of neoliberal economics by social democratic parties is not part of their DNA. It is largely because their ranks have been infested by careerists who have come from the ‘elites’ and have little resonance with workers. The gaps in the policy space that these fractures have created is being occupied by extremist groups. It will be much easier for progressive parties to reclaim that space than it will be for the conservatives who are in the process of a death spiral. But to do that, the social democratic movements has to abandon every vestige of neoliberal economics — the concepts, policies and language and framing. That is the challenge.” (http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=40209#more-40209).
What I explain is so far from neoliberalism
That is markets with the empathy removed
Slight misunderstanding. I wasn’t suggesting that there were any neo-liberal policy aspects to your explanation. I know better than to do that! I was looking at your reply from ‘the friend’s’ possible perspective and making assumptions regarding his/her reaction. My point is, as Bill Mitchell emphasises, we need to reframe the dialectic in a way that doesn’t in any way reinforce the neo-liberal narrative. We must accept that for the past 40+ years they have owned the rhetoric – hence a mass audience via the MSM – leaving the progressive left no choice but to accommodate them in order to achieve any public voice at all. But, if we’re to make the urgent radical progress now necessary in order to halt the continuing, dangerous shift to the right, then this has to stop. Somehow or other progressives must take control of the framing.
Maybe I’m not making my point succinctly enough. But at least I know what I’m talking about 😉
🙂
For many years I’ve thought that the Left made a serious mistake in arguing against, or at best being suspicious of, the Free Market, given that, as set out above, the market, properly understood, and above all properly regulated, is actually a Socialist instrument, given that it is, or should be, all about equality of arms and equality of bargaining power, both clearly Socialist ideals (though other Parties may, quite reasonably, lay claim to similar, even identical ideals).
It is, of course, true to say that the Free Market might better then be described as a Fair Market, but I think Richard’s piece above shows that the unregulated (which is the reality behind thr adjective “Free”), is actually no market at all, since it is effectively a stitch-up by market players with excessive bargaining power – the extension, that is, to the whole economy of Henry Ford’s “You can have any colour you want, so long as you want black” = coercion, not choice.
Socialism, but not only Socialism, I agree, just wants markets to behave fairly, and thereby effectively, for unfairness is actually bad economics, in my view.
Nobody to my knowledge claims it works because nobody claims it exists.
I’ve asked you to name one economist that claims all markets are empirically perfect as you suggest (ie that monopolies, oligopolies etc. don’t exist).
Can I take it that despite it being ‘widely taught’, you can’t actually name one person who teaches it?
I game every teacher of every first year undergraduate course
Now stop wasting my time
“But let’s also be clear that the stereotype of capitalism that so many want to believe in is as simplistic, and as wrong, as that of socialism I have noted above. That stereotype is widely taught by economists as if it is true.
It assumes that all markets are ‘perfect’. That means there are masses of firms engaged in the supply of any product and each competes only on price because consumers have all the information they need on all of them to know that the products are indeed identical.”
I’ve never heard of an economist that argues that all markets are perfect.
Can you please name one economist, and cite his or her work where he or she makes this claim?
That is the foundation of micro and in turn all macro
Rational expectations are built on this idea
Find me neoclassical economists who do not think this, or at least think this is the model from which all other models deviate
“Can you please name one economist, and cite his or her work where he or she makes this claim?”
Richard. It is amusing that having made your claim, you cannot respond to Dom’s question.
This makes you claim what’s is known, I believe, as a straw man argument.
Putting forward an argument which your opponent has never made, in order to refute it.
No serious economist has ever claimed perfect markets exist in the real world. They are a theory. Like MMT working. Just a theory.
So no serious economist has ever claimed that perfect competition works
And yet, despite that, it is taught to every undergraduate as if it is the perfect form to which we should aspire, and the ultimate economic model to which all others should be compared
Why is that?
And why is it that most of the models of macroeconomics make the same assumptions as those promoting perfect competition do?
Would you like to explain?
Would you also like to explain what use the resulting models might be?
