Bernie, Bernie, Bernie

First off, to be quite clear, I don't like Hillary Clinton.  I don't trust Hillary Clinton, and never have.  I see Hillary Clinton, and Bill Clinton as well for that matter, as the very representation of the right-wing corporate takeover of the Democratic Party*.  I fear the very idea of Hillary Clinton as president, though not nearly so much so as the multitude of maniacs running for the Republican nomination.  I am not pro-Hillary or in any way inherently anti-Bernie.  And other, than that with his particular support amongst younger progressives, I may skew slightly older, I am generally exactly in line demographically with the majority of his supporters, and ideologically, if anything, perhaps a little to his left.  I like Bernie Sanders.  I support most of his economic proposals.  But....


So...Bernie Sanders.  I mentioned him a few times last year, including my praise of a speech he gave at Liberty University, in which I mentioned again his continuing failure to break out of his largely white support-base, a subject I had discussed in one of my earlier mentions of his candidacy also.  When I wrote the latter, I certainly never expected Sanders to still be running so strongly in the race by now, days away from the Iowa Caucus, let alone seemingly with a shot at winning the early primaries, if not the nomination for the Democratic Party for the presidency.

A lot of time has passed since then, there's been a lot of discussion amongst the pundit-classes about Sanders, there have been a few** debates and townhalls between the five, then three*** candidates on the Democratic side, and Bernie even found time to give a major speech on so-called 'Democratic Socialism' (in which he continued his apparent complete confusion between mainstream Social Democratic policy, and the attainment of a purely Socialist society, with public ownership of the means of production by democratic methods).  So much time, and perhaps the reason I haven't felt compelled to add anything here is that...my opinion of Sanders hasn't changed a jot.

I'm a little bit more optimistic with the polls coming out that some element of Sanders' Occupy Wall Street-style rhetoric and progressive economic policies could have a long-term impact on policy and direction for the Democratic party, but I still think Clinton will win the nomination, and I still can't see Sanders becoming president, even if he were to clinch the nomination, despite Clinton's monetary advantage, establishment-connections, and early lead in super-delegates.  And that's despite what is happening with the Republican nomination, currently being contested primarily between a far-right bomb-throwing theocratic ideologue, and an apparent out-and-out fascist.

I've watched Sanders give the same speech, the same talking points over and over and over again.  Wall Street, corruption, the one percent, only developed nation without universal healthcare, free college, the middle class, hard working Americans, economic inequality, fairness, too much money in politics, political revolution...  I've heard the breathless praise from his supporters, be they on Twitter or in independent media.  I've watched the fucking debates, I've seen the man's style, I've seen the large (mostly white) crowds he attracts, and I've heard over and over again how I should 'feel the Bern.'

Except I don't.  Never liked the slogan, never felt it six months to a year back, when his candidacy seemed a harmless irrelevancy, and still not feeling it now.  I still see an angry old white guy shouting platitudes at the audience, an aged social warrior whose lifelong-rhetoric happens to now, in his mid-seventies, match the popular zeitgeist of the post-Great Recession era.  I don't see a great leader, I don't see a future president, I don't see any evidence of this political revolution he wants, no matter how much enthusiasm he may inspire amongst college-students.  I don't see, perhaps more importantly, any evolution, even having gone through the protests and conflicts with Black Lives Matter protesters, of Bernie Sanders from a walking OWS-parody into a serious general-election candidate for the presidency.

It's almost as if he still doesn't quite take it seriously, close as he's getting, as if like Carly Fiorina on the Republican side, he were really running for a VP slot, or like Ben Carson or Mike Huckabee, just wanting to sell a book.  Almost, but not quite.  I think he must genuinely believe there's going to a mass uprising of Americans any time now in support of this great progressive revolution he keeps going on about.  Any time now.  As if almost half the country's electorate weren't in thrall to the right-wing radicalism of Tea Party Republicans.  As if in denial about his continuing inability to make inroads in support amongst blacks, and other peoples of colour.  As if forgetting the fact that older voters tend to have famously high turnout, and younger college-age voters notoriously low turnout.

