Max Corden
It has been blindingly obvious since before the GFC that taxes are too low. The neo-liberal free-market right-wing swill who have professed to have governed most of the planet - although many have experienced this as mis-governed - since the advent of Thatcherism.
I draw your attention to Paul Krugman's "Conscience of a Liberal" and Thomas Picketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century".
For some unknown reason the conservative side of politics in almost every part of the world have chained themselves to this neoliberal Thatcherite ideology which prohibits raising taxes for any reason and obsesses with driving them down and this causes so called "budget emergencies" which are in fact nothing of the sort
On the macroeconomic side they have their noses stuck to Hayeck and the politics of scarcity and thrift.
In his op-ed in the New York Times Paul Krugman points out that pursuit of such policies leads directly to long term recession and generational unemployment. That this is a historically proven fact, in that all these things have been tried before and this was the result. He has predicted a decade of generational unemployment and underperforming economies in the Eurozone. Its been six years now and his prediction is holding up so far. The question is: "which will come first; the truth of his prediction or the next GFC.
I congratulate Max Corden for supplying some credentialed argument for our neoliberal swill of a government as to the idiocy of their stance on the budget.
Saturday 6 December 2014
Friday 31 October 2014
To Regress or Not to Regress
Fuel tax indexation: the pressure is on
Did someone say 'tax reform'?
The term sounds so innocuous, even good, but that depends on whose mouth it comes out of. A reform that comprises the introduction of , or increase in, a regressive tax, is a reform backwards.
A rise in fuel excise is an increase in a regressive tax. Any rise or increase in the base of the GST would also be an increase in a regressive tax. These are both moves this government is contemplating, whether they admit it or not.
Regressive taxation is LNP policy whether they admit it or not. Beware of the term 'tax reform'. It is a vector concept and will therefore be progressive or regressive depending on which side of politics uses it.
Did someone say 'tax reform'?
The term sounds so innocuous, even good, but that depends on whose mouth it comes out of. A reform that comprises the introduction of , or increase in, a regressive tax, is a reform backwards.
A rise in fuel excise is an increase in a regressive tax. Any rise or increase in the base of the GST would also be an increase in a regressive tax. These are both moves this government is contemplating, whether they admit it or not.
Regressive taxation is LNP policy whether they admit it or not. Beware of the term 'tax reform'. It is a vector concept and will therefore be progressive or regressive depending on which side of politics uses it.
Monday 27 October 2014
There is always an optimum Level
Simon Cowan
"Our projected level of spending is unsustainable with our current tax base."
Contrary to LNP neo-liberal drivel, society does exist, and the electorate knows what sort of society they want to live in. This is not the harsh society of the American socio-economic experiment - the end result and ultimate inevitability of LNP policy - but a society where the government provides services which improve it.
If we accept the truth of this statement then either spending must be cut or the tax base or level must increase. The blind lunatic direction of LNP policy sees only cuts to spending as the only solution, and so protects their vested support.
Taxes need to be raised to provide the services we want our government to provide. These sevices have a price determined by the market.This means taxing those who can afford to pay without dropping into hardship. The level of spending has crossed a threshold above which a structural deficit is enmeshed in the budget.
A rebalance of the income-business tax level is required to maintain services at their present level. This will require an increase in progressive taxation rates for those who can best afford it. Only a Greens government has the guts to do this, judging from recent rhetoric.
What a mess.
"Our projected level of spending is unsustainable with our current tax base."
Contrary to LNP neo-liberal drivel, society does exist, and the electorate knows what sort of society they want to live in. This is not the harsh society of the American socio-economic experiment - the end result and ultimate inevitability of LNP policy - but a society where the government provides services which improve it.
If we accept the truth of this statement then either spending must be cut or the tax base or level must increase. The blind lunatic direction of LNP policy sees only cuts to spending as the only solution, and so protects their vested support.
Taxes need to be raised to provide the services we want our government to provide. These sevices have a price determined by the market.This means taxing those who can afford to pay without dropping into hardship. The level of spending has crossed a threshold above which a structural deficit is enmeshed in the budget.
A rebalance of the income-business tax level is required to maintain services at their present level. This will require an increase in progressive taxation rates for those who can best afford it. Only a Greens government has the guts to do this, judging from recent rhetoric.
What a mess.
Politics
Paula Matthewson
"politics (which by definition is the theory and practice of influencing people)."
"There is an alternative to conceding to popular opinion, and that is to change it, but this is akin to doing a u-turn in a cruise ship.
Getting the voting public to change its mind, not on superficial matters, but on those that tap into core values and concerns, is a slow and laborious task that can take longer than one three or four-year parliamentary term to produce results. Doing so is hard enough for a government, even with the authority that comes from being in power and having a phalanx of departments and battalions of advisers at its disposal."
Patience is a virtue.
"politics (which by definition is the theory and practice of influencing people)."
"There is an alternative to conceding to popular opinion, and that is to change it, but this is akin to doing a u-turn in a cruise ship.
Getting the voting public to change its mind, not on superficial matters, but on those that tap into core values and concerns, is a slow and laborious task that can take longer than one three or four-year parliamentary term to produce results. Doing so is hard enough for a government, even with the authority that comes from being in power and having a phalanx of departments and battalions of advisers at its disposal."
Patience is a virtue.
Tuesday 15 July 2014
What a Neat Statement of the Neo-Liberal Intention
Ian Verrender
"policy aims to take money from polluters and distribute it to taxpayers. Direct Action takes money from taxpayers and hands it out to polluters."
This sentence encapsulates the end result of neo-liberal policy. Admittedly the context is Climate Change Policy, but if you substitute 'vested interests', 'big business' or what Paul Krugman is now calling 'the 0.01 percent' for 'polluters' and 'government', 'the people', or, to maintain consistency, 'the 99.99 percent', you come up with a reasonable approximation of reality.
"policy aims to take money from polluters and distribute it to taxpayers. Direct Action takes money from taxpayers and hands it out to polluters."
This sentence encapsulates the end result of neo-liberal policy. Admittedly the context is Climate Change Policy, but if you substitute 'vested interests', 'big business' or what Paul Krugman is now calling 'the 0.01 percent' for 'polluters' and 'government', 'the people', or, to maintain consistency, 'the 99.99 percent', you come up with a reasonable approximation of reality.
Saturday 17 May 2014
This Horse Still Has Some Life In It Yet
Emily Millane
Matt Grudnoff
Alan Kohler
David Ritter
At the risk of flogging the proverbial dead horse one too many times, let's start with the fact that all the necessary information required to recognise the lies expressed in this budget was available to the electorate at the 2013 election. Nothing in the above links is new. Getting access to it simply involves looking around on the internet as one should do when choosing a leader. Don't you need to know what you are voting for?
This would appear to be too hard for the majority of people. They are content to swallow what the mainstream media (MSM) chooses to print and this stuff is not printed, you have to question what is presented to you and look beyond it to find the truth and recognise lies for what they are. If you only look at commercial television and (MSM), accepting it as gospel, as most people do, then you can not help but be hoodwinked into voting for things you didn't think you were voting for.
I could rattle on for ever about the MSM being the mouthpiece of the LNP and its political hue being somewhere to the right of Ghengis Khan, but this has already been said. The ABC and SBS remain the last bastion of independent information and their defunding in this fraudulent budget amounts to censorship.
We really need a double disolusion. The problem is and always has been the electability of the ALP.