There’s no straw man in what I say unless, of course, every economics course the world over teachers about strawmen
Economists’ assumption of perfect markets is a major theme in Steve Keen’s _Debunking Economics_. It’s kind of amusing. Asked straight out, no economist will admit to believing in perfect markets, but lo, when the theorizing starts that perfection underpins all the calculations.
Look for indifference curves of the “Gorman form”, that’s one tell; or “Sonnnenschein-Mantel-Debreu conditions.”
Keen chapter three.
It does not matter whether there is one single economist who states the complete idea. What Richard observes are the key ideas suggested by an undergraduate syllabus and which are extolled to a lesser or greater extent in most public debate. This real issue is that they are so far from reality – hypothetical constructs that will never exist.
(Yes, I majored in Economics – there is much debunking required)
Get copies to Seumus Milne and John McDonnell.
There is no need to insult these people. They were true socialists before Richard started this blog.
@ Carol Wilcox
“They were true socialists before Richard started this blog.”
A socialist is of no great use if they only have heart and little true understanding of how modern monetary systems and macroeconomics works. Ask Corbyn and McDonnell to point to complete and coherent explanations and you will not get a response. They’re winging it mainly using a Neoliberal play book.
“To help achieve this the state has to tax, because it has had to spend. ”
My guess is you already knew some MMTer would comment about this!
I would have put it:
‘To help achieve this, the state has to tax to free up the resources (materials & labour) the private sector exploits for raw profit , in order to instead use them for the social good. And in taxing the state not only should, but must, charge progressively so that those who disproportionately use more resources, should be taxed higher than those who are lesser able to. ‘
Though….totally agree with everything else.
Cheers 🙂
“That’s not penal. That’s to make sure that using capital to monopolise use of a finite resources can’t happen without paying a hefty price. Landlords, for instance, use capital to exploit finite housing stock and earn a high income for no productivity. Exploitative companies who employ staff (another finite resource) on zero contract hours to maximise profits, should also be taxed for these kind of employment terms. ‘
I was as getting as close as I could without adding another diversion
Just my two pennorth. MMT is about the uses and effects of money of money in an economy. Taken in its pure form it is not about ‘policy’ (or ideology) it merely describes what really happens. So as Bill has said you can have an ‘MMT of the right’ as well as of the left depending on your political persuasion. But you will have to accept the monetary and fiscal consequences that the understanding of MMT will show you.
But all spending has a purpose especially government spending. There is a social and political objective as well as a monetary or fiscal outcome. So I think an MMTer would agree with Richard that a government has to spend and it has to tax. Those are the means by which it achieves its political and social aims (or provisions itself as Randy Wray puts it.) They don’t ‘tax to spend’ but they ‘steer’ the economy (and to an extent society) by that spending and taxing. To use the overused car analogy their steering wheel needs to turn in both directions either spending or taxing to keep them on the road to where they want to go. That’s all taxing and spending are – turning the wheel one way or the other. You obviously have to do both at the appropriate time – but they are both essentially complementary parts of the same activity.
And I should add your exposition of socialism was excellent and a pleasure to read. As well as being clear and simple. I very much applaud efforts like this to persuade and explain the value you perceive in socialism rather than the polemics we so often see that just puts people off.
[…] Richard Murphy is Professor of Practice in International Political Economy, City University of London. He campaigns on issues of tax avoidance and tax evasion, as well as blogging at Tax Research UK […]
Hard to disagree in a non-nitpicking manner. Ramsi Woodcock adds to the possibilities with this on persuasive advertising and monopolistic anti-competition
https://www.yalelawjournal.org/article/the-obsolescence-of-advertising-in-the-information-age
The basic idea is that while ant-trust suits against persuasive advertising would once fail because “we need the information content”, they need not in the information age. This is the nub:
Critics of advertising often attack advertising’s effect on culture, particularly
the way advertising crowds public-spirited speech, like the arts and political
debate, out of public fora, replacing them with speech aimed solely at serving
the narrow pecuniary interests of private speakers.The virtue of an antitrust
challenge to manipulative advertising is that it would focus not on what advertising
does to culture but on what it does to the market, the very object that the
pursuit of narrow pecuniary interests is supposed to nourish. Advertising in
its manipulative guise, so far from smoothing the flow of commerce, threatens
technological advance, by giving consumers a reason–image–to purchase a
product that is distinct from the only reason for which a consumer should buy
a product in a well-functioning market: that the product is actually better (p. 2275)
Democratic socialism would thus seek to improve markets not abolish them yet again. Advertising regulation would be to further free-markets.
