Economics

Single parents bear the brunt of the rental crisis in regional Victoria

Only the one income in a household makes renting more difficult. Who would have thought it, eh?

As a result, foreign aid spending is forecasted to drop from £15.3 billion, or 0.58 per cent of GNI, in 2023 to £13.6 billion, or 0.50 per cent of GNI, in 2024. That is a fall of £1.7 billion. The exact figure depends on the size of the economy this year.

Poverty in Argentina soars to over 50% as Milei’s austerity measures hit hard
Far-right president has been battling inflation by imposing steep cuts in spending, resulting in widespread poverty

Err, no.

Yes, spending has been liimited, cut even. That poverty rate waws already well over 40% before he started (as far as I can see Argentina uses an absolute. not relative, poverty level). But the poverty rate is not being caused by the poor getting less from government. Again as far as I can see (the usual language barriers here) the incomes of the already poor are the one thing being protected. It’s that those who were just above it before are just below it now. And that’s because inflation is moderating – not wholly gone yet – while pay rises aren;t keeping up with that moderating inflation.

That is, contrary to that impression being given it’s not, in fact, cuts to the welfare side of the state that are causing the rise in poverty.

We might be tempted to dismiss these as isolated cases. But a recent KPMG survey found that 83% of CEOs expected a full return to the office within three years. Such a finding raises serious questions, not so much about remote work but about whether CEOs deserve the power they currently hold and the pay they currently receive.

Many of the factors contributing to corporate success or failure, such as interest and exchange rates, booms and recessions, and changes in consumer tastes are outside the control of CEOs. And the success or failure of technical innovations is, to a large extent, a matter of chance.

By contrast, the organisation of work within the corporation is something over which CEOs have a lot of control. The case of remote work shows that the CEO class as a whole failed to pick up an innovation yielding massive benefits before it was forced on them by the pandemic, and have continued to resist and resent it ever since.

Even, a masterpiece of bad reasoning.

CEOs should have known about the benefits of WFH, didn’t, therefore they are bad CEOs and overturn the heirarchy. Further, because they’re against WFH and I, an academic economist, think this, therefore they are bad CEOs and overturn the heirarchy.

The real concern driving CEO resistance is the fact remote work involves a previously unthinkable change in the way productive activity is structured and organised. If workers can do without the physical presence of managers, perhaps they don’t need managers at all, at least in the way they currently operate. The eagerness of CEOs and other senior managers to wish these changes away suggests that, at some level, they realise this.

Except, nowhere is any proof given of that necessary proof – that productivity has risen. That is, the CEOs could in fact be right – there is no such rise, maybe even a fall. Which makes the CEOs correct and Professor Quiggin, well, somewhat jumping the horse.

Sir Keir told party delegates in Liverpool: “Now don’t get me wrong – markets are dynamic. Competition is a vital life force in our economy. This is a Labour Party proud to say that. We work hand-in-hand with business.

“But markets don’t give you control – that is almost literally their point. So if you want a country with more control, if you want the great forces that affect your community to be better managed – whether that’s migration, climate change, law and order, or security at work – then that does need more decisive government, and that is a Labour Government.

“Taking back control is a Labour argument.”

Sure, control etc. But the pro-market argument is that non-market methods – for many to most things, but not all – which lead to that control produce worse, not better, results. The energy system would be better – cheaper – with less government control than we currently have as one example.

We don’t, that is, want more control because the outcome of more control is worse.

The paper has also since been joined by eight economists, mostly from academia and the public sector, who have written a letter arguing the Chancellor should tear up fiscal rules that vow to get national debt falling as a share of GDP in five years’ time.

“A more responsible approach, which better reflects the significant long-term benefits of increased public investment, will require changes to our fiscal rules and to the mandate for the Office for Budget Responsibility,” said the letter, signed by luminaries including Lord O’ Donnell, the former cabinet secretary, Mariana Mazzucato, professor at University College London, and Simon Wren-Lewis, professor at the University of Oxford.

Who would ever imagine that lot arguing for more govt spending funded by borrowing?

