The core theme of Mark's blog - Land Value Tax and its companion programme, Citizens income - could be considered 'left wing'. I am not so sure. As the full fat LVT/CI programme includes the abolition of pretty well all taxes on labour and capital it could be equally considered right wing.
Personally I think that the right v left meme is dead. But as there is a lot of political capital to be lost if this is admitted and adopted neither those on the right or the left are interested in changing the status quo. They both need to keep the gravy train on the rails.
The political landscape is no longer left v right, it is, or perhaps becoming or even moving back to, a vertical landscape. At the top is liberty and personal responsibility and at the bottom is slavery and irresponsibility. Think of it as a circle with vertical and horizontal radii. Lefties move round the left arc to the bottom and righties move round the right arc also to the bottom.
This leaves 'people like us' from say me, (according to DBCR on the fascist right,) to DBCR, (who probably thinks that I think he is on the fascist left) completely without a convenient box in which the current political actors can pigeon hole us. I quite like this.
The tragedy is that under the current nexus of the state/crony banking/bad money/high taxes/high rents/high direct and deadweight costs of regulationism/nationalised education (I think it is indoctrination)/nationalised health care etc. etc. it is very difficult for the great mass of people (who quite frankly and quite rightly have lots of better things to do than with their time than come to places like this and debate and learn - Mrs L for example - and are generally often quite frightened of one thing or another) it is very difficult indeed to 'sell' the LVT/CI meme to anyone - notionally left or right. Mostly people are entrenched.
Yet the Momentum crowd and the anti-one-percenters would be surprised how much people they would consider antipathetic to their solutions actually agree with their analysis. We both 'know' something's wrong. It's our solutions that differ.
So, deep down people do know that something is wrong. The emperor has no clothes. They know that Left v Right is passe without knowing why. And this is what I think occurred on the 23rd June 2016. A largely inchoate scream for some major adjustment, more than would just be achieved by being delivered from the obviously anti-democratic EU. The vote was a success for The wisdom of Crowds. Or, if you prefer, the 'market'.
In any event, IMHO, Left v Right is dead. (Now all that has to be done is to explain to T May PM that Libertarianism/classical liberal is not 'right wing'. She is clearly another victim of the nexus.)
(This is a think piece. Please discuss).
48 comments:
Yup.
I was once on a UKIP demo outside the Houses of Parliament protesting against the EU. When it was over we chatted about what to do next and I said I was going to the Occupy London demo near St Pauls.
They looked me askance as if these were polar opposites but I said it's al the same thing - the EU is a vast corrupt bureaucracy that subsidises land owners and banks, i.e. the One Percent, although many Ukippers don't make this connection. If the peripheral EU countries weren't being trampled on, there'd be less of them wanting to emigrate.
The Occupy London people are protesting directly against the super rich One Percent, without realising that it is not capitalism per se which is to blame, it is the way that things are rigged in favour of landowners and banks. The irony was that they all used iPads and bought food at Starbucks (proper capitalism) and were derided for doing so.
I'm not sure if they got the parallels but it seems clear enough to me.
The Wisdom of Crowds? The earlier, truer, original was entitled Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.
DBCR. It's the 'dispersed knowledge' thingy. You can see it happening all the time and the benefits it brings.
Like the Tulip Mania which features prominently in the Madness of Crowds. (But surely the tulip bulbs which could be propagated exponentially at tremendous profit caused less harm than the current land value mania where the value goes up but the land is left off the market as long as possible?)
DBCR. Your confused again. The Tulip mania only affected a relatively small number of already wealthy people in trade and professions. Most people stayed right out of it. And in such event - pre 2008 bubble say - many people did not go with the hysteria. Me for example. In the case of the pre 2008 bubble that was also nearly 100% the fault of government and government policy.
So no. And as I run an investment business market hysteria is grist to my mill, and mostly the best thing to do is to ignore it. Or if you fee comfortable ride the momentum as long as you dare. In such times what a small number is fail to get out when they should.
