General politics discussion thread

[mikey]

I was a long-time supporter of the Liberal Democrats. I'm 30 now and I've voted for Liberal Democrats in every election since I could vote, except in 2001, where I was influenced by my parents. I even voted for Paddick for mayor. I supported the platform of social democracy that Paddy Ashdown, Charles Kennedy and Ming Campbell extolled. Problem is, the party has been hijacked by these neo-classical liberals on the right of the party. The party that was pro-Europe and pro-referendum sat on its hands over the issue of a referendum over the Lisbon Treaty. I voted Lib Dem because they presented a manifesto that's closest to my fucked up, all-over-the-shop views but that is more of a indictment of how far away from the political mainstream I am that a party with a marked rightward shift still come close to my views.

 

I will also say that you can present any website you like that says "cuts are bad" but all you're really doing is taking economics as a science, when it's more like a religion. In the last 80 years, governments have directly interfered in the economy too much and in the last 65, mainstream economists have rejected anything that doesn't fall into the strict empirical parameters of "modern" economics as antiquated. We have an economic system which is run on a completely different school of thought to which it was originally built and every person feels the effects of that every day. When you bring the maths and the pseudo-science thing and start acting like you can predict things like you're Charlie Eppes on Numb3rs and that is all you listen to, you're in trouble.

Edited February 25, 2011 by mikey

[Kenny McBride]

You won't ever catch me arguing about how shit public sector IT procurement is. In my current job, we're still awaiting the development of a system that was first put into development more than ten years ago. I've never understood, though, why people assume that the public sector HAS to be inefficient. All it takes is some better management and, in many cases, government not sticking its nose in every five minutes to satisfy some mindless tabloid demand by setting unreasonable targets that distract from the real purpose of the service, and things would improve. I'm even easing up in some ways on the necessity of certain services being provided by the public sector. However, cutting important (if not absolutely vital)services without knowing that there's an alternative in place is reckless and stupid.

 

As far as "completely unnecessary" goes, I don't know that that isn't true. Making cuts when times are tough is a risky move. Increasing the dole queues helps no-one. At least if people are employed by the state, they're spending the money they earn in the private sector. If they're on JSA, they're broke and spending nothing. I understand the philosophy that says they add nothing to the economy, but that's not exactly true. The success of the economy has as much to do with velocity of circulation as it does with GDP. Besides, the deficit we're running is really not all that huge. The national debt can be paid off in one stroke when we sell our God-forsaken banking assets. I'd rather see real investment in job creation (and I've proposed a number of ways to do that elsewhere in this thread) than cuts. Cuts inevitably mean someone, somewhere suffering. Investment sees someone, somewhere celebrating. Cuts may be necessary in some places, but without doing something to re-develop and re-balance out economy, it won't make any positive difference to the vast majority of people.

[Carbomb]

But let's admit some truths here.

 

- Public spending under Labour had reached truly unsustainable proportions, and there were going to have to be cuts whatever party or parties got into power.

 

Not to re-enter the argument myself, but I'd like to point you in the direction of a rather interesting article here. Yes, it's from the trade union side of the left, and it may not change your opinion, but it may prompt you to come up with more solid reasoning in arguing your position:

 

From "Stage, Screen & Radio" (BECTU News Magazine):

 

The Coalition Is The Weakest Link

 

The UK government's cuts plans pose dangers - whether they threaten your job or your relatives. They are not "inevitable" and they are likely to be self-defeating, increasing damage to the economy, as Tony Lennon explains.

 

Every so often in life you have to give credit to a natural opponent. So here's an unsolicited complimentfor the Con/Lib coalition government, already shaping up to be a detemined opponent of organised labour. Their success in persuading nearly two-thirds of the populaion that the current public spending cuts are essential and unavoidable is a masterpiece of mass manipulation that even the Chinese government must find awesome.

 

Is this an unorthodox or shocking view? No, becuse according to informed commentators the UK government is doing the exact opposite of what should be done at this stage in a recession, albeit following in the footsteps of many other European states. Public expenditure, far from being savagely cut, should at least be maintained, and possibly even increased, in line with basic Keynesian theory. John Maynard Keynes was the seminal British economist whose "General Theory", published in 1936, overturned the prevailingclassical school of economics by reassessing the link between full employment and public spending and investment. His view that countries should spend, not save, in recessions held sway unti the arrival of the monetarist school of economics in the late 1970s.

 

Amid all the hand-wringing about the inevitability of cuts, some present-day economists have been prepared to speak out. Paul Krugman, a winner of the Nobel prize in economis, says: "The British Governments' plan is bold...but it boldly goes in exactly the wrong direction." Anothe Nobel prize economist, Joseph Stiglitz, described the cuts plan as: "a gamble with almost no potential upside". Even Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, not the most liberal economic commentator, said the government has "dcided to go political rock-climbing without ropes".

