During the election campaign, I plan to post a short video on YouTube every day asking politicians about what I think are appropriate themes.
The obvious hope is that some of these questions might be asked of them. This is the first, and I'm sorry - but I can't seem to embed it here, so you will need to click this link.
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If you look at the behaviour of large companies they do their level best to evade taxes both for the companies as an entity in themselves but also for personal evasion by their senior managers or owners. Amazon is a classic example of evading tax barely paying any in the UK for example. It deliberately seeks out ways of using political power to get or keep rules in place that enable it to engage in tax evasion. This is Neoliberalism engaging in undemocratic behaviour. Furthermore engaging in never ending profit growth to grow or maintain market power (price point in technical terms) is clearly a driver of global warming and the obvious check to this is people power exercised through democratic institutions. These of course need to be subverted by profit hungry mega-businesses/monsters!
Friedman’s comment “The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits” identifies the very limited corporate purpose of ‘maximising shareholder value’.
That purpose is entirely exclusive, elitist and totally restricted in its target beneficiaries.
It automatically excludes environmental concerns, and is basically destructive.
The hegemony and resultant inertia in this mindset will see off many, if not all, current human civilisations due to failure to ameliorate climate change, its bastard offspring.
Interestingly, Friedman later admitted “I agree that corporate executives might have duties to the general public which sometimes outweigh their duties to the shareholders.” and he also wriggled in trying to qualify ‘social responsibility’ as a by-product of profit maximisation, but it was a reluctant admission of the limitations of and fallacies inherent in his ideology.
Very interesting bit of blubber from a dude named Will Dunn at the New Statesman.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/election-2024/2024/05/will-labour-raise-taxes
It strikes me that the answer to your question is simple – the people who work hard to resist the changes you suggest want to to join the wealthy.
I agree we must tax wealth more. However, isn’t this more about redistribution of wealth rather than funding improved public services, climate action etc. It isn’t money that limits our ability to do these things, it’s the availability of resources and labour.
But we have labour available – it’s being really badly used right now
Yes, I suspect that’s true. I also agree with your other post, that redistribution of wealth and income would create economic growth. As would increased government spending. The challenge is to ensure the growth generated is sustainable and, at the same time, we reduce undesirable growth. Indeed, reducing undesirable economic activity will free resources for desirable activity. All that said, growth for its own sake is not the right goal. Well-being and a safe planet is.
Getting back to under-utilized labour and poor low paid jobs. One solution is a job guarantee scheme. It could set a minimum living wage and achieve full employment. Any thoughts on this?
I used to be unsure, and there are real problems if it becomes compulsory work, which is the Tory direction of travel