Economics

You can’t argue with Stevenson’s statements that living standards are falling and people are struggling to get by, nor can you doubt the sincerity of his beliefs. Undeniably, wealth is concentrated in the hands of the super-rich, and home ownership is becoming a pipe dream in many parts of the country.

Living standards are not falling, welath concentration is roughly as it has been these past few decades, house prices are moderating, not rising.

It’s not just Gazza’s plans, it’s his knowledge of reality that’s a problem.

Trump has run out of cards to play in the midterm elections, which is why he’s now talking about the “communist menace”.

He can’t talk about the economy because prices continue to rise faster than wages, which means most Americans are getting poorer.

That’s Robert Reich, that is.

Real wages (OK, median weekly earnings) fell 10% in hte first two years of the Biden admin and have risen, wgat, 5% since then?

So, wages are doing better than inflation.

Bobby Reich, always so accurate in his economics, eh?

Of course, this is written from the press release, the full report is not yet published. But you would hope that the engineers can do better than this:

Its report found that almost half of disabled professionals have turned down job opportunities because of transport issues, leaving about 2.8 million people effectively locked out of the workforce, in part because of transport barriers.

Based on the Office for National Statistics’ estimate of an average worker’s annual contribution to economic output of about £63,000, IMechE said helping all of them into a job could add £176.4bn a year to the national economy.

They’ve gone from “a job” to “any job” in one single leap. Their estimate is based upon everyone who has not taken a job not having taken any job.

As I say, the report’s not up yet. So that’ll just have to stand as the analysis – it’s fuckin’ awful analysis there by the engineers.

Andy Burnham promised to ease the cost of living if he becomes prime minister in his first interview since returning to parliament.

The Makerfield MP told LBC that if he became prime minister later this month, as expected, he would look at reducing business rates for some high street businesses,

Rates are incident upon landlords. Reduce them and rents go up. Why does Our Andy want to benefit landlords?

Broadly speaking, the right of the party sees the left as too hopeful about how much can be done to make Britain more equal, while the left sees the right as not hopeful enough.

The one single measure – equaliddee – does rather miss the joy and complexity of life, no? Absolute standards of living say? Liberty? Simple joy itsef?

Millennials – those born between the early 1980s and mid-1990s – are the first generation not to have enjoyed higher disposable incomes than previous generations, according to the thinktank. The researchers added that this setback was partly driven by millennials’ careers kicking off at around the time of the 2008 financial crisis, and the long stagnation in real wage growth that has taken place ever since.

However, a preview of a report due on Thursday show the Resolution Foundation’s latest numbers suggest that real weekly pay at age 24 of those born in the late 1990s was 12% higher than for cohorts born in the late 1980s.

At the age of 24, those born in the early 2000s are also earning more than any other generation going back to those born in the 1950s, according to the study.

I don’t in fact, believe the numbers anyway. The vast expansion in higher education hits exactly these groups – so, of course, earning is delayed.

But, if we go along an accept the usual explanation. Turns ouit it’s not in fact the death throes of late stage capitalism, it’s the one time effects of one of those little burps in capitalism….

Willy Hutton asks the question:

So, is Andy Burnham’s credo of business-friendly socialism a contradiction in terms –

No. What it is is fascism.

Note this is different from spiffy uniforms and invading Poland. The fascist economy was one in which capitalists, business, were nominally independent as long as they did what government told it. Which is what Willy and Andy are proposing here.

So, it’s fascism.

Cuba, tropical island, famously fertile soil, why’re there food shortages? Even peasant farming should be able to get somewhere, right?

And sure, they do now allow the peasant plots. Which do have much better yields than the state farms. They use a lot of “agroecological” techniques which is, I think, the modern code word for medieval peasantry methods. But they’re not growing wheat, they’re growing yams, yucca, beans, light veggies and citrus. Things where the peasant farmer can indeed produce a considerable surplus even using those medieval techniques, no fertiliser – other than night soil – etc.

So I was still not quite getting why horrendous food shortages. They’ve got those peasant plots, peasants can sell in free markets, should all work out even if there’s going to be a shortage of beefsteak on such a basis.

Ah. You’ve got sell 80% of your crop to the state at state determined prices. Yea, even if you’re farming half an acre with a hoe and machete. And guess how efficient the state is at coming to pick up your crop, let alone take a guess at the prices the state offers……

Sure, I know, pretty silly thing to thing about but there the thought arrived as I was hacking at weeds in my own garden in fact. Yes, I’m getting, for the very first time in my life, a real and direct idea of how much physical effort goes into hand farming. I’m not being stupid enough to actually try to feed myself – a few chili peppers just to show I can notwithstanding. And the muttering I’m doing to myself is, well, if you know what you’re doing (!) then yes, you really can feed yourself and household off a few acres. With a substantial surplus to sell too. It’s not going to be grand riches, by any means, but there wouldn’t be a shortage of plant based food calories.

