I know it's not trendy, cool or whatever to say you like a Dire Straits song, but I have said before, and may well say again that this is a favourite of mine:
Mark Knopfler wrote stories. This one includes these lines:
I used to like to go to work but they shut it down
I've got a right to go to work but there's no work here to be found
Yes, and they say we're gonna have to pay what's owed
We're gonna have to reap from some seed that's been sowed
So, do we have that right?
Should we have that right?
And what must be paid for it?
The context is the discussion of UBI and the Jobs Guarantee in the comments section yesterday.
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Rights always run two ways so turn the question round and it becomes; Does work have a right to make us go in?
You mean can you have your freedom, and the right to strike, removed?
Or are you simply suggesting slavery?
Private Investigations. Another story that conjures up images of Jack Nicholson in Chinatown. I find Telegraph Road too long and I have to be in the mood. That said – when I am it’s cranked up to 11.
“I’ve seen desperation explode into flames” a possible portent of things to come?
Yes
A decent society owes its citizens a number of rights, including employment, shelter, food, fuel, social and health care, pensions and so on. These should be provided by the state at a decent level. And of course there are reciprocal obligations on the part of citizens.
Seems more like an obligation than a right. I would have had a better life if I had never had to work.
I think few would agree with you
I also wonder how you think you might have lived well
Would not working have reflected your necessary commitment to others, assuming you were able to do so?
The relative operator here is the word “had”. I had little choice about working or not working. If I wanted to live an independent life I had to work. But if I’d been born into privilege and been able to choose my occupation is have happily tinkered with my music and writing without bothering about renumeration. As it was the things I lived were sacrificed. Maybe you always worked at what you enjoyed. Many of us feel like wage slaves. I work on an office of 1000. I reckon many would agree with me.
I have done that
Overall, I’d still work
I have a contribution to make to society by doing so
I took a quick straw poll amongst my Civil Service colleagues, and many agreed with me that the only reason they work at THIS job is because they need the money. In forty years of working in that arena I met only a handful of people who professed any love for the nuts and bolts of the job (initially, sorting and reading documents, writing letters and speaking to the public and latterly twiddling with a computer).
This explains why it goes so badly when the managers bring in academics to tell us how wonderful our jobs are (this has happened many times). Just because YOU had a great career doesn’t mean everyone does. Work SUCKS!
I respect your opinion
That is simply not an opinion most people I know share
And most people I know are not academics and a lot are not professionals
Peri –
You say you’d have had a better life if you’d never had to work but you have, I assume, worked for a great proportion of your life. Therefore I suggest you aren’t familiar with the alternative.
I’ve experienced significant periods of time without work but with sufficient funds to live comfortably. I can only speak for myself but I suspect it is true of others when I say: not working and therefore not feeling like you are contributing enough to society imposes a heavy psychological burden even before you start to consider the separate burden of being thwarted from being able to make full use of your skills.
I suggest you simply take for granted the sense of self worth that having something to do to contribute to the greater good bestows on you and struggle to empathise with the lack of self worth incurred by those underemployed or unemployed.
Well, there’s a right not to be blacklisted and pro-actively excluded from consideration by employers.
Not quite the question you’re asking, though.
I suspect that Mark Knopfler was being ironic, or trying to express the sentiments of baffled and wounded workers in a rustbelt town: given where he’s from, he would know very well.
I don’t think there’s a right to keep working in a dying industry. But I do believe that there is a moral right – which should be a legal right, as it is in mush of Northern Europe – to be treated as a stakeholder, and consulted in decisions, rather than a tool to be discarded.
This, too, is an issue of good government: nation-states that disregard and discard their citizens have mass unemployment. Those states that work with industry – by encouraging investment, by providing training and resources for redeployment, and occasionally by compulsion – do not.
