There is a new comment on the blog this morning, in which the following is said:
While I really appreciate the blog, and enjoy much of your commentary, I really do wish you'd dial back the language a bit!
The comment as a whole was actually about GDP, and I will address the issues its raises on that subject separately. However, this comment deserves a discussion in its own right.
I am the first to agree that some of the comments that I make on this blog are robust. Over many years I have been told by many professional people that I would have much more chance of success in achieving change if only I was more moderate.
So, for example, I was told that the work that I did on tax havens, which was a particular focus of this blog when it began, would be so much better received if only I would tone down my commentary.
I was told the same thing about my demand for country-by-country reporting, automatic information exchange from tax havens, and the need for beneficial ownership registers so that we might know who owns the companies that trade throughout the world.
The same was also said of the Green New Deal.
I was also interviewed recently by an academic who is trying to explain the rise of modern monetary theory who suggested to me in conversation that in the UK, at least, this might be because of the robust approach to this issue that I have taken on this blog and on Twitter.
So why have I been robust? Simply because I know that the way in which I can guarantee that I will be ignored is by asking nicely and politely for change. Experience has proven that nothing is ever given up by those with power unless unreasonable people demand it from them, with those unreasonable people being willing to upset a few people along the way.
I am quite happy to be unreasonable.
I have no desire for power for myself. I have no reason as a consequence to appease those who might give it to me. I am, instead, only interested in effecting change. And since the only way in which it seems I can achieve this is by writing, and by sometimes being unreasonable, then that is precisely what I will be.
The results speak for themselves.
Tax haven secrecy has been shattered.
The term secrecy jurisdiction has come into common usage, and with that there has been a whole change in direction in policy to tackle these places.
Country-by-country reporting is being delivered.
Automatic information exchange from tax havens is happening.
The green new deal is the biggest alternative economic narrative that is available to the world today, albeit that most of those with power still wish to ignore that fact.
Modern monetary theory is gaining traction, and with the idea that we can deliver full employment, sustainability and stable currencies simultaneously.
Alternative economic narratives are being created.
And even when it comes to official statistics, the Office for National statistics now publishes a monthly analysis of the Bank of England's so-called contribution to the national debt, which is entirely because of discussion that took place on this blog.
Will I be toning anything down then? No, not at all. Delivering change demands that I do not.
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Saves effort on time wasters…… : )
Keep flying the MMT flag and let no man try to deny it.
Richard, I have seen nothing offensive in either your terminology or tone. Ever. You have been forthright in expressing your views. Only a snowflake or someone with something to hide could take offense. Or pretend to do so.
I for one tend to keep my head down because I have no experience or expertise in economics. But I am quietly learning an awful lot from this site. It is much appreciated and I would like to take the opportunity to wholeheartedly second what Larry has said above.
The one thing I have learnt is that neoliberal economics appears to be suffused with undue self confidence and self righteousness and that it seems more concerned with cementing its position as a pseudo-religious cult rather that with trying, genuinely to understand the world we live in. In those circumstances I think the response must inevitably be robust and forthright.
Thanks
The way I see it, there are trolls and people who should know better, for whom a robust response is required.
But then there are also people who are genuinely ignorant, who may be spouting only what they have heard. These people need a gentler, more constructive response, otherwise they will immediately go on the defence and associate bad vibes with new economics. It’s time consuming, but most people are reasonable.
If I think people are reasonable I help, always
I also have a finely tuned antennae for trolls
Not always so finely tuned! As a non-troll (and monthly subcriber) I asked a question last year that I thought you could answer.
You didn’t answer it, plainly thinking that I was not sincere. “In case you hadn’t noticed” featured in your brush-off, which I found unnecessarily insulting because it was precisely an apparent contradiction between what I HAD noticed and what you had been writing, that I thought you could explain. I don’t know as much about trolls as you do, but I suppose some trolls do that sort of thing as an underhand way of needling you rather than (like me) needing help understanding.
I have continued to read you daily nevertheless, with much profit, and may restore the monthly support that I angrily suspended. I hope you won’t think I am a troll buying his way in!
Finer tuning please!
I make mistakes
Sorry
Quaker ‘plain speech’.
Come to think of it, they achieved a great deal against the odds.