We had a presidential candidate running on a quite progressive series of promises (some of which he has managed to keep, some not) back in 2008, with the slogan of 'Hope and Change'.  An extraordinarily well-spoken and charismatic candidate, who united white progressives, members of the Democratic establishment, blacks and Hispanics, rich and poor, the LGBT community, the young & the older.  If Barack Obama hadn't been able to assemble the broad coalition of support he did, hadn't especially been able to achieve the historically high turnout amongst black voters, what are the chances he would have got near the presidency ?  Sanders isn't remotely the charismatic unifying figure Obama managed to be back in 2008, and a coalition of young college-age progressives and white progressives simply isn't going to cut it, whatever the pollsters may say.

The right in American politics is far more motivated, far angrier, historically more likely to turn out, and likely to represent a very solid potent political bloc, unless Donald Trump manages to somehow split the party.  The growing numbers who increasingly call themselves Independents (which would include myself as it happens) are harder to gauge, but I suspect that the majority of that growth is actually amongst Tea Partiers who eschew the label 'Republican', but would never ever ever vote for a Democrat.  As for the polling again, Donald Trump especially polls badly amongst self-identified Independents, but...people lie.  People lie about their politics all the times, especially to pollsters, and especially when it comes to matters such as race, which has become the most contentious element in the current Republican fearmongering rhetoric regarding various 'Others', such as Muslims, blacks, immigrants...

I want to believe that a President Donald Trump or Ted Cruz is a fantasy, but the longer I spend in the company of American politics, and the more I know of the American people, the less surprised, the less shocked I am when there is such amazing support for extreme right-wing demagogues.****  I really wouldn't rule out a maniac like Trump or Cruz getting elected, and, especially with a Republican Congress, and the likelihood to cement right-wing control of the Supreme Court for decades to come, the result of such a presidency would be utterly disastrous for the United States, and ultimately, the whole planet.  This upcoming election frankly scares the crap out of me, even as I want to believe that Sanders' policies, if not his actual candidacy have some chance in the future of the Democratic party.  Which I desperately do.

We're still for now in primary season, but Sanders needs to be defining himself more clearly on the likes of foreign policy.  As of this moment, after all this time, I haven't a clue what kind of president Sanders would be outside of economic justice, because it's...all...he...ever...fucking...talks about.  No matter what the question, what the context, always, always, always he pivots back to his comfort zone of talking about the 99% percent versus the 1%, as if incapable of talking about anything else.*****  I get it Bernie.  I agree.  You're talking to the converted here.  But Iran, Russia, Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Saudia Arabia, Turkey, China ?  The migrants ?  ISIS ?  And I'm not going to get started on Black Lives Matter and racial justice.  'Not my wheelhouse' as they say.******  The latter, not even a matter for pivoting in the near future, as GE nears, but a pivot he needed to have made months ago, given Hillary's lead amongst black and minority ethnic voters.

If Sanders is serious, truly truly serious about running for President, I'd love to see him show it.  You need black voters, Bernie, you need older voters, you need to be addressing people's concerns about foreign policy, including terrorism, need to counter Hillary's claims of superior experience with something more than 'judgement' of voting against the War in Iraq.  And you need to understand, in the United States at least, with generations of right-wing corporatist brainwashing, that saying you are going to raise peoples' taxes, but blah...blah...blah...better off in the long term isn't enough, that accusations of being a 'socialist' isn't something you can shrug off, especially as you don't seem to understand (or perhaps care) what the term even fucking means...You need to explain again and again and again, even as you try to build a case for yourself as something more than a one-trick pony, something more than a one-issue candidate.  You signed up for this shit, you brought this on yourself, and your work is cut out for you now.  This if fucking serious, and the consequences, if as the Democratic candidate, you fuck up, utterly dire for the whole world.  I was familiar with 'Occupy' Bernie's rhetoric a year ago, but you need to evolve to face the full scope of the challenges ahead of you and truly 'bring it' if you're serious about this.  I want to be convinced.  By all means, make me feel the Bern...*******



* I'm inclined to think that as for Hillary herself, she never ceased to be a Goldwater Republican (which would admittedly put her still to the left of the GOP today, so far rightwards has it slid, as Goldwater himself predicted), and merely pretended a political conversion for the sake of her marriage and her husband's political career.