Thanks
Good points
Got to evolve..i was born in redcar in the NE, left school in 1981..ICI and British Steel were cutting right back on apprenticeships and the local industry supply chain ditto..my peer group, the wanna be footballers who left school with no O levels ended up in YTS schemes..gradually they picked up experience and a trade and through wanting to succeed many have used their trades (often in he oil industry) all over the world and to earn a good living. In 1980 a YTS wasn’t great but the working class are generally aspirational and want to do better for themselves. Now they are all die hard anti Thatcher for what she did to local industry but they found a way to succeed. The key thing is an earlier opportunity to learn a skill and that needs to be Government financed. That is not the same thing as the Government providing jobs come what may as it is not the route to a productive economy. E.g any point in keeping the likes of woolworths, HMV etc when they are clearly out of date & out of touch?
“The key thing is an earlier opportunity to learn a skill”
Yes Ben,
Well that may be very helpful but your anecdote assumes that everyone will have an opportunity once they have a skill. Our workforce can be under-skilled, over-educated or something else perhaps. It won’t make any difference to the fact that the number of available applicants exceeds the number of vacancies and has done for nigh on 40 years.
In a neoliberal society it is necessary for those of us who oppose the dogma to engage with the hypothesis underpinning the neoliberal claims and expose the falsity of them. In what is possibly the only rational exposition attempting to defend the morality of the neoliberal position Robert Nozick said…
“Allowing boundary crossing provided only that full compensation is paid “solves” the problem of distributing the benefits of voluntary exchange in an unfair and arbitrary manner.”
Anarchy State & Utopia.
He is implying that contracting to work is a major mechanism for crossing boundaries (advancing oneself). The statement also implies that ‘fully compensated’ work is essential to the successful functioning of a neoliberal society. That in turn implies that employer and worker are able to negotiate a contract on an equal basis.
Nozick’s argument supports the notion that a reduction of the State (regulation and taxes) is necessary, beneficial and moral. Like most neoliberal arguments it is flawed because it dismisses the need to provide the mechanisms so that boundary crossing can occur (allowing is not ensuring, it is simply hoping that ‘someone’ will provide opportunity whereas ensuring entails the exercise of political power). The use of zero hours contracts and minimum wages coupled with refusal to fund training removes the ability to cross boundaries.
And, of course, in a neoliberal society work is not just a means of gaining a living. In the neoliberal world ‘worth’ is gauged by wealth. It is the value of the person expressed in economic terms. As a consequence attitudes are struck and we see the results. Women earn less than men, is it just me, or is there a correlation that manifests in behaviour such as is alleged to have happened at the Presidents Club Gala? At the other end of the scale the directors of Carillion were paid generous sums. Their ‘worth’ will protect them from facing the full consequences of such spectacular mismanagement.
Our neoliberals do not believe in work, they believe in slavery and privilege and maintaining the gulf between them. For those who deny this Nozick devotes a chapter arguing it is possible and morally acceptable for slavery to happen when people’s economic condition provides them no other ‘voluntary’ choice.
Not intentional Daily Mail rhetoric here but asking out of curiosity coming from my own limited understanding of what a jobs guarantee entails, is there not an interesting intersection between a jobs guarantee which might be seen as a more left-wing idea and a requirement to work which might be seen as more traditionally right wing? If a jobs guarantee implies a right to a job at (presumably) what is deemed to be minimum acceptable (hopefully living wage) pay and conditions does it not also imply a requirement to take up that job? Obviously nobody can be legally forced to work and you always have the right to opt out of society. But what happens at the margin where you refuse to undertake your guaranteed job for whatever reason, i.e. not to your liking. I’m assuming that the jobs guarantee would mostly involve public works jobs which might not necessarily be deemed the most desirable. Would you be entitled to any unemployment benefit?
Again I’m not looking to take a ‘’welfare sponger’’ angle. I fully accept that nearly everyone without a job would take up one. Rather I am seeking an answer to a question that will be raised.
My concern with the JG is that it could be used for enforcement
I still incline to UBI for that reason
I happen to think most people want to work, and not just for money: they like working
Some of us never want to retire……
I share your concern about enforcement (potentially, at least) but in a recent reply in another post post you said that the both the JG & UBI had some merit and addressed different needs (or something like that).
I would also agree with that. I can’t see them as substitutes. In aggregate demand terms the UBI can never be an adequate substitute for a paid-up, fully employed workforce.