True
I am so very glad to read that this is how you feel Richard. I don’t always agree with absolutely everything you write and say (mostly I do) but it is endlessly heartening to engage with sincere opinion and in good faith arguments. And for what its worth, I couldn’t concur with you more strongly: change is never achieved by appeasement or by playing by the rules of social nicety created by those with vested interests in maintaining the status quo. Change is always going to be resisted even by some of those that will benefit from it most, let alone by those that have interests (ideological or material) in opposing it.
Thanks
Well said.
Those criticising a robust approach – just want “business-as-usual plus a little bit of change” – which is pathetic given the state of the Uk and indeed the planet.
I have zero idea what “dialling back the language” means – perhaps the writer means being mealy mouthed?
I commend your robustness, clarity of communication and astonishing dedication to the well-being of humanity. Thank you.
In particular, you have kept ‘climate’ on your agenda for a decade or two.
At the same time, the overwhelming majority of those with significant financial, communication or political power (FCPPs), think they know enough about the climate to ignore it.
Other FCPPs just want to stop any action or information which challenges their fantasies of eternal growth.
However, scientific predictions are – and will increasingly be – borne out by the droughts, hurricanes, floods and the devastation that FCPPs are inflicting on wildlife.
As an illustration, white ice bounces some of the sun’s heat back into space. There is less than there used to be. Within two or three decades, the Arctic will be ice-free towards the end of summer. It will take longer to refreeze. Western Europe’s climate will change dramatically. Growing food will be a massive issue.
We need to emit less carbon dioxide but “Air India’s record deal for 470 planes from Airbus and Boeing” … “is a game-changer with domestic carriers expected to place orders for 1,500-1,700 aircraft over the next two years.” “The country is building at least 80 new airports over the next five years”… https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-64646336 15 Feb 2023.
According to the BBC World Service, Modi, Biden and Macron are all ecstatic about it. Apparently, they don’t understand climate imperatives. Neither the BBC broadcast, nor the on-line article, mentioned the word ‘climate’. Is that because of diktat from the chairman, management ignorance or journalistic blindness?
Alarmingly, the 5-day-old deal hasn’t even featured in Guardian headlines.
That is very worrying
I have learned that I missed some context when, on another blog, I posted about Air India (which I wrote about above) with its order for 470 planes now, 1500 – 1700 over the next two years plus 80 new airports – and how pleased Modi, Biden and Macron are about it … when it’s climate change that bothers me.
A responder pointed out that the US Federal Aviation Authority oversees 5,000 flights carrying 2.9 million passengers every *day*. Also, the USA has around 5,000 airports for the public and 15,000 *private* airports – 20,000 altogether. https://www.statista.com/statistics/183496/number-of-airports-in-the-united-states-since-1990/
So, (1) are Californian politicians quite so gung-ho about the expansion of flying when recent “Downpours bumped California out of the most extreme categories of drought, but the storms also left behind a dangerous mess”? “The climate crisis turned up the dial. Spiking temperatures now pull more moisture out of plants, landscapes and the atmosphere, setting the stage for once-healthy ignitions to turn into infernos.” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/13/california-storms-rains-drought-fires
(2) “New Zealand Faces a Future of Flood and Fire. The country’s climate woes are just beginning and will likely include rising heat and drought, as well as stronger cyclones.” https://www.wired.co.uk/article/new-zealand-floods-cyclone-gabrielle (17 February 2023)
(3) Last August, “World has crossed climate tipping point,” says Pakistan Climate Change Minister https://www.channel4.com/news/world-has-crossed-climate-tipping-point-says-pakistan-climate-change-minister?fbclid=IwAR3SYmMwleVAYtb69lW6wWfzDA_u-kQ5FNN5OQuuXtQmYuXHpe95vHa81Ys
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, while referring to Pakistan’s catastrophic floods, said that “humanity has declared war on nature and nature is striking back.” (9 September 2022)
Noted.
My comment turns back to the much earlier thread, to which you have referred here. It was for me, unfinished business, so I have taken advantage here, because the comment thread had closed (and few would read it now, anyway).
Mr Stokoe defended GDP, partly by seeming to suggest it wasn’t used for decision making. He then went on to write this: “From a fiscal data perspective, I’d also welcome a change in approach to things like debt and deficit measured in % of GDP, or at least where this is the headline measure. GDP as a proxy for national income is fine, for some purposes – but government debt would likely make more sense in relation, not to GDP, but to government revenue.”