Let's get this strait. There is no budget emergency. this was always a lie to hoodwink the electorate into electing this swill. There is a medium term problem caused by structural issues leading back to Howard Era tax cuts. These are easily rectified by reinstating the taxes. Instead all we hear about is raising the GST, a regressive impost on those who can least afford it, and will mean hardship for many, while the well off barely notice it. We have a progressive income tax system which is always cut but for ideological reasons is never raised.
Paul Krugman, Economics Nobel Laureate and New York Times columnist, documents the unavoidable result of these ideologically driven austerity measures in Europe. The evidence is plain to the naked eye: generational unemployment representing double-digit proportions. If you want a recession this is the way to get one.
I've said on this blog we will have double-digit unemployment within a year of this government's policies, and could well be at war with Indonesia. This prophesy is well on the way to fulfillment.
I work at the coal face of the market and interact with people every day. I am getting continuous feedback from people who have lost their jobs or had their hours cut back. Almost every week their is a new story of a factory or business shutting down or shedding jobs. The breathtaking dishonesty of Friar Tuck saying new jobs will magically appear the minute he releases Business from the chains of his mythical 'carbon tax' is noteworthy.
Bring on a double disolution.
Matt Grudnoff
Alan Kohler
David Ritter
At the risk of flogging the proverbial dead horse one too many times, let's start with the fact that all the necessary information required to recognise the lies expressed in this budget was available to the electorate at the 2013 election. Nothing in the above links is new. Getting access to it simply involves looking around on the internet as one should do when choosing a leader. Don't you need to know what you are voting for?
This would appear to be too hard for the majority of people. They are content to swallow what the mainstream media (MSM) chooses to print and this stuff is not printed, you have to question what is presented to you and look beyond it to find the truth and recognise lies for what they are. If you only look at commercial television and (MSM), accepting it as gospel, as most people do, then you can not help but be hoodwinked into voting for things you didn't think you were voting for.
I could rattle on for ever about the MSM being the mouthpiece of the LNP and its political hue being somewhere to the right of Ghengis Khan, but this has already been said. The ABC and SBS remain the last bastion of independent information and their defunding in this fraudulent budget amounts to censorship.
We really need a double disolusion. The problem is and always has been the electability of the ALP.
Let's get this strait. There is no budget emergency. this was always a lie to hoodwink the electorate into electing this swill. There is a medium term problem caused by structural issues leading back to Howard Era tax cuts. These are easily rectified by reinstating the taxes. Instead all we hear about is raising the GST, a regressive impost on those who can least afford it, and will mean hardship for many, while the well off barely notice it. We have a progressive income tax system which is always cut but for ideological reasons is never raised.
Paul Krugman, Economics Nobel Laureate and New York Times columnist, documents the unavoidable result of these ideologically driven austerity measures in Europe. The evidence is plain to the naked eye: generational unemployment representing double-digit proportions. If you want a recession this is the way to get one.
I've said on this blog we will have double-digit unemployment within a year of this government's policies, and could well be at war with Indonesia. This prophesy is well on the way to fulfillment.
I work at the coal face of the market and interact with people every day. I am getting continuous feedback from people who have lost their jobs or had their hours cut back. Almost every week their is a new story of a factory or business shutting down or shedding jobs. The breathtaking dishonesty of Friar Tuck saying new jobs will magically appear the minute he releases Business from the chains of his mythical 'carbon tax' is noteworthy.
Bring on a double disolution.
Wednesday 26 March 2014
Where did I see that fact....thought I saw it lying around here somewhere
Peter Lewis and Jackie Woods
overestimate in the numbers of Muslims living in Australia.
Strangely the odd fact has a profound effect on public discourse and debate. The electorate is not supplied with the facts, rather a biased or even blatantly untrue set of facts, and are therefore unable to make an informed decision. Of course an untrue fact is an oxymoron but it makes as much sense as anything else this government says.
"Over the years, Essential polls have shown how factual misconceptions can skew public debate. We've found a direct correlation between those who overstate the numbers of people seeking asylum and a belief we are too soft on border protection.We have also found that concern about Muslim influence in Australia is directly linked to an
overestimate in the numbers of Muslims living in Australia.
And we have established the link between acceptance of climate change science and support for measures to reduce carbon emissions."
Strangely the odd fact has a profound effect on public discourse and debate. The electorate is not supplied with the facts, rather a biased or even blatantly untrue set of facts, and are therefore unable to make an informed decision. Of course an untrue fact is an oxymoron but it makes as much sense as anything else this government says.
Friar Tuck and the Robbing Hood Continue on Their Merry Way
Vic Alhadeff
This mockery of a government continues to send a wrecking ball through much of what is good in this country. Will we now build a tradition of defamation, blasphemy...etc. by removing this clause from the anti-discrimination laws? The drivel issuing from the mouths of the libertine extreme represented by Andrew Bolt is testament to the shallow facade covering these disagreeable elements in our society. Tinkering with this legislation will encourage Boltian bigotry and could 'open a floodgate' as they say. At the very least it sends the wrong message.
"The late Justice Lionel Murphy said: 'Freedom of speech is what is left over after due weight has been accorded to the laws relating to defamation, blasphemy, copyright, sedition, obscenity, use of insulting words, official secrecy, contempt of court and parliament, incitement and censorship'."
This mockery of a government continues to send a wrecking ball through much of what is good in this country. Will we now build a tradition of defamation, blasphemy...etc. by removing this clause from the anti-discrimination laws? The drivel issuing from the mouths of the libertine extreme represented by Andrew Bolt is testament to the shallow facade covering these disagreeable elements in our society. Tinkering with this legislation will encourage Boltian bigotry and could 'open a floodgate' as they say. At the very least it sends the wrong message.
Thursday 20 March 2014
The Saga of Friar Tuck and the Robbing Hood Continues
Robert Simms
The march in march was a success and a message to Friar Tuck. He pretended to shrug it off and ignore it but he will have to take such a large demonstration into account, especially when it is supported by intelligent argument. To criticise it because it included some personal stuff against Friar Tuck is to focus on superficiality.
"Offensive March in March placards and the controversy over the Carolyn Habib pamphlet demonstrate that both sides of politics are guilty of double-standards when it comes to personal denigration, writes"If you don't want to be offended, don't get into politics. Democratic processes should be about rational debate, agreement (or the agreement to disagree), consensus. All these things happen under the surface and it is true that the personal stuff highlighted here shouldn't be there but that's life in the big smoke as they say.
The march in march was a success and a message to Friar Tuck. He pretended to shrug it off and ignore it but he will have to take such a large demonstration into account, especially when it is supported by intelligent argument. To criticise it because it included some personal stuff against Friar Tuck is to focus on superficiality.
Tuesday 18 March 2014
Another Conservative Myth Debunked
Paul Krugman
You really do start seeing conspiracies everywhere. A great conservative tome, in this case Arthur Okun's Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff, was hauled out and touted as proof of the truth and justification for maintaining the concentration of obscene wealth in so few hands and the dire consequences of touching this wealth, much as Hayek has been used to justify austerity policies. Beautifully crafted arguments all with the ring of truth and appealing to common sense. All proven to be completely false, except that the application of these arguments had the underlying effect, in addition to any other effect, of maintaining the status quo.
"everybody knew that doing anything to reduce inequality would have at least some negative impact on G.D.P.
But it appears that what everyone knew isn’t true. Taking action to reduce the extreme inequality of 21st-century America would probably increase, not reduce, economic growth."
You really do start seeing conspiracies everywhere. A great conservative tome, in this case Arthur Okun's Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff, was hauled out and touted as proof of the truth and justification for maintaining the concentration of obscene wealth in so few hands and the dire consequences of touching this wealth, much as Hayek has been used to justify austerity policies. Beautifully crafted arguments all with the ring of truth and appealing to common sense. All proven to be completely false, except that the application of these arguments had the underlying effect, in addition to any other effect, of maintaining the status quo.