** Thanks Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.  Not trying to rig the electoral process in favour of your bud. and presumptive front-runner...at...all...

*** Who are we kidding, this is a two-person race, and long has been.  Not fair, and largely a result of media-bias, but what can one do ?  Now, if only we could combine Clinton's tenacity and political acumen, with Bernie's principles, and O'Malley's personality and good looks...Damn, that would be a fearsome candidate indeed...

**** Yes, I could and would say much the same of many European countries.

***** Oh, and climate change.  We should deffo. do something about that.  Millions & millions of green jobs sprouting magically out of the ground.  A Yuuuge economic opportunity...

****** Fucking hate the expression, but seems to be the phrase du jour, at least in US culture.

******* All this said, who would I be supporting, if I were in the Iowa caucuses or New Hampshire primaries ?  Absolutely, it would be Bernie.  But I'm not the one that really needs convincing.  My support or lack thereof doesn't matter a whit.  As I said earlier, a coalition of young college-age progressives and white progressives simply isn't going to cut it.  A focus on economic inequality isn't going to do it either.  The brief half-hearted reaction to Black Lives Matter is the only time I've seen any willingness on behalf of Sanders' campaign to even try to expand beyond his core economic message.  It he wants to go all the way, it just isn't enough.




Update: Hoped to post this earlier, and almost seems inappropriate now (morning of 2-2-2016) when the result in Iowa is neck-and-neck with Hillary, but the video in question wasn't available when I checked previously.  There's much to praise about Sanders' perfomance in this interview for MSNBC, but Sanders' response to Hayes' question at 4'32 on foreign policy is a perfect example of what I was talking about.  Hayes provides Sanders an opportunity to answer the sceptics on his foreign policy credentials, and even hands him on a platter a specific topical subject: the current Saudi assault on Yemen.

Here, Sanders could have gone into detail on his opinion regarding, and proposals for dealing with that particular conflict, or any other that took his fancy.  Hell, all he really had to do was show an awareness of the situation, and he could have given us just about any generic politician-speak (oh, it's a terrible tragedy what's currently happening in Yemen...blah blah blah...complicated situation...blah blah blah diplomacy...blah blah talk with our enemies...blah blah maintaining relations with allies...blah blah).  Instead, he segues from telling us how serious an understanding of foreign policy is for any would-be president ('life and death stuff') to retreating yet again behind the defence of his 'judgement' compared to Hillary Clinton's on the vote to go to war in Iraq.

Chris Hayes is about as friendly an interviewer as could be imagined for Bernie here, and he handed Bernie a perfect opportunity to prove himself on foreign policy.  I'm sick of hearing about the Iraq War vote already.  What about Yemen ?  What about the South China Sea ?  What about Boko Haram, say ?  Pick one, not 'the many many crises that exist all over the world', dammit.

I want to believe in ya Bernie, but I've been burned before, and I'm no political naïf.  Your answer here wasn't Donald Trump-level bad, but it was similarly insubstantive.  At this stage of the campaign, your supporters, and your country deserve better.

Interesting Times

Anyone else feel like we are sleepwalking off a precipice ?  And that our governments are utterly unprepared for the next shoe to drop, having exhausted all the tools in their toolbox during the last crisis ?*


Meanwhile, apparently this is a thing:

People's poorly remembered experiences with an unusually titled series of childrens' books**, from their childhood, at a time when they were just barely learning to read, as evidence of alternate dimensions/parallel universes, rewritten history, interference by aliens, time-travel, or the like...

As a lifelong fan of escapism (hey, I still watch Doctor Who, though I'm not sure Moffat appreciates the escapist element fully), I can't blame people for wanting to escape from reality.  Certainly not in times like these.  The present sucks, and the future looks bleak indeed.  But meanwhile our overlords in government and in the business-classes are continuing to pursue policies that are destroying our planet, and planning for the future when then need to pull up the ladders behind them, as they batten the hatches, and leave us to drown, safely ensconced (they hope) in their fortified private compounds.***  And ninety-plus percent of us aren't paying any attention whatsoever.