A general shortage of basic plant – and perhaps eggs, say – calories has to be about something else therefore. And there I found it – the 80% confiscation (because their prices are confiscatory) by the State. The peasants are growing enough to feed their families, which no doubt disappears into bellies before the state calculation of yield, then there’s only a bit on top.

And that, I assume – or even would insist – is why beaucoup de fertile land on a tropical island – citrus is damn near a weed in such places, ‘nananananas too – with private plots allowed still has basic food shortages. Because, effectively, the state steals 80% of what the farmers don’t simply stuff into their own bellies.

It should even be possible to test this. Check the diets of the peasant farmers. Really test them – and find out whether they’re living off the declared crops that the state takes 80% of or there’s a bit of leakage before that calculation.

The thing that’s always got me about the Cuban variety of socialism is just how drearily shite it is. Yes, yes, gross political repression, the early days most certainly saw more than a few bourgeois up against the wall and so on. But over the decades it all just seems to be so, well, shite. I mean, seriously,. food shortages on a tropical island with a surplus of fertile land? How fucking shite do you have to be to achieve that?

Despite what the UK right will tell you, appeasing bond markets has actually led to instability
Andy Beckett

Usual idiocies. But lefty plans will be so lovely and so why are bond markets nasty to us? Because you want to do it with the bond markets’ money. If you went off and did all that lovely by taxing then the bond markets wouldn’t give a shit. Shrug.

The inequality caused by technological innovation is not a given.

Technological innovation reduces inequality, not produces it.

Half the species gets free telecoms from Zucks. Telecoms inequality is thereby reduced. Amazon has knocked 2 to 4% off the US price level. Given that consumption is income constrained at the bottom but not at the top this reduces consumption inequality, not increases it. That first great technologiocal change, spinning, weaving and knitting with machines meant stockings went for being for queens to something the factory girl had a change of. Stocking inequality fell.

Technological change *reduces* inequality, not increases it.

Sting, who wrote the music for the show and will star in a run at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in September, said the closure of the shipyards began an era when the north of England was failed by successive governments.

“Britain’s wealth was created in the coalfields and the steel towns and the mill towns and the shipyards,” he said. “All of those skill sets were thrown on the scrapheap … for Thatcher’s dream of a service economy.”

Manufacturing output is, of course, up since then. Also, every rich country lost its coal, steel and shipbuilding, so it wasn’t Maggie there either.

But, you know, the bass player, eh?

Ministers should press ahead with a ban on zero-hours contracts, campaigners say, despite claims by business leaders that it would deter hiring and lock more young people out of the labour market.

The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) and the union umbrella organisation the TUC were among eight signatories to a letter to the department of business and trade calling on the government to “ignore the noise” from businesses, which want zero-hours contracts to remain.

I mean, really? Why would anyone listen to actual businesses about how a change in hte law would affect hiring by actually businesses? Pfft, ludicrous, eh?

The billionaires of today are unusually aggressive in their hoarding of cultural and technological influence, according to Mordecai Kurz, a Stanford economist whose research connects monopoly power with political and economic inequality.

It’s the buzzword du jour, hoarding is. And, of course, if we take more of their money off them then they’ll have less of this technological influence to hoard, right?

an extreme version of a pattern that has repeated itself since industrialization: technological power concentrating in the hands of a few, which is eroding democracy.

Oh, and that appeal to the ultimate virtue, democracy. Got your buzzword bingo cards ready, Lads?

Tech giants use the force of their largely unregulated social media networks

Oh yes, so we should have censorship in order to preserve democracy.

“[Social meda] activity is profitable, and sometimes you generate activity by creating falsehoods, which are not good for democracy,”

We must control what is said in order to eliminate falsehoods.

“We want capitalism to support democracy. Capitalism has to become more humane. It has to be more regulated. And in democracy, we don’t leave anybody behind,” he said.

Heavily regulated, publicly contrrolled, capitalism. Whjy is it all these people who insist we must fight fascism end up designing fascism all over again?

Homes with bigger gardens to be penalised with higher water bills
Water firms test tiered tariffs that charge more per unit as consumption rises

That a place as wet as England has problems with water supply is odd, obviously. That system of never allowing any reservoirs etc. But yes, rising charges for water consumption, entirely sensible. Exactly what we have here. Can be painful if a pipe bursts or even if a toilet cistern keeps running. But then that’s part of the point – get ‘er fixed.

Part of the worry is that if Starmer is forced out of Downing Street, his possible replacements may seek to increase public spending and loosen the government’s fiscal rules.

Well, quite. Someone, somewhere, might have been listening to Spud. And then what will happen with inflation?

This is, in fact, fairly pathetic:

Their battered metal safes, filled with millions of Somali shillings, are closed and locked. The paper fortunes inside have suddenly become worthless. “It’s like we went bankrupt overnight,” says Jama.

Last month, fed up with greasy, ripped and aged banknotes, a handful of traders in Mogadishu decided they would no longer accept them. Soon businesses, shops and even bus drivers were following suit, and the decision quickly spread to regions outside the capital.