 

In convincing so many voters that Keynes should be ignored, the COn/Libs have had plenty of helpers. First among them are the media, especially the press, with the honourable exceptions of the Financial Times and Morning Star - both good reads at times of crisis. And the UK population has indirectly helped with the deception by being, at the least, confused by economic theory, and often confused by numbers themselves.

 

Most normal people don't have to deal with numbers containing more than about five zeroes, which is all you need to describe the price of an average home in this country, the most valuable asset many of us will ever come across. Move into the territory of numbers with up to twelve zeroes, necessary to measure gross domestic product for exapmle. and some of our politicians glaze over and begin to look scared.

 

In this climate the government has managed to conflate the separate issues of national debt, annual deficits, and public spending, thus adding to the confusion, leaving the bewildered public thinking that cuts are unavoidable. In the process, ther have disguised the genuine agenda underlying the fiscal retrenchment which is about to engulf us all. The real ambition of Cameron and Clegg is to complete the project which Margaret Thatcher never quite finished in the 1980s, namely the conversion of the UK from a centrist, social-democrat, Eureopean-leaning country, into a red-blooded copy of the USA, with a small state, low taxes, weaker trade unions, fewer public services mostly provided by the private sector, and no social safety net to prevent glaring inequalities between rich and poor. Their first move is to shrink the state, on the premise that there is no alternative to spending cuts.

 

In fact, there is an alternative, but first let's understand the factors which the government has hyped up to justify the cuts.

 

Public Debt

 

Chancellor George Osborne has repeatedly claimed that the UK is on the brink of bankruptcy because of public borrowing, and "future generations will pay interest on the interest". The facts are rather different.

 

Net UK public borrowing at the end of October 2010 was

Edited February 25, 2011 by Carbomb MA

[JNLister]

Even aside from that, consider this - everyone who works in the public sector is effectively not bringing in money into the economy.

 

Schools teach the people who go on to run businesses. Roads and railways help private sector workers get to work. Hospitals help people get better to they can return to working for companies. Police help increase the chances people actually get to work rather than being stabbed or blown up.

[JNLister]

Just read about the latest fun in the US. Wisconsin Republicans are trying to pass a state law that pretty much removes any trade union power. Democrats know they'll lose a vote so 14 of them are refusing to vote, which is enough to stop it passing as there's a quorum rule (a certain proportion of senators have to be present at a vote for it to be legal.) The Republicans have threatened to get the police involved as Senators can theoretically be legally forced to vote. In response, the 14 have now moved across the state line to Illinois where Wisconsin cops can't touch them.

 

Meanwhile in the lower house of the Wisconsin Assembly they did have a vote, but the instant enough people had pressed the yes button to get a majority, the speaker of the house shut down the vote and called it a win. It doesn't change the outcome as it was going to pass either way, but a fair chunk of the Democrats who were going to vote no are now officially recorded as abstaining.

[Happ Hazzard]

I imagine Wisconsin are trying to bring their public spending under control. Union members in Wisconsin are almost entirely public sector workers. Public sector workers in the state are paid far more than the private sector workers whose taxes fund the public sector. There are plenty of people in the private sector who would love a cushy public sector jobs with the various benefits, pension etc on offer, but since union power makes it very hard for someone in the public sector to lose their job for anything short of gross incompetance, those on the outside stay on the outside, and those on the inside are set for life.

 

The same applies to the public sector in this country. Wages have dropped across the board for private sector workers whereas public sector workers have somehow been insulated from the same pressures that apply to other jobs. Something needs to be done, and if it takes extreme measures from politicians to achieve it, so be it. It's bullshit that council tax continues to rise unabated while the level of service that most people recieve decreases.

[Glen Quagmire]

I imagine Wisconsin are trying to bring their public spending under control. Union members in Wisconsin are almost entirely public sector workers. Public sector workers in the state are paid far more than the private sector workers whose taxes fund the public sector.

 

This report seems to suggest that public sector workers in the state collectively earn 4.8% less than their peers in the private sector. Note that I am just glancing over figures and not looking at them in great detail, but it doesn't look like public sector workers in Winconsin are exactly rolling in it, the only benefit might be in better pension contributions.

 

The same applies to the public sector in this country. Wages have dropped across the board for private sector workers whereas public sector workers have somehow been insulated from the same pressures that apply to other jobs. Something needs to be done, and if it takes extreme measures from politicians to achieve it, so be it. It's bullshit that council tax continues to rise unabated while the level of service that most people recieve decreases.

