...they are lying again. Headline and Article.
Heir to Blair indeed.
I do not have time to fisk the whole nonsense, so let's consider what would happen to the GBP if (when?) we exit. We should note that Cameron/Osborne comments are pure speculation. The numbers they cite are just fiction. (In lots of ways this sort of lunatic economic soothsaying is what has got us into this mess in the first place.)
Initially there will be uncertainty in the currency markets. (Personally I think that a lot of that is already in the price.). The markets will then take time to work out what is going on. I don't think that that will take long - financial markets being among the most efficient markets. The markets will quickly realise that we are off the hook for all our contingent liabilities to the EU. These are both massive and we have the true quantum deliberately hidden from us. They will also realise that the government's finances have been materially improved by about £9 Bn per annum. (I concede that there is a lot of uncertainty as to just how much the EU costs us). This will mean that we can repay our international debts quicker. Although it will take longer (the quangoistas will fight like Hell to hang onto their power and fat entitlements - I fully expect them to argue that 'now we have left the EU we need more regulation') the deadweight costs of EU created regulatory burden will be removed from the 55% of our international trade that does not go to the EU and all of it from the 90% of our GDP which is internal. Production costs in the UK will fall. (If the Government had any clue what is was doing it could immediately cut taxes on production and hence create a low tax economy which in turn would immediately cancel out the 4% to 5% external tariff on exports to the EU. Next and crucially we will be able to return to proper supervision of our banks. (As you know I hold that Bank of England is largely incompetent at this and the FCA / PRA totally useless), but we could start to address the structure of bank capital outside the constraints of the EU's agenda that is to keep itself and the Euro in being come what may, mostly by printing money. The City would profit from this. I also fully expect us to quickly become the largest offshore financial centre on the planet. (As part of this I also fully expect London land prices to carry on rising - but 'we' know how to address this, don't 'we')
Overall I expect GBP to rise in relative price.
Which is good because we'll be able to buy Mercedes cheaper. Question, What will Mercedes do with all those lovely GBP's? Where can they spend them?
Cameron / Osborne whole scare mongering meme is based entirely on ill thought out speculation and deceit.
Get involved with AI says Starmer
2 hours ago
41 comments:
"..they are lying again."
Of course they are. What have they to lose? If we vote to leave they (Camerosborne) are finished anyway. If we vote to stay they no-one can prove that they were lying.
"I fully expect them to argue that 'now we have left the EU we need more regulation"
I hadn't thought of that, but now that you come to say it, it's obvious. However, I fully expect that, if we did leave the EU, that things would be somehow worse than they are now, given the proven incompetence of all governments to get things right going back centuries.
I think there's a fair bit if having your cake and eating it in your post. There's little doubt that foreign investment will be lower in the near term, near being the first 5 years or so after Brexit, whether that investment is German automakers or otherwise. If the happy utopia that you paint transpires then of course that could change investment decisions in the medium term. As for the claim that the City will be big beneficiaries of Brexit, that claim needs to be seen in the light of the fact that the City is the most powerful of the stay right where you are campaign, which could have been a good argument for leaving, only you wanted to have your cake and eat it...
I do not know why this site which was an amiable pro LVT site has been taken over by EU ranting, when, in or out, we are going to need LVT anyway.What is actually alarming is that Brexit is going to be used by its proponents here and elsewhere as cover for massive cuts to the public sector and a return to pre 1870's laissez faire, which on this site has no negative connotations whatsoever.Lola would privatise the health services and probably education taking us back to the glory days of cholera (caused in pre Chamberlain Birmingham by private water supplies and in John Snow's London by the lack of piped-water infrastructure).
It all gives the impression that the LVT is just a cover for neo laissez faire rent seeking of not land but health, education, transport systems.Big Money from private taxation.
"What is actually alarming is that Brexit is going to be used by its proponents here and elsewhere as cover for...."
whatever the government was going to do anyway, whichever way the vote falls. It's what they always do, regardless of the colour of their rosettes.
P156. Fair point about FDI. I disagree, if, and only if, the government grasps the opportunity and cuts all taxes on production. And to answer DBCR accusation, moves taxation to land location values.
DBCR I see Brexit as a first step on the road to tax reform, which is why it is relevant here. Anyway, MW'S blog is an economics blog, not specifically an LVT one. If that is not true then MW will edit new out.