Thursday 13 March 2014
Balanced and Unbiased but Unjustified and Untrue
Julie Novak
I appreciate the commitment of the ABC to balanced, unbiased journalism, and that this involves printing both sides of any story no matter that it is untrue and proven to be untrue by the application of logic and reason, but publishing this drivel is akin to the radio broadcasts of Lord Haw-Haw in the 1940's or the continuing publication of climate change denialism.
'Freedom of choice' is a myth. Look around you and you will see the homogenation of the so-called 'free' market. Many of the houses in my neighbourhood are on the market from time to time, and I walk around and look at the display boards, noting all the time how similar these houses are to mine. Cars are the same. Go out and buy any car on the market and you will find that it does pretty much exactly what they all do with a minor, superficial deviation here and there. Even that bastion of Hayekian economic thought Niall Ferguson notes this problem.
I have deconstructed the Austrian School of economic thought on this blog for the past year or so. In fact it has been one of my favourite themes. The ABC chooses to publish the alternative to this in the interests of balanced journalism. I applaud them on this. Fortunately this drivel is shouted down by the voices of Greg Jericho, David Llewellyn-Smith, Ian Verrender, and Mungo MacCallum, among others.
This is just a token article which no one with half a brain will take any notice of.
"This week, 70 years ago, Friedrich Hayek's book The Road To Serfdom was first published in the United Kingdom. Dedicated "to the socialists of all parties", the book quickly became a bestseller with five reprints within 15 months in the UK, and with US sales in the first six months exceeding initial expectations 10 times over."
"Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes, we can turn to another. But if we face a monopolist we are at his mercy. And an authority directing the whole economic system would be the most powerful monopolist imaginable."
I appreciate the commitment of the ABC to balanced, unbiased journalism, and that this involves printing both sides of any story no matter that it is untrue and proven to be untrue by the application of logic and reason, but publishing this drivel is akin to the radio broadcasts of Lord Haw-Haw in the 1940's or the continuing publication of climate change denialism.
'Freedom of choice' is a myth. Look around you and you will see the homogenation of the so-called 'free' market. Many of the houses in my neighbourhood are on the market from time to time, and I walk around and look at the display boards, noting all the time how similar these houses are to mine. Cars are the same. Go out and buy any car on the market and you will find that it does pretty much exactly what they all do with a minor, superficial deviation here and there. Even that bastion of Hayekian economic thought Niall Ferguson notes this problem.
I have deconstructed the Austrian School of economic thought on this blog for the past year or so. In fact it has been one of my favourite themes. The ABC chooses to publish the alternative to this in the interests of balanced journalism. I applaud them on this. Fortunately this drivel is shouted down by the voices of Greg Jericho, David Llewellyn-Smith, Ian Verrender, and Mungo MacCallum, among others.
This is just a token article which no one with half a brain will take any notice of.
Wednesday 12 March 2014
Friar Tuck and the Robbing Hoods Part IV (The Wolf is revealed)
Greg Jericho
"Last week there was a bit of news because various Liberal Party backbenchers were openly talking about penalty rates. It started with Dan Tehan and by the end of the week there were about 10 Government MPs lining up to tell the media they think penalty rates need to go."
Well done, again, Greg Jericho, for a lucid piece.
Did anyone mention deja vous? I was active with GetUp in the Kevin07 campaign when the LNP version of IR Reform was supposedly put to sleep permanently. I was working at a factory in Sydney when the EBA was under negotiation and the AWU turned the Howard Government Attack on it's head.
When you talk about penalty rates you run up against the prima facie argument that an hour's work has the same economic value whether it is consumed on a weekend, public holiday, day of annual leave, sick day, or normal work day. This has credence when you put zero value on common goods, all of which have sociosociatal value (apologies for the abuse of language but coining a new term seemed appropriate). Politicians, indeed all salaried workers, are actually paid penalty rates- they are hidden in the fine print of the employment contract. As part of EBA negotiations average hours worked are calculated as the arithmetic mean of observed hours worked over the entire industry. If you then observe a figure for total economic value created in the same period, divide this number by your Arithmetic mean, and subtract an arbitrary percentage representing profit margin for the company, you then arrive at a fair and equitable hourly wage rate, which can be expanded into an annualised amount, paid as a salary, and everyone can get on with life under win-win conditions.
IR policy is a positive-sum game, under ALP policy. This LNP swill continues to attempt to play their traditional divisive, divide-and-conquer, games, all dressed up in harmless-looking, prima facie, rational-sounding, negative-sum game, clothing.
Beware the wolf. His sheeps'-clothing has now been removed.
"Last week there was a bit of news because various Liberal Party backbenchers were openly talking about penalty rates. It started with Dan Tehan and by the end of the week there were about 10 Government MPs lining up to tell the media they think penalty rates need to go."
Well done, again, Greg Jericho, for a lucid piece.
Did anyone mention deja vous? I was active with GetUp in the Kevin07 campaign when the LNP version of IR Reform was supposedly put to sleep permanently. I was working at a factory in Sydney when the EBA was under negotiation and the AWU turned the Howard Government Attack on it's head.
When you talk about penalty rates you run up against the prima facie argument that an hour's work has the same economic value whether it is consumed on a weekend, public holiday, day of annual leave, sick day, or normal work day. This has credence when you put zero value on common goods, all of which have sociosociatal value (apologies for the abuse of language but coining a new term seemed appropriate). Politicians, indeed all salaried workers, are actually paid penalty rates- they are hidden in the fine print of the employment contract. As part of EBA negotiations average hours worked are calculated as the arithmetic mean of observed hours worked over the entire industry. If you then observe a figure for total economic value created in the same period, divide this number by your Arithmetic mean, and subtract an arbitrary percentage representing profit margin for the company, you then arrive at a fair and equitable hourly wage rate, which can be expanded into an annualised amount, paid as a salary, and everyone can get on with life under win-win conditions.
IR policy is a positive-sum game, under ALP policy. This LNP swill continues to attempt to play their traditional divisive, divide-and-conquer, games, all dressed up in harmless-looking, prima facie, rational-sounding, negative-sum game, clothing.
Beware the wolf. His sheeps'-clothing has now been removed.
Monday 10 March 2014
And It's Finally Hit The Fan.....But
The Biennale, Transfield, and the value of boycott
We have been here before.
Is this stuff too hard for the mass of people as the mainstream media obviously believes? Are the majority of people really stupid?
I don't believe they are.
But that will not get this stuff in front of the small number of people who's votes determinew government.
"In July 1846, the American writer Henry David Thoreau went to prison for refusing to pay his poll tax. He couldn’t abide the thought that his money would be used, however indirectly, to perpetuate the Mexican-American war and the institution of slavery. “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison,” Thoreau reasoned, and so that’s where he was."A breath of fresh air appears to finally be blowing today. Everywhere I look there is counter-argument to the drivel and lies that have polluted the media since the election of this right-wing swill.
We have been here before.
Is this stuff too hard for the mass of people as the mainstream media obviously believes? Are the majority of people really stupid?
I don't believe they are.
But that will not get this stuff in front of the small number of people who's votes determinew government.
At Least We Can Take Some Comfort
The Hammock Fallacy
It's not just here. It's everywhere. Paul Krugman knows the answer and expresses himself very clearly........and is ignored.
Why are we blinded by ideology? If it defies reason then it is ideology. Let's really get rid of it next time.
"Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue. So when you see something like the current scramble by Republicans to declare their deep concern for America’s poor, it’s a good sign, indicating a positive change in social norms. Goodbye, sneering at the 47 percent; hello, fake compassion.And the big new poverty report from the House Budget Committee, led by Representative Paul Ryan, offers additional reasons for optimism. Mr. Ryan used to rely on “scholarship” from places like the Heritage Foundation. Remember when Heritage declared that the Ryan budget would reduce unemployment to a ludicrous 2.8 percent, then tried to cover its tracks? This time, however, Mr. Ryan is citing a lot of actual social science research."
It's not just here. It's everywhere. Paul Krugman knows the answer and expresses himself very clearly........and is ignored.
Why are we blinded by ideology? If it defies reason then it is ideology. Let's really get rid of it next time.
Friar Tuck and the Robbing Hoods Part III
Ian Verrender
Finally someone who tells it like it is in a similar vein to my verbiage on this blog.
Will it get into the mainstream media where the majority of the electorate have their opinions dictated, since they don't have the time to form their own, because they are enslaved to their mortgage repayments and therefore have to work longer hours than they otherwise would.
This government is running this country into the ground because its policies are blinded by a failed ideology which has created a world existentially threatened by climate change and subject to inevitable economic crises, which have the potential to knock civilization back to the stone age.
The failure of this ideology has been played out before our eyes on the world stage since its original implementation in the 1980's leading directly to the GFC in 2008. Breathtaking human suffering has been caused. Why do we continue to follow it?
"It's on again: the great productivity debate."
"It makes for a compelling argument, particularly for an electorate that has grown accustomed to the five second sound bite, repeated ad infinitum.
Unfortunately, like almost everything that passes for political discourse these days, it ignores the evidence, overlooks the logic and ploughs on through to a predictable conclusion that is entirely wrong."
Finally someone who tells it like it is in a similar vein to my verbiage on this blog.
Will it get into the mainstream media where the majority of the electorate have their opinions dictated, since they don't have the time to form their own, because they are enslaved to their mortgage repayments and therefore have to work longer hours than they otherwise would.
This government is running this country into the ground because its policies are blinded by a failed ideology which has created a world existentially threatened by climate change and subject to inevitable economic crises, which have the potential to knock civilization back to the stone age.
The failure of this ideology has been played out before our eyes on the world stage since its original implementation in the 1980's leading directly to the GFC in 2008. Breathtaking human suffering has been caused. Why do we continue to follow it?
Sunday 9 March 2014
The Continuing Saga of Friar Tuck and the Robbing Hood Part II
Stephen Koukoulas - Per Capita
"All of which suggests the hidden agenda of reform to the labour market slowly but surely being unfurled by the Coalition government since the election is not really about macroeconomic management."
Oh Really. What on Earth could it possibly be about then?
This article is way too diplomatic. The above quote is the only reference in this entire article - an article with such an alarming title - to the re-emergence of the work-choices bogey supposedly killed off in the Kevin-07 election.
When will people wake up? The ancient antagonism between the forces of capital and the forces of labour, embodied in the political conflict between the ALP and the LNP, doesn't magically disappear when you abandon the union movement and allow another round of marginally legitimate LNP government.
Progressive forces all over the world need to harden themselves and get down and dirty. They are pitted against neoliberal ideologues who know exactly how free markets work in capitalist economies, and are prepared to use every weapon available - to win. If the powers of progress can not bring themselves to play the free marketeers at their own game, then we are all well and truly doomed.
"All of which suggests the hidden agenda of reform to the labour market slowly but surely being unfurled by the Coalition government since the election is not really about macroeconomic management."
Oh Really. What on Earth could it possibly be about then?
This article is way too diplomatic. The above quote is the only reference in this entire article - an article with such an alarming title - to the re-emergence of the work-choices bogey supposedly killed off in the Kevin-07 election.
When will people wake up? The ancient antagonism between the forces of capital and the forces of labour, embodied in the political conflict between the ALP and the LNP, doesn't magically disappear when you abandon the union movement and allow another round of marginally legitimate LNP government.
Progressive forces all over the world need to harden themselves and get down and dirty. They are pitted against neoliberal ideologues who know exactly how free markets work in capitalist economies, and are prepared to use every weapon available - to win. If the powers of progress can not bring themselves to play the free marketeers at their own game, then we are all well and truly doomed.
Thursday 6 March 2014
The Continuing Saga of Friar Tuck and the Robbing Hood Part I
Jonathon Green
"Young people will struggle to imagine that there can ever have been a mainstream expression of hardline leftist thinking, a school of thought represented today by a few tattered remnants; a half a dozen spotty vendors of Green Left Weekly huddled defiantly by a card table in a stream of oblivious commuters."
They'll be strugglin' a'right. Subsistence wages for slaving at the job 12 hours a day.
Fools.
Could've easily been avoided.
"Young people will struggle to imagine that there can ever have been a mainstream expression of hardline leftist thinking, a school of thought represented today by a few tattered remnants; a half a dozen spotty vendors of Green Left Weekly huddled defiantly by a card table in a stream of oblivious commuters."
They'll be strugglin' a'right. Subsistence wages for slaving at the job 12 hours a day.
Fools.
Could've easily been avoided.
The Great Continuing Saga of Friar Tuck and The Robbing Hood
Jonathan Green
"The conservative commentariat is still railing against a hardline left which is almost exclusively represented in modern times by half a dozen spotty vendors of Green Left Weekly."
Where can we find the next bogey-man-to-beat-up. Those ignorant low-borns won't know what to think. Oh no Joe please don't go. No, no Joe.
"A hankering for a time when ideological divisions were rich, clear and meaningful, when a clear sense of what separated the left and the right gave a certain rhythm to the cut and thrust of mainstream politics."
This is such a LIE. Ideology is vastly important. Good God : an asteroid is coming close to our annihilation and you say it's unimportant? The salvation of the planet relies on this concept.
Oh Jonathon. What shall we say to this?
"In early 1886, the Texas & Pacific Railroad fired a leader of the district assembly of the Knights of Labor, and this led to a strike which spread throughout the Southwest, tying up traffic as far as St. Louis and Kansas City. Nine young men recruited in New Orleans as marshals, brought to Texas to protect company property, learned about the strike and quit their jobs, saying, “as man to man we could not justifiably go to work and take the bread out of our fellow-workmen’s mouths, no matter how much we needed it ourselves.” They were then arrested for defrauding the company by refusing to work, and sentenced to three months in the Galveston county jail. The strikers engaged in sabotage. A news dispatch from Atchison, Kansas: At 12: 45 this morning the men on guard at the Missouri Pacific roundhouse were surprised by the appearance of 35 or 40 masked men. The guards were corralled in the oil room by a detachment of the visitors who stood guard with pistols . . . while the rest of them thoroughly disabled 12 locomotives which stood in the stalls."
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (p. 269). Harper Perennial Modern Classics. Kindle Edition.
Is this ideology? No, these are only facts, things that actually happened. It is because of the lies of Friar Tuck and the Robbing Hood that another myth is created about the disappearance of ideology. It reminds me of that 'budget emergency' we were searching for, high and low, before the election. Was that my ideology? oh no I missed it again.
Why do you procreate the myth by giving it credence on the media?
Which brings us to the crux of the matter.
