tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5312853715123370916.post7390662052058861735..comments2024-03-17T00:10:44.022+00:00Comments on From Arse To Elbow: Institutional RotDavid Timoneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03568348438980023320noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5312853715123370916.post-35429320761503423662017-02-04T18:06:58.190+00:002017-02-04T18:06:58.190+00:00If the work needs doing, and the non-citizen rate ...If the work needs doing, and the non-citizen rate is too low, then employers must either increase wages (which would attract domestic labour) or invest in more automation. A BI does not require either open or closed borders - it affects the dynamic of supply and demand rather than constraining movement.David Timoneyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03568348438980023320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5312853715123370916.post-69282004247667460662017-02-04T17:58:59.462+00:002017-02-04T17:58:59.462+00:00"Open borders are not an issue because the BI..."Open borders are not an issue because the BI would be dependent on citizenship, so it could cut migration in the short-term if marginal wages are reduced (e.g. a £7 minimum wage becomes a CBI of £6 + a min wage of £1)"<br /><br />BTW it seems open borders are *required* for BI then, you need a bunch of 2nd class citizens to do the work. That is quite socially corrosive. Why wouldn't they resent and 'smash the system'?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5312853715123370916.post-37702864270537571552016-11-14T10:51:27.904+00:002016-11-14T10:51:27.904+00:00The job guarantee and workfare both assume that un...The job guarantee and workfare both assume that unemployment is episodic. In other words, they aim to return to (and expect) a state of full employment. <br /><br />The JG must offer wages marginally below the minimum in order to incentivise workers to move back into the private sector when demand for labour picks up (i.e. JG jobs are "non-feather-bedded" public sector roles). Similarly, workfare assumes that retraining or skills maintenance will raise the value of labour making it easier to reintegrate workers in the market when demands picks up.<br /><br />The growing interest in a basic income is driven by the fear that we are facing structural, persistent unemployment due to the results of globalisation and technological change - i.e. there will never be enough jobs to satisfy demand and this in turn will depress wages, obliging the state to subsidise pay (e.g. tax credits) and depressing productivity growth. I explain more here:<br /><br /><a href="http://fromarsetoelbow.blogspot.co.uk/p/basic-income-is-coming.html" rel="nofollow">http://fromarsetoelbow.blogspot.co.uk/p/basic-income-is-coming.html</a><br /><br />Re the relationship of basic income to migration, I am not suggesting that cutting immigration is a good thing, merely observing that it is a likely consequence because of the link to citizenship and the impact on minimum wage rates.David Timoneyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03568348438980023320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5312853715123370916.post-6283685210663771082016-11-14T01:03:17.745+00:002016-11-14T01:03:17.745+00:00"indicates a recognition that workfare and jo..."indicates a recognition that workfare and job guarantees are inadequate."<br /><br />How come?<br /><br />People demand that everybody else make the same choice as their own. Or at least that seems to be what happens at our current level of development within our cultural norms. Don’t forget that we already have resentment from the private sector for the so-called ‘feather bed’ jobs in the public sector.<br /><br />Similarly where people are ‘on the dole’ or on hand outs you get intense resentment within those societies from those who feel they have to go out to work – and perhaps don’t want to.<br /><br />The main argument is that ‘natural forces’ have failed to provide a system with sufficient income and therefore it is extremely unlikely that ‘natural forces’ would provide a system with a particular standard of living either. It has to be directed in some way.<br /><br />So I would see it as having to start at the more directed end of the Job Guarantee – because the current cohort has been trained in the ‘job = income = resources’ mindset. You would then have to change the education system so that it stopped training people to be cogs in a machine.<br /><br />Then perhaps over a generation or so you could move to a more spontaneous society – once we have citizens where the creativity hasn’t been crushed out of them by the structure of schooling.<br /><br />"cut migration in the short-term if marginal wages are reduced"<br /><br />Hmm. I don't like this. IMHO if we invite people into the country they should be treated the same as anyone else. I can see how it could be sold though.<br /><br />Have any BI advocates thought about 'funding' a BI from restricting bank lending? -<br /><br />http://www.3spoken.co.uk/2013/05/making-banks-work.htmlAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5312853715123370916.post-14593723603986396932016-11-11T19:42:29.110+00:002016-11-11T19:42:29.110+00:00I'm thinking of a basic income, not a job guar...I'm thinking of a basic income, not a job guarantee. The BI has the twin advantage (if generous enough) of allowing workers to reject low-paid jobs and necessitates higher taxes on the rich, so reducing inequality.