QED

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

yes Simon i do take your point about Jenkins to a degree but he is rather quaint don't you think ... his localism is certainly insipid and rather on the the Phoenix Sheriff model eh? as if he sees the country house manor and estate as the height of our civilisation he is essentially landed gentry and that does not entail that he is an unattractive human being ...... but quaint definitely

[Simon]

Yes, CdJ, I think that "quaint" might indeed be one of a number of apt adjectives to describe him.

I wonder if he'd agree?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

well perhaps he might agree with the tenor of this editorial in the Graun last April that slipped by me but seems far too good to remain obscure

why were the Greeks buying arms with borrowed money from the French & German arms industries?

see also if you are feeling brave

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

plug

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

a cogent explanation by a rich chap of how he or his ilk do not create wealth ..... his money comes from customers and if they have none he does not make any .... customers [ordinary people] create wealth QED
[but not TED apparently] ....

here it is in full

It is astounding how significantly one idea can shape a society and its policies. Consider this one.

If taxes on the rich go up, job creation will go down.

This idea is an article of faith for republicans and seldom challenged by democrats and has shaped much of today's economic landscape.

But sometimes the ideas that we know to be true are dead wrong. For thousands of years people were sure that earth was at the center of the universe. It's not, and an astronomer who still believed that it was, would do some lousy astronomy.

In the same way, a policy maker who believed that the rich and businesses are "job creators" and therefore should not be taxed, would make equally bad policy.

I have started or helped start, dozens of businesses and initially hired lots of people. But if no one could have afforded to buy what we had to sell, my businesses would all have failed and all those jobs would have evaporated.

That's why I can say with confidence that rich people don't create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is a "circle of life" like feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion this virtuous cycle of increasing demand and hiring. In this sense, an ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than a capitalist like me.

So when businesspeople take credit for creating jobs, it's a little like squirrels taking credit for creating evolution. In fact, it's the other way around.

Anyone who's ever run a business knows that hiring more people is a capitalists course of last resort, something we do only when increasing customer demand requires it. In this sense, calling ourselves job creators isn't just inaccurate, it's disingenuous.

That's why our current policies are so upside down. When you have a tax system in which most of the exemptions and the lowest rates benefit the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer.

Since 1980 the share of income for the richest Americans has more than tripled while effective tax rates have declined by close to 50%.

If it were true that lower tax rates and more wealth for the wealthy would lead to more job creation, then today we would be drowning in jobs. And yet unemployment and under-employment is at record highs.

Another reason this idea is so wrong-headed is that there can never be enough superrich Americans to power a great economy. The annual earnings of people like me are hundreds, if not thousands, of times greater than those of the median American, but we don't buy hundreds or thousands of times more stuff. My family owns three cars, not 3,000. I buy a few pairs of pants and a few shirts a year, just like most American men. Like everyone else, we go out to eat with friends and family only occasionally.

I can't buy enough of anything to make up for the fact that millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans can't buy any new clothes or cars or enjoy any meals out. Or to make up for the decreasing consumption of the vast majority of American families that are barely squeaking by, buried by spiraling costs and trapped by stagnant or declining wages.
Here's an incredible fact. If the typical American family still got today the same share of income they earned in 1980, they would earn about 25% more and have an astounding $13,000 more a year. Where would the economy be if that were the case?

Significant privileges have come to capitalists like me for being perceived as "job creators" at the center of the economic universe, and the language and metaphors we use to defend the fairness of the current social and economic arrangements is telling. For instance, it is a small step from "job creator" to "The Creator". We did not accidentally choose this language. It is only honest to admit that calling oneself a "job creator" is both an assertion about how economics works and the a claim on status and privileges.

The extraordinary differential between a 15% tax rate on capital gains, dividends, and carried interest for capitalists, and the 35% top marginal rate on work for ordinary Americans is a privilege that is hard to justify without just a touch of deification

We've had it backward for the last 30 years. Rich businesspeople like me don't create jobs. Rather they are a consequence of an eco-systemic feedback loop animated by middle-class consumers, and when they thrive, businesses grow and hire, and owners profit. That's why taxing the rich to pay for investments that benefit all is a great deal for both the middle class and the rich.

So here's an idea worth spreading.

In a capitalist economy, the true job creators are consumers, the middle class. And taxing the rich to make investments that grow the middle class, is the single smartest thing we can do for the middle class, the poor and the rich.

Thank You.