Wiki is pretty good on the tulip mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
As a member of Momentum and Labour, I would like to outline something about Liverpool last month and relate it to YPP, as Lola and I agree boringly on the bigger picture. As a metaphor, I too like the idea that the folks here cannot be slotted on the board like chess pieces, so that everybody 'understands' where they fit without having to think. In fact, we need that Three D, Chess board from Star Trek, that Sheldon from Big Bang tries to teach, from time to time. :)
I had got bored talking about this 'disterbance in the force', once Labour got to 500,000 members and Momentum got to about 100,000. But of course you need to add in Occupy, Robin Hood et al, as Lola/MW rightly identify. So I'll chip in.
I decided that Henry George and LVT/CI needed to be in Liverpool, so I went every day (the ordinary peoples meeting, not the outdated, Blairite, pinstripe and designer clothes, wake down on the waterfront) and talked to anybody who wanted to discuss this strange branch of 'socialism'/ 'free' market Political Economy. You will be pleased to hear, that a large chunk of Mark's toolkit is not needed for the young/old, lefty, science students, engineers and economists
and concerned citizens who were in the queue, theatre seat, lavatory cubical,smoking section, next to me! Sure there were a few Marxists who said, 'but you won't have 'true equality' and stop 'man's expolitation' of man' etc. As you can guess, they do not like 'neither will you!', but it was good humoured and reminded me what a 'broad church' the Labour Party really is.
LVT: rather than discuss the 'old widow bogy'etc. The most common response I got was,'great how do we impliment it?'I found myself having to say, most often, 'Hold your horses, if it were that easy it would have been done a hundred years ago!'Once you wheel out the interests of the City of London, Tory pary (Blair's Labour), Landowners, Rentseeking Monopolists, Crony Corporations and anyboby with a Victorian pile in London and the South East, the problem situation sinks in for them. But that is their problem situation too!
I do not know how it was presented in the media, but here's the thing. In the queue outside were members of the old Hatton Militant, but they were as confused by Momentum's alternative, as were those nervous, pin stripes who ventured up from the labour conference hall. What were these youngster up to? What is it about? I can assure you that it was organised by motivated, southern accent, speaking students who you lot would want working in your companies.
I could say more, but I found that the ideas of: A Democrat, A Georgist and Building a Meritocracy (not Jerusalem) are what links us and those 'devils' at the heart of what is to come.So ironically, the YPP is alive and well me thinks :)
MikeW. Well, not quite 'anybody living in a Victorian pile in London'. I have a relative who benefited thusly and she/they are fully aware that they have not earned their gain and are as pissed off as everyone else.
Mike w. What really pleases me about your comment is that by fessing up as being a Momentum and Labour supporter you rather endorse my contention about the 'broad church' of consensus around LVT/CI. Me being a 'capitalist free marketer' an' all that.
My other vague theory of life is that most people are 'libertarian' (slightly left or slightly right as depends) - they just do not know it yet.
Granted there is plenty of anti profit on one side and anti anti profit on the other side) prejudice. But once a meeting of minds is achieved much of this falls away in friendly discussion. (DBCR excepted - of course. -:) )
Lola,
I wasn't 'fessing' up to much. I know this is dramatic but...
Georgist/LVT is our last hope:the last great untried project of political economy.Otherwise it is a Schumpeter and Orwell future. Lets hope folks of good will, on all sides, can bring it about this time. We all just choose our small part.(Although from a Labour party perspective, I will jump at Mark's 'LVT Lite' to be going on with)
Re your last point, Comrade DBCR, yes, strange fish :)
MikeW. I was teasing about fessing up...
I am not so sure that we are going forward to LVT. Land taxes were the original taxes. And in a sense the Church - the biggest land owner - paid out 'benefits' to the needy.
Just saying is all.
I get called Comrade Reed and a strange fish when Lola is proclaiming Left and Right is dead! and that we are menaced by stupendous contingent liabilities in a rerun of the Brexit's Project Fear .
Lefties do what they do best: attack each other for the amusement of right-wingers.Sad.
DBCR.
Eh? what?
The numbers for the contingent liabilities of the UK to the EU banking system are concrete. That's what we'd be up for if (when?) the EU banks crash further and need more recapitalising, or the Euro has more problems. The number is estimated at £982Bn. It's a 'fact'. (I personally think that the likely cost will be three times that - and I was right on that about the original bailout estimates for the UK banks by the then gov't. They said £500 Bn. It's actually been more like £1.5Tr.
