A commentator on the blog wrote this morning:
Richard,
I think you need to recognise that a massive change has taken place over the last couple of months. Until recently, you were a fringe campaigner whose ideas were gradually gaining traction. Now your ideas are likely to be taken up by a major political party, and could form the economic policy of the next government. What this means is that you and this blog will be subject to a whole new level of attack and misrepresentation.
The stakes are now far higher, and it will be essential for those who want austerity and inequality to to try to discredit you and your blog.
The first attack is well under way, and the Parliamentary Labour Party will do its best to sabotage the new leadership and any adoption of your ideas.
The second approach will be political, to try to discredit you personally. Any mistakes you have made over the last thirty years.
The third approach will be to recruit an army of VSPs (Paul Krugman's very serious people) to look convincing and claim that your ideas are infantile and illogical. After all, if you look sufficiently serious you can claim anything.
Jeremy Corbyn has done brilliantly by simply saying he doesn't do personal abuse. I hope you are prepared for a far harder and dirtier fight than you have ever had.
Good luck!
This may not, of course, be entirely right: I am not a member of the Labour Party or in any formal way a member of the Corbyn team. The only thing that has happened is that Jeremy has used some of my ideas, and because I am in the habit of providing robust defence for my ideas that is exactly what I have done since some waded in to criticise them. What happens if Jeremy Corbyn wins the Labour party leadership I do not know.
But what I do know is that it is reported that Mahatma Ghandi once said:
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win
There is some doubt about whether it is true that he said it: what I think we can be sure of is that Schopenhauer was right when he said that truth goes through three stages. In the first stage, it is ridiculed. In the second stage, it is violently opposed. And in the third stage it is accepted as self-evident.
These two comments are, of course, variations on a theme that feel fairly apposite to me right now. I wrote the first version of green quantitative easing in 2010. I know some have said it was a variation on earlier themes by others: if it was I was not aware of them. I do know it did not attract massive attention. That was the ignoring bit.
When it was noticed back then it was by and large dismissed as 'so much green stuff'. I guess that was the laughing bit.
As People's quantitative easing the idea has certainly attracted attention now. And we, sure as heck, are in the fighting stage.
I am, however, quite confident that that this idea will become mainstream and I can most certainly accept all the comments being thrown at it right now. If you stand outside the mainstream - and I have for a long time - then you are used to being told you have got things wrong.
I remember, for example, being told that country-by-country reporting for multinational corporations, which I created in 2003, was unnecessary, badly thought out, vastly too costly, impossible to deliver, would impart no useful information and so much more, mostly by people who have never once bothered to read what it was about and who made up the most ridiculous claims to try to discredit it. In September 2014 it became the world standard for transfer pricing risk assessment: the UK government has adopted it. Sure, I was not the only person who campaigned for it by a very long way, but I started the ball rolling. And now it will be normal. Banks are already reporting it, as my report for the EU Greens shows.
Likewise I remember in June 2009 being told in the UK Treasury that automatic information exchange from tax havens was impossible. I was told it would not happen in my lifetime. I wrote this report as a result. I don't claim that was the only thing that tipped the balance, not by a long way. But it is going to be commonplace by 2017. I think I played at least a part in that.
And then there was the general anti-avoidance principle: I was one of its rare UK exponents before 2010. Professor Judith Freedman was the other main one, of course. But it was me who persuaded the Lib Dems to put it in their 2010 manifesto, from where it went to the Coalition Agreement and so to law. OK, what we got was not exactly what I asked for, but it will be in the end: George Osborne has already begun modifying it to bring it into line with my ideas. But, of course, it was considered bizarre before it got anywhere near becoming law.
So, I am used to the counter-attack. And the ridicule. And the hegemonic thinking that denies the need for reform. And the fact that there are those on all sides who say things I propose are not needed. And I'm used to seeing things happen.
I am pretty confident about People's QE as a result, but not for a few years yet. After all, nothing's likely before 2020 at which point the gestation period would be about right. Good things do not happen overnight, but happen they do. I may be wrong, of course, but it doesn't feel that way right now. After all, unlike the others at a similar stage it has already been widely conceded it will work: there's just the prejudice left to conquer.
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May you live in interesting and exciting times.
This might just be my favourite post of all time on this blog.
I’m enjoying every minute of this. It’s fantastic. Keep it going Richard.
Might see you soon.
I am over on 11/9
You around?
Would be good to see you
Yes Richard I was hoping that would still be in your schedule. I’m at the same event. So we will talk then. Splendid.
As much fun as this is, you are going to need resilience and a thick skin, and it’s really great to hear you recognising this, even though I never doubted it for a minute. See you soon.
I am aware of the stresses to come
It already feels like I have ceased, in part, to be a private person
But if that’s the price to pay at present for effecting the change I want it’s one worth paying
One thing’s for sure – if anyone wants to implement these ideas, they’ll need a big purge of the public service, from Service Head level, and up. Almost complete change of horses.
There are lots of them, and they aren’t the types to go quietly.
It is the society’s biggest parasites that you will need to wage war against.
They are the entrenched rentiers that produce nothing.
They simply play games with money in order to manufacture largely deceitful and fraudulent claims against real wealth, which they seek to capture.
Their specialism is predatory rather than productive capitalism.