As I argued in The Courageous State
Whilst in Berlin my family and I went to the GDR museum.
I have to say that it is very balanced and well done.
After two hours of reading about the fact that the GDR did not invest in new plant (the Trabant of 1985 was the same Trabant of 1959), had huge issues with environmental degradation (brown coal), that its population was under constant surveillance plus its isolation from greater Western Europe made certain raw materials hard for it to acquire I had a case of deja vue and thought that it did not sound too dissimilar from the country I am a citizen of!!!!
Those problems that afflicted the GDR seem to afflict Western capitalism now.
– renter capitalism holding back R & D and innovation in drugs and technology instead communist ideology.
– denial about climate change driven by self interested private parties and not the state
– the internet and its ability to spy on its users to get them to buy stuff as well as fake people and fake news
– the prospect of living in a post BREXIT Britain where basic food stuffs and materials will be harder to acquire as we isolate ourselves.
But hey………it’s only those nasty old communists that fuck things up eh?
Yeah………..right.
Good explanation. I do a lot of arguing with anti-socialists on FB. They consistently refer to unsuccessful command economies. There are indeed many from the left who believe that sort of structure can work and I have argued with them too. I know communists who have no trouble with markets, competition, money/wages and ‘the nation state, but also people in the LP who believe in open borders and state control of the means of production. I’ve been working on a new ‘Clause IV’ which tries to define the term ‘common ownership’, sadly taken to mean ‘nationalisation’. Sidney Webb has a lot to answer for;o)
Common ownership of an enterprise should be entirely acceptable to anyone who supports modern capitalism: isn’t this equal access to capital for all?
How do you interpret that? It has consistently been misconstrued as nationalisation. See here https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/09/clause-iv-of-labour-party-constitution-what-is-all-the-fuss-about-reinstating-it.
And that’s absurd
I don’t tiink it absurd at all. We’ve been struggling to find a clear alternative. Can you suggest one?
I wish I could
Mr Murphy, I suggested to a local columnist here on the mid coast of Maine that he read this blog post re: Democratic Socialism and he did read it and replied to my suggestion as follows:
“Mr. Bachofner,
Thanks for including the article by Richard Murphy. I printed the article and have read through it thoroughly. It like most ideas on Democratic Socialism it calls for Medicare for all, and also free college tuition, but I was amazed to find that we now need to supply free housing for all as well. The only solution that Mr. Murphy offered to fund these ambitious proposals was to tax the rich. That element already supplies a huge % of the tax income today while over 50 % of families and individuals pay zero federal tax. How he views the world today in my opinion lacks clarity and understanding of economics. As the former Prime Minister of England, Margaret Thatcher said years ago ” Socialism works well until it runs out of other peoples money.” I must add having lived in England for several years that the UK system of health care is poor in comparison to our own.
Jan Dolcater Rockport”
His column, if you have an interest in reading it, entitled Democratic Socialism: Where do You Stand? can be read at (https://knox.villagesoup.com/p/democratic-socialism-where-do-you-stand/1773365).
Best regards,
Bill Bachofner
Thanks for the comment
First, let’s deal with facts. Our healthcare system has been assessed as vastly more effective than yours, covers everyone and costs half the price. We have slightly worse cancer outcomes. That’s it. So factually the suggestion we have worse healthcare is just wrong.
And I di not suggets free housing – except for those in real need. I suggested we have a duty to make sure there is housing for all. I never said we did not expect a contribution for it. But, yes, when a person is unable to pay through no fault of their own (and as a safety net in all cases) of course we shoulkd make sure decent housing is available for all. If we want to live in a decent society, why not?