The analysis, for the European Trade Union Institute, shows that, contrary to what the far right has us believe – and what is increasingly received wisdom – its voting patterns on proposed EU directives do not indicate a pro-worker stance on socioeconomic issues, let alone a leftwing one. Quite the contrary: on virtually all eight issues we examined, the far – right’s voting behaviour suggests a stance that is indifferent, if not outright hostile, to workers’ rights. One striking example is the clear rejection of pay transparency and an opposition to an EU directive on adequate minimum wages, mainly among members of the ID group.

We are lefties. We define what is a pro-working laddie policy. People not on our lefty side do not vote as we think they should on economic policy. Therefore those not on our lefty side are not on the side of the working class.

That, you know, lefty economic policy might be shit for the working class doesn’t get a look in here.

“Smiles were made for sales,” a room full of women were told in one bizarre training session. The only reason I stuck it out was because it was better paid than other retail jobs and completely flexible. Everyone I worked with (all women) felt the same.

So I empathise with the thousands of shop floor staff who joined retail for perks such as flexibility but are now fed up with being underpaid and undervalued.

Job that’s better than others, provides something you value other than money – that flexibility – and yet it’s underpaid?

Err, no?

There’s technically nothing stopping female store workers from applying for a better-paid warehouse job. But in reality it’s not that easy.

Aside from the skills being very different, the draw of a shop floor job is flexibility and location – attracting carers, students and working parents who want to work part-time and close to home.

Flexibility and location is why I put up with working in a shop that told me “smiles were made for sales”, many years before I could begin to appreciate how vital a flexible job like that might be for a parent. That doesn’t justify poor pay.

Right about now is when we tell this bird to fuck off, isn’t it.

But it’s worse than that. Labour believes this stuff. Free marketeers may have won the battle in the Seventies and Eighties. But it has to be refought every generation, for capitalism runs up against prejudices embedded deep in our DNA.

Permanent employment for Dan, me, and all those who follow….

New levies – drawn up by Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, and Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary – will see North Sea oil and gas producers paying 78pc tax on profits from November. This is the highest rate of any UK sector.

Additionally, operators face being stripped of vital tax allowances, which let companies subtract the cost of the huge investments needed to find new oil and gas from the tax paid on profits.

So they’re to withdraw full expensing at the same time they up the profit tax rate. As a result:

A report from industry trade body Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) said plans to further increase the windfall tax on oil and gas profits and scrap tax breaks would virtually halt all further investment into the North Sea.

The changes will cause “a reduction in capital investment from £14bn to £2.3bn from 2025 to 2029”. This would mean “a reduction of £13bn in the total economic value of the sector from 2025 to 2029,” OEUK said in its report.

So the Laffer Curve exists then. It’s possible to have tax rates so high that they reduce revenue over time. Brown, G, did this back a couple of decades too. Some people never do learn lessons, do they?

After a washout summer, with stubbornly high interest rates taking their toll and the spectre of tax rises on the horizon, one might expect people to be tightening their belts as the gloom sets in.

Not so, according to Barclaycard. The public has in fact upped spending on small luxuries, such as pastries and cosmetics, in what the card provider has dubbed the “sweet treat economy”.

No, not the sweet treat economy. It’s the Lippy Effect:

The lipstick effect is the theory that when facing an economic crisis consumers will be more willing to buy less costly luxury goods.[1] Instead of buying expensive purses and fur coats, for example, people will buy expensive cosmetics, such as high-end brands of lipstick.[2] The underlying assumption is that a certain portion of consumers will still buy luxury goods even during a bad economy. When consumer trust in the economy is dwindling, consumers will buy goods that have less impact on their available funds.

Everybody likes a little treat. When the treats are a £10/£30 lipstick, not a new purse then we’ve a shit economy. So, Barclaycard hsa just given us a leading recession indicator.

Not so leading, in the sense that if people are already doing this then the recession is already here, but leading in that it’s before other economic indicators.

Well, mebbe, of course. We never know how much something like this is real and how much is something cooked up by Barclaycard’s PR department to get a bit of coverage….

Canada has headed into an unprecedented lockout at its major rail companies – an action that could grind sectors of the economy to a halt amid complaints from workers over worsening job conditions.

Canadian National Rail (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) began lockouts of nearly 9,000 workers on Thursday morning after tense negotiations failed to produce a deal.

Train drivers were offered a 14 per cent pay rise over three years on Wednesday night in an effort to bring an end to their crippling strikes.