Unfortunately, this means taking on the most powerful group in the UK that squat on it like the evil troll that lived below the bridge in the tale of the “Three Billy Goats Gruff”;-)
Ed Miliband raised the issue of predatory capitalism more than three years ago, but he lacked real support to drive this home, not least from his own party.
Key amongst the party members, who did not support him was Ed Balls, the largely ineffectual Shadow Chancellor. Regrettably, it would seem that he was too distracted by siren voices from the power elite to perform his Opposition role well.
Balls (up) appeared in such a desperate haste to impress the power elite that at one Bilderberg Conference (his last?), he misplaced his entry pass and was caught on camera fumbling around. In his search for the elusive pass, Balls (up) opened his case to reveal that it was stuffed full of handouts for his presentation to the chosen gilded attendees.
If Jeremy Corbyn does by some miracle win the leadership vote (and the Blairites are hard at work to sabotage this effort by foul means where necessary) then he’ll needs to eject ruthlessly the leading Blairites. One of the leading “cuckoos in in the Labour Party nest”, is Balls up)’s wife, Yvette Cooper.
Ms Cooper revealed her total lack of imagination recently. yes sound policies for childcare have their place, but I think the coming few months and 2016 will reveal their significance as to that of deck chair rearranging on the Titanic.
The commentator on you blog is right and despite the fact that you are not a member of the Labour Party, this will not make you any less of a target for assimilation by the Corporatist Borg that run the Media.
I post this but there is much in it, including tone, about which I have reservations
I like Jeremy Corbyn’s “we don’t do personal”. It speaks to my Quaker views
Richard,
I accept and understand your reservations. I respect your stance, but regrettably business and politics is currently a dirty “game” and I imagine that the Blairites won’t hesitate to use underhand tricks.
I would only caution that this is likely to be a “street fight” and those that stick to “Queensberry” rules will be at a distinct disadvantage!
Nick
So far it’s worked – and the tax havens have not made anything stick
But oh boy have they tried to find it
You are very perceptive and original in your thinking and the nation should be grateful for your zeal in challenging NeoLiberal “group-think.” It is true that others in the past have worked on the same furrow/s as yourself particularly Keynes (who’s ideas have failed to be properly and fully understood by later generations) but for me your big and original contribution is highlighting how QE really works and the true role it plays and can be made to play. You are on the right track keep on rolling!
Thanks
“Hey, folks. Meet the economics ‘genius’ behind Jeremy Corbyn
That is to say, here’s Richard Murphy, everybody!”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/16/richard_murphy_corbyn_economics/
Worstall is enjoying himself
If he’s the best critic they can find there’s not a lot to worry about
A former press officer of UKIP who is fervently anti EU now living in Portugal…..
Richard
I voted in the General Election this year, for the first time in too long. I voted in desperation (truthfully) because I know that what is happening now is wrong.
Theresa
Maybe in 2020 you will have a wider choice
I hope so. Maybe it’s up to ordinary people like me to make that happen.
Everyone has a role to play in change
I am not sure I believe in ordinary people
No one seems to be after I talk to them for not very long
Indeed-the idea of the ‘ordinary person’ is a myth-there’s more creativity out here than in the ‘Westmonster’ bubble-the only people that can be considered ordinary are those that follow received views for the purposes of maintaining power-we know who they are!
What I think has been shown in the last couple of months is that this is more than a debate between right and left. It is a battle between intelligent thinking and cognitional myth.
The left has been struggling to find an intelligent rebuff to the Tory’s demand for spending cuts and balancing budgets. By taking Richard Murphy on board, Jeremy’s team are attempting to apply an intelligent solution to our economic crisis, an area in which there is much confusion and paranoia. The surprise popularity of the Corbynites shows at last they are cutting through the rhetoric and getting to the heart of the matter.
If the intelligent thinking wins out, which I very much hope it shall, then I could also conceive a scenario in which the right take on at least some of Richard’s ideas, for the simple reason that they may suffer electoral defeat if they don’t. At the moment I think this is quite unlikely, for two reasons. Firstly, there needs to be a stronger opposition which is united in condemning Tory imposed austerity, tax cuts for millionaires, QE for banks but not working Britain. Secondly, it would involve the right admitting that for many years, they got it wrong. Would the Tories have the decency to apologise for their mistakes of the past, and correct them? If they did, then I could conceive the possibility of the Tories running a government deserving to be called a Courageous State.
No doubt you have heard of the “Peter Principle”. Just because you have had successes in the past does not mean you will do so in the future. As I keep saying you need candid friends too, besides the sycophants I see on this blog.
I have the whole press acting as critical friends now, or so it seems
I don’t think you need worry
My I suggest a little more reading around the French Revolution? I am not entirely
unaware in my dotage of left wing parties gaining in ground in Europe, especially amongst the young, although I notice Podemos in Spain moving a little more to the right.Anyway back to the French Revolution, it showed that the end result against an Anciene Regime is not necessarily left wing Nirvana but a right wing coup a la Napoleon. In other words be careful what you wish for.
Whilst I agree with many of your ideas, I do think with some of your bloggers that if I substitute the word for Green for Red I go back to the days of my youth where so much hypocrisy reigned and lefties (which included me) whilst espousing the rights of the proletariat were mainly in it for themselves in the end.
Old cynics never die
They just moan
And bewail their lost idealism