Economically and socially I think that has to be true
The problem with that analysis of the Job Guarantee is that it’s limited to the current perceptions of work, meaning that we can only envisage the selling of labour as work. In my view, the Job Guarantee is superior to the UBI due to the inclusion of an inflationary anchor (the JG pool), but only if we are prepared to expand the true definition of work to include any function that is deemed to be socially beneficial. This means it must include:
1) Carers looking after their own children or elderly/disabled relatives (we already view carers looking after other people’s children or other people’s elderly/disabled relatives as workers, so we’re half way there!)
2)Post-16 Education, including 16-25 year olds on their first college/degree courses and older people retraining due to either necessity or desire for a career change
3)Artists practicing their trade, whether that’s musicians, painters, modern artists and so on – things that are currently viewed as hobbies
4) Amateur sports that require a good chunk of their time practicing, so for example, Olympic athletes and so on.
5) Any other “pastime” that can provide individual or social benefit that requires time and support that I haven’t thought of – I’m sure there are many!
In an age of automation I’m too sure. We used to look forward to the future because it promised more leisure time.
Now that time is here yet we do not know how to deal with it because of the false morality of ‘moral hazard’ in terms of offering money to people who do not work.
But there is lots of work that we do not get paid for – going to the recycling centre to recycle; looking after our elderly relations ourselves; looking after our own kids at home; we go into debt for education instead of being paid to do it. There’s lots of good stuff that people do that some don’t want to value. And then we wonder why so much money gets allocated to those at the top. Because it has nowhere else to go!
What is evident to me is that money makes the real economy work (see my previous comment this morning). Money is more important than work – it has to be if work is declining because of automation. We could live without work. But it seems not without money – a medium of exchange.
BTW – you have posted my all time favourite Dire Straights song ever Richard. Knopfler’s solo on it is amazing – makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up – but also his Springsteen type lyrics redolent of the industrial decline of the North East of the UK rather than small town America.
With apologies to Mr K:
‘I’d like to be economically active but they shut me down
The economy needs my money but there is no money to be found
Yes they say ‘But all money’s gotta come from work’
But with no work, then there’s no money and no economy you Neo-liberal jerk’
‘So then came austerity and then came low growth
And then came inequality and an economy like a sloth
And once the rent seekers had nothing else to take
In came UBI………..
…….For the economy’s sake ‘
(Cue solo: grab you tennis racquets gentleman and make sure you have a sweat band on your head for the real 80’s feel and turn that stereo way up).
Very good
It all depends what you mean by work.
I’ll bet Mark Knopfler thought writing this song was work, though to others of us it might not seem much like it.
The advantage of UBI is that we’d all have a better opportunity to decide what work is. The disadvantage of the job guarantee is that you don’t get to decide that and that, unless you bring back the chain gang, it can only ever be a job offer so what do you do with those who decline it?
Have some sympathy with whoever it was who said that if work was so marvellous the rich would have kept it all for themselves.
In the end whilst we have any un- or under- employment at all we should have the right to go to work less. Whatever happened to the three day week that we always used to be promised?
We have found, I think, that our bankers have it.
It could be argued I don’t work
I am fortunate to be paid to do what I want to do
On the other hand summarising my timesheets (now doing) feels very much like work to me….
Where i come from people work so that they and they and their family enjoy a better standard of living, it is that simple. And welders, fitters, riggers etc still do.. particularly if they are prepared to travel. Some from our community choose not work hard and live on benefits but get by. That was their lifestyle choice. The world from a working class mans perspective hasn’t been that bad. That said the emerging economies have become skilled and in the oil industry in particular Koreans and Indians now occupy many positions which would have been filled on high wages by British workers. I suppose thats a benefit of globalisation and the next generation in Britain will have to evolve accordingly. I do not profess to be able to understand half of the stuff posted on here but i am interested. That all said the working class have done alright in the last 30 years if they are prepared to work hard.
“Some from our community choose not work hard and live on benefits but get by”
“Choose”. Right, so your community is characterised by the continual presence of well-paid, permanently un-fillled vacancies. I doubt it. If there are 1000 jobs and 1100 applicants someone misses out.