It is LNP policy to drive wages down to the level of subsistence existing in China (in fact, if you look at their policy on Qantas, they want all our assets to be owned and operated for profit by state owned Chinese enterprises). Part of their strategy for achieving this is to convince the electorate that the ideological battles of the previous two centuries are in the past: 'blowing in the wind', passing wind in the process. This has lead to the abandonment of union membership we see today. They have fooled everyone into believing that we have all grown up now and it can't happen again.
This is all just lulling their opponents into a false sense of security prior to a blood-letting of supreme importance.
People died and blood was spilt to get everyone their job security and wages and working hours.
If we get lucky, a few of us may still have these things by the end of this term of government.
every body fell for it.
"The conservative commentariat is still railing against a hardline left which is almost exclusively represented in modern times by half a dozen spotty vendors of Green Left Weekly."
Where can we find the next bogey-man-to-beat-up. Those ignorant low-borns won't know what to think. Oh no Joe please don't go. No, no Joe.
"A hankering for a time when ideological divisions were rich, clear and meaningful, when a clear sense of what separated the left and the right gave a certain rhythm to the cut and thrust of mainstream politics."
This is such a LIE. Ideology is vastly important. Good God : an asteroid is coming close to our annihilation and you say it's unimportant? The salvation of the planet relies on this concept.
Oh Jonathon. What shall we say to this?
"In early 1886, the Texas & Pacific Railroad fired a leader of the district assembly of the Knights of Labor, and this led to a strike which spread throughout the Southwest, tying up traffic as far as St. Louis and Kansas City. Nine young men recruited in New Orleans as marshals, brought to Texas to protect company property, learned about the strike and quit their jobs, saying, “as man to man we could not justifiably go to work and take the bread out of our fellow-workmen’s mouths, no matter how much we needed it ourselves.” They were then arrested for defrauding the company by refusing to work, and sentenced to three months in the Galveston county jail. The strikers engaged in sabotage. A news dispatch from Atchison, Kansas: At 12: 45 this morning the men on guard at the Missouri Pacific roundhouse were surprised by the appearance of 35 or 40 masked men. The guards were corralled in the oil room by a detachment of the visitors who stood guard with pistols . . . while the rest of them thoroughly disabled 12 locomotives which stood in the stalls."
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (p. 269). Harper Perennial Modern Classics. Kindle Edition.
Is this ideology? No, these are only facts, things that actually happened. It is because of the lies of Friar Tuck and the Robbing Hood that another myth is created about the disappearance of ideology. It reminds me of that 'budget emergency' we were searching for, high and low, before the election. Was that my ideology? oh no I missed it again.
Why do you procreate the myth by giving it credence on the media?
Which brings us to the crux of the matter.
It is LNP policy to drive wages down to the level of subsistence existing in China (in fact, if you look at their policy on Qantas, they want all our assets to be owned and operated for profit by state owned Chinese enterprises). Part of their strategy for achieving this is to convince the electorate that the ideological battles of the previous two centuries are in the past: 'blowing in the wind', passing wind in the process. This has lead to the abandonment of union membership we see today. They have fooled everyone into believing that we have all grown up now and it can't happen again.
This is all just lulling their opponents into a false sense of security prior to a blood-letting of supreme importance.
People died and blood was spilt to get everyone their job security and wages and working hours.
If we get lucky, a few of us may still have these things by the end of this term of government.
every body fell for it.
Sunday 2 March 2014
Usually a Better Way
Ivor Roberts
"Yet appeasement has continued to get a bad press and this has infected the political thinking of those born too young to have fought in wars and too ignorant of history to absorb its lessons."
This is a delightful article. It never quite comes out and makes too many points though. Historians tend to be much too diplomatic and water down their content accordingly. How would they ever get published if they didn't?
The phrase 'too ignorant of history' rang some bells for me. To misquote a wise man, something about perhaps 'too ignorant of history to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past'.
Howard Zinn , a historian/activist, someone who practiced what they preached, in his seminal and highly readable "Peoples' History of the United States" points out the failings of history, how things can be left out or barely mentioned, or coloured and stressed differently, so 'ignorant of history' will also mean those who know all about 'history', meaning history as approved by the dominant ideology only.
When I went through school Christopher Columbus was a hero, a groundbreaking far-sighted genious who took his heart in his hands and set out into the unknown on the promise of what we would now call rumour, not a ruthless scammer who duped the monarchs of Spain into backing him financially time and again on the promise of dubious loot and pillage and then cruelly conquered vast swathes of the planet killing and stealing as he went.
In Australia you just never heard of massacres of aboriginals. The truth was so well burried that you would have had to go back to original source documents and eye-witness accounts to find it. Even then you wouldn't know who to believe as reputable people contradicted this information at every turn.
As a policy 'appeasement' did not exist to appease, but to buy time to rearm in the face of superior military strength. 'The war to end all wars'; 'The war that ended peace' had ensnared the world's leader in their own lies, causing them to think it was then OK to drop their guard permanently and disarm.
The truth is always in the middle.
"Yet appeasement has continued to get a bad press and this has infected the political thinking of those born too young to have fought in wars and too ignorant of history to absorb its lessons."
This is a delightful article. It never quite comes out and makes too many points though. Historians tend to be much too diplomatic and water down their content accordingly. How would they ever get published if they didn't?
The phrase 'too ignorant of history' rang some bells for me. To misquote a wise man, something about perhaps 'too ignorant of history to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past'.
Howard Zinn , a historian/activist, someone who practiced what they preached, in his seminal and highly readable "Peoples' History of the United States" points out the failings of history, how things can be left out or barely mentioned, or coloured and stressed differently, so 'ignorant of history' will also mean those who know all about 'history', meaning history as approved by the dominant ideology only.
When I went through school Christopher Columbus was a hero, a groundbreaking far-sighted genious who took his heart in his hands and set out into the unknown on the promise of what we would now call rumour, not a ruthless scammer who duped the monarchs of Spain into backing him financially time and again on the promise of dubious loot and pillage and then cruelly conquered vast swathes of the planet killing and stealing as he went.
In Australia you just never heard of massacres of aboriginals. The truth was so well burried that you would have had to go back to original source documents and eye-witness accounts to find it. Even then you wouldn't know who to believe as reputable people contradicted this information at every turn.
As a policy 'appeasement' did not exist to appease, but to buy time to rearm in the face of superior military strength. 'The war to end all wars'; 'The war that ended peace' had ensnared the world's leader in their own lies, causing them to think it was then OK to drop their guard permanently and disarm.
The truth is always in the middle.
Saturday 1 March 2014
Stalin's Last Hurrah
Goodbye Ukraine and thanks for the fish
Civil war may be the only solution to the Ukrainian dilemma. After colonisation of Ukraine by first Czarist then Stalinist Russia through the better part of two centuries the Russian segment of society is almost as numerous as the Ukrainian.
Unless the two sides can compromise there will need to be two Ukraines.
Civil war may be the only solution to the Ukrainian dilemma. After colonisation of Ukraine by first Czarist then Stalinist Russia through the better part of two centuries the Russian segment of society is almost as numerous as the Ukrainian.
Unless the two sides can compromise there will need to be two Ukraines.
Monday 17 February 2014
Progressive Utopia
Tim Dunlop
"And yet this is where we are heading, mere months into the first term of an Abbott government. We are, as a nation, being transformed from a society into an economy."
"Changes to superannuation that favour the rich over the low-paid; abolishing a pay rise for low-paid workers in the childcare sector; abandoning the Gonski reforms that set in place a more equitable funding scheme for public education; floating the idea of a Medicare co-payment for GP visits; gutting the NDIS: all of these point to a government trying to restructure the economy not for the benefit of the many but for enrichment of the few."