Last sentence - true. Sadly. It's the Judean Peoples Front/Peoples Front of Judea thingy eh? Maybe conspiracy is in the nature of lefties? Who knows?
The left - right divide is dead is it? We have an unelected administration ( we only just missed out on Leadsom being chosen for us) which has decided to interpret the results of a vaguely worded Referendum as an imperative mandate to get nasty with legal hard working migrant labour with no possibility of commons' vote on matters which are constitutionally and economically foundational.If the left were riding roughshod over Parliament like this you'd say that there was a coup taking place.When its the right , you don't see it, do you?
DBCR. Sigh. You are confused. I suggest you read my post again.
I am no fan of the May administration (on economic and authoritarian grounds)as you probably know. But the UK constitutional rules are that the person that can command a majority of the House of Commons can form the government. there is nothing in that about being chosen by the electorate. In any event, if this is an avowedly BREXIT administration then arguably it does have an absolute democratic mandate. The referendum was cleanly won.
Next, only a very few unpleasant souls what to get nasty with immigrant labour that is already here. What the majority of outers wanted was to 'control' immigration. As did I. But I also want to right to employ who I like and if that happens to be a Slovakian - so what.(In fact I have just employed an apprentice who is part Dutch).
So going back to the thrust of my post I contend that left v right is dead and what we now have is a competition between Liberty and responsibility v slavery and irresponsibility.
DBCR,
If you notice my post was effectively saying, the YPP is alive and well but it is called Momentum! I would have thought you would have a good chuckle over that. Notice though it was effectively turned into a discussion, as stated, not an abuse session.Those YPPers that disliked it ignored it. So did you!
So I take it it is the last comment.
1. As you know, Labour meetings start with the problem of how the chair addresses the group; is it old style: Comrade, Brothers, er sisters, or Members, or colleague, or as the Blairites would have it customers? The joke is on me as much as you (think about it). Comrade Mikew to Comrade DBCR, the last two lefties on this 'right wing','Geo Lib' site!
2. But you are surely an 'odd fish'. On a contrairian political site an uber contrianian, such as you, is upset and sees a rightist conspiracy when all the other contrairians refuse to do what the fall force of the establishment( left and right) tells them to do!
I notice you did not point out the class treachery of the Tories here, effectively voting down their Prime Minister and Chancellor of Austerty. In terms of class traitors, I would have voted 'out', if the destruction of these two men's careers (and chaos in the Tory Party)was the only thing on offer in the referendum for me.
And attacked any Labour MP who took the campaign stage with them.
3.I will discuss with you in a calm manner what the 'upper'part of my City Labour party told me to vote and why.But it is not a noble position. What I really want is to discuss with you and the others here, Labours 1983 Manifesto pledge on Europe and how we exit, and rethink the idea of the 'Longest sucide note'.Why? because there is feck all anybody else in my party that wants to talk about the irony of it all.
RS. I don't understand your comment.
Mike W. I just re read your comment. You are really confirming what I am saying in my post. Or rather what I suspect is going on. The Tory party is somewhat the same - except for the local grandee mafia of course. And the MP whose position is dependent on he getting the mafia to like him. But I did have a meeting with another conservative MP elsewhere recently and he was fully on message with 'us'.
The problem is not then how you get past the gate-keepers of rent seeking, but how you get your momentum'ers talking to my classical liberal insurgents?
@L
Your usual formulaic reply not to say patronising : I am not in the least confused.
(The formula is to say somebody's confused ; revise all the relevant definitions so they cover ground of your own choosing: announce yourself triumphant in a sideshow argument.)
The constitutional situation is that the person commanding a majority after an election in invited to form a government: there was no general election, so the condition cannot apply. Andrea Loathsome emerged from the conspiracies first but showed herself as possibly demented and the shadowy coup organisers withdrew support suddenly and brutally.
The Brexit conspirators do not have a mandate: the referendum was advisory only.
It was assumed that many people voted in hatred of immigration because of the Leave campaign's dishonourable decision to abandon economic arguments and to major on
anti-immigrant prejudice (which leading people on here supported).There is nothing in the results to support this anti-immigrant assumption because the proposition was simply to leave the EU : no reasons were itemised to be approved or disapproved.