“the working class have done alright in the last 30 years if they are prepared to work hard”
Really? I’m not so sure. See this: ‘The chart that shows UK workers have had the worst wage performance in the OECD except Greece’
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uk-workers-have-had-the-worst-wage-growth-in-the-oecd-except-greece-a7773246.html
Fifty plus years ago I had a good friend who knew his economics. He was an Irish journalist on The Financial Times. It was his considered view that work was the curse of the drinking classes.
‘It could be argued I don’t work’
If I may say Richard: ‘Bollocks’.
As I think I have tried to argue elsewhere, it is such narrow minded thinking on what is called work or constitutes work or ‘meaningful activity’ that is the problem. Only work for some form of authority (an employer or an owner of dare I say it ‘capital’) seems to count. And that is flawed.
Well, as you pointed out about Andy Crow’s post on Carillion – what about the activities that boost HUMAN CAPITAL (being paid to look after infirm in laws or staying at home to raise children ) or the planet’s capital (being paid to recycle or take the bus or tram). If work is declining but the economy needs money and we still believe that money should be exchanged for something then the logical progression is to begin to ascribe a decent value to such other activity so that it constitutes an income.
Anything that is a utility to society is meaningful – especially in the context of the reduction in traditional work. And especially when we look at modern banking.
And BTW – Surely you must know that the stuff you have done has and is useful? What you do looks like work to me and is indeed bloody useful. Unless you were being tongue in your cheek (which is entirely possible of course).
I enjoy my work
I do what I want to do and am paid for it
Some might say ‘that’s not working, that’s the way to do it’ (another Dire Straits song)
That’s the context in which I made the comment
Whoops – I don’t think I came across quite how I intended to!!
The short version is that I think that what you do IS work.
There is the problem of how we value different sorts of work. Picking fruit, packing supermarket shelves, working in care homes – poorly paid, often utilising immigrant labour, low status, wouldn’t catch me doing it etc etc. Now, brain surgery, footballer, professor of economics, yep I could do that.
Let’s start by valuing all work and rewarding it more equally, and if automation or something else means a business needs fewer workers, let’s reduce the hours worked and keep the same number of workers and pay (R Wolff).
Apart from the outliers like company directors, footballers, etc. I don’t think there’s much wrong with the spread of wages. So long as there’s a floor, strong worker bargaining powers and full employment, the labour market should be allowed to function to set the price and thus allocate human resources to best use
“the labour market should be allowed to function to set the price and thus allocate human resources to best use”
Carol,
Coming from you that surprises me. Does it include all the wasted that talent has been lured into rent-seeking for the financial sector. Apparently the pay there can be very attractive.
Blairism alive and well.
The RSA has just posted a report on people’s experiences of work, which is very relevant to this discussion. Emphasises the very real problems of insecurity and underpayment.
https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/reports/seven-portraits-of-economic-security-and-modern-work-in-the-uk#
What is not clear is where those secure, decently paid jobs are going to come from and then the flip-side of the jobs debate, how the country’s wealth is going to be generated. I’m taking it as read that we need fundamental changes to how wealth is shared, invested in innovation, taxed, but where’s it going to come from? Small bits of the story are there with for example the renewables sector, though the current government is still more interested in fossil based jobs. More jobs in the care sector with an ageing population but the UK population has not shown much enthusiasm for that (as with picking fruit and veg…)?
At the risk of sounding like a Soviet central planner, I wonder who might be trying to model and project employment 10-20 years out? What are the sectors and industries that are going to provide those jobs and how will they be developed?
Excellent question Robin
It’s getting boring hearing people say ‘new jobs will happen’
They need to
The private sector, so far, looks unlikely to supply them, unless on outsourced contracts, so the need to plan is a very real one
Robin –
People show enthusiasm for work activities that:
a) utilise their skills and abilities
b) are interesting and varied
c) are viewed as useful and therefore respected by society and thus garner respect and kudos for the worker
d) pay sufficiently well to allow the worker the material means to fully engage with society.
B through C are largely socially constructed and A can be built up and expanded through education and training there’s no inherent reason we should all be so disinterested in work activities. We simply lack the imagination to figure out how to alter the existing system to remedy that problem.
