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It’s the stupidity that hurts so much

There are a number of ways in which that failure might happen. For example, war could upset the financial power of the elite and reinstate power in favour of the state. In a different era this did, of course, happen after the Second World War.

It is also, of course, just possible that people will have enough of the abuse that they are suffering from hegemonic financial interests, which abuse is denying them all prospects of hope. This trend is now being seen, very markedly, amongst younger people, many of whom now recognise that a supposed market economy is never going to offer them a chance of their own home,

It is the restrictions of the State – the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors – which makes British housing both shit and expensive. This is then used as proof that the State should have more power, markets less.

Cretin.

15 thoughts on “It’s the stupidity that hurts so much”

  1. You could quite easily argue that it’s the lack of state regulation that is the problem.
    The complete lack of regulation on people coming to the country via irregular means to live here that is pushing prices up and beyond the reach of many.

  2. I can’t help myself from being a conspiracy theorist nowadays. Net Zero and becoming a Moslem country, how do the politicians expect to survive in their new creation? Lord Alli-Willi can only offer his chum so much protection and I’m sure he can provide TTK some warmth but he’s not going to able to smelt steel. Iknow Obama has secured his own future by hiding in a place that 98% of climate scientists agree will be 800 feet underwater by next year and just in case he’s got the largest propane tank in private hands in the world. But even though Michelle managed to save the $17,000,000 dollars to buy the estate by being frugal with her husband’s salary, the propane won’t last for ever…

  3. Chernyy Drakon

    A lot of Aussies (like me) tend to think that the housing shortage in Oz is caused by too many immigrants too.

  4. I’ve undergone the same journey since Covid. There’s nothing wrong with being a conspiracy theorist when the obvious conspiracy is staring you in the face.
    As to your question of how the conspirators expect to survive, a lot of people who scoff at the notion of conspiracies do so on the following basis: ‘Look, do you really think there is a cabal of giant-brained people who have worked it all out and are just manoeuvring the chess pieces?’
    My response is, no, I think there’s a cabal of fuckwits who think they’ve worked it all out and are just manoeuvring the chess pieces.
    They’re as fucked as the rest of us, maybe more – they just don’t know it.

  5. Martin Near The M25

    We’re adding about a million people to the population a year (against our will but that’s another topic). We can’t build anything like a million houses, even if that made sense. You can abolish all the regulations you like but the price of housing is not coming down.

    They’re not going to build big semis and detached houses.. It would be more rabbit hutches as councils are incentivised to pack in as many people as possible to farm council tax.

  6. Strap yourselves in people….

    Larry Elliott, writing in the Guardian this week, said:

    Keynes said that finance should be the servant not the master, providing a steady and reliable source of funds for investment and not much else. In the decades after the second world war strict capital controls usually ensured that was the case.

    The opposite now applies. Finance is the master not the servant. It decides what governments are free to do; it sets the terms of the debate; it shapes and dominates the economy.

    Too bad, you might think. That’s the way it is. But the reality is that, without curbs on finance, governments are severely constrained in what they are able to deliver, even if they have a powerful mandate. The triumph of finance has not been good for democracy. It has not been good for the economy either.

    So, is Larry right? Is finance now the master?

    There can be little doubt that within the neoliberal mindset he is. That mindset was created by Hayek and Friedman to establish the hegemonic power of wealth and, as a consequence, of finance, which is its chosen mechanism for delivery of that power. Larry‘s article suggest that this agenda has won the battle between the government, people, and financial elites. However, even if this is the case at present, neoliberalism can, like all human constructs, fail.

    Larry Elliott is one of the few Guardian journalists who I wouldn’t consider a total moron. The notion that either Hayek or Friedman would look at the current global economy and consider it in line with their philosophy is questionable. I doubt Murphy has read even one paragraph of either which is a shame as he might have his mind opened.

    There are a number of ways in which that failure might happen. For example, war could upset the financial power of the elite and reinstate power in favour of the state. In a different era this did, of course, happen after the Second World War.