And who pays for it? The government does. Thatcher was wrong, and so is your friend. Public services are paid for with public money – created by the government, whose job it is to put money into the economy because no one else, ultimately, can. Tax returns the money government has injected to control inflation.
And is tax then the constraint on activity? OIf course it is not: the ability of people to work is that.
As for the questions in the article – the minimum wage did not create unemployment. Nor did people sit around. No line lives comfortably on a minimum wage. Anyone who thinks that someone might is not connected to economic reality.
And free college education? We do that now in the UK. We say we loan the funds but that’s just bullshit accounting to engineer debt to enslave a population to debt. The reality is all education is up front funded by government. So free education would change nothing. And since much student debt will not be repaid nor will the lack of recovery have a major impact down the line.
As I argue in the article – if modern capitalism understood waht Ford did – that it needs customers who can pay – it would be backing modern democratic socialism.
Richard
Thanks Richard I passed forward to Mr Dolcatur, who is not a friend but rather a local conservative columnist (Another View), your response. I will send you any further replies by him.
Cheers,
Bill
Thanks
Dear Bill
Please forgive me for diving in here but this Jan fellow seems very badly informed -especially about healthcare.
As I understand it the US healthcare system has a number of problems related to the way in which Richard Nixon in particular helped to ‘transform’ it in his time as President.
1. There are more unecessary invasive procedures carried on patients in the US system related to perhaps the need to generate fees in the hospitals that do them.
2. Infant mortality in the States is rather high for a so-called ‘advanced nation’.
3. It is well known that the complexity of private medical insurance gets in the way of effective emergency care and that people have died in the US as a result of waiting to hear that insurers have agreed or not to pay for treatment. Does Jan know how many of these tend to be Afro- American by any chance?
4. It is well known that US health insurers also use loss adjusters to scan insurance agreements to catch out claimants so that the HO can get out of paying for treatment and make a nice fat profit from the premiums. In fact the loss adjusters are rewarded bonuses for his sort of thing. They are Incentivised to do this. Incentivised. Just like those criminals who sold dodgy loans to US citizens and credit default swaps on Wall Street leading to 2008 and all that.
5. As wages fall in America the cost of healthcare has not. The mismatch has meant more and more decent Americans cannot afford it. If the market system in the US was efficient and better, prices would match available income in the real world. But no. And that is because the US health system is not ran to deliver health; it is ran to deliver profit. Health issues in America can mean people becoming bankrupt through no fault of their own.
6. The US health system is just an outlet for big pharma which means that the US is now the most heavily medicated country in the world bar none.
The UK NHS (that was set up and funded not by taxes but by Government money) is not perfect and especially not so after nearly 10 years of Conservative government.
When the Tories got in in 2010 and talked about an American like system in the UK because we all of a sudden could not afford it anymore, please note that those off us here who walk around with our eyes open noted the share price of many US health providers go up. Like the piranhas they are, they smelled blood in the water.
The only way that health provision in America can go on making huge profits is to remain unaffordable for more and more hard working US citizens and concentrate more on big juicy government contracts abroad like in the UK where the successful NHS is being deliberately ran down in order get manufactured consent for it to become increasingly private.
US healthcare in my view is an extremely badly ran system managed by people who want to make money and not make people better. It is a system that has forgotten what it is there for.
Pass this onto Jan and tell us what he thinks about what I have said. The US healthcare system has no place in the UK, the US in fact no where in the world at all as far as I am concerned.
well it appears lots of aspects combining politics/economics throughout the ages have been tried and failed,i mean just look at where we are today! and whilst most of our troubles are economic ones no government has put a stop to it,there are supposedly our representatives there to defend us,there not agin them there with them.