DBCR. It's not privatisation. It's denationalisation. And you know well that YPP policy is for education and health vouchers.
the media has been discussing short term effects , but you'd think the long term effects would be the more appropriate for the topics of discussion in the first case.
DBCR. You also know full well that I fully accept that there are things that can only be done by the state and that there are some things best done by the state. It's just that there are very few of the latter. Which is precisely the EU problem. It thinks everything is the province for the state to intervene. So, going back to LVT yes, the EU might end up with it. But it will be as an extra tax. Precisely what we do not want.
@ You seem to forget that leaving the Common Market started of as a left-wing project for the kind of reasons that had me voting for Bob Crowe's NO2 EU years after the 1975 Referendum.
If you read the criticisms of EU made from a left wing P.O.V you will see that your fears of left-wing control are a phantasmagoria: "The EU stability and growth pact outlaws Keynesian-style reflationary policies. Competition policy prevents state aid to strategic industries. The EU services directive forces privatisation of what remains of the public sector. And European Court of Justice rulings undermine collective bargaining and wage levels.Social Europe is a con" Chris Guiton Guardian. In fact the EU is already, and always has been, embedded with anti-public sector policies.Which is why I would naturally vote Brexit if the present breed of callow Brexiteers were not so intent on ending the UK's traditional mixed economy by true blue British class politics in a very thin disguise.
@ DBCR @ 14.38 (I assume that was directed at me?). I do not think of the EU as some sort of left wing project at all. I view it as crony corporatist, bureaucratic, and entirely untrustworthy. Existing as it does for itself. And as regards Keynesian policies, it'll implement whatever 'policy' it cares to. In lots of ways its current approach to the Eurozone travails is Keynesian.
As regards national state aid, do me a favour. There is more than one way to skin that cat. CAP anyone?
The UK has never had a traditional mixed economy. That really only began to happen in the 20th Century. I doubt that the phrase 'mixed economy' existed before 1900.
"Which is why I would naturally vote Brexit if the present breed of callow Brexiteers were not so intent on ending the UK's traditional mixed economy by true blue British class politics in a very thin disguise."
Which is more a problem with the fact that we've had decades now of Tory and Tory-lite governments: if you take out the proper Tories, the Blairite Labour MPs and the Lib Dems, there just aren't that many politicians left and a fair chunk of them are SNP. So even if the same proportion of the remainder as of the foregoing were Brexiters, the majority of Brexiters will still be right wing.
DBCR is anti-everything...especially anti-history. perhaps he can explain how the Bennite antipathy to the EEC fits in with his "thesis", although dignifying his random word garbage with the term "thesis" goes against the grain.
G. Maybe. But that's not the point. He and I have precisely the same concerns. It's just that we differ in how best to ameliorate them. His arguments are those of the traditional lefty. And by my arguments he thinks I am a righty. Relative to his views, certainly. Although to any 'Evil Toree' I am wildly left wing.
But the point is that these arguments must be had, all the time. Without argument, the clash of ideas, mankind can not progress. Different people buy different things, and their preferences change and are influenced by these arguments and clash of ideas.
And that is also precisely what is wrong with the EU. By deliberately setting out to create uniformity and single sets of rules for everything throughout Europe it in effect shuts down argument. For example, by making a single currency it denies the white heat of currency competition that ruthlessly exposes monetary authority failure which information is picked up by citizens which in turn enables them to choose. This will depress the price of the bad money and passes an accurate judgement that force (in this case) reform on the particular failed monetary authorities.
Going back to DBCR views and those of his ilk, I have encountered these all my life. I have cousins who hold them. And they are still wrong. (I have one cousin who I understand was a policy adviser to Gordon Brown - she has been wrong all my life, so God help us).
But we must continue to have these arguments and I therefore welcome DBCR views. Not in the least as it enables me to practice my rebuttals. He is also well informed - although, of course from my point of view he does take the wrong lesson from that information - which is an added bonus as you can follow up the facts on which he bases his assertions.
You leave DBCR alone!!! :-)
@L
Many thanks for the kind words which I would like to return: how you get on with radical Land Tax views in a traditional Tory milieu has long been beyond comprehension.Its not as if there's the slightest support, official or unofficial!