<br /><br />Open borders are not an issue because the BI would be dependent on citizenship, so it could cut migration in the short-term if marginal wages are reduced (e.g. a £7 minimum wage becomes a CBI of £6 + a min wage of £1), and in the long-term as CBIs are introduced globally, so reducing pressure for economic migration at the lower end of the income scale.<br /><br />The growing liberal media fascination with basic income schemes indicates a recognition that workfare and job guarantees are inadequate. The political struggle will be over generosity, collateral damage (the right like BI as a means of abolishing the welfare state), and uprating (i.e. making sure fruits of growth are spread evenly across all of society).David Timoneyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03568348438980023320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5312853715123370916.post-44090545452287037182016-11-11T19:14:50.151+00:002016-11-11T19:14:50.151+00:00Thank you for reply, I fear you are right about th...Thank you for reply, I fear you are right about the significance different context of previous double movements, but picking up on your last remark, are you hinting at a new distributional logic, maybe the job Guarentee, and if so how can we get there politically from here? Also would that not be the ultimate institutional consequence of what would still be a double movement, because if the jobs are not coming back then there's no way to get a tight enough labour market to reverse income inequality, then something like the job Guarentee / workfare is all we have left. And if you were to agree any of that, how can it be reconciled with open borders? We can't even prevent the Europeans effectively defecting by refusing to relflate the periphery, what chance to we have at a wider level?<br />Sorry to sound pessimistic Hugo Evanshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12705056750207255618noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5312853715123370916.post-65108982216263320802016-11-11T14:44:34.254+00:002016-11-11T14:44:34.254+00:00There is a staggering amount of bullshit around th...There is a staggering amount of bullshit around the victory of Trump, it is the end of the world, the political centre is dead (if only!), capitalism is facing as existential crisis (if only), the bourgeois are in turmoil (do me a favour).<br /><br />What I do think is that this should be viewed more in terms of a crisis of globalisation and part of the inevitable problems as a result of a 'leveling' and reconfiguration between the advanced and developing world as globalisation intensifies.<br /><br />The thing is globalisation cannot ultimately be stopped under a capitalist system, so either the world ends through a nuclear war (ok maybe end of the world wasn't total bullshit!) or the advanced world comes to terms with this reality and globalisation gathers pace once more. But Trump is simply a by-product of this process, here today and gone tomorrow.<br /><br />Meanwhile Britain court China while trying to catch the eye of the US. A delicate balancing act! Like having 2 lovers! No she means nothing to me darling!! Then why did you buy her that ring. It is you I love!!<br /><br />I have plugged in the figures and computer says capitalism has another 176 years before everything starts to disintegrate. Computer doesn't think socialism is the likely end game. All you see is a blank screen!THE SAS ARE A BUNCH OF MURDERING BASTARDSnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5312853715123370916.post-41987703990095992192016-11-11T12:34:03.449+00:002016-11-11T12:34:03.449+00:00At a coarse level, we are clearly seeing a double ...At a coarse level, we are clearly seeing a double movement. For example, Trump's promise to repeal NAFTA and "bring the jobs back" is a promise to defend society against the free market. But there are two major differences between the dynamic seen in the 19th century and today.<br /><br />First, much of the destruction wreaked by the market then was exported to the colonies. In other words, empire provided a means of compensating industrial workers at the expense of others. Second, welfare could be reconciled with the market because unemployment was periodic, hence we institutionalised market mechanisms such as insurance, saving and borrowing in the welfare state.<br /><br />Today, we are seeing a historic (and largely peaceful) rebalancing of wealth between nations. What this produces in the West is growing internal inequality. You can think of globalisation as an informal empire that continues to benefit the rich, but which no longer compensates the rest. <br /><br />The root driver of contemporary structural unemployment and stagnant wages is technology, not "job-stealing". In other words, globalisation should be thought of as primarily a financial dynamic - capital flows - not as the displacement of labour. Reversing globalisation will not bring the jobs back.<br /><br />What this suggests is that the liberal state will struggle to defend society against the market until it accepts two principles. First, that intra-national wealth inequality must be reduced and that this can only be done through international cooperation over capital flows (essentially Piketty's point). Second, that the link between welfare and work must be broken for good.David Timoneyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03568348438980023320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5312853715123370916.post-27570978263956969742016-11-11T12:26:32.658+00:002016-11-11T12:26:32.658+00:00Yes, part of the success of the German 'Grundg...Yes, part of the success of the German 'Grundgesetz' was that it effectively started from 'stunde null'- a clean slate. The old aristocratic and military elites that had retarded democratic institutions throughout the country's history were wiped out or marginalised along with the reactionary petty bourgeoisie that had spawned the Nazis.