Atkinson has proposed a 15-point plan to suppress inequality, at the centre of which is the idea of a “Social and Economic Council” involving employers, unions and NGOs, a living wage, a guaranteed income and the shaping of technology policy towards redistributive goals.
And NEDDIE didn’t work did it?
Tim
This is yet one more area where they are impervious to evidence. The Attlee government suffered major losses in the 1950 General election and was turfed out a year later – I’m guessing history is even less of a strong point for Mason than economics – I wonder what other aspects of the late 40s they are keen to bring back – The Death penalty? Criminalisation of homosexuality? Ability to discriminate on racial and religious grounds? Somehow I doubt it…..
It depends. If you are a Trot (as Mason still is), it might have worked sufficiently to get some of your fellow travellers embedded in the power structure to further the road to proper revolution.
“First, inequality punishes the unlucky. Lose your job and you are thrown back on your savings. Split up with your partner and you are thrown back on a single wage. If there is a reliable safety net of out-of-work benefits and social housing, personal catastrophes like this are survivable. Without them economic life becomes a lottery.”
I’m all for a safety net for those who suffer the slings of outrageous fortune and those that get caught up in creative destruction, but splitting up with your partner?
Yes I know, its all about the children, but perhaps we need some of Cripps’ christian moralising to bring back a sense of responsibility.
“Cripps makes a poor role model for the modern chancellor. An austere christian moralist, he seemed to revel in inflicting pain. He imposed rationing with zeal, not just on the moneyed classes but on the workers, whose demands for higher pay he pillories in the rediscovered speech as playing into the hands of Russia.”
As opposed to the new moralists of the Labour Party and Public Health England who want to inflict exactly the same on us.
I could reword this
“First, inequality punishes the unlucky”
as
“First, taxes on employment punishes the unlucky. Lose your job and as there are less jobs it is harder to get a new one”
and
” If there is a reliable safety net of out-of-work benefits and social housing, personal catastrophes like this are survivable.”
as
” If there is a dynamic economy and cheap housing, personal catastrophes like this are survivable. As opposed to the moment where social housing is only available for the select few (and if you are a white man not you)”
Tim–OT but perhaps this is worth your consideration.
https://juliareda.eu/2015/11/ancillary-copyright-2-0-the-european-commission-is-preparing-a-frontal-attack-on-the-hyperlink/
I find it rather difficult to believe that the kind of high-performer making bags of cash out of globalisation (or corporatism, to be fair) wouldn’t find alternative means of obtaining advantage. Eg by getting their hands on the levers of power directly in government/civil service, or indirectly through unions, bbc, or the dreaded milk marketing board.
The purpose of the game is to control your environment for personal benefit. Income is just an easier way to keep score.
Who will care for the Moneytree™ if everyone is paid regardless?
involving employers, unions and NGOs,
In other words, the non-democratic people.
We have “inequality” because people vote for it, if there were too many unequal people then they’d vote in a government to change it. Most of the above are signed up members of the Livingstone view of “if voting worked they’d abolish it” anyway, so that argument doesn’t work with them. They hate democracy because it devolves their power, and inequality is the stick they use to get it back.
This is nothing more than a bunch of idealists trying to rope us in to their expensive social experiment. Be afraid.
When they get equality will they ban football, big breasts, tough alpha males,expensive handbags, the Chinese ,riot police, amd right handers