I am becoming reconciled to Brexit, in a Pyrrhic way. The Tory Party will disintegrate, finally and forever, and Labour will sweep to power and, free of the EU, enact all the Keynesian reflationary policies: State aid to strategic industries etc which they have sought all along.
It is a pity Tony Benn is not alive to see it; his other project back then was LVT.
DBCR. Once again for the crowd I am not in any way a Tory. I concede that I am slightly conservative ( as are you :-)) because I have a respect for institutions developed over ages and handed down to us. I am a true ' capitalist ' not in the not Marxist sense, but in the understanding that the continuous formation of capital is what frees us all.
"I have a respect for institutions developed over ages" L
...like the Bank of England? :)
"continuous formation of capital is what frees us all"
One of the nastier features of capitalism is that it forces people, for lack of alternatives, into employment relations which are illiberal, coercive and demeaning. Such freedom is illusory/Orwellian.
P156, I fear you are confusing the message with the medium. Capitalism's failings are precisely the same as Socialism's, the failure to straighten the crooked timber from which all humanity is made. That is not the problem of the ideology, it is a problem with the people who espouse it, who are, by and large, the same Homo Sapiens in both cases. To compare bad capitalists with good socialists is as pointless as comparing bad socialists with good capitalists.
P156. No. You know full well that I despise the Bank of England - in fact all central banks.
And the whole point is that 'capitalism' doesn't force anybody to do anything. Ever. Unlike socialism which is a foul philosophy based entirely on coercion and arbitrary rationing by capricious and self interested bureaucrats.
IMHO the core problem is that 'capitalism' was defined (wrongly) by Marx as an 'anti-communism' sort of straw man. We need to be clearer as to what capitalism actually is. Personally I think of it as classical liberalism or what now is known as libertarian.
"And the whole point is that 'capitalism' doesn't force anybody to do anything. Ever." That's being silly.
When economic conditions are such that workers effectively have no choice but to keep their current job, no matter how nasty they will be vulnerable to coercive abuses of their employers. Which is merely an amplified version of Hayek’s position. It's worse in the US than here but in the US there is more private tyranny than state. I think that you only see coercion when it is initiated by the state.
B. Maybe. But production for profit rather than need seems to me to merely emphasise the worst of human nature as opposed to the best.
Oh yes L. My reference to the venerable institution that is the old lady of Threadneedle St was just my little joke. Sorry, couldn't resist.
P156 @ 14.24. That just does not happen now. The motor car has pretty well seen off such bondage. And the US is not 'free market' as you will have noticed me say before. It's crony capitalist.
P156 @ 14.27 Eh? What's the bloody point of producing anything if there's no profit? How do you know that you're adding value without 'profit'.
p156 @ 14.31 Yep. I know I know.
L. I can give you a multitude of examples where large numbers of people are working in what I and probably you, would regard as Dickensian/abusive/demeaning, conditions/circumstances. That people continue to work in such places is somewhat inconvenient for the idea that "That just does not happen now".
A citizens income is something that would indeed reduce such conditions and provide further benefits. However it's somewhat doubtful that capitalism would tolerate such an 'intrusion'. Seeing as capitalism relies to a large extent on coercion (direct and subtle varieties) and a large labour supply and is for profit over utility.
Production for profit may have been a boon to progress for over two centuries but today we see its strict limitations in the advanced economies and it's faltering power. Pharmaceuticals, reluctant to develop new anti biotics since they object to the principal that too much use of anti biotics is to be discouraged. So life preservation is incompatible with production for profit. Guess which one we keep.
P156. Generally. Nope. You are mis-defining capitalism (a point I made above). There can be no coercion under capitalism.
Yes, there are plenty of jobs that are dirty and dangerous or unpleasant. Generally the pay for these reflects those factors.
No, CI is not an 'intrusion. It's a correction to rent seeking. Any true capitalist -combining labour and capital to create wealth will be totally down with that.
Production for profit is still the game, as profit is wealth creation. It's is limited in its power by dark forces of bureaucratism and socialism compromising it. You point about Pharma and AB's is false. I listened to something only very recently which was totally the opposite.