[Serial_Apologist]

a cogent explanation by a rich chap of how he or his ilk do not create wealth ..... his money comes from customers and if they have none he does not make any .... customers [ordinary people] create wealth QED
[but not TED apparently] ....

here it is in full

Yes but if one reads carefully he's only interested in "the middle class". Basically capital goes to where the maximum rate of exploitation can achieve the highest returns, or they lose their shareholders. If capitalists could they would only employ the working class to produce product for the rich; "unfortunately" they have also to take into account what Marx called "the reproduction of the labourer", ie the capacity for the worker to produce the goods by being well enough in mind and body so to do. But it's always a knife-edge situation - "he" (the capitalist) will be out-competed by his fellow competitor lowering "his" employees living standards, so long as he (the competitor) can in turn sell "his" product to the first capitalist who is pushing up his employees' incomes; but the first capitalist will go out of business if he chooses, ie, to invest in say Britain, where workers' living standards may be higher as a result of better political representation, workers having long fought for better working conditions etc. And this is the situation that will never be resolved as long as capitalism is not replaced, because at the end of the proverbial it is the iron law of capitalism that firms have to make profits to survive, or go under. Yes, I can hear people say, but what if governments in the richer countries subsidise the private sector to bribe firms not to move abroad? Well, this is then condemned as "protectionism" and inimical to so-called "free trade". See? - the ruling class co-operates beyond competition by means of monopoly and class interest - which is why true socialists were or should have always been against nationalism and advocated trade union transnational organisation to counter the power of multinational oligarchy - not just nice ideas about the brotherhood and sisterhood of man and woman but because it is an objective call determined by the global imbalance of class relations.

Sorry, but it really is heads you win, tails they lose, every time. There's no getting away from it, whatever one chummy maverick American millionaire says to the contrary. Robert Tressell spelt it out very articulately in "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists", and it's as true in 2012 as it was in 1908.

S-A

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

no you dont need to read it carefully to see he is interested in the middle class S_A but in America that refers to everyone ... or the working class as we say here .... fanny that innit ...

and even if he meants middle class as you define it SA i would still agree with his thesis but note its potential for extensionn ....

and disagree with your totalitarian mutualism .... try a Chinese factory? .... and recall that the USSR and satellites were economically stagnant in the extreme ...

to be candid i find both marxist or hard left and neo liberal or hard right theory dangerously wrong .... my reading of the evidence of economic history is that good old fashioned bourgeois democracy is the best we can get ... so long as it is not captured by the rentiers and bankers .... vive la france anglo-american capitalism sucks etc ... but then any gangster run system sucks ..... the essential point about bourgeois democracy is the rule of law and civilised dissent ... i do feel that the truly radical potential of bourgeois democracy is greatly under appreciated .... why the mere application of the law would have more than half our present financial elites behind bars!

[Serial_Apologist]

no you dont need to read it carefully to see he is interested in the middle class S_A but in America that refers to everyone ... or the working class as we say here .... fanny that innit ...

and even if he meants middle class as you define it SA i would still agree with his thesis but note its potential for extensionn ....

and disagree with your totalitarian mutualism .... try a Chinese factory? .... and recall that the USSR and satellites were economically stagnant in the extreme ...

to be candid i find both marxist or hard left and neo liberal or hard right theory dangerously wrong .... my reading of the evidence of economic history is that good old fashioned bourgeois democracy is the best we can get ... so long as it is not captured by the rentiers and bankers .... vive la france anglo-american capitalism sucks etc ... but then any gangster run system sucks ..... the essential point about bourgeois democracy is the rule of law and civilised dissent ... i do feel that the truly radical potential of bourgeois democracy is greatly under appreciated .... why the mere application of the law would have more than half our present financial elites behind bars!

While I don't get your point about the Chinese factory, it has to be said that the Soviet Union did actually expand with extraordinary rapidity under the dictatorial Stalinist distortion of "socialist planning" but we should by now be way beyond re-enactions, as most on what's left of the left would admit. The next few months could well decide which (if either) of us is right on this, Calum. The key missing ingredient in your picture is a power sufficient in strength and motivation to defend the existing system from those who are so easily turning it to what you so pungently describe. The "best" parts of the institutions are probably more prone to hostage taking than an economy's production sector: ideas - which at the end of the day is what institutions are - aren't of much use if locked up inside heads; machines can still be put to use, in whoever's hands. One thing I have learned/concluded from what I witnessed from 12 years' involvement is that how change takes place probably is the biggest determinant in protecting working class gains under bourgeois democracy. That talk of "smashing the state", more applicable in 1917 Russia, should have no place today, shouldn't need saying, not just because we're "nice chaps". But if change comes about by dint of necessity at the direst and most basic survival levels it will again be bloody with left or no left at the helm.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i have just noticed you have switched the argument S_A .... the chap is on about wealth creation that is fair and you are arguing for a particular view of social justice .... the argument about wealth creation can not be ducked imv .... more later

[Serial_Apologist]

i have just noticed you have switched the argument S_A .... the chap is on about wealth creation that is fair and you are arguing for a particular view of social justice .... the argument about wealth creation can not be ducked imv .... more later

Probably not fair to come back while you're busy, but wealth creation and social justice aren't disconnected imv. I agree that the argument about wealth creation cannot be ducked, but fairness is contested in the very nature of the beast. Like Schoenberg with sonata and variation forms, it will be a matter of picking up the tarnished elements of an outworn, imperfect system before being lost to landfill and make something anew out of them