Aw, what the hell ?  No-one cares.  Interview with a/the Vampire, Fruit/Froot Loops, Nelson Mandela dying in prison, Sex in/and the City, 52 states in the US, New Zealand changing location, Henry VIII with a turkey-leg in his hand****, Magic mirror on the wall...have at it.

We're all gonna die !  Possibly imminently if the conflict with Russia goes nuclear.  But...isn't this just the cutest likkle doggie you ever did see ?!!

* Mixing metaphors all over the place.  And no, I don't fully understand the significance in the drop-off of the PRC and others purchasing US debt.  Nor am I sure I want to...

** Always thought the spelling was weird; Never imagined it would be inspiring conspiracy-theories in multiple generations of adults.

*** Mixing metaphors with abandon now.  Whee !

**** Wouldn't chicken be more likely ?

BBC: Why Germany needs migrants more than UK

Robert Peston:

There is an economic and demographic backdrop to the differential policies towards asylum-seekers of Germany and the UK - to Germany's relatively open door, that compares with the UK's heavily fortified portal (which will be opened just a bit by David Cameron later today).

The two relevant points (leaving aside moral ones) are that:

1. the UK's population is rising fast, whereas Germany's is falling fast;
2. the dependency ratio (the proportion of expensive older people in the population relative to able-bodied, tax-generating workers) is rising much quicker in Germany than in the UK.

So to put it another way, it is arguably particularly useful to Germany to have an influx of young grateful families from Syria or elsewhere, who may well be keen to toil and strive to rebuild their lives and prove to their hosts that they are not a burden - in the way that successive immigrant waves have done all over the world (including Jews like my family in London's East End).

Here are the European Commission's projections from its Ageing Report that was published earlier this year.

It projects that Germany's population will shrink from 81.3 million in 2013 to 70.8 million in 2060, whereas the UK's will rise from 64.1 million to 80.1 million.

As you can see, what is striking is that the UK is set to become the EU's most populous country, ahead of Germany and France, as a result of a relatively high fertility rate and greater projected rates of net migration.

It is probably relevant that the Commission forecasts that the proportion of the German population in 2060 represented by migrants arriving after 2013 would be 9%, compared with 14% in the UK. So Germany would be a lot less multicultural than the UK.

As for the dependency ratio, the percentage of those 65 and over compared with those aged between 15 and 64, that is forecast to rise from 32% to a very high 59% in Germany by 2060.

Or to put it another way, by 2060 there will be fewer than two Germans under 65 to work and generate taxes to support each German over 65.

...

Here is the thing. Wherever you stand in the debate on whether immigration is a good or bad thing - and most economists would argue that immigration promotes growth - right now immigration looks much more economically useful to Germany than to the UK.

That is perhaps one of the unspoken reasons why Germany is being much more welcoming to asylum seekers from Syria and elsewhere right now.

That said, some business leaders and a couple of Tory ministers gave me what can only be described as an off-message critique of David Cameron's approach to the migrant crisis over the weekend.

They said that Angela Merkel is creaming off the most economically useful of the asylum seekers, by taking those that have shown the gumption and initiative to risk life and limb by fleeing to Europe.

Precedent suggests they will be the ones that find work fastest and impose the least economic burden on Germany or any other host country.

By contrast, David Cameron appears to be doing what many would see as the more morally admirable thing - which is to go to the Syrian camps and invite children and the most vulnerable of refugees to Britain....

Ah, the politics of population-replacement...

Here we are in the age of the robot, and yet still we talk of too few workers.  One might think our policies...and our politics might reflect the same...As if !  What they do reflect, as always, are the interests of capital.

The Beeb has a poll out on public attitudes in the UK towards taking in more refugees.  They note that those of a working-class background are much less supportive (24% to 54%) than the middle-classes.  Wonder why that might be ?*


* No, not that they are simply uneducated and/or racist.