It has been made clear that immigrants already here are under threat of deportation (backed by fascist street thugs of course).
My Polish neighbours decided to have a child because they felt at home here.
You say the outers want to CONTROL immigration. What does control mean? It wasn't explained in the Referendum .You and everybody else on the leave side which includes a lot of knuckledraggers ( as well as old fashioned uppermiddle class shits like Farage)assume it means picking and choosing foreigners.Fuck off on that one.
You cannot pick and choose while remaining a part of single market that requires the four freedoms.
So basically the knuckledraggers get to decide our economic and international policies.
I assume this is the wisdom of the crowds .
DBCR "...The constitutional situation is that the person commanding a majority after an election in invited to form a government: there was no general election.. Nope. "...technically the appointment of the prime minister is a prerogative exercised by the head of state... The appointment of a PM in the UK parliament has nothing to do with elections. (see. I knew you were confused :-))
"The Brexit conspirators do not have a mandate: the referendum was advisory only. Maybe. Maybe not. All the newsflow coming from the government prior to the referendum and the things it published stated unequivocally that it would implement the result. As it should in a democracy and with the clear majority. If you don't like the result, emigrate.
Control immigration means exactly what it says. All nations control immigration. In many ways it is the prime duty of the government of a nation state. Just what form that control takes is decided by parliament and takes account of popular consensus. E.G. No-one I know of would turn away the genuinely needy refugee.
Fascist Thugs bit. I have conceded that a minority of the UK population are racist and want to repatriate immigrants. They are not the majority and not me and those that I know in the exit camp. And extend all my wishes for good luck to your Polish neighbours. That's exactly correct and what we would expect.
Of course you can't control that whilst in the SM. But the SM is a blind. What it really is a whole set of bureaucratic interferences behind a vastly complex tariff wall. It's not a 'market' at all. And don't be abusive. Just because someone disagrees with you does not make them wrong or stupid.
MW, I am heartened that you find it so easy to explain. I really struggle and get bogged down in technicalities. I should start with Georgism Lite, a proven success and work from there I suppose.
MW Just stick to the simple logic. 'All profits return to rents' and go from there. If you follow that meme everybody soon understands that 'capital' isn't the problem. It's rents. You need to be a better rep!!
MW, 'I am heartened that you find it so easy to explain.'
I hear you Mark! No, you should be hearted that we get a good reception, even in the most unlikely of places.I'll leave it to these folks to make their way over here at their own pace.
L, You need to be a better rep!! I certainly do. But, what did that general say, 'Better to be at a battle with ten men, that absent with 10,000.' :)
MIkeW and MW. By 'being a better rep.' I mean being a better salesman. People buy the sizzle not the sausage. They buy on emotion. Mostly.
But IMHO we're never going to sell LVT to the government, especially not the professional bureaucrat bit, because it is an anti-stealth tax. Someone once said that the art of taxation was to take as many feathers from the goose without it hissing too much. LVT will make the goose hiss a lot. Good.
So we are back with Parliament and my not any longer left right theory. If you get an alliance of liberty you will have more chance of getting LVT/CI going. Anyway that's what I think.
Lola,
Re 'emotion'
ok I see. Thanks for the clarification, because as you can see from my other answer, that's how I think we go with this new group. :)
Mike W. I have been banging on about this to my children (4 No. Age range 26 to 35) and their mates, and once they get it they get it. And they get pretty cross as well. Those that don't have rich rent seeking parents that is...
@MiW I'll have you know I am not an ubercontrarian, as you now assert.I agree on all the land tax points, rather boringly so. Lola and I waste good arguing time saying how much we agree with each other on land price issues although we come at them from right and left (which ,of course Lola ,with typical caprice, says no longer exist).
I support Mark's Citizen's Income proposals in principle, and take his side in any argument on the matter but he has some funny ideas about the creation of money which, in respect of Martin Wolf's proposals to "Strip Private banks of the power to create Money " place Mark on the outside of the main money reform tradition.
All the rest of the stuff superfluous to LVT: the Brexit mania, especially the approval of anti-immigrant prejudice,etc.I do not want to know and am annoyed to read. As I have every right to be.
DBC, after years of puzzling over incomplete solutions to the banking, money creation crap, I have decided what the way forward is, that ticks every box AFAICS.