The problem here is that GDP does loom large in how neoliberals persuade the public that austerity – for thirteen years – was necessary in 2010: it wasn’t. And to show how impossible the scale of the national debt has become; when it is oscillating around/just under 100% of GDP, no more than the norm for most of the last three hundred years in the UK, and actually lower than for long periods of that same, and much of our modern history. What is exceptional is periods of low national debt.
Here is the paradox; Debt/GDP actually does a good job in showing that neoliberal demands drastically to reduce the National Debt (especially in times of crisis) are simply plain wrong.
It is also full of holes. More generally, if I may quote from the economist Ha-Joon Chang, “Economics, as it has been practised for the last three decades, has been positively harmful for most people”. Sonce he wrote that remark, it is now over four decades that neoliberal economists have been wasting our time, our money … and our lives.
Totally agreed
I may do another blog on this…
This is why I cheekily mentioned an entry about the way in which Neo-libs create their own reality by lying.
The deficit / the national debt – is it a real debt or just showing how much – or how little – has been spent by the government? Is it just really a ledger of state investment or financial commitments? Or is it both? I prefer to see it as good thing if the state has created money and released it into into the economy. And who by the way is going to come knocking on the door to ask for it back with menaces? How many times have we gone around in circles here about that one?
But the real question is – on what has this state money been spent? And, is it enough?
The crowding out of the private sector by the public sector is another example of a lie – the truth being that an economy is actually composed of public and private sectors actually working together – not opposed to each other or one or the other (in fascism, it’s always about one or the other) especially at the point of production or output.
Austerity – another lie – expecting low income families to save and forego consumption for the economy to consume less but produce more output. It only enriches those who are already rich and although it might make us more competitive in trade is it worth the price of paucity at home?
To me its just fascist spoiler-ism – contest the facts or the truth and set up false claims – sow doubt, and create un-needed debate to throw us off the scent about what is really making us poor and sending us backwards. Appeal to people’e prejudices instead (tell people that the NHS is failing because there are too many immigrants when you are actively under-funding it for example).
Those coming here peddling rubbish like the above deserve a short shrift in my view and are well catered for elsewhere.
Black people in South Africa and the US didn’t get any improvement in their conditions by being meek and mild. Women didn’t get the vote by being meek and mild, the same for gay and trans people or underpaid public sector workers, or people trying to save the planet from climate disaster.
Precisely….
I have found from time to time that conservative/Conservative people give the impression that they exist in a “genteel” bubble, insulated from the realities of this world and its mores.
Robust language, which is simply that which gets to the point and “pops the bubble” is very challenging to them, as their worldview has to struggle with experiences they generally tend shield themselves from, or deny.
Better to match our expectations to the world than the neoliberal efforts to make reality conform to their expectations and illusions.
Keep on doing what you do, Richard. It is just what we need.
Ecan be as robust as they like when they want to be
They just clutch their pearls when anyone else is
You’re just the bees knees Richard, what you and this blog provides is fab – and as noted, asking politely is simply ignored, and I’ve never known you to be rude without cause (e.g. to trolls) .
Really appreciate what you doo
Thanks
I suppose, Richard, you could emulate Sgt Wilson of ‘Dad’s Army’ fame along the lines of, ‘I do say, Chancellor, if you wouldn’t awfully mind, but would there be some possibility of slightly amending your policies concerning the chaps and their families that a rather stretched financially by, perhaps, asking the a bit more of the well orf to, er, contribute a little more by way of tax?’ On the other hand … there are moments when the spade is better called ‘the bloody shovel’!
I am in here table turning in the Temple camp
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before, but my first Chief Manager when I started to train as an FX dealer in 1972, Mr Bill Batt, had a large framed copy on his office’s wall of El Greco’s ‘Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple’. He was a devout Catholic. I asked him one day why he had it there always facing him at his desk, and he replied to the effect, ‘To remind me of what the Lord thinks of my profession!’
🙂
‘The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.’ George Bernard Shaw.
Keep in keeping on, Richard. You’re doing a fine job.
Thanks
It’s ironic that the Financial Secrecy Index is itself rather secretive.
Just try finding the rankings from 2011 to see what I mean.
I agree
But the Tax Justice Network is now a failed organisation in my opinion as are most of its related organisations
I have no involvement with any of them
All your other posts today add to my impression that to an increasing or perhaps just more blatantly obvious extent we live in a plutocratic rather than democratic society, one dollar one vote holding more sway than one person one vote.
In that context, I’m delighted that you’re not going to be persuaded to dial back the language even a bit.