Washington Post: The remarkably high odds you’ll be poor at some point in your life

The remarkably high odds you’ll be poor at some point in your life

The poor in America are not a permanent class of people. Who's poor in any given year is different from who's poor a few years later.

Census data on who participates in assistance programs suggests as much. But Mark Rank, a sociologist at Washington University, has for several years been compiling far more comprehensive evidence of this pattern. He and colleagues have been studying the economic fortunes of several thousand families in the longest running longitudinal survey in America, going all the way back to 1968. Follow people over a really long period of time, they've found, and an incredible number of them experience economic insecurity at some point.

In fact, a vast majority do.

By the time they're 60 years old, Rank has found, nearly four in five people experience some kind of economic hardship: They've gone through a spell of unemployment, or spent time relying on a government program for the poor like food stamps, or lived at least one year in poverty or very close to it.

...

"Rather than an uncommon event," Rank says, "poverty was much more common than many people had assumed once you looked over a long period of time."

...

"The story of the American life course is marked by a surprising degree of economic movement and volatility," Rank says.

That means that the poor (or even the wealthy) are not some abstract other. The poor are, well, us — or us 10 or 15 years from now. If more people recognized this, Rank suggests, it's reasonable to think there'd be greater public support for programs that aid the poor. If you don't like food stamps because you think you'll never need them, maybe these probabilities would change your mind.

Here's the fucked-up thing though, regardless how how high someone may score on those EQ tests, their empathy tends to drop away to zero when it's someone they've never met.  (Understandably in part, as we'd go mad if we had to face up to all the suffering in this world)  And people, especially religious people, tend to have a rather distorted sense of what they face in their life/what they are likely to experience, and what is the norm. for others.

Hence: Others suffer economically, and need assistance, and they're all lazy moochers who deserve it because of their poor life-choices and sinful lifestyle.  I succeed in life, and it's just a result purely of my hard work and a reward of my inherent virtues, no luck involved, no external factors acknowledged.  I fall on hard times, and it's all a result of external factors that conspired against me, despite my hard work, and I deserve to be helped dammit 'cos I paid into the system with my hard-earned tax-dollars.

Most of those who never have fallen on hard times will likely simply assume it will never happen, and that those to whom it does happen deserve it somehow.  And many of those who have, still manage to look down on the economically less privileged, once they personally are back on their feet.

Basically, we're all delusional selfish assholes, who see ourselves as somehow inherently more moral and deserving than we really are.  We're kinda designed that way.  And if we weren't, how else to explain our elections ?

So, to answer the WaPo's question in that last sentence, no, it won't change people's minds.  Not a bit.



PS, if you were wondering about how this breaks down by 'racial privilege' as it were, well here you go:

Guess whites just work that much harder than everyone else, right ?

David Cameron: We Need More Invisible Unaccountable Wealth

Britain should not shy away from doing business with countries where corruption is a problem, according to David Cameron.

Writing in The Daily Mail ahead of a trade mission to South East Asia, the Prime Minister said the “wind of economic change is blowing east – and not just to China and India”.

He argued that Britain had concentrated too much on trading with Europe, rather than countries in Asia.

He wrote that people were wrong to argue that “we should avoid doing business with countries with barriers to trade including corruption”.

“Many in South East Asia have led the battle against corruption, which costs the global economy billions of pounds a year,” Mr Cameron said.

“Britain is joining them in that fight – I’ve put the issue at the top of the global agenda.

“Given a level playing field, British businesses can out-compete anyone in the world.” *

Sigh. This is an obvious candidate for 'posted without comment', but I will say this:

1. Cameron is interested in certain groups/individuals profiting here.
2. Those groups/individuals are mostly not in Asia.
3. Those groups/individuals are inherently corrupt.
4. Those groups/individuals are Cameron's friends or friends of friends.
5. Those groups/individuals are not you or anyone you are ever likely to know.
6. That offshored 'wealth' is never coming back.

* 'Level playing field' !  Classic !

Thanks in No Small Part to the Cowardice of Labour's Leadership*...

The biggest crackdown on trade union rights for 30 years will be unveiled on Wednesday, including new plans to criminalise picketing, permit employers to hire strike-breaking agency staff and choke off the flow of union funds to the Labour party.