All of this stuff is absolutely 100% correct. The same state of existence as Europe with double-digit entrenched unemployment exacerbating an oversupply of labour driving wages down to where the elites like to have them: at subsistence level.
This is "The invisible hand of the market" in action. Adam Smith foresaw this effect and did not recommend its application but the mythology constructed by the elite to maintain its dominance extracts this phrase out of context and uses it for their purposes.
John Maynard Keynes envisaged a capitalist utopia where production in the capitalist market had been allowed to create a materialist abundance where all could live well and good. The advanced economies of the world have already achieved this utopia but it's effects are being held back by the devious tactics of the ruling elite because in such a utopia t.heir elite status may not necessarily be maintained.
We await our nirvana generated by the coming of a new leader of great charisma, insight, and ability.
"And yet this is where we are heading, mere months into the first term of an Abbott government. We are, as a nation, being transformed from a society into an economy."
"Changes to superannuation that favour the rich over the low-paid; abolishing a pay rise for low-paid workers in the childcare sector; abandoning the Gonski reforms that set in place a more equitable funding scheme for public education; floating the idea of a Medicare co-payment for GP visits; gutting the NDIS: all of these point to a government trying to restructure the economy not for the benefit of the many but for enrichment of the few."
All of this stuff is absolutely 100% correct. The same state of existence as Europe with double-digit entrenched unemployment exacerbating an oversupply of labour driving wages down to where the elites like to have them: at subsistence level.
This is "The invisible hand of the market" in action. Adam Smith foresaw this effect and did not recommend its application but the mythology constructed by the elite to maintain its dominance extracts this phrase out of context and uses it for their purposes.
John Maynard Keynes envisaged a capitalist utopia where production in the capitalist market had been allowed to create a materialist abundance where all could live well and good. The advanced economies of the world have already achieved this utopia but it's effects are being held back by the devious tactics of the ruling elite because in such a utopia t.heir elite status may not necessarily be maintained.
We await our nirvana generated by the coming of a new leader of great charisma, insight, and ability.
Sunday 9 February 2014
The Hypocracy of the LNP
The politics of deindustrialisation
"Equally importantly, every country that has ever become a successful manufacturing economy – including bastions of free market ideology like the UK and the US – did so with the help of a powerful, protective and supportive state.
Even if we accept and recognise that historical reality – and many don’t, of course – the question is whether such a role for governments is any longer appropriate when capital and companies can easily move around a supposedly borderless world. Workers on the production line at one of the rapidly diminishing band of multinational car producers in this country clearly think it is. They may have a point, despite the obvious self-interest.
While there are still things governments can do to assist or protect local producers if they choose to do so (as many states in competing economies still do), it is evident that the Coalition has decided that those businesses that cannot survive on their own probably shouldn’t. The Abbott government is plainly not persuaded by either the idea that manufacturing has special strategic qualities or that it should use taxpayers money to prop-up the ailing off-shoots of foreign companies."
Remember back during the election the flagrant promises by Friar Tuck of millions of jobs appearing out of nowhere? Yes it's the magic of the free market. Just free it up and all these wonderful things just happen. As I explained in a previous post, the market is a harlot. competitiveness is a learned trait and pure competition is monopolistic. This is because in each contest there is a winner and a loser, and as the contests multiply the number of winner becomes smaller and smaller.
The retreat to free markets has been happening sporadically for a long time now and has resulted in the oligopolies in the supply of many products we see today.
Manufacturing has been nurtured by protective governments at every stage of history. In fact it may be said to not exist if it is not fostered and nurtured by National Governments. I don't think the electorate voted for the abolition of manufacturing in Australia, but that will be the end result of LNP policies.
As for jobs, this fanciful idea that eliminating the emissions trading scheme will magically produce millions of jobs is nonsensically absurd.
Under this imbecilic government we are headed for double digit unemployment and may well be at war with Indonesia by the end of the year.
"Equally importantly, every country that has ever become a successful manufacturing economy – including bastions of free market ideology like the UK and the US – did so with the help of a powerful, protective and supportive state.
Even if we accept and recognise that historical reality – and many don’t, of course – the question is whether such a role for governments is any longer appropriate when capital and companies can easily move around a supposedly borderless world. Workers on the production line at one of the rapidly diminishing band of multinational car producers in this country clearly think it is. They may have a point, despite the obvious self-interest.
While there are still things governments can do to assist or protect local producers if they choose to do so (as many states in competing economies still do), it is evident that the Coalition has decided that those businesses that cannot survive on their own probably shouldn’t. The Abbott government is plainly not persuaded by either the idea that manufacturing has special strategic qualities or that it should use taxpayers money to prop-up the ailing off-shoots of foreign companies."
Remember back during the election the flagrant promises by Friar Tuck of millions of jobs appearing out of nowhere? Yes it's the magic of the free market. Just free it up and all these wonderful things just happen. As I explained in a previous post, the market is a harlot. competitiveness is a learned trait and pure competition is monopolistic. This is because in each contest there is a winner and a loser, and as the contests multiply the number of winner becomes smaller and smaller.
The retreat to free markets has been happening sporadically for a long time now and has resulted in the oligopolies in the supply of many products we see today.
Manufacturing has been nurtured by protective governments at every stage of history. In fact it may be said to not exist if it is not fostered and nurtured by National Governments. I don't think the electorate voted for the abolition of manufacturing in Australia, but that will be the end result of LNP policies.
As for jobs, this fanciful idea that eliminating the emissions trading scheme will magically produce millions of jobs is nonsensically absurd.
Under this imbecilic government we are headed for double digit unemployment and may well be at war with Indonesia by the end of the year.
Saturday 1 February 2014
Head in the Sand
More time on policy, less time on framing
"We cannot call this a "National Broadband Network" any more. That term is fundamentally redundant, when around 28 percent of Australian premises will not receive the infrastructure, and most of the rest will receive a watered down version highly dependent on Telstra's copper network."
A defining characteristic of conservative parties is an ideologically driven ignorance which is stubbornly clung to in the face of informed opinion, indeed demonstrated fact. Every expert in the field has stated that the FTTN technology is inferior and can not be updated but must be torn down and rebuilt when this factoid impinges on their collective brain cell. The experience in Germany proves this.
Likewise with global warming and climate change.
We need to be governed by light and reason, not by ideological ignorance.
"the major cause of this year's budget deficit was Joe Hockey's $8.8bn gift to the RBA... an amount of money...roughly equal to that spent by the government annually on higher education."
"It's even tougher to sell something as a budget emergency when you also say we have to wait six months before you'll do anything about it.
Most of the decisions have been handballed to the Commission of Audit, which is due to release its interim report by the end of this month."
As H. L. Mencken, the acerbic social critic of the 1920s, put it: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
And so it continues. LNP governments always do the same thing. Stop everything. Our obscenely rich supporters are not rich enough. We must create smoke and mirrors so we can make them richer at the expense of the poor. The unemployed have no voice: lets grind them further into the dust. What else can we cut? Oh I know: education. We don't want people educated. they might then be able to see through our smoke and mirrors and we wouldn't be able to fool them into electing us again.
"We cannot call this a "National Broadband Network" any more. That term is fundamentally redundant, when around 28 percent of Australian premises will not receive the infrastructure, and most of the rest will receive a watered down version highly dependent on Telstra's copper network."
A defining characteristic of conservative parties is an ideologically driven ignorance which is stubbornly clung to in the face of informed opinion, indeed demonstrated fact. Every expert in the field has stated that the FTTN technology is inferior and can not be updated but must be torn down and rebuilt when this factoid impinges on their collective brain cell. The experience in Germany proves this.