Command economies don’t need nationalisation per se. The Nazis had no use for it, believing they could control by other means. Indeed, they went for privatisation and the encouragement of cartels and monopolies at the expense of small businesses – all funded by deficit spending. Railways have been the ruin of many a poor investor – the BR privatisation in early days boasted it was turning a public service into an efficient railway, making use of the intrapreneur and other guff. Ownership will be a bed of nails, with return on needed investment impossible for venture or the people’s capital. Making money from railways is an international intractable. I doubt ownership provides any answer and we need new understandings of capital and returns to get services and products we want and are morally responsible. A democratic socialist framework could bring that with a concomitant change in the private sector business plan away from ‘private is ideologically better’ and instead complimentary.
It’s Ok lauding the nhs – many of us would be dead or broke without it. “First, let’s deal with facts. Our healthcare system has been assessed as vastly more effective than yours, covers everyone and costs half the price. We have slightly worse cancer outcomes. That’s it. So factually the suggestion we have worse healthcare is just wrong.” is disemmbling. The report actually says that “The only serious black mark against the NHS was its poor record on keeping people alive. On a composite “healthy lives” score, which includes deaths among infants and patients who would have survived had they received timely and effective healthcare, the UK came 10th.”
Yes the “The United Kingdom ranks first overall, scoring highest on quality, access and efficiency,” but it’s not very good at keeping people actually alive. I note no other country has adopted the model we have, so perhaps being efficient etc is no good if you end up dead.
Nothing that 2% more of GDP could not solve
Exactly, Richard. Our NHS rated higher when Labour was in government.
If we are honest, it is not just the NHS that may be failing on the keeping people alive front.
We have a system here where food producers exert far too much influence on government policy. There is far too much sugar in our food as well as other stuff that we could do without.
And the obesity problem is also related to the over consumption of alcohol in which there is loads of sugar. Alcohol is a big problem for the English at the moment.
I am even noticing young people with beer guts these days. It is very worrying.
For someone who writes radical economic ideas you are unable to tackle the shibboleth of the nhs. Nhs spending as a proportion of gdp has risen from 3.5% at inception to over 7%. Throughout it’s history the cry has been we need more money, but this seems neverending. How about looking at what goes on in other countries and examining their systems which may not be as efficient but are better at keeping you alive. Maybe we’ll find a system that initially is more expensive, but gives better outcomes. As your only suggestion is to pour money into an open drain, it may even work out cheaper in the short and long run. I suspect that if we increased spending on the nhs by 100% we would hear the same cries of more money needed. Perhaps the models broken and you are unwilling to consider it.
Have you noticed we have an amazing, but underfunded system compared to everyone else
Maybe that’s why I think more money might help
You know, sometimes it is the right answer
Oh dear Peter.
Please – what are you talking about? Eh?
So we develop an NHS that successfully does its job and because of that people live longer or have more children but then we think that that is a problem now? The NHS has achieved its objectives and now you say what – that you want to put the clock back?
You are putting money before people.
How typically British. How typically Thatcherite.
What is the logic at work here ?
Sure – we could all try to lead healthier lifestyles. Here in Berlin I cannot get over the amount of people cycling around the city in well designed cycle lanes. More people than I have ever seen in any UK city. There are loads of them.
Yes the Germans like their beer, their sausages and a good smoke but they also seem to like to get outside and do something physical. And the amount of obese people we have seen here has been negligible compared to what I have seen in the UK. Even the elderly here look fit. Maybe it is different in other parts of Germany.
If we want to make the NHS more economical then the Government needs to regulate the food industry more and also stop making less room in the school curriculum for exercise.
Because the NHS just ends up being a reseptical for people damaged by bad food, PE and nutrition policy that is all mouth and no trousers.
Amazingly efficient – surely if we pump in more money it will become less efficient? Still unable to face a basic reality – that the so called envy of the world has never been copied by anyone else – at least 10 other health systems are better at keeping you alive. What’s the point of being amazingly efficient if you kill your patients or let them die. Perhaps the failure is not due to money but the system in place ? You seem unable to consider that there maybe better ways of doing things than how they have been been done in living memory health wise. Progressive if you like the 1950s.
This does not seem to be even remotely close to a debate
Tell me, how much should we spend, and why are all this health systems more expensive than ours?
And if we should spend more, why not do it efficiently?