Louise Haigh, the Transport Secretary, announced the above inflation increase which will see the average driver’s salary rise from £60,000 to just shy of £70,000.

People gaining economic power through combination, thereby being able to charge everyone else economic rents.

Outta be illegal of course.

So Google’s a monopolist, so are Amazon and all the rest. Well, mebbe. But then we get this:

Beyond individual policies, the Democratic party also has the chance to attempt something grander: resurrecting the zealous monopoly-busting spirit of its New Deal and Great Society heyday. That means sidelining the “golf-buddy Democrats”, to borrow a phrase from the constitutional lawyer Zephyr Teachout, once and for all. By returning the party’s central constituency to the actual producers of goods, Democrats can pursue a full agenda of antitrust reforms, from hiking fees for big mergers to forcing companies to divest from lines of business that conflict with each other.

Monopolies are good for the producers of goods. It’s consumers who get screwed by them. So, she’s justifying antimonopoly actions as being worthwhile because they’re good for the producers of goods. This is to be an absolute fucking moron.

However, there is less excitement in the air now. Self-scanners are everywhere, accounting for roughly 80pc of sales in a typical supermarket, yet nobody seems to love them.

As customers grow frustrated and shoplifters fill their boots, bosses of grocery giants are finally asking themselves the question customers are asked at self-checkout kiosks every day. Do you wish to continue?

Not really, as it turns out. Having ruthlessly replaced cashier staff with self-checkout terminals to speed up purchases and save on wages, boardrooms now want the humans back.

Economics is about the margin. Economics is about the margin.

Booths is scrapping self-checkoout entirely. The M&S at Bristol Airport has only self-checkout. In between we’ve varyig different levels ofhuman aided tills and self-checkout. The robots might not be expnding, that’s true, but they’re also not all – all, given Booths – being scrapped either.

You know, markets. Try this, see if it works, if it does, do some morre, if that doesn’t then a step back and so on.

This is the usual idiocy of business coverage. The journo tries to shoehorn in an all or nothing idea. When the correct answer is near always some but how much?

The US is at real risk of recession – and it’s a disaster for Kamala Harris
The declining health of America’s economy threatens to upend the presidential election

Weeellll…..

If the US economy is just now about to enter a recession then no, that’s not really a danger. No one votes either way because the beancounters announce a recession. It’s because they or a mate got laid off, or takings are down, or sales are harder or – personal experience. And if it’s all just starting now then 3 months isn’t really long enough for opinions about how good or bad the economy is to change much. Maybe.

On the other hand if we’re saying that the economic statistics are already showing recession then that means the slowdown started some months back. Which means that it is a problem.

So, when did the recession start is that political q.

Verity Davidge, director of policy at Make UK, said: “There is no getting away from the fact that it’s deeply disappointing to see the UK drop out of the world’s top ten manufacturing nations for the first time. However, this isn’t a reflection of any decline in UK industry but of specific factors and trends that are redrawing the contours of the global economy.”

It’s not that manufacturing is declining in the UK. Output is still within a few percentage points of all time highs. Double what it was when Maggie came to power.

It’s that it’s growing more elsewhere. Which is fine – as other places get rich for the first time in history then they’ll be manufacturing more. Shrug.

The programme features a 90 per cent tax rate on annual income of over €400,000, a reduction in the retirement age from 64 to 60, a block on the price of “essential goods”, a 14 per cent increase in the minimum wage and spending commitments of at least €150 billion over three years.

I say do it, good ‘n’ ‘ard. After all, it will be only Frenchies who are harmed in the proof that lefty ecnoomic ignorance doesn’t work.

Leading House Democrat Adam Smith calls on Biden to end presidential bid

Someone getting on for 300 years old says an 81 year old is past it?

Arun Advani, associate professor at the University of Warwick, warned that increasing the levy could make Britain’s economy less dynamic by discouraging business owners from selling.

He said: “The vast majority of gains are coming from private business assets. The downside of raising rates is that you encourage people to either leave and liquidate or hold until death, even when they don’t really want the business anymore, to get the gains wiped out.

“By encouraging people to hold until death, even when they might want to sell, raising rates would be bad for business dynamism.”

That’s the tosser who wants the “one off” 1% wealth tax for 5 years.