L.So, you 'heard' something that refutes the commonly held view that insufficient profits is no impediment to rent seeking pharmaceuticals in their half interested approach to developing new classes of AB's.
I'm sure it will come back to you. Meanwhile try the trotskyite FT.
https://next.ft.com/content/805e4746-fb0c-11e4-9aed-00144feab7de
Your protestations that I'm 'misdefining' capitalism, as coercion can not happen under capitalism or if it does it isn't capitalism, really does come out of Joseph Heller. A paradox from which one can not escape!
P156.
Pharma is a beneficiary of state supported IP protection. There is a libertarian view that IP is wrong. I am not sure about those arguments. Given that Pharma is generally in bed with the NHS - whose incompetent purchasing practices and the entirely useless NICE (the result of one of whose flawed diktats nearly killed me) I fully expect them to enjoy some rent seeking. But that is the result of various socialist and Kafkaesque structures, not the result of capitalism - or classical liberalism.
The piece I heard was on R4. The Pharma blokey was making the point about differential pricing in various international markets which meant that drugs were available at lower prices in Africa say. In other words the payments by nationalised health care in the UK (e.g.) was subsidising drugs to Africa. You can argue that both ways of course. The point is that in the UK the ludicrous quantity of rules reduce competition and hold up prices and the NHS is an administratively incompetent monopsony.
capitalism as a things was defined by Marx. He defined it to suit his argument. His definition is completely flawed.
The FT is crony corporatist so really not reliable on freedom and markets. It is pro EU and pro Euro membership. I will speed read that article later.
PC, you are jumbling loads of different issues, which cannot possibly all be addressed in the comments section.
For sure, 'capitalism' has its downsides and there are plenty people who exploit the situation, but it is still better than anything else (feudalism, hunter gathering, socialism, whatever).
"I can give you a multitude of examples where large numbers of people are working in what I and probably you, would regard as Dickensian/abusive/demeaning, conditions/circumstances."
Can you be certain that no-one worked in Dickensian/abusive/demeaning, conditions/circumstances in, say, Soviet Russia/communist China? If not, how can the existence of these conditions/circumstances be laid at capitalism's door?
"But production for profit rather than need seems to me to merely emphasise the worst of human nature as opposed to the best."
Well, as I see it, the problem is greed. Where you are producing for profit, under a capitalist system, say, there is a problem when the greed of those who are in control of the process of production means that they take more than their fair share. However, this is an equal problem when you are producing for need under a communist/socialist system. In both cases the workers end up with less than their fair share/needs and the controllers end up with more.
A major problem with political and economic thinkers is that they think of business as hundreds of workers toiling in huge factories, run by benevolent/evil capitalists/bureaucrats, depending on the flavour of your thinking. This is not the case. The vast majority of businesses employ only a few people, less than the "magic number" of 150 people. Below this number, everyone in an organisation can know everyone else and when everyone knows everyone else, it is much harder for the traditional authoritarian bosses/workers divide to exist. (Having said that, Britain is particularly bad at persisting with such artificial divisions, even in the smallest companies. Perhaps it is no accident that communism was invented in England.)
B. Competition tends to sort out 'extractors'. That's what Adam Smith was on about when he bemoaned about collusion between employers and the state. Anyway, what exactly is a 'fair share'?
I run a small business. I take ALL the financial risk. My drawings aren't significantly more than my employees. But I do own the thing. And it is the value of that ownership that will deliver my risk premium. And I work a Damn' sight harder then ANY of my employees.
DBCR. Whilst I think of it, we will not be able to return to Keynesian stimulus spending, we are already doing it!!
Oops. I guess I poked the hornets nest.
MW. Sorry for 'jumbling', think of it as the thread that keeps giving. One thing tends to lead to another.
Yes, certainly capitalism was an advancement on feudal system, which was probably an advancement on hunter gatherers etc. The idea that history stopped with the advent of capitalism is not one I'd considered. Sounds improbable though.
B. Agreed. Dickensian/abusive work conditions will to some degree be inevitable in any authoritarian environment, whether in Maoist China, Stalinist S.U or modern day corporations in the US etc. The comparison between communist and capitalist regards distribution of income is also a fair one but under a form of libertarian socialism where the workers control and own their enterprises without any vanguard or outside central committee their need be no siphoning off. As for smaller enterprises these may even be better off as private/family owned, not sure.