 

The traditional view for the last several decades is that those working in public service jobs don't get as highly paid as those in the private sector in a rough like-for-like basis, but that they have better job security and better pensions. If some public sector workers are "insulated from the same pressures that apply to other jobs" then it might be because the role of their work does not have the same financial incentives as in the private sector. Also the majority of public sector workers, except those earning a fair bit below the national average wage (e.g. administrative assistants and administrative officers in the Civil Service) have had pay freezes, and there are recruitment freezes in many places. At the present time public sector workers appear to have it better, in five/ten years time we'll probably be back to private sector employees (especially those not doing minimum wage jobs) having notably better pay and perks compared to those in the public sector.

[Loki]

I've never understood, though, why people assume that the public sector HAS to be inefficient.

 

I don't think many people genuinely do, and it's certainly not a view I subscribe to. I do think the public sector IS inefficient though, and I would suggest that a lot of that stems from Labour's instinct that improved services come from increasing the measurement and control of expenditure, which has led to a massive increase in the middle management structures in public services.

 

Carbomb, that article is interesting, and I will absorb it more tomorrow. Essentially, though, it's a passionate advocacy of Keynsian economic theory and, whilst I'm not an economist, but I do know that Keynes' collectivist economic theories have been somewhat out of favour in the last 30 years. I don't think it really changes my belief that the pendulum had swing too far towards public sector expenditure and a correction needs to me made. Hope that's a solid enough reason for you

[Jonathan Ford]

The public sector, generally speaking, is massively inefficient. Well, certainly the NHS is. As an example, I saw a piece of research a few months ago (think it may have been in the Health Service Journal, but cancelled my subscription due to the insane amount of spam they send) that found just one NHS trust bought something like 16 different types of A4 printer paper, from five different sources. Just the cost saving of buying it all from one place would be astonishing. If this procurement behaviour is replicated across the spectrum of everything that every NHS trust buys, from biscuits and paper clips, through medicines and dressings, uniforms, beds......the implications are enormous.

[Yoghurt]

It is replicated, across the board, they're facing cuts, but it's easily nothing that can't be absorbed by getting their collective acts together. That's all the services.

[David]

I've never understood, though, why people assume that the public sector HAS to be inefficient.

I don't think many people genuinely do, and it's certainly not a view I subscribe to. I do think the public sector IS inefficient though, and I would suggest that a lot of that stems from Labour's instinct that improved services come from increasing the measurement and control of expenditure, which has led to a massive increase in the middle management structures in public services.

The problem we face though, is that when the job cuts are delivered from above it most likely won't be the "middle-management" that faces the brunt of it.

[Jonathan Ford]

I've never understood, though, why people assume that the public sector HAS to be inefficient.

I don't think many people genuinely do, and it's certainly not a view I subscribe to. I do think the public sector IS inefficient though, and I would suggest that a lot of that stems from Labour's instinct that improved services come from increasing the measurement and control of expenditure, which has led to a massive increase in the middle management structures in public services.

The problem we face though, is that when the job cuts are delivered from above it most likely won't be the "middle-management" that faces the brunt of it.

Bang on. I'm one of the few people that thinks we should pay NHS managers more; then we'd get better managers and could have fewer of them with no noticeable restriction to the service. And the cuts are being delivered already...so many people retiring or leaving and simply not being replaced.

[David]

Bang on. I'm one of the few people that thinks we should pay NHS managers more; then we'd get better managers and could have fewer of them with no noticeable restriction to the service. And the cuts are being delivered already...so many people retiring or leaving and simply not being replaced.

Which means the workforce left behind are being expected to produce the same kind of results by means of working harder for longer, and in many cases having to take a pay freeze (which is a cut in real terms).

 

Still, they ought to be thankful they have jobs at all I guess.

[mikey]

Even aside from that, consider this - everyone who works in the public sector is effectively not bringing in money into the economy.

 

Schools teach the people who go on to run businesses. Roads and railways help private sector workers get to work. Hospitals help people get better to they can return to working for companies. Police help increase the chances people actually get to work rather than being stabbed or blown up.

 

Schools teach the people who go on to run businesses. That's a good one, John. Wilson (not MacMillan, I get the names confused) started the destruction of the tripartite system of schools in this country which stopped a good many kids from poor areas moving up in the world. They did it in the name of fairness but it wasn't fair at all on bright, working class/working-middle class children.

[Happ Hazzard]

I don't think schools teach much in the way of actual business acumen. Most of business studies is just textbook theory. And most of the rest of schooling is pretty much anti-business, and more concerned with indoctrinating kids with liberal idealism. And then we wonder why we have so many NEETs.