    While his anti-semitism leads him to side with ‘Big Islam’ against Israel he seems oblivious to the Ukrainian debacle. I think in fairness to him at least that cause of massive inflation he did at least remain indifferent to. Not sure why but even a stopped clock shows the right time twice a day.

    It is also, of course, just possible that people will have enough of the abuse that they are suffering from hegemonic financial interests, which abuse is denying them all prospects of hope. This trend is now being seen, very markedly, amongst younger people, many of whom now recognise that a supposed market economy is never going to offer them a chance of their own home, or the possibility of affording to have a family or to have secure employment and economic prospects. As a result, it is something they do not wish to engage with. Outright rejection of the economic model is, therefore, quite possible without even taking into consideration the issue of climate change.

    Well we have seen what happens when people look at one of the reasons behind the housing crisis (unlimited migration) and take action. Murderers and rapists of a dusky hue are released and scarce prison places freed up by the worst government in recorded British history for them to be imprisoned. But of course as this polymath says – ‘Immigration is a good thing’

    Regarding climate change, there will at some point in time be an event which means that the inevitability of climate change can no longer be denied, whilst revealing that it is global financial interests that have prevented us addressing this issue. What will that event be, and when? I do not know, but that it might happen seems to be inevitable. Then, this power relationship might need to change.

    There will come a time when Climate change is revealed to have been nonsense and those peddling it so assiduously could end up dangling from ropes. I am looking forward to, and acquiring popcorn in anticipation of, such an event.

    So, too, and perhaps most likely in the short term, is the chance of a major financial crisis changing this relationship. For all the attention given to supposed national debt, it is personal and corporate debt that is the real risk in the modern economy, and the expectations are that both will grow considerably in the future. Finance does, after all, want to increase the wealth of the wealthy and the biggest asset they now have is the debt owed to them by those who need to borrow. So hooked are they on their asset accumulation that they will not know when to stop debt creation – and households and businesses cannot create money to repay those debts when they are stressed, unlike sovereign states. So, this bubble will burst just as surely as it did in 2008, and then, I hope, the questions will be asked about why it was created.

    You said money can be created without limit – haven’t you just contradicted everything you have written on MMT in the past five years in a single sentence. You have also inadvertently pointed out why Interest rates need to be reduced gradually if at all. Additionally you will find a lot of limits on sovereign states to create debt as well if demand dries up, exposing MMT as the dangerous nonsense it is

    It is easy to be fatalistic about the rise of the power of finance. I also accept that, at present, it is undoubtedly winning this battle. Without a tipping point event change is also unlikely to happen. But I think a tipping point event is likely.

    In fairness I would not disagree with this point. The future is not set in stone and evil is eternal, as Murphy’s output proves.

    Of those, I note, which is most likely? In order, a crash, a major climate event, a rejection of the current economic model by younger generations who will make its operation impossible, and war. None of them is attractive as all involve risk. But that risk is being created by the subjugation of the world to the power of debt-driven finance, from which many already see no escape.

    There will be stress, but change will happen.

    Let’s hope so – a change which results in the end of left wing ideology and the closing down of its generators will be one I welcome.

  7. Ah, the Town and Country Planning Act 1947.

    Another gift from Attlee, along with the policy of dumping lowlife scum into every pleasant part of this green land by building “council houses” so ugly they make your eyes bleed and filling them with cunts.

    Oh, sorry, “homes for heroes”.

    Which was worse? Attlee or Blair?

  8. Chernyy Drakon, Boganboy,
    We just had Vice Presidential Candidate Vance address that. He was interviewed by some media spokeshole who asked, since illegal aliens make up much of house building industry, how will we build houses if we deport them. Vance told her that a large part of the housing crisis was that 25 million illegals were here filling houses. He then pointed out that somehow we managed to build houses before those 25 million showed up. He also noticed that we had 5 million working age men who had dropped out of the work force because illegals were undercutting their wages. She immediately changed the subject to abortion.