L. Capitalism in my posts here are based on the K.I.S.S principle. Means simply the production for profit. You might have your own definition but my one is pretty conventional and importantly, not so slippery as to be able to mean anything one wants as the mood takes. The 'Pharma blokey' you mentioned from Radio Four is the rent seeker you also mention in the same paragraph: "beneficiary of state supported IP protection", but you accept his defence anyhow?!
You should treat all rent seekers with the same scepticism. There's no need to reinvent the wheel to figure out why they've dragged their feet on AB's. Anti biotics are no good to the likes of Roche unless, to borrow that phrase, we stuff their mouths with gold...or we could just keep the gold and extend public funded research into the trial and development stages and supply the drugs at cost. Sorted. As a bonus this would end 'patent' inspired rent extraction which routinely spills over into outright criminal activity and fraud by ALL the major pharma corps. But that could auger the end of freedom or something...shriek!!!
"under a form of libertarian socialism where the workers control and own their enterprises without any vanguard or outside central committee their need be no siphoning off"
The problem with the idea of collective control is once again that "magic number" I came up with earlier. It's the way our brains have evolved. Over that number you need a hierarchy and you need a split between the controllers and the controlled. Once you have that split, then the controllers start thinking of themselves as more important than the controlled and the rot sets in. However, as to the workers owning their enterprises, I think most enlightened capitalists recognise this as being a definite benefit to the enterprise concerned. Have you read "Up the Organisation", by Robert Townsend?
P 156. "Capitalism in my posts here are based on the K.I.S.S principle. Means simply the production for profit.". You are making precisely the same error as Marx. Defining capitalism in a way that lets you knock it down. You cannot apply the KISS principle, as capitalism is complex. It took both Adam Smith and Von Mises very large books to try and set out what capitalism actually is and how it works. Even their title choices demonstrate that difficulty - 'Wealth of Nations' and 'Human Action'. (I have read both). I also think you have no idea what 'profit' actually is.
FWIW I think capitalism has to have all of the following characteristics to function fairly and effectively. Strong private property rights. Sound money. The Rule of Law. Small government (as in minimum state bureaucracy). Freedom. Markets. A Judeo Christian heritage. Commercial relationships governed by contract not nepotism. 'a-religious'. 'a-ethnic'. The celebration of success and the knowledge gained from failure. The Family as the centre of society. An absence of coercion (by definition). Entrepreneurialism. Human Charity (what Smith called 'sympathy'). And so on.
I say Judeo Christian heritage because that seems observably to be the case. The latter half of the The Ten Commandments are a template - 'Don't kill people. Don't steal their stuff. Off you go'.
Because of all this Capitalism is the most moral system you can have. I am not saying it is ideal. I am saying it is the least worst.
By being complex it confounds all those benighted souls who love an order they can understand and measure who tend to end up as bureaucrats and then try to 'sort out capitalism'. The trouble is it is not only complex it is delicate. When some always ignorant bureaucrat sticks their nose into it they break it, and then blame it for failing.
Profit is wealth creation. This is fundamentally misunderstood by every anti-capitalist. Which means that the systems they espouse - socialism say - always consume capital and end up in bankruptcy. In fact all alternative systems are 'capitalistic'. They have to be. The problem is that they can neither consistently create capital or preserve it. For example, the Soviet Union essentially took 70 years to write down all its capital. Very little of what was left there in 1991 was any good for anything at all.
So going back to the point of my post, the whole EU 'project' is 'anti-capitalistic'. Which is why it will eventually fail. If we get out now, I am pretty sure that others will follow. This will lead to a reasonably orderly collapse (with some contingent painful casualties - Greece probably). If we don't go now , the collapse will be delayed and will likely be catastrophic when it happens - Euro failure?. In short it is time for some 'creative destruction'. The EU experiment has failed. It's time for it to be abandoned.
@L From a lot earlier .I did not say you were a Tory: I said you were immersed in a Tory milieu, which as a business owner you pretty much have to be. And as I said, this must be difficult at times, given your LVT leanings.