Take for example your boring fruit picking job. Think outside the box. What could make it a more attractive role? Well it fails on all four criteria listed above. So how do you make it work on all four criteria above?
Perhaps if some people were allowed to move back to the land and own their own small holdings that would correct all those problems in categories a-d by giving them varied and interesting work using multiple skills, confidence and respect for being land owners and changed (reduced mostly) need for disposable high embedded carbon products and services in order to take part in society. I’m addition it would create an army of people prepared, in the right places and with the will and incentives to restore biodiversity, prevent soil loss and increase the sustainability of our farming sector.
There you go, simple, the detail of how you achieve that is more complicated but I guess a Green Jobs Guarantee could play a part in the mix of policies that could help achieve the goal of: “making fruit picking an attractive job”.
Prompted by thinking about and working on the same problem in Africa – where they have about 85% informal employment. And the ILO just worries about working conditions in current formal employment… Not much help in working where the new jobs are coming from – needed in massive numbers. There is a surprising amount of venture capital around – but they look for the kind of packaged investment propositions they’d get in the West. Not apparent that anyone is thinking more systemically or holistically about the kind of mix of industries and sectors that would be appropriate and what set of interventions would be needed to develop them.
Got me wondering what China has done. Don’t think they left it to the market. Fortuitously a mate is dean of a business school there – have asked him…
Robin,
China has run an aggressive state-directed Mercantilist economy.
The problems with that, overall, are numerous with the main one being that not everyone can run a massive trade surplus. For some to have surpluses others must have deficits.
Marco
Plenty to criticise about China from human rights to workers conditions in Apple factories to pollution to deep state control of everything. But they’ve also pulled more people out of poverty than anywhere else with a deliberate plan for creating industries and jobs. Nowhere has got it all right. if we are really looking for a transformed economy to support the social goals, we probably need to be prepared to take ideas from all over. We don’t have to take the whole package.
Where would you see as perhaps providing a good start point? Somewhere that has got a lot more right than wrong?
Robin,
You are responding without really thinking. My point remains intact. Read it again (its very brief) then add the first paragraph of this: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/mercantilism.asp
There you go.
Occupational therapy is founded on the evidence that meaningful activity gives each of us a sense of identity and wellbeing. That activity may be in the formal or informal part of the economy. It is very subjective and shaped by the culture and environment in which we live. Denial of that role is literally soul destroying and fosters mental and physical damage.
Gary Keilhofner developed the Model of Human Occupation (MOHO) over many decades and should be at the heart of thinking about the future of healthy employment.
My favourite Dire Straights songs is Brothers in Arms. The words and the beautiful phrasing using the sonic resonance of a Gibson Les Paul and the right amplifier are exquisite. I aspire to play like that through hours of practice. However without an adequate income developing that skill and art form would be difficult. It certainly feeds my soul now that I’m partly retired..
I play the sax solo on Your latest trick when I need a break….
Bernard
There are lots of very good and reasonably priced Les Paul copies and decent mini amplifiers out there these days for you to have a crack at Brothers in Arms. You do not have to spend hundreds and hundreds of pounds these days. For example look at the Vintage range of guitars which you can find heavily discounted. And there are plenty being sold second hand too.
And digital modelling amps are getting cheaper and better – even a headphone amp would do. You also might want to consider a cheaper Gibson SG copy instead of a Les Paul – they use the same hum-bucking pickup and can be made from mahogany or a similar tone wood – much lighter as well.
There are plenty of free websites who will tell you the chord structure of the song in guitar tab – as well as the solo (I’ve worked it out by ear and also by watching Knopfler play it live on Youtube – also people will show you how to play it on Youtube to get you started).
Just remember to use the neck pickup in the solo and wind down the tone pot for it (a bit like Clapton’s ‘woman tone’) and you should be there or pretty damn close (remembering of course to overdrive the amp slightly).
Of course I don’t know anything about your income, but taking up a musical instrument is really good for the soul – especially during times of economic woe like this – I’d recommend it. I’ve been playing since I was 14 and it does keep you going – adds to your resilience an all that.