I explained it here.
As you see we can neatly break the money system into three fairly separate loops: "land", "private economy" and "government spending/taxation". Simply banging on about "credit creation" is far too simplistic
MW. Something else I've just remembered is that you could always get house purchase mortgage from a bank, but it was at a higher rate than charged by a building society. A risk and return are related that seems to make sense.
Yes. 1986 was the watershed. Thatcher's Big Bang and the Financial Services Acts. In principle these were the right thing to do, as long as you squared the circle with taxes on rents and some way of linking deposits to mortgages. Maybe the 1996 Act went to far in its liberalisation.
OT slightly. Many people state that Thatcher 'de-regulated' banking. But she didn't. The other part of the 1986 Acts was the creation of the various nascent financial regulators who have grown into what we see today.
DBCR. My contention about the death of left v right holds. However, clearly you being the example of one such, the 'left' still exist. And my point about that is that most people are libertarian, and can shown to be so by a series of simple questions but with a slightly left or right bias. Other refuse to accept this for what I think are tribal reasons; or some long held antipathy that they cannot overcome. Given my history I ought to be deep blue Tory, but I am not. I am way left of the Tories, but I am also way right of socialists. And fundamentally I trust people. So how do you categorise people like me? I think the vertical axis is more accurate.
@MW
Sigh. Nope. Confused (and all that patronising right-wing bullshit).
As I said, I take my cue from Martin Wolf in the FT 24 April 2014 "Strip Private banks of their power to create money".
There's no other way of putting this but I think he knows what he's talking about more than you.
You have forgotten in the early days of this blog you patronised me, telling me to stick to Shakespearean sonnets (all I ever wanted actually), while you laboriously claimed that banks only lent their savers' money- and never made up loans.
I was relying on old Social Credit arguments and did n't have such recent quotes as the following from the BoE which finally lost its temper with people like you confessing "This article explains how the majority of money in the modern economy is created by commercial banks making loans " from Money creation in the Modern Economy Bulletin.The money in bank loans is created by the banks.
Since Wolf is the world's foremost Economics journalist and is a shit-hot land taxer, you should be working with him to advance the cause. But he is, hardly, in his position, going to work with someone whose views on money are so homemade and hobbyist.
DBCR "..while you laboriously claimed that banks only lent their savers' money- and never made up loans. AFAIAA MW has always maintained that banks create loans out of this air. i.e. 'create money'/Credit. When did he say the opposite to you? Or post such thoughts? Got a link?
"Martin Wolf in the FT 24 April 2014 "Strip Private banks of their power to create money""
Do you have a link for that, or is it behind their paywall?
AFAICS the principle of money is fairly simple: Money is debt. In the past it was based on past debt, i.e. savings. Now it is based on future debt, i.e. credit. Or is that too "homemade and hobbyist"?
Does Mr Wolf explain why it is OK for central banks to create money in this way but not commercial banks, or is he an advocate of stripping central banks' power to create money in this way also?
@B
Martin Wolf's article "Strip private banks... etc" comes up on Google every time I type it.
DBCR et al. I am sure that we have all read this, but just in case...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Wolf
L
Without wishing to be accused of being a traitor to the working class again.I do not reconise this characterisation of the Wadsworth from the last couple of years.
I joined and left Positive Money in the space of just six months. I tried to tackle the relationship between: Pos Mon, MMT and Henry George. And still have Wadsworth's old, long argument with a PM 'balance sheet expert' on my list. His song about these three groups has been the same for a long time. I think we even touched on this link.
Please look at this brilliant argument by Ballinginer
http://clintballinger.edublogs.org/2014/10/12/endogenous-mmt-pm/. Go to the very end of the comments and see the PM reply to it all.(subltle difference?)
So DBC Reed you mean the Wadsworth did not understand that the 'Loanable funds model'above was a piece of ideological clap trap that the Neo Libs and banks dropped it as soon as they were found out by you, me and every other concerned citizen. (Finally anounced by St Louie Fed and Bank of England. Fair do's, I know you have the article too.