(My father was MD of an old Mittelstand firm and as a teenager I accompanied him to long boozy lunchtimes with his business associates where no topic of conversation was off limits but I can't remember anything Socialist let alone land taxy. Needless to say my father's firm was soon after taken over in the Clore era ie by a classic rent seeker. Clore started off buying Northampton shoe firms not to make shoes but for all their dedicated high street shops and this was before the straight forward asset stripping of the Slater/ Walker era, when factories were bought up and knocked down for housing .The latter was a Tory cabinet minister!)
All in all from the very bitter experiences of my family, I would say all this creative destruction lark actually creates is the destruction of productive activity and the opening up of rent-seeking opportunities.I would say your ideal of capitalism is very romanticised ,even to a heroic level, while the old rat of rent seeking continues to gnaw its way through everything.)
"You are making precisely the same error as Marx. Defining capitalism in a way that lets you knock it down. You cannot apply the KISS principle, as capitalism is complex"
No, rocket science is complex. Adding complexity when it is not required is self serving. The more complex you make your capitalism the less likely can anyone else understand what you're talking about and the more easily dismissed their objections. That shouldn't be confused with argument. Rather it is a form of obscurantism. Now I notice you have no such qualms about dumbing down on such things as 'socialism'. This is merely anything that is not 'your' preferred form of 'capitalism'. What's good for the goose...
But let's look at 'your' version of capitalism;
"Strong private property rights. Sound money. The Rule of Law. Small government (as in minimum state bureaucracy). Freedom. Markets. Commercial relationships governed by contract not nepotism."
Most of it is a wish list. Nepotism has always been a feature of civilisation whether capitalist or not. We know today that in both the US and UK for example the biggest predictor of future income is the income of the parents. Such is progress.
Markets as in free and unfettered ironically probably only existed in what is regarded as pre capitalist era. Otherwise they always and everywhere are subject to manipulation and restriction by participants and authorities, the latter most often at the behest of the former. Freedom is an empty vessel in your prescription that only means very limited freedom, according to whims.
Not freedom from hunger, need or disease (see AB's and pharma) Not freedom from extreme insecurity. And what about economic freedom? Hayek’s complaint against central planning applies to companies as well as to nations. Freedom is more complex than the bare bones freedom you profer. Capitalism by contrast is much more transparent.
P156. Nope. You still don't get it. Your arguments are contradictory and confused. So this is a pointless discussion. Bye.
B. I know of the book but haven't read it. Have read a bit about the Mondragon Corporation and anarcho-syndicalism. Some game theory stuff pertinent to top down organisations.
L. Your problem is capitalism,free markets even freedom etc for you is more religion than anything. So questioning its precepts is a bit like asking the Pope to consider the merits of agnosticism. Obfuscation beats argument. Bye Lola.
P156 @ 11.34. Nope. Again. You clearly have not been properly reading wot I rote, and nor have you red wot I red. Faith (religion) mostly requires a degree of unreason. What I have been demonstrating, and what you have absolutely failed to counter by logical argument are the arguments for liberty based on reason and observation. You wilfully refuse to actually engage in the detail. You simply make assertions about parts of what I have written and then use those to counter the whole argument.
The point you make that rocketry is complex and 'capitalism' is simple is just risible.
And that really is it for me on this thread in my engagement with you.
erm...like this argument/1st commandment: "There can be no coercion under capitalism."
Or this logical reasoning:
Me. "pharma dragging feet on developing new anti biotics due to insufficient profit potential"
You: "Your point about Pharma and AB's is false. I listened to something only very recently which was totally the opposite."
Me: Sounds like powerful stuff! Really, what might that have been I wonder?
You:"The piece I heard was on R4. The Pharma blokey was making the point about differential pricing in various international markets which meant that drugs were available at lower prices in Africa say."
Like what? Hello, we were discussing the relative paucity of new anti biotics...
What you call logical reasoning is entirely ad hoc bits and bobs of anything you vaguely remember hearing or reading that lends support to your preferred view. pharma blokey indeed. It wasn't coherent but consistent with your 2nd commandment.Governments are only for enforcing contracts and the law. Break that commandment and you enter the seventh circle of hell.
Somehow government involvement in funneling money to and instituting regulations in the pharma industry has caused the industry to downgrade anti biotic development. It doesn't matter how it was just bound to happen. That's a strong belief system.
And that really is it for me on this thread in my engagement with you. I mean it. Really.
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