That has to be the most off topic comment ever
And I like it!
All I can say is I play a 30 year old Yamaha….
Interestingly here we have a suggestion for both Job Guarantee and UBI.
This could be the unanswerable solution to the MMT job coercion problem:
https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/10368/ben-wray-why-both-right-work-and-right-not-work-can-set-us-free
Ben writes a lot of common sense
A right to go to work?
That’s a big one. It goes back to the 19th century philosphers doesn’t it? Marx and others. In a traditional feudal society most people lived a largely subsistence life on the land that they collectively inherited. As lands were enclosed and industrialism took over, subsistence was replaced by wage-labour. The right to land was replaced by a right to work, or should have been. If not there is ultimately no reciprocation for the loss of commons and industrial capitalism represents a history of theft.
Of course the broader idea of “commons” is about more than just land. Pre-Enlightenment, the concept of individual rights scarcely existed (including some of those that relate to property). Much of what existed was collective by assumption rather than statute and the individual was exceeded by a hierarchy of loyalties: family, clan, fealty and king. None of this is to say that that arrangement offered a better life than ours. For most it certainly did not but the point about reciprocation and theft remains. The right to work is inherent in the process of industrialisation. Without it the majority, with no other share in the means of production are arbitrarily dispossessed.
Scroll forward to the neo-liberal era and the post-War commitment to full employment has been replaced by a regime of deliberate and enforced unemployment. Yes, deliberate and enforced. Sitting there with their Philip’s Curve / Taylor Rule logic, central bank’s try to play a balancing game that trades more unemployment for less inflation (or vice-versa). And in order to maintain their tight, little 2% inflation target they never achieve full employment and never really intend to do so.
The government (of which the central bank is a part) sanctions this and the uneasy public accept it within limits because the primary effects of inflation hit everyone but the primary affects of unemployment are all loaded on to a sacrificial minority. No one commonly or officially says that but the inherent logic is too obvious.
That said, CPI control is not the only rationale for a policy of ongoing unemployment. In the market for labour an oversupply suppresses the price – hence lower wage growth. The great Polish economist Michael Kalecki further observed that: “under a regime of permanent full employment, the ‘sack’ would cease to play its role as a disciplinary measure. The social position of the boss would be undermined, and the self-assurance and class-consciousness of the working class would grow.” https://delong.typepad.com/kalecki43.pdf
It would appear that the neo-liberal regime cannot, with a fiat currency, its “de-regulation” of finance and other markets, suppress inflation without deliberately relegating millions to a life of poverty with a pittance being paid to them as compensation. The regime controls the levers of demand, they could make other choices but prefer to control prices, wages and workers by cruel means. That choice is an essential feature of their design. Without it they wouldn’t be neo-liberal.
Returning to the idea of reciprocation and theft. An economic regime that has fully seized the means of production has obligations as does a government that pulls the levers of demand. I am reminded of ‘mutual obligation’ law in employment contracts. In an industrial society we can extend that to the macroeconomic level. Historically, a right to work replaces the common rights and a regime that willfully raises the unemployment level faces serious questions about its legitimacy. Or should do.
Its interesting how the post-War Keynesians provided full-employment and low inflation in the 1950’s and 60’s. Mind you, their regime regulated banking and exchange rates as well as having the gold standard. Some of those controls may be no longer be realistic or desirable. MMT proposes a credible path to full employment with a floating, fiat currency. That’s what I like about it.
The post-war Keynsian period has a lot to be said for it, and the de-regulation of banks has been a huge factor in the problems we now face. Mind you there was a fair amount of work to do in reconstruction at the time…
A push-back against the full employment argument: One can achieve this as was achieved in Eastern Europe by making things regardless of whether they are needed – digging holes and then filling them in is much the same approach. Ive seen all those abandoned factories in the East and a sad sight they are. Does not make for much innovation either
A different approach suggests that in a changing world, jobs and skills become outdated or unnecessary and new ones emerge. An option is to have strong social protection combined with retraining so that people can be reskilled for those new industries, so they will be unemployed during those periods. I think some of the Scandinavian countries operate this model. The extremes are no social protection and no retraining which is a recipe for bad industrial relations as people cling to their jobs (understandably). Doesn’t help make for a very innovative economy either. Pretty much the US model with the UK heading in that direction at the moment.
