“What do we want?!” Well we’re not sure yet but…

Even for George Monbiot this is bizarre:

The government should adopt the plan proposed by the Green Fiscal Commission: by 2020 levies on damage to the environment should amount to 20% of the total tax take, with a commensurate reduction in the income tax and national insurance paid by people with low earnings

I don’t know what % of total tax take ‘levies on damage to the environment’ currently accounts for but assuming it’s considerably less what exactly does George propose the government does to achieve that target? You can only really encourage more reckless environmental behaviour by industry or reduce the overall tax take, neither of which, I assume Monboit supports.

This, by the way, is in the context of an article whose main purpose is to better articulate the demands of the anti-cuts movement ahead of a planned TUC march on the 26th of this month. I guess he has a few weeks left….

Eh..?

Mervyn King has some alarming views for a man soon to be responsible for banking regulation. On bonuses:

Why do banks in general want to pay bonuses? It’s because they live in a ‘too big to fail’ world in which the state will bail them out on the downside.

I know lots of people are cynical about the more common explanation – to retain talent – but to pretend it doesn’t exist seems bizarre. Financial institutions have always paid bonuses and have done so regardless of the regulatory regime they operate under. The notion that their existence depends entirely on the safety net of state intervention is batty – not least because of the bonuses paid (and still being paid) by banks that didn’t take a penny of public money. If there was a more successful business model, one that involved more modest remuneration at the top but equally successful returns elsewhere wouldn’t everyone be rushing to adopt it?

Then on banks relationships with their customers:

He also drew a contrast between manufacturing companies, which largely care about their workforces, customers and products, and the banks. “There’s a different attitude towards customers. Small and medium firms really notice this: they miss the people they know,” he said.

I guess the facetious response is that if you’re in a position to ‘miss’ or ‘know’ your customer base then yes, of course you’ll have a different attitude to customers. The implication that banks ‘don’t care’ about their customers makes no sense since those customers ultimately fund & support the bonues & profits the banks are criticised for.

Speaking up for Randy Newman…

Bit of a strange topic to lure me back to the world of blogging after many months but I had to respond to David Hajdu’s less than rousing defence of Randy Newman in the New Republic. Although Hajdu invokes Newman’s own ironic defence of George Bush to point out his (Newman’s) Oscar-winning song isn’t that bad he still has a good old pop himself:

The music is a generic pastiche of clichés from the pop charts of Newman’s apprenticeship in the early ’60s, and the words seem lifted from one of those recent-vintage Hallmark cards that dispense with faux poetry for flat banalities

That’s broadly true but from recollection the same charge could be reconciled at most of the Oscar nominated soundtrack work Newman’s done over the last 20 years (which Hajdu seems to rate better). Regardless I think he’s being unnecessarily highbrow and should lighten up and allow Newman his easier paycheck every now & then. As he points out:

Starting in the late ’60s with “Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear,” Newman has drawn from the traditions of Tin Pan Alley and nineteenth-century American music, as well the pop of his own generation, to build a body of mature, multi-layered, often drolly comic and sometimes harrowing songs

The Daily Mail Song…

Every chance you’ve seen it already but this was sent to me today and I thought it worth sharing….

The Welfare Debate…

Something that’s been niggling at the back of my mind was clarified last night watching Newsnight. Kirsty Wark chaired a discussion with Lord Freud*, Welfare Reform Minister, and a panel of welfare recipients where each recipient cited a likely problem based on what’s known so far about the governments plans and challenged Lord Freud to defend it. Kirsty herself opened the segment by asking him if the 3year withdrawal of benefit sanction would apply to people with children.

Is that a constructive way to judge the likely impact of these proposals? Surely I could’ve seated a Labour Minister in a chair facing a panel of welfare recipients 9 months ago and found similar conundrums and apparent injustice? That’s the very nature of the subject. It’s surely impossible to design a welfare system entirely devoid of any injustice. There will always be people who’s personal circmstance puts them at the margin of one rule or just beyond another, that’s not a creation of this government.

There’s an issue of scale here and I accept that should government proposals massively increase injustice then they should be challenged but that’s not necessarily what’s happening here. Last night’s debate made this point explicit by seating real, individual people opposite the minister and absurdly asking him to account for theoretical outcomes from policies yet to be written and implemented many years hence.

Votes for prisoners…

I don’t understand the strength of reaction to the news that convicted prisoners may soon be given the vote. I understand the anger about a European court imposing a decision that has no democratic legitimacy in the UK (although that’s hardly a first) and I understand the general contempt & revulsion felt towards many of the likely beneficiaries. But the strength of reaction (see here, here & here) just seems OTT to me.

