{"id":14389,"date":"2012-03-01T08:16:42","date_gmt":"2012-03-01T08:16:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=14389"},"modified":"2012-03-01T08:16:42","modified_gmt":"2012-03-01T08:16:42","slug":"elvis-liverpool-fc-and-the-courageous-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/03\/01\/elvis-liverpool-fc-and-the-courageous-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Elvis, Liverpool FC and The Courageous State"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following blog <\/a>was written on Howard Jackson's Elvis blog.\u00a0Now I admit I don't know Howard, and I don't usually read Elvis blogs, but I'll share it none the less, and offer my\u00a0thanks\u00a0to Howard:<\/p>\n

The mens\u2019 toilet at Wembley was crowded.\u00a0 The bloke who stood next to me was tall, broad and loud. \u2018Stewart Downing,\u2019 said the large man in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, \u2018man of the bleeding match.\u00a0 When I saw that I thought I was back on the\u00a0drugs.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

I said nothing.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018Let\u2019s be honest, mate,\u2019 he said.\u00a0 \u2018We were dogshit.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018We have played better,\u2019 I said.<\/em><\/p>\n

Bliss and disbelief occur often in football.\u00a0\u00a0 Liverpool had just won a penalty shoot out to clinch the 2012 Carling Cup Final despite missing their first two penalties.\u00a0\u00a0 Later, in the car, the disbelief and the bliss was compounded by the Analysis programme on BBC Radio 4.\u00a0 The Trade Union economist, Duncan Weldon, demonstrated how, during the last ten years in the UK, wages had flattened for ordinary people.\u00a0 He challenged the self-serving establishment view that it was an unavoidable consequence of globalisation and technology.\u00a0\u00a0 He compared countries with neo-liberal policies with the few remaining social democracies and stated that the latter had been far more successful at protecting the jobs and living standards of working people.\u00a0\u00a0 The penalty shoot out was bizarre by even the somewhat dodgy Cup Final standards of Liverpool Football Club.\u00a0 Neither is economic heresy normal for the BBC.<\/em><\/p>\n

The social democrats are fighting back and\u00a0Richard Murphy<\/a>, the number one economics\u00a0blogger<\/a>\u00a0in the UK, is leading the fight.\u00a0\u00a0 He wrote \u2018The Courageous State\u2019 in three months.\u00a0 This compares to Elvis producing the classic albums \u2018Elvis Is Back\u2019 and \u2018Elvis Country\u2019 in a matter of days or, for the more serious, Joseph Conrad writing \u2018Heart Of Darkness\u2019 in a month.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0I have spent my life deferring to superior talent but this effortless mastery is definitely sickening.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the week before the Cup Final, ex-cabinet minister, David Laws, wrote an article for The Guardian newspaper defending the chancellor, George Osborne.\u00a0\u00a0 Laws is the man who made fifty million in the City and who believes that the free market always produces the best possible outcomes.\u00a0\u00a0 He resigned from the Government because of expenses claims which culminated in him being paid money to which he was not entitled.\u00a0\u00a0 I have no way of verifying this but I am prepared to bet some of my own cash that he supports Harry Redknapp for the job of England football manager.\u00a0 The article by Laws was short on analysis and quoted just one statistic, the rate of inflation.\u00a0 Instead, he intimidated with a superior tone and used words like serious and informed.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He had the comfort of knowing that other people thought like him and that these people were invariably powerful.\u00a0 That\u2019s right, he agrees with the idiots who created the current economic mess.<\/em><\/p>\n

Richard Murphy may not thank me for featuring him on an Elvis blog but it should not do him too much harm.\u00a0 He is combative, confident and energetic enough to be everywhere.\u00a0 He was interviewed today on Sky News about Barclays Bank and the \u00a3500m underpayment of tax.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018We ain\u2019t done anything wrong, mate.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s all legal,\u2019 said a spokesman from the Bank.<\/em><\/p>\n