Likewise with global warming and climate change.
We need to be governed by light and reason, not by ideological ignorance.
"the major cause of this year's budget deficit was Joe Hockey's $8.8bn gift to the RBA... an amount of money...roughly equal to that spent by the government annually on higher education."
"It's even tougher to sell something as a budget emergency when you also say we have to wait six months before you'll do anything about it.
Most of the decisions have been handballed to the Commission of Audit, which is due to release its interim report by the end of this month."
As H. L. Mencken, the acerbic social critic of the 1920s, put it: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
And so it continues. LNP governments always do the same thing. Stop everything. Our obscenely rich supporters are not rich enough. We must create smoke and mirrors so we can make them richer at the expense of the poor. The unemployed have no voice: lets grind them further into the dust. What else can we cut? Oh I know: education. We don't want people educated. they might then be able to see through our smoke and mirrors and we wouldn't be able to fool them into electing us again.
Just Another Recipe for Disaster
Would you dump rubbish in the Grand Canyon?
"Queensland Premier Campbell Newman has declared "we're in the coal business"."
"The thirst for the project comes from the Queensland government and the coal industry which are brazenly pushing to open up the Galilee Basin."
"Allowing a climate-driving coal-shipping superhighway to go ahead through the Reef will only add to the pressures the Reef is already facing from climate change, land-based pollution and crown of thorns starfish outbreaks."
This article is balanced and well-written and all that, and I congratulate this official Greenpeace Climate Campaigner on getting it published, but it is just so bland and ineffectual.
Let's be perfectly clear about this. Unless large deposits of fossil fuels such as those in the Galilee Basin (and the South China Sea,...and the Arctic Ocean) remain in the ground, this planet faces Catastrophic Climate Change, leading to the probable extinction of most of the present species on the planet, including the human race, and that every further gram of fossil fuel extracted and burnt intensifies this result.
There was a small chance to stabilise a 2 degree world when global warming due to the greenhouse effect entered mainstream consciousness. Remember that a 2 degree change in average surface temperature was all it took end the last ice age and produce our current conditions.
Now that chance has been blown out the window because nothing was done about the problem immediately. We will be lucky if we can stop it at a 4 degree world now and if we keep allowing fossil fuel extraction it won't even stop there.
So full marks for a good piece of journalism, but an official Greenpeace advocate should be advocating much more strongly.
"Queensland Premier Campbell Newman has declared "we're in the coal business"."
"The thirst for the project comes from the Queensland government and the coal industry which are brazenly pushing to open up the Galilee Basin."
"Allowing a climate-driving coal-shipping superhighway to go ahead through the Reef will only add to the pressures the Reef is already facing from climate change, land-based pollution and crown of thorns starfish outbreaks."
This article is balanced and well-written and all that, and I congratulate this official Greenpeace Climate Campaigner on getting it published, but it is just so bland and ineffectual.
Let's be perfectly clear about this. Unless large deposits of fossil fuels such as those in the Galilee Basin (and the South China Sea,...and the Arctic Ocean) remain in the ground, this planet faces Catastrophic Climate Change, leading to the probable extinction of most of the present species on the planet, including the human race, and that every further gram of fossil fuel extracted and burnt intensifies this result.
There was a small chance to stabilise a 2 degree world when global warming due to the greenhouse effect entered mainstream consciousness. Remember that a 2 degree change in average surface temperature was all it took end the last ice age and produce our current conditions.
Now that chance has been blown out the window because nothing was done about the problem immediately. We will be lucky if we can stop it at a 4 degree world now and if we keep allowing fossil fuel extraction it won't even stop there.
So full marks for a good piece of journalism, but an official Greenpeace advocate should be advocating much more strongly.
Saturday 25 January 2014
Abbinflation
Tony Abbott's inflation headache
"If inflation proves enduring this year, the Coalition will have to prevent any wage push from causing a breakout - and that means falling standards of living, writes David Llewellyn-Smith."
Inflation is the least of Abbott's worries. LNP economic policies are proven to create a low-employment economy with all its associated human suffering.
Mark my words. We will have double digit unemployment by the end of the calendar year and may well be at war with Indonesia.
If you want proof just look at EU data. Every country that succeeds with these policies does so at the cost of widespread unemployment. And it's not the vested interests or the drones they elect who suffer under these policies. It's the you-and-me common people.
Get used to it. Everyone has reverted to business as usual so the next economic crisis is just around the corner and the pundits are taking bets on whether the climate crisis will pre-or-post-date it.
"If inflation proves enduring this year, the Coalition will have to prevent any wage push from causing a breakout - and that means falling standards of living, writes David Llewellyn-Smith."
Inflation is the least of Abbott's worries. LNP economic policies are proven to create a low-employment economy with all its associated human suffering.
Mark my words. We will have double digit unemployment by the end of the calendar year and may well be at war with Indonesia.
If you want proof just look at EU data. Every country that succeeds with these policies does so at the cost of widespread unemployment. And it's not the vested interests or the drones they elect who suffer under these policies. It's the you-and-me common people.
Get used to it. Everyone has reverted to business as usual so the next economic crisis is just around the corner and the pundits are taking bets on whether the climate crisis will pre-or-post-date it.
The Market is a Harlot
It's not just the rich who benefit from free markets
"In an unhampered, free-market economy, the distribution of income is wholly determined by the interplay of mutually beneficial market transactions between sellers and buyers.
Incomes are attained by selling goods and services to customers willing to pay for them, and suppliers who most closely meet the needs and desires of consumers are rewarded with revenues that more than cover production costs.
The resultant inequality, therefore, derives from the personal choices of the millions, or even billions, of participants in the market process"
This sort of absurd oversimplification is particularly prevalent in the pseudo-science of economics and always results in a false argument which creates a myth which in turn bolsters and recreates the status quo.
Firstly, an 'unhampered, free-market economy' is a contradiction-in-terms and an utter impossibility in the context of human interactions. The vested interests 'hamper' the market for their own benefit every day through the election and manipulation of their drones in government.
Secondly, I can think of a number of significant sources of income which have nothing to do with the selling of goods and services, not to mention the common goods which are shared and used by everyone free of charge, and therefore have no value according to this outdated oversimplified model.
I could go through this whole article and pick it to pieces, but you get the drift. The starting point is absurd so all that derives from it is also absurd.
So the title is true in an absurd sort of a way. It might more accurately be read as 'be happy and satisfied with the few crumbs which fall to you as we devour this crust of bread'.
There are way too many right-wing neo-liberal free-market extremists spreading this sort of drivel around and not enough realists to counter their absurd arguments. Even if there were sufficient numbers though, they would never make it into circulation to the major portion of the electorate because these people get their information from the mainstream media, and these are controlled by the vested interests who benefit from everyone believing this crap. If you say it enough times any lie becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Thus are the myths created which procreate the present reality and doom us to repeat the mistakes of the past.
But enough of this morbidity. Since the market is a harlot let's go have a bang.
"In an unhampered, free-market economy, the distribution of income is wholly determined by the interplay of mutually beneficial market transactions between sellers and buyers.
Incomes are attained by selling goods and services to customers willing to pay for them, and suppliers who most closely meet the needs and desires of consumers are rewarded with revenues that more than cover production costs.
The resultant inequality, therefore, derives from the personal choices of the millions, or even billions, of participants in the market process"
This sort of absurd oversimplification is particularly prevalent in the pseudo-science of economics and always results in a false argument which creates a myth which in turn bolsters and recreates the status quo.