<br /><br />As such, occupied (and to an extent it still is) West Germany was a country where the bourgeois provided a much firmer socio-economic base for liberal institutions than almost anywhere else in the world. For liberals this is fine- for the moment. But you're right in suggesting that the 'Ordoliberal' ideological justification for German institutions has to criticised from the left, for the sake of the European Union as much as Germany.Igor Belanovnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5312853715123370916.post-28051173591197217812016-11-11T11:37:32.172+00:002016-11-11T11:37:32.172+00:00Germany has the advantage that its institutions ar...Germany has the advantage that its institutions are relatively recent, and were partly designed by British and American liberals who had the opportunity to embed features that they'd never been able to implement in their own countries. In other words, Germany was a used as a guinea pig for the design of an ideal liberal state.<br /><br />Insofar as it is capable of offering a better model (many liberals have already anointed Merkel as the new "leader of the free world"), it does so as a sort of nostalgic mid-2th century "backup". The danger is that the market principles embedded in the German model (i.e. Ordoliberalism) are not thereby critiqued.David Timoneyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03568348438980023320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5312853715123370916.post-61384820914328772542016-11-11T11:23:57.808+00:002016-11-11T11:23:57.808+00:00Ha ha. Mine is a rhetorical "zero", not ...Ha ha. Mine is a rhetorical "zero", not a mathematical estimate. There is no knowing what weird shit will happen over the next 4 years, but I suspect the inherent contradictions of a Trump presidency will make a second term highly unlikely, regardless of his ability to stand.<br />David Timoneyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03568348438980023320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5312853715123370916.post-24911184212685082262016-11-11T10:57:52.366+00:002016-11-11T10:57:52.366+00:00How much of this analysis can be dovetailed to the...How much of this analysis can be dovetailed to the polanyian double movement notion. Anne Petifor is already claiming that we are seeing at root is a defensive gesture. If these votes don't somehow result in the creation or renewal of our social institutions then what can? Hugo Evanshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12705056750207255618noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5312853715123370916.post-36447413226841508222016-11-10T21:36:09.319+00:002016-11-10T21:36:09.319+00:00Considering the recent backward steps that the BBC...Considering the recent backward steps that the BBC has taken, the recent Reith lectures by Kwame Anthony Appiah are quite timely, as one of his main theses is that aspects of civilisation that we ascribe as "Western" are not so unless we actually embody them. So it is our institutions that must reflect our civilisation or lack of it. At a time when our institutions are indeed falling apart. In that context Angela Merkel's response to Trump's election was far more appropriate - ironic considering WW2 and all that.gastro georgenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5312853715123370916.post-15601507622742238242016-11-10T17:39:13.914+00:002016-11-10T17:39:13.914+00:00"the chance of a second term at zero."
..."the chance of a second term at zero."<br /><br />So pretty much the same probability of him getting a first term.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5312853715123370916.post-35458559390427243342016-11-10T12:24:22.698+00:002016-11-10T12:24:22.698+00:00"I'd put the chance of him surviving four..."I'd put the chance of him surviving four years at 50% (jail being a bigger risk than a bullet), and the chance of a second term at zero."<br /><br />I think the second term issue is important. If he wants it, and the signs are that he will, given that he already seems to regard himself as a pseudo-Emperor, then I think that will affect how he approaches the presidency.<br /><br />Given that his economic programme is unlikely to benefit the poorer section of his support, to appease them would require that he make more than just a gesture towards their more racist and reactionary concerns. Thus some minorities (or minorities of minorities) are going to suffer seriously from his presidency.<br /><br />Alternatively, he could try and maintain his 'outsider' status by deliberately picking a fight with Congress and create position as a national figure acting over the sectional interests of politics. To do this, however, would require a massive volte-face on many of his previous statements and orientations, particularly as the Republican political establishment seems to object to his style and the manner of his rise rather than any of his stated policies.<br /><br />I suspect you're right that he has no chance of being elected for a second term, but it might be his efforts to try and achieve this that really lead to his ultimate downfall. Igor Belanovnoreply@blogger.com