Richard Murphy used to work as a tax consultant.\u00a0 He knows the dirty secrets and the insatiable greed of the rich.\u00a0 Indeed, his book has a good section on why they are so callous.\u00a0\u00a0 He is not a man who made a \u00a3500m fortune without a hint of personal doubt and subsequently felt obliged to claim expenses to which he was not entitled.\u00a0\u00a0 This merely makes him a better human being and is not\u00a0the reason we should trust Richard Murphy rather than David Laws.\u00a0 Murphy has qualities that make opportunists and networkers like Laws sneer.\u00a0\u00a0 He is capable of original thought and he is not afraid of facts.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The most alarming that his book \u2018The Courageous State\u2019 reveals is the \u00a320bn unpaid tax, and the 97% portion of the UK money supply created by the private sector.\u00a0\u00a0 Before Thatcher, the State created most of the money, now it creates a mere 3%.\u00a0 This 97% is debt disguised by the banks as assets (my words not those of Richard Murphy).\u00a0\u00a0 Debt attracts interest and this interest is paid to the rich and the bankers.\u00a0\u00a0 No wonder their bonus payments amount to billions.<\/em><\/p>\n

Richard Murphy is right.\u00a0 The State has been enfeebled and those economic libertarians who are joyfully welcoming this should consider an alternative history to their romanticised view of the industrial revolution.\u00a0\u00a0 The two leaps forward in human development were precipitated by the rise of Rome and Athens, and the emergence of powerful nation states in the 18th<\/sup>\u00a0Century.\u00a0\u00a0 (These are my words again.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018The Courageous State\u2019 argues for the nation state to assert itself once more.\u00a0\u00a0 A civilised society is obliged to maximise the development of the potential of its citizens and to reduce the income gap between the very rich and the poor.\u00a0\u00a0 Richard Murphy is offended by an economy where the richest do not pay tax and the poorest pay more of their money in tax than those who have more.\u00a0\u00a0 Only in our crazed world of neo-liberalism are his views described as extremist.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"tax<\/a>\u2018The Courageous State\u2019 is a 300 page book and the future of the world is a big subject.\u00a0 There are omissions.\u00a0 Faith in his future is undermined by the knowledge that too much economic power has shifted to outside the nation state.\u00a0\u00a0 Richard Murphy admits this but we need another book to convince politicians that it is in their interests to cooperate with each other rather than their financiers.\u00a0 Also, within the left, somebody needs to talk about the tyranny of government AND the tyranny of the market.\u00a0 I have no doubt that Murphy will rise to the challenge.<\/em><\/p>\n

Murphy is right to argue that we should use a different language for tax. We are citizens and we do not give money to the Government in the way the British press describes.\u00a0 We pay the Government what we owe it for services such as roads and hospitals.\u00a0\u00a0 But when Murphy says that it is the money of the Government and not ours he does not help the argument.<\/em><\/p>\n

The book offers clever alternative circular economic models to the familiar co-axial graphs of economic theory.\u00a0 In some, the circles are too conveniently concentric but the underlying assumptions are valid.\u00a0\u00a0 Diagram 10.14 sums up brilliantly what is wrong with neo-liberalism and its sole emphasis on money and is a fabulous moment of epiphany that demonstrates how lives are wrecked and distorted by narrow economic ideology.<\/em><\/p>\n

I hope this inspiring economist is not offended by being included on an Elvis blog.\u00a0\u00a0 60 years ago the establishment argued that\u00a0\"Elvis\"<\/a>Elvis could not sing but he prevailed and now people realise he could warble better than the rest of them.\u00a0 He also inspired other rockabilly singers such as Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 These men were not prepared for the world to stay the same.\u00a0\u00a0 Like Richard Murphy, Elvis was not alone.\u00a0 Murphy has Ann Pettifor, Paul Krugman, Roger Bootle and Robert Skidelski for company.\u00a0\u00a0 He is not the only brave economist talking sense.\u00a0\u00a0 I am a pessimist by nature but on Sunday I enjoyed bliss and disbelief for almost the whole 200 mile journey back to Liverpool.\u00a0\u00a0 With heroes like Richard Murphy around we may yet be pleasantly surprised.<\/em><\/p>\n

If you want to read about Elvis, rock and roll and much more\u00a0click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The following blog was written on Howard Jackson’s Elvis blog.\u00a0Now I admit I don’t know Howard, and I don’t usually read Elvis blogs, but I’ll
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[141,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-courageous-state","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14389\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}