But the Wandsworth's 'ideological' postition as argued with me over the last couple of years is/was: First, In the end LVT will make Pos Mon redundent anyway. So lets charge him with commitment to LVG above all else! Two, He/we always agreed with their criticism of the problem: Loanable Funds is/was Ballshit. But that PM solution to the general problem is accountingly problematic (I have no comment on that) it is not simple (true) and see above, unecessary. Please read Ben's 'Dyson's Modernising Money' for your own view.
As I noted recently for information purpose only, the public face (their two most recent conferences) of PosMon has now dropped the 'complex solution' and is simply trying to educate the public that Loanable Funds Model is Economics/Banking's dirty little lie. They have gone with a Steve Keen Debt Jubilee and Green Bank for what we do now. Like we will go with LVT Lite for the now too.
So,
1,What is all the smoke and fire above about?
2,Martin Wolf, yes on the side of the angels too
3, Lola, yes, yes, I know; 'Debt Jubilee' is not a new, untried policy, but as ancient as the land tax :)
L and MW, thanks for support!
What really pisses me off about all this is that it is so fucking simple. It's not fucking rocket science. (That's why Pos Money is out of my lexicon. It's too bloody complicated).
My business is in what is called 'financial planning' and we major on 'portfolio management'. Quite honestly I don't know why I get paid to do it. Well I do actually. 80% of what we do is re-educating people from the utter failure of the education system and also to help them navigate the ludicrous complexity of things like the pensions system and the UK tax code (to which MW will attest).
LVT/CI massively simplifies the whole thing. Sort out all this bad money and credit expansion (yes yes I know I know - bear with me it's just a shorthand) and combine that with my vertical analysis of political philosophy and off we'd all go the races. Peace and harmony.
Why doesn't this happen? Vested interests of course. The bloody politicos in the Government (NOT Parliament) don't want it as it largely does in their reason to be. The quangoistsas and government bureaucrats don't want it - they'd lose all the sinecures and fat entitlements. My peer group don't want it as they'd have to work out how to make a living elsewhere.
So all 'we' need is for DBCR to stop being an dinosaur and start lobbying his mates to get behind the game :-)...
L yes agreed :-)
Obviously nobody has read Martin Wolf or can offer any critique of his ideas, you know, using quotes and all that boring humanities stuff.
So we are stuck forever with Lola's right wing rants ( he's going on about the education system now, plus, wait for it, government bureaucrats and quangoistas, who'd have guessed it ?).
We also have Mark attaching the same kind of tin cans to the tail of the poor old LVT dog , the current can being a racist Brexit which saw my Polish neighbour plunged into fear soon after getting pregnant.
My leftie mates organised the Labour Land Campaign, lobbying for LVT back in the 70's and its members currently include John McDonnell.
The fact that it has got nowhere should be a warning to enthusiasts like Mike W: having the right arguments is not enough in a fascist-lite system where the workers are bribed to vote for the Conservatives because they are traditionally the party of house price inflation, the only way to make any money nowadays.
Vote Labour/ Vote Corbyn (land taxer).Join Labour.
DBC, I would normally be quite happy to go to the trouble of explaining where Wolf and Pos Mon are right and where they are wrong; where they have oversimplified and where they have overcomplicated.
BUt with you it is a complete and utter waste of time, Wolf is your God, despite you don't really know what he said or what he thinks it means or what it actually means.
And whatever I say you will say that I am a racist and Lola is a fascist (or whatever the insult de la semaine is) which is a) untrue and b) completely irrelevant to a simple mechanical topic like banking or bookkeeping.
Banking and bookkeeping work exactly the same whether you are a Commie or a Nazi, the same as the laws of gravity function the same in a Commie state or a Nazi state. This is not some humanities clap trap open to legitimate differences of opinion.
@MW
As a matter of simple fact it does not matter if money is created by the banking system as Wolf, the BoE and everybody else asserts, or whether it is merely circulated by the wise bookkeeping fairies.If it is blocked from going into landed property by a sodding great LVT the results are the same (beneficial) despite the difference in motivation.
There is no point in us arguing as we have it covered either way.
I was simply pointing out to Mike W, who accuses me of being an uber contrarian, that I object to right-wingers on here trying to attach
a lot of right-wing junk to a simple political proposition.
I particularly object to daily diets of kick-out-the-foreigners Brexit which has fuck all LVT relevance.