Ive had 3 different careers – if you can call them careers. Starting life in the IT industry which turned upside down every 8-10 years was good training in itself. My children have so far been able to adapt and change (in their mid-30s). I know thats tough for a generation brought up to expect to be able to do the same job all their lives, but I suspect most of the younger generations do not think like that.
Interesting Robin,
For reasons that I touched on briefly above I don’t think that we can or should replicate the post-war Bretton Woods model but there are lessons that can be leaned from it, with the main one being that full employment has and can be achieved.
The “reconstruction” argument is often cited but I can’t see how that stretches right in to the 1960’s and more significantly, it doesn’t apply at all to places like the US, Canada and Australia that were never actually bombed (Pearl Harbour and Darwin excluded).
I, like many, think that building the green, sustainable economy is the new reconstruction. There is plenty to do there without digging holes and filling them in again. That is a theme that Richard has covered quite often.
I can buy that
I buy the green economy and its huge potential. But then I did lead on the topic for a while at an environmental NGO. Depressing meetings with investment bank shysters at the Green Investment Bank as the Tories set about flogging it off. However, even interpreting it in its widest sense (energy, transport, housing, agriculture …) I’d doubt that its enough to drive the entire economy.
So we need a much wider and more thought through ‘industrial’ strategy than we are seeing from either of the major parties, which will included profound changes to both public and private finance to enable it. You may justifiably question the mercantilist (and other) aspects of China’s development but it does not negate the point that they have thought this through in a way that laisser faire, market driven, neo-liberal capitalism has not. And in wholly state-centric Soviet era countries, their form of central planning failed dismally. Those seem to be the preferred approaches of our two main parties at the moment.
In times like these I’d suggest that we need to look widely for models that might have some relevance, whilst rejecting the bits that are clearly undesirable.
(As it happens, renewables are a big part of China’s economy – a huge missed opportunity for the UK)
Robin
You say: ‘Mind you there was a fair amount of work to do in reconstruction at the time’…
Well, there still is a huge shortage of affordable homes that could be built but have not been because you may have noticed that most of the construction is centred (wrongly) in the Southeast or London where the returns are huge. A recent report by a prominent Northern university pointed out last year that building for speculation has been the focus of the majority of house builders:
http://www4.shu.ac.uk/research/cresr/sites/shu.ac.uk/files/profits-before-volume-housebuilders-crisis-housing-supply.pdf
That is to say if the they can be sold:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/26/ghost-towers-half-of-new-build-luxury-london-flats-fail-to-sell
An economy that concentrates too much on speculation and not need, is not working and amounts to a wasteful misallocation of resources.
There is still the need to build and the brownfield sites are there to build on. The speculative stuff just soaks up tradesmen and materials that could be used to build for real need. You try getting a supplier to get hold of bricks at the moment – its a nightmare. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had to ask my local Planning team to authorise a change in brick design because the original stipulated is out of stock or in high demand.
That is what the housing crisis is all about as far as I am concerned.
Marco Fante – you want guaranteed jobs for everyone? How does that work exactly?..i run my own roofing business (currently 2 weeks off through injury hence on here) and employ 6 full time and take on short term labour when we have the work. How could i for example guarantee jobs for anyone – we would go broke when times are hard. At the moment it isn’t easy finding skilled workers hence people coming over from eastern europe because they can quite easily find work. I suppose the Government could get people to dig holes and fill them in (i exaggerate – but you get my point?) There has to be a purpose to any work that is being done…and i completely stick by what i said about the working man doing well over the last 30 years, they generally have if the desire is there..nothing comes to you unless you work for it.
I hope Marco might have the time to reply
I am very pushed today
Ben,
Like I said:
1. “Its interesting how the post-War Keynesians provided full-employment and low inflation in the 1950’s and 60’s”
If they can do that 50 years ago so can we. No one is expecting you or your roofing company to be responsible for full employment. That’s one reason why we have government.