The scale of the reforms goes far wider than the previously trailed plan for strikes to be made unlawful unless 50% of those being asked to strike vote in the ballot.

In a set of proposals on a par with those introduced by Norman Tebbit in 1985, Sajid Javid, the business secretary, is also to require that at least 40% of those asked to vote support the strike in most key public services. In the case of 100 teachers asked to strike, the action would only be lawful if at least 50 teachers voted and 40 of them backed the strike.

The double threshold would have to be met in any strike called in health, education, fire, transport, border security and energy sectors – including the Border Force and nuclear decommissioning.

In further changes, Javid will:

• Require all unions, not just those affiliated to Labour, to ask each existing union member whether they wish to pay the political levy and then repeat the question every five years. The £25m annual political fund income from 4.5 million political levy payers funds a wide range of political campaigning including being a chief source of funding for Labour.

• Propose that unlawful or intimidatory picketing should become a criminal as opposed to civil offence and new protections should be available for those workers unwilling to strike. A named official will be required to be available at all times to the police to oversee the picket including the numbers on the line, currently set at six, in an existing code of conduct.

• Compel unions to renew any strike mandate with a fresh ballot within four months of the first ballot and give employers the right to hire strike-breaking agency staff as well as require a union to give the employer at least a fortnight’s notice before the industrial action starts.

• Empower the government to set a limit on the proportion of working time any public sector worker can spend on trade union duties.

• Give the government certification officer powers to fine trade unions as much as £20,000 for breaches of reporting rules including an annual audit on its protests and pickets. The certification officer will also have power to initiate investigations and will in future be funded by a joint levy of unions and employers

• Require a clear description of the trade dispute and the planned industrial action on the ballot paper, so that all union members are clear what they are voting for.

The number of working days lost due to strikes was 704,000 in the 12 months to April 2015, but this is a far cry from the near 13m days lost through strike action on average in the 70s, the heyday of union militancy.

The government says it feels forced to act due to the number of strikes called on the London underground, railways or in schools based on small turnouts or two-year-old ballot mandates.

The leader of the train drivers’ union Aslef, Mick Whelan, has already likened the attack on union rights as resonant of fascist Germany.

Guess yer gonna need to distance yerselves even further from the unions.  Perhaps there's a few votes to be had in championing tax-relief for the children of foreign billionaire elitists.


* And to Ed's nose.  Sorry, but I just had to say it at some point.  Nativist perceptions about what a British leader should look like and sound like had a hell of a part to play in the man's perception, even to the degree of actual racism.

Jeb Bush is a Dick Part MMDCCLXI

The 'smarter Bush':

“My aspiration for the country and I believe we can achieve it, is 4 percent growth as far as the eye can see. Which means we have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows. It means that people need to work longer hours” and, through their productivity, gain more income for their families. That's the only way we're going to get out of this rut that we're in.”

There isn't enough work for the existing population, so those in work, should work even longer hours.  We need an even more productive & even more-overworked workforce, than that which ensures not enough jobs currently.  Makes perfect sense.

Asshole.

Jeb Bush says Americans should work more hours. but they already are working more than ever before for stagnant pay pic.twitter.com/WpsGUqvszI

— Political Line (@PoliticalLine) July 8, 2015

Bah, What do Economists Know Anyway ?

And no, I'm certainly not one.

George Osborne’s plan to enshrine permanent budget surpluses in law is a political gimmick that ignores “basic economics”, a group of academic economists has warned.

Responding to the chancellor’s Mansion House speech earlier this week, they said a law forcing the government to cut spending or raise taxes every year to generate a budget surplus, characterised as Micawber economics, would suck the economy dry and within a few years could trigger another credit crunch.

 In a letter to the Guardian, coordinated by the Centre for Labour and Social Studies, 77 of the best-known academic economists, including French economist Thomas Piketty and Cambridge professor Ha-Joon Chang, said the chancellor was turning a blind eye to the complexities of a 21st-century economy that demanded governments remain flexible and responsive to changing global events.