  9. Bloke in North Dorset

    MG,

    Vance could have also pointed to Operation Wetback as explained in this nice takedown of Krugman and his claims that deportations will cause a crash. You’ll have to follow the link to see the FRED chart.:

    There is simply no need to go all the way back to 1919 and cross the Atlantic Ocean to find a suitable comparison for the economic impact of mass deportation; we have an historic example from far more recently and in the United States itself. In fact, one need not analogize at all, as the example was itself a mass deportation of Latin American migrants. During the Eisenhower administration, more than 1.3 million undocumented laborers – about one percent of the US population at the time – were deported from the US as part of what was known as Operation Wetback. One need not agree with the process or the idea of that 1955 policy to see it as a direct analog to what the Trump campaign is proposing. It was 1) a mass deportation of 2) illegal Latin American laborers carried out in 3) the United States by 4) a Republican administration. Clearly, this is far more comparable to the Trump plan than was a literal world war. So why doesn’t Krugman use this instead? The answer lies in the chart below.

    As you can see, the chart, taken directly from the Federal Reserve dataset – the gold standard of American economic research, something Krugman surely knows – shows an increase of 17% in GDP per capita over the decade from 1951 to 1961. Smack dab in the middle of that period was the largest mass deportation in American history, something that, according to Krugman, should have caused severe economic problems. Instead of a major decline in economic productivity and national wealth, we saw a significant rise. The deportation years of 1955 and 1956 saw an increase themselves, with only a few slight downturns after that. If one is trying to extrapolate from history in a neutral manner, he would have to contend with this direct contradictory evidence and either find a reason that it is wrong or alter his opinions to fit the facts. Krugman is not trying to be a neutral expert, but a partisan hack. And he is succeeding.

    https://rationalpolicy.com/2024/10/14/the-suicide-of-expertise/

  10. @Mohave Greenie – “He also noticed that we had 5 million working age men who had dropped out of the work force because illegals were undercutting their wages”

    Another example of the weird thinking from some people. We have two groups of people: one desperately want to work and get ahead, and another are reluctant and would prefer not to work. So for some reason we must prevent the ones who want to work from working, while forcing work upon the ones who don’t want to. Where does this bizarre reasoning some from?

  11. @Charles

    Another example of the weird thinking from some people. We have two groups of people: one desperately want to work and get ahead, and another are reluctant and would prefer not to work. So for some reason we must prevent the ones who want to work from working, while forcing work upon the ones who don’t want to. Where does this bizarre reasoning some from?

    Your premise is that the group of people who are not working are not working because they’re ‘reluctant’ to.

    I’m sure this is true of some, but I suspect many want to work but can’t because they are being undercut by the group of people who are desperate to work and prepared to live ten to a room in a slum.

    Building firms are just not hiring people at $30 per hour when they can get others for $10 (or whatever).

    Sure, it’s illegal – is the government enforcing the law? No.

    The second group of people shouldn’t be in the country. Removing them will bring the first group back into play because employers will have no choice.

    It’s not bizarre for the American system to put Americans ahead of non Americans.

  12. @Interested – “Your premise is that the group of people who are not working are not working because they’re ‘reluctant’ to.”

    Well, I don’t know them personally, but when there is mention of people on long-term benefits, one of the common solutions proposed is to cut the benefits, suggesting they are indeed reluctant.

    – ” I suspect many want to work but can’t because they are being undercut”

    That’s not a “can’t” – it’s a “won’t”.

  13. What we need to cut on benefits isn’t the level but the duration. It’s meant to be a safety net, not a lifestyle choice.

    With that change, we could actually make the total payments higher (the level linked to NI contributions).

    Yes, there will always be sob cases where after 6 months they still don’t have a job, but that’s where the generous Leftist can come in to save the day. Instead of crowdfunding fox murdering lawfarers they can use that money to support a 17 year transman old with a muti-coloured sprog zoo.

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