( I may as well confess that although I came up with the concept of Homeownerism I have always felt that it was a Mussolini-like scheme to divide the working class by paying a privileged IN group an unearned [imputed] income from land price rises which should be taxed for common purposes.It would appear by definition to be a fascist policy. I do not accuse Lola of this: he bravely, in view of his background, opposes it strongly and effectively.
It is just a pity that right-wingers on here keep dragging in extraneous concepts which they are incapable of understanding.)
DBCR. Just for the record and where we came in - left v right is dead. They're done. Finished. It's just that there are a lot of vested interests who benefit from keeping them going. And the sooner people realise this the better. Calling me 'right wing' from your perspective only proves that you are 'left wing'. You define yourself by telling me what you think I am. You have admitted that I am down wiv der kids on the LVT/CI revolution so how the bloody Hell can I be 'right wing'?
L: "there are a lot of vested interests who benefit from keeping the [left v right charade] going"
Is that what I refer to as "indian Bicycle Marketing"? Same product with different labels and advertising campaigns?
Left versus right always has been a bit of an artificial concept and only really useful within a particular state e.g. the Democrats are to the "left" of US politics, but to the right of most "left-wing" political parties elsewhere. Comparing state with state, it is irrelevant. E.g. the example of a right-wing fascist state most people think of is Nazi Germany, but the Nazi Party was the National Socialist German Workers Party and had quite a few "left-wing" policies. Big government/small government or totalitarian/libertarian is a better split when comparing one state with another.
@L Even the Tory government is now trying to stop the false self employment scandal that thrusts millions of people back into the nineteenth century with no sick pay , holiday pay, minimum wage ,works pensions, unions, collective bargaining.It's because the difference between left and right has been blurred in the popular mind by the unspeakable shits bribing homeowners with unearned imputed income from house price inflation that they can tell the mortgaged masses "we are you real friends; we put up your house price every year: it does n't matter if wages drift a bit; you are a land owner like in Downton".
BTW False self employment: another triumph for the not left or right brigade on here last time it was discussed.
DBC, you can misrepresent as much as you like, but for the record, the majority of people who post and comment here are of the general opinion that the false self-employment/zero hours contracts problems are caused and exacerbated by…
National Minimum Wage (employers have to cut hours to bare minimum)
Spiteful extra taxes on employment income compared to self-employment income
Onerous employment rights/employer duties
Bad employers being let off the hook (Philip Green, Mike Ashley etc)
Excessive means testing of benefits
General squeeze on wages caused by Home-Owner-Ism and corporatism.
As we see, these are neither exclusively left nor right wing issues. All would be largely fixed if we had LVT and CI, as Lola said from the onset.
DBCR and MW. My employees benefit from a profit share bonus scheme. Essentially I distribute all the 'profit' over the target revenue. One of my chief reasons for providing it is to engender a feeling of 'ownership'. Personally I think that they are as self-employed as I am. They can take their labour away any day they like, subject to the contract they have agreed. The only difference is I own the business.
"the false self employment scandal that thrusts millions of people back into the nineteenth century with no sick pay , holiday pay, minimum wage ,works pensions, unions, collective bargaining"
DBCR, have you any idea how patronising that attitude is? Look at it this way: "Poor dissolute, feckless working class, can't be trusted to put by money against sickess, holidays or pensions, the wise employer must do that, to stop the workers spending it all down the pub."
All the money that the employer spends on the worker's behalf comes straight out of the worker's pay packet. If we treated workers as normal sensible human beings instead of some sub-human underclass, we would pay them that money and leave them to spend it on pensions, union dues and national insurance, save some for holidays and sickness, as they saw fit.
In any case, it's a mistake to think that the government forces employers to look after their workers in the way you describe in order to help the workers. No it's to cut down on the government's bill when they have to look after the truly feckless, and it's the most efficient way for them to do it. If all the prudent people have to suffer as a result, so be it, they don't give a shit: it makes them look benevolent and saves them money, what's not to like?
B Precisely. You have to look at the incentives. The incentives on governments and their bureaucrats is to preserve their own sinecures and fat entitlements. To do this they concentrate benefits and distribute costs. They play out Bastiat's assertion that "The State is the great fiction through which everyone endeavours to live at the expense of everyone else."
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