The main argument of those opposed seems pretty straightforward; convicted prisoners have, in some way, infringed the civil / human rights of their victims so there’s legitimacy in infringing theirs as part of their punishment. Fair enough but that doesn’t resolve the issue – we don’t consider it OK to torture prisoners or treat them inhumanely, we deprive them of their liberty but acknowledge a boundary beyond which we shouldn’t step no matter what the crime. Some people just believe the right to vote lies beyond that boundary, others don’t.

Likewise with the habit of further vilifying prisoners themselves and stoking up antipathy towards them – an understandable impulse but no substitute for a reasoned or coherent objection. We’re constantly reminded that this ruling means giving a vote to ‘murderers & paedophiles’ with the ridiculous implication that these people are organised activists intent on repealing the laws that put them inside. The ruling also applies to car thiefs and tax fraudsters but that doesn’t push the right emotional buttons so we don’t hear it very often.

Does the thought of a convicted paedophile going into a voting booth and casting his vote repulse me? Yes, it probably does – but so does the thought of him sitting down to a bowl of cornflakes or reading a book, watching Newsnight or reading a newspaper – all of which he can do in prison. The revulsion is rooted in the person and the crime they committed, not the activity undertaken. It’s an instinctive & emotional reaction, not a reasoned one.

As I said at the top this is about the strength of reaction rather than the issue at hand. I don’t think the UK government should feel any particular shame about denying prisoners the vote nor does it ‘turn my stomach’ to think we might have to at some point in the future. I just wish there was a little more reason and detachment in the whole debate.

Game changer…?

We’re awash with hyperbole about how significant today’s spending cuts will be – “once in a generation”, “fundamental impact to society”, “the biggest in decades” etc. Fear is very much the dominant mood.

So let me share a few naive hopes I have for today. Not about the detail of the CSR but about what it might mean for how we discuss government and public spending.

1. Our government spends a tremendous amount of money and the last government increased that expenditure by a huge amount. Contrary to the claims of tribalists on the right that increase wasn’t wholly reckless or wasteful; much of it was long overdue and sorely needed investment in our public services and at the time the tax revenues were there to support it. But the claims of tribalists on the left are equally fallacious – today’s cuts will take public spending back to the levels seen 3/4 years ago, not the 1970s or 1930s, not the dark ages. At the end of this Parliament public spending will have increased in cash terms by £41bn. That’s a real terms cut so yes, people will lose their jobs, services will be cut or withdrawn but please, let’s keep some perspective and reject the ‘Armageddon’ narrative the government’s opponents are pushing.
2. Our welfare system makes payments to people and families among the top 3% wealthiest in the country as well as those who are homeless and don’t know where the next meal is coming from. Can anyone, anywhere offer a credible defence to that span of welfare support? So yes, we should be making significant cuts to welfare spending even if there was no pressing deficit to deal with. By all means each cuts needs to be judged on its merits and we might see some today that are unfair – but let’s at least acknowledge there’s scope to act and not pretend that ‘cutting welfare’ is an absolute wrong.
3. It shouldn’t be a given that everything the state does is either necessary or best done by them but unfortunately today’s drama will unfold against just that premise. In many, many obvious cases it is – schooling, healthcare, policing etc. – but not so in others. Unlike the US we’re still remarkably deferential towards our political class – if they say something needs doing and they’re going to do it we tend to acquiesce and then at most grumble about how it’s done. I’d like to see a culture more analogous to the US where the hurdles government has to clear to spend public money are far higher. Our politicians should be held to account just as rigorously when they increase spending as when they propose to cut it.

Like I say, perhaps that’s all a bit naive but I can dream.

Stale metaphors wanted…

How many different metaphors have been used to explain the deficit problem and competing ways to address it?

The ‘deficit like a credit-card’ one is widespread and been used & abused by Keynesians and monetarists alike. A variant on that casts the national economy like that of a household where incomings & outgoings are mismatched – I think Mrs Thatcher evoked that in her 1979 election campaign but perhaps someone can confirm. And yesterday David Blanchflower introduced a new one (to me anyway) in the form of imminent national invasion – apparently tomorrow George Osborne is about to surrender.

Any more I’ve missed?

Austerity for dummies…

The video below, brought to my attention by the Institute of New Economic Thinking and feauring Mark Blyth from Brown University in Rhode Island is very, very good and deserves a wide audience.

I say it’s very good not because it’s without flaw – it’s not – nor because I agree with every word – I don’t – but because it takes an idea which everyone thinks is simple and easily understood and explains why it’s neither. That’s not an easy think to do and this video does it with more than a little charm.

I’d like to see a similarly straightforward explanation of the counter-case but I haven’t the talent nor the tools to make one. If anyone is aware of one please let me know….

Rest over, anybody there…?

I didn’t make a conscious decision to take a rest from blogging but a number of things, particularly the day job, got in the way. Similarly a number of things are now drawing me back – the US midterms, the CSR next week to name a couple – so hopefully back to regular blogging soon….