The impact on prices was immediate, pushing up everyday expenses such as groceries, medicines and public transport. A small bag of powdered milk, for example, more than doubled in price.

Amid global food price rises and Somalia’s ongoing drought, poor people are bearing the brunt of the effects of an economy that is becoming completely “dollarised”.

Of course, as soon as anyone started using something as evil as American dollars then it was the poor who got screwed.

That’s the way The Guardian’s going to play it at least. A simpler explanation dsoes present itself. The Somali shilling lost another 50% of its value and there was a collective decision to “fuck this shit”. A sensible one too, as those shillings seem to have lost even more of their value since, no?

I will admit it’s amusing The G using a currency trader as a source and also being sympathetic to them….

It’s not really in the spirit of capitalism for a thing to get more expensive after you’ve bought it; though anyone with a student loan will know that it’s very much in the spirit of late capitalism. EasyJet has been able to offer its guarantee because it’s 70% hedged, though only until September. (In other words, it’s made financial deals to lock in a price for 70% of its fuel needs.)

It’s those speculators losing money now fuel prices have moved. Isn;t that lovely? That financial speculation that Spud declares achieves nothing does, in fact, transfer risk from us mere consumers out here to hte rich bastard speculators who are actively seeking risk to speculate upon. Society is made better thereby.

‘Oi bruv, listen up innit, it’s ya boy Gazza Stevenson here, the one who made it big time back in the day. Yeah, I was that trader geezer, stackin’ mad P’s on the bond desk, livin’ the dream, flyin’ first class, birds everywhere, the full works…

But please bro, don’t even try it, yeah? I got rich but you never can do the same ‘cause I was a one-off, innit. Proper miracle, me. You lot? Nah. You’re stuck in the ends, scrapin’ by on zero-hour shifts, Universal Credit an’ dreams of a council flat upgrade. That’s just how it is now, bruv – the game’s rigged, the rich got all the ladders an’ you got the snakes. End of.

So what we gonna do about it? Tax the rich, that’s what! Hit ‘em where it hurts, take their yachts, their second gaffs in Marbella, their private jets – the lot. An’ while we’re at it, gimme some of that money too, yeah?

I mean, I’m one of the good ones now, ain’t I? I wrote the book, I do the talks, I’m on the telly tellin’ everyone how unfair it all is. But I still gotta eat, bruv. I still gotta keep the wolf from the door, keep the missus happy, keep the kids in private school so they don’t end up like you.

So bung us a tenner, or a grand, or whatever you can spare. Go on, means-test yourself, pay your bit. It’s for the greater good, innit. I’m tellin’ ya, if we don’t tax the rich proper – an’ by rich I mean anyone who’s got more than me right now – then you lot are proper screwed.

No hope, no future, just more Deliveroo gigs an’ Netflix on the electric that’s about to get cut off. But me? I’m the voice of the voiceless. I’m the one who escaped the matrix an’ came back to tell ya the door’s locked now…

So cough up, people. Donate to the cause. Subscribe to the channel. Buy the merch. Because we need to tax the rich… an’ I’m standin’ right ‘ere with me hand out, safe. You can’t make it like I did. I was special. You’re not. Simple as. Now gimme the money, bruv. For equality, yeah? For the kids. For the future. Please mate. Cheers Bro.’

Inequality is lower than commonly measured:

Councils are offering benefit claimants discounts on nights out, beauty parlours and beach huts under a spiralling “welfare culture” taking hold in Britain.
A Telegraph investigation has found Universal Credit and mental health benefits claimants can receive concessions for drinks at bars, massages and eyebrow treatments via local government schemes, with discounts for jobless claimants also extending to football matches, comedy clubs, cinemas, saunas and spas.
Concessions offered by councils or independent businesses even apply to white water rafting, rowing clubs, yoga classes and ice skating.
Local authorities are also providing benefit claimants discounts on weddings and at leisure centres, while taxpayers foot rising bills.

None of these bennies count as income. Therefore they are not counted when measuring how many people are living on incomes less than 60% of median. So, that relative poverty is over-measured.

How important this is is another matter but it’s definitely true.

It wants eVED to be the successor to fuel duty. But the numbers don’t add up. Pay-per-mile will raise £7bn a year by 2050-51, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). That’s less than a third of the current £24bn tax take earned from fuel duty.
It seems inevitable that a dramatic increase in eVED charges will be needed to make up the shortfall. What starts as 3p per mile could soon be 10p.

A chunk of current fuel duty is that Pigou Tax upon emissions. If no emissions are being made then that tax – and that tax revenue – should not exist. But here we’ve the politcos insisting that the same revenue must be raised even if there aren’t those emissions that should be brutally taxed.

BiS is quite right that this is a problem with Pigou Taxes. No, I don’t know what the solution is. Other than yes, taxing petrrol is better than giving MadEd a free hand…..