2. Hard work or no hard work: “If there are 1000 jobs and 1100 applicants someone misses out.”
You say: “i completely stick by what i said about the working man doing well over the last 30 years”
I said: See this: ‘The chart that shows UK workers have had the worst wage performance in the OECD except Greece’
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uk-workers-have-had-the-worst-wage-growth-in-the-oecd-except-greece-a7773246.html (go on, have a look)
If that working man has done well, the chances are that he will be living somewhere other than Britain.
In my opinion the best version of this song is from the aLCHEMY live album
For me this contains some magic that isn’t quite there on the studio album version
The aLCHEMY version is one of my favourite ever songs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1Wp2ASqyxI
Great to see a discussion of JG vs UBI Vs JG and UBI. Thanks for this Richard, I know you’ve been critical of the JG for a while so it reflects well on your open-mindedness that you’re happy to host this conversation.
For me the biggest benefit of the JG is in the long-term. I believe that it could, if implemented in a thoughtful “outside-the-box” fashion, help lead to the greatest transformation of our economic system we’ve seen since the first industrial revolution. I’d call it the Green Jobs Guarantee and consider it an essential component of any Green New Deal. You can have a guaranteed job if you want it but only if it is in a role that increases the wellbeing of your fellow citizens and the ecosystems we depend on for our survival.
In the existing system activity is increasingly only deemed to be work and therefore worthy of pay if it producers profit for the existing owners of existing capital. This leaves a wide range of activities outside the definition of work and therefore outside the money economy. The result is a bunch of market externalities which are variously biting us on the arse. The end result is a sclerotic system of production seemingly unable (or unwilling) to change despite the overwhelming evidence for the necessity of immediate substantial change. We need something big to trigger and enable necessary change, hence the Green New Deal proposals.
How does a Green JG fit in to enabling change?
Imagine as well as fulfilling a (now enfeebled) regulatory role the state started paying people proper wages to perform all sorts of tasks currently outside the money economy. Imagine most of these roles are providing care, education and entertainment for other people, producing new hi-tech green infrastructure, researching new green technology and production-systems and ongoing stewardship of the natural world.
At the same time imagine the state imposes taxes to remove spending power from old polluting sectors of the economy and drain the dormant spending power of the super-rich. Thus real resources can be freed for green infrastructure and systems of production and the power of small cliques to lobby against the democratic will of the people are reduced. At the same time government subsidies and tax breaks to green private sector businesses make it easier for them to commandeer those newly freed up resources.
Imagine a flow of newly created money entering the economy via the incomes millions of Green JG workers producing low embedded carbon services and sustainable productive capital alongside newly invigorated green private sector enterprises. The broader private sector would have an incentive to provide additional services and products that these new JG workers want and need.
Bear in mind that people working day-in-day-out researching green tech, building sustainable infrastructure, caring for the natural world and other people are going to develop different tastes and desires to people working in a materially consumerist economy and you start to see how a Green JG could become part of an enormous positive feedback loop that stands a chance of building the sustainable future economy that’s essential for our survival by spearheading that change and then dragging the rest of the economy along with it.
Compare the above thought experiment to the undeniably destructive feedback loop installed by our existing economic system and the industry lobbying that has driven the state interventions that have been instrumental in enabling and sustaining this destructive cycle. It surely isn’t unreasonable to suggest, as Richard and others have, a Green New Deal to drive a significant move away from the damaging status quo.
Consider the lack of leverage a UBI has as a means to create a green positive feedback loop by comparison to the possible leverage created by a Green JG
surely it is not unreasonable to suggest a Green JG could be an important element in a Green New Deal?
Many thanks
A great deal to think about there – and it does help reframe what I am thinking
My suspicion is that these ideas need each other and an industrial strategy to work
I’ll think about that as I go off to work on MMT questions this afternoon….
Richard, it’s cool To like Mark Knoppler. He’s probably the most underrated guitarist/singer/songwriter on th planet. Eric, Van, Emmy Lou, all absolutely
Love him and work with him. That aside, I follow analyses everyday. Keep up the good work.