Can you imagine hearing, “No! Not if you make rude, selfish demands like that! But if you ask me nicely, I may just let you have that privilege!”
Sounds like a really creepy, abusive bully, doesn’t it?
That is the subtext of what your correspondent is saying; be nice to your Masters and you may get some crumbs from the table.
When the reality is that you should be making reasonable demands robustly and publicly, whilst demonstrating that you have a large and movement of followers and allies supporting your demands.
There needs to be a coalition of a few but powerful insiders and a lot of outsiders, who understand and support the struggle in the modern equivalent of the smoke-filled rooms as well.
I was relieved to read your response! I’ve often found it strange that people don’t object to the horror -such as what the UN referred to as the UK’s social murder policy by stripping away people’s benefits, or the excess deaths caused by NHS underfunding, and so on (the list could be endless) – but instead object to the language used to depict it, deflecting from the issue onto something else, a trivial aside.
Richard, I remember a quote, but not it’s origin, which feel right here. “a militant is just a moderate, who has got up off their knees. Please keep standing tall.
Some years ago I was was in the police service. Not one of the metropolitan services.
My roles, sequentially were to improve general operational performance and then improving performance in race and diversity.
In neither of these was I particularly popular.
I learned that mouse like behaviour doesn’t progress things. One just gets a pat on the head and ignored.
So when you stand up, metaphorically, and demand attention it may make waves but conformity doesn’t create change.
Thanks
The one positive outcome of the Truss fiasco was to expose the astounding ignorance, greed and incompetence of the Tory Establishment.
Right wing Newspaper owners, Think Tanks, and Politicians who for four decades have claimed that there is no alternative were exposed as being as intellectually naked as the silly king of the fairy tale and there is nothing that the rich and powerful hate more than somebody who points out that they have no clothes.
So how do they fight back?
The best English Teacher I ever had once pointed out to the class that if evidence and rational argument were all on the side of a cause you opposed you could still undermine it by inventing imaginary flaws in your opponents use of English.
Indeed…..
The first thing I noticed when visiting the Netherlands from 74 and living there in 79/80 was how direct the Dutch are which I found most refreshing compared to the mealy mouthed English. It was hilarious to see how shocked the English were when confronted with this Dutch directness. The Germans,Flemish and Scandinavians are the same. Since the ‘English’ are descended directly from these Aryan races it is bizarre that they are so different.
You only have to check out the ‘acceptable’ language of the English parliament to see how unreal and outdated it all is – ‘the right honourable gentleman/woman’ the wearing of 17th century wigs there and in the courts.
Mick Lynch (obviously of good Irish Celtic blood) has kick started a whole new movement among elected union officials in ‘real speak’ something that should have happened in the 1960s and 70s’. It has shocked the Nasty party and all their arrogant public school cretins. I would like Richard Murphy to be more direct, blunt and abrasive. I think Joe Public is ready for this sea change in directness to happen.
I remember so well how shocked the establishment was when music and colour of the 60s’ burst onto the scene. When the lyrics of songs actually dealt with the reality of life. The Beatles depiction of the Blue Meanies desperately trying to stomp out all colour and music was so accurate then. This momentum of telling it like it is must continue and grow. The English ‘politeness’ demanded by the elite must be wiped out, it’s part of the change that has to happen for ‘real’ change to occur. What I think so many are frightened to admit is that this change will not happen peacefully, real change never does – bite the bullet.
Richard, your blog is my first read every morning because of its clarity and robustness so keep at it please.
Thanks
What worries me most in all these arguments, is the Government’s inability to understand that if they really are pro-growth then they need to invest. And the most productive investments are
In education (general, not just maths but technical, scientific, digital and creativity)
In health and social care so our “workers” are fit, healthy and productive
In police so that society functions smoothly. etc.
But their obsession with reducing the NationalDebt and the deficit also damages or even destroys the things our country needs the most.
So who do they go to for advice? Osborne!
Climate scientists have given “toned down” interviews and write ups. See how far that’s got us.
Its does their careers good and screws everything else.
Keep it real Richard.
keep doing what you are doing. you are an effective communicator. your language and passion cuts through.
it may be necessary to re-package some of your ideas into different language or forms of content/media in order to reach different audiences – but i see evidence of others doing that with your work already on social media.
just keep churning out the good stuff and write it how you see fit.
Thanks
As you said yourself “Protest is a public service.” And effective protest that causes change is never polite.