... 

And George Osborne's background is what exactly I wonder ?  <Checks, ineveitably, Wikipedia>  Okay, nothing wrong with a degree in Modern History is there ?  And tried his hand at 'journalism' for...The Telegraph...okay.  What's that about a flat tax ?  When was that ?   When he was back at public school perhaps ?...

2005.  Oh G-d...



* BTW, Grauniad, who the hell chooses the pictures for your articles ?  Why would you choose that crop other than to fill the damn space with text ?  And what is the choice of picture meant to convey ?  That Osborne is a privileged Toff ?  Or that he's James Bond ?...

Would that Humans Humane Were

With a new government — the first really new government in 44 years — Alberta politics is alive with possibilities for new directions and fresh approaches. Two ideas in particular have the province’s political class abuzz.

The first is the possible introduction of a guaranteed minimum income, known to be an area of interest to the province’s new finance minister, the former city alderman and poverty activist Joseph Ceci. The second is an increase in the province’s minimum wage to $15, as promised in the NDP’s election manifesto.

The two might be thought to work in parallel, both with “minimum” in their name, both aiming — or professing to do so — to improve the lot of the worst off in society. In fact, they are opposites.

The guaranteed minimum income has been the desideratum of generations of economists and welfare theorists, from the left and the right. The idea is to combine a number of existing income support and benefit programs into one, for which every citizen would quality as of right: no forms to fill out, no eligibility criteria, just a basic entitlement.

The benefit would start at a relatively low level, for those with no income at all, but would be withdrawn relatively gradually as earned income increased, thus ensuring recipients were not unduly penalized for taking a job and advancing themselves. The easiest objection to the guaranteed minimum income — that it would leave people with no incentive to work — is thus the most easily rebuffed.

The real disincentive to work arises not from giving money to people who don’t work, but taking it away from them when they do.

But notice how it works. The benefit is a social obligation; thus, it is socially financed, i.e., through the tax and transfer system. Everybody pays for it (though the more you make the more you pay) and everybody is eligible for it (though the more you make the less you receive). It is available whether you are in work or out, and has no impact either on the willingness of workers to supply their labour or the willingness of employers to demand it.

Now contrast all this to the minimum wage. This makes no pretence to be available to all. To benefit from it, you must have a job. Moreover, rather than being financed collectively, through a levy that all must pay, the cost is borne entirely by employers — at least in theory.

But of course, employers have a simple means of avoiding this obligation that the rest of us have seen fit to thrust upon them: by hiring fewer workers. And the higher the minimum wage, the greater an employer’s incentive to take this exit. It need not mean actually laying people off; it may simply be that they take on fewer new hires than they otherwise would. But all the legislation in the world can’t force a company to pay a worker who isn’t in their employ.

Of course, the minimum wage benefits some workers: those who are employed make more than they otherwise would. Surprisingly few workers are actually at the minimum wage — just five per cent of the labour force — and few of these work full-time or serve as a family’s principal source of income. But there’s also some evidence that minimum wages tend to push up wages at higher levels, to the extent wage bargainers work off the difference between the two.

But this is hardly social justice. A just society concerns itself first with the lot of those worst off, and the very worst off are surely those, not on low income, but no income at all; not those in work, but those out of work, priced out of the market by the tariff the state has thoughtfully placed on their labour.

A government that wanted to help those whose lack of skills or experience left them unable to earn what the rest of us would regard as a decent level of income would therefore prefer the minimum income to the minimum wage — that is, a government that valued results, rather than just good intentions, would do so.

... 

I've heard worse arguments certainly.

War Is Peace, Freedom is Slavery

These two sentences piqued my interest in this piece about Jeb Bush.


Bush advisers say Poland is an economic success story, a home to outsourced labor of German manufacturers that's warily watching Russia's aggression toward former Eastern bloc states. 

&

"Both the United States and the European Union are confronted by legitimate security concerns and middle-class concerns, including lack of wage growth," said Kristen Silverberg, a Bush adviser and former ambassador to the European Union during President George W. Bush's second term. 


Yes, the United States and the European Union are very concerned about 'middle-class concerns' such as 'lack of wage growth.'  So much so that they consistently pursue policies that will inevitably keep wages low.

Such as new mass trade-deals.  Such as the United States looking the other way during the first decade of the new century, whilst millions and millions of illegal immigrants flooded across the southern border, providing cheap and compliant labour on the low-end of the labour-market (and whilst also using visas and outsourcing agreements on the higher end).  And such, as the European Union expanding ever further eastwards in the pursuit of amongst other things, cheap labour.

Those Polish workers can work for less than the Germans they displaced, in part because of a lower cost of living.  But inevitably they are going to want a higher standard of living, are going to be more choosy in what work they do and under what conditions.  And as their standard of living equalises with the likes of Deutschland, there's inevitably pressure for new frontiers in cheap labour.

And there, right to the east of Poland is Ukraine.  What is the Western interest in Ukraine ?  Well, four things really*:

1. Containment of Russia (all ridiculous claims to the contrary aside)
2. New markets for Western goods
3. Natural resources, and...
4. Cheap labour.

For the West, Ukraine must join the EU.  Turkey must join the EU.  Georgia, which doesn't even have a foothold on the European sub-continent, must join the EU.  Why ?  Because, profit.  Even more so than the desire to contain Russia, profit.  Always profit über alles.

And one of the biggest drags on profits is always those pesky workers with their whining about wanting living wages, whining about wanting time off because they had babies, then wanting time off to spend with their children, wanting healthcare for their families, education for their children, wanting to be able to one day retire without having to live in a freezing apartment in winter subsiding on catfood.  Damn greedy workers !

And so the European Union is seemingly willing to risk everything, even possibly nuclear war, over adding the largest possible prize in the subcontinent into its mix.  A union that was created in the aftermath of the Second World War explicitly as an attempt to prevent further war.  But...profit.


* You may note that there is no mention on this list of Ukrainian aspirations for freedom, for more democracy, for a better life.  That is because the West frankly does not give a shit.

That Clinton Economic Legacy

For all the progressives & Hillary-fans out there talking up the economic legacy of Bill Clinton, a president who inherited an economic recovery from his predecessor, George Herbert Walker Bush, and whose presidency happened to coincide with the tech. bubble, how about a reminder of some of Bill's economic accomplishments while in office ?*  I've divided them into two groups, one subjectively 'good', one subjectively 'bad'.  Your guess which is which.

NAFTA (North American Free Tree Agreement)
'Welfare-Reform'
The DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act)
Telecommunications Act of 1996
Permanent Most Favoured Nation status for the People's Republic of China
GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade)
Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 (i.e. partial reform of Glass-Steagall)

Balanced the budget (Repubs. would probably dispute credit for this one)*
FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993)
Increased the Minimum Wage
Expanded EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit)
Expansion of Head-Start programme
Attempted (and failed miserably) to bring about universal healthcare-reform.

So, a record on balance to celebrate ?  Consider for one, what was/is the impact of these changes, short-term...and long...


*I am talking here about things Clinton actually did while in office, or was significantly involved in getting through Congress.  One of the things at least on my list (the one starred) is very debatable, and things like employment-figures and stock-market numbers are impossible to separate out between the multitudinous number of potential causal factors, most of which are probably outside of the control of any sitting president.

** Although I provided Wiki links for most of this stuff, I'm assuming a certain level of familiarity with this history and the politics thereof, which Wikipedia alone probably won't provide.

Behold, the latest triumph of the 'free market'...

Chinese vehicle maker Ninebot has bought iconic US rival Segway, the company announced on Wednesday.

The Beijing-based firm did not disclose the amount of the acquisition, but did say that it received $80m (£54m) in funding from smartphone maker Xiaomi and investment firm Sequoia Capital.

Ninebot also makes two-wheeled electric vehicles, designed for standing riders, that resemble Segways.

Segway had sought an import ban against Ninebot in the US in September.

The Chinese company was one of several that Segway had accused of infringing on its patents.

Part of me just lives in hope of seeing the eventual downfall of companies like Apple & GM.