Firstly, an 'unhampered, free-market economy' is a contradiction-in-terms and an utter impossibility in the context of human interactions. The vested interests 'hamper' the market for their own benefit every day through the election and manipulation of their drones in government.
Secondly, I can think of a number of significant sources of income which have nothing to do with the selling of goods and services, not to mention the common goods which are shared and used by everyone free of charge, and therefore have no value according to this outdated oversimplified model.
I could go through this whole article and pick it to pieces, but you get the drift. The starting point is absurd so all that derives from it is also absurd.
So the title is true in an absurd sort of a way. It might more accurately be read as 'be happy and satisfied with the few crumbs which fall to you as we devour this crust of bread'.
There are way too many right-wing neo-liberal free-market extremists spreading this sort of drivel around and not enough realists to counter their absurd arguments. Even if there were sufficient numbers though, they would never make it into circulation to the major portion of the electorate because these people get their information from the mainstream media, and these are controlled by the vested interests who benefit from everyone believing this crap. If you say it enough times any lie becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Thus are the myths created which procreate the present reality and doom us to repeat the mistakes of the past.
But enough of this morbidity. Since the market is a harlot let's go have a bang.
Tuesday 21 January 2014
Is the light on the hill a mcmansion
Dethroning GDP as our measure of progress
"Whatever you think it is that makes life worth living, as Robert F Kennedy pointed out in 1968, it's almost a sure bet that it isn't measured by Gross Domestic Product, or GDP."
"One of the frontrunners to replace GDP is the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI)."
"While the unbridled pursuit of GDP growth has not done much to increase our well-being over the past few decades, it has been a triumph for big business and the finance sector, i.e. those who disproportionately benefit from raw economic activity. Not surprisingly, as a result of this windfall, these sectors - and the politicians who serve them - are likely to resist any move to a more comprehensive metric of national economic well-being."
Tim Dean succinctly and eloquently outlines this problem, which has been talked about and analysed and bandied about and then talked about and analysed some more, ad infinitum, since the sixties, just as the reality of the greenhouse effect due to it's basis in the physical characteristics of chemical bonds, and therefore global warming and climate change, has been, but still we maintain the status quo and vote conservative governments into office.
We are already doomed to at least a two degree world and probably worse. The last time there was a two degree change in the average global temperature the glaciers retreated from central North America and Europe. These are the sort of macro effects you can expect from only a two degree change. And yet we maintain the status quo and vote conservative governments into office.
It has been demonstrated that even a two degree world can not support the lives of 7-8 billion people. At least a billion people will have to be eliminated. But still we maintain the status quo and vote conservative governments into office.
You can't argue with physical laws. The very existence of our species is at stake, so we build bigger and bigger coal mines, coal trains and shipping facilities, extract crude oil from coal seams, and from the Arctic ocean-bed. But that's OK because we can always maintain the status quo and vote conservative governments into office.
David Suzuki visited Australia and spoke on ABC TV. He has been a voice crying in the wilderness for something like fifty years now. The commercial media take no interest at all. He has not abandoned all hope, as many futurists have. He said that we simply don't know enough to predict what is going to happen and described an example to illustrate what he means.
If we keep maintaining the status quo and voting conservative governments into office, we all have blood on our hands, and the answer is yes. I personally never vote conservative, so I can pretend to have washed my hands of this blood, but we are all collectively members of the electorate, and the electorate voted this government into office, so no one can escape responsibility completely.
Revolution or the status quo. which would you prefer?
"Whatever you think it is that makes life worth living, as Robert F Kennedy pointed out in 1968, it's almost a sure bet that it isn't measured by Gross Domestic Product, or GDP."
"One of the frontrunners to replace GDP is the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI)."
"While the unbridled pursuit of GDP growth has not done much to increase our well-being over the past few decades, it has been a triumph for big business and the finance sector, i.e. those who disproportionately benefit from raw economic activity. Not surprisingly, as a result of this windfall, these sectors - and the politicians who serve them - are likely to resist any move to a more comprehensive metric of national economic well-being."
Tim Dean succinctly and eloquently outlines this problem, which has been talked about and analysed and bandied about and then talked about and analysed some more, ad infinitum, since the sixties, just as the reality of the greenhouse effect due to it's basis in the physical characteristics of chemical bonds, and therefore global warming and climate change, has been, but still we maintain the status quo and vote conservative governments into office.
We are already doomed to at least a two degree world and probably worse. The last time there was a two degree change in the average global temperature the glaciers retreated from central North America and Europe. These are the sort of macro effects you can expect from only a two degree change. And yet we maintain the status quo and vote conservative governments into office.
It has been demonstrated that even a two degree world can not support the lives of 7-8 billion people. At least a billion people will have to be eliminated. But still we maintain the status quo and vote conservative governments into office.
You can't argue with physical laws. The very existence of our species is at stake, so we build bigger and bigger coal mines, coal trains and shipping facilities, extract crude oil from coal seams, and from the Arctic ocean-bed. But that's OK because we can always maintain the status quo and vote conservative governments into office.
David Suzuki visited Australia and spoke on ABC TV. He has been a voice crying in the wilderness for something like fifty years now. The commercial media take no interest at all. He has not abandoned all hope, as many futurists have. He said that we simply don't know enough to predict what is going to happen and described an example to illustrate what he means.
If we keep maintaining the status quo and voting conservative governments into office, we all have blood on our hands, and the answer is yes. I personally never vote conservative, so I can pretend to have washed my hands of this blood, but we are all collectively members of the electorate, and the electorate voted this government into office, so no one can escape responsibility completely.
Revolution or the status quo. which would you prefer?
Wednesday 15 January 2014
Is it time to panic yet
The environment would pay for 'free trade'
"The potential benefits from these clauses to Australians are very limited. Australian businesses have apparently never used the ISDS provisions in Australian treaties. The Productivity Commission, in a 2010 report into ISDS clauses, recommended that our government "avoid the inclusion of investor-state dispute settlement provisions in [international agreements] that grant foreign investors in Australia substantive or procedural rights greater than those enjoyed by Australian investors" - advice that the Abbott Government appears to be ignoring in the TPP negotiations.
Do we really want to create an Australia where we have to pay a foreign corporation not to dig up or destroy our coastline or native forests? Our laws should protect Australians and the places we love - not the profits of foreign multinationals."
Is this a trick question? Who or what will stop this imbecile government from signing-off on this stuff?
This is precisely the sort of irreparable damage I've been rattling on about since the election.
"The potential benefits from these clauses to Australians are very limited. Australian businesses have apparently never used the ISDS provisions in Australian treaties. The Productivity Commission, in a 2010 report into ISDS clauses, recommended that our government "avoid the inclusion of investor-state dispute settlement provisions in [international agreements] that grant foreign investors in Australia substantive or procedural rights greater than those enjoyed by Australian investors" - advice that the Abbott Government appears to be ignoring in the TPP negotiations.
Do we really want to create an Australia where we have to pay a foreign corporation not to dig up or destroy our coastline or native forests? Our laws should protect Australians and the places we love - not the profits of foreign multinationals."
Is this a trick question? Who or what will stop this imbecile government from signing-off on this stuff?
This is precisely the sort of irreparable damage I've been rattling on about since the election.
Ideology of War
Asylum seekers and the language of war
"The cloak of a military campaign against the hapless asylum seekers has been adopted as political camouflage, partly to inflate the importance of what is, by any normal measure, no more than an irritant, and partly to justify the cult of secrecy ("we do not comment on operational matters") that Abbott and Morrison have invoked to cover their own mismanagement. And it appears that there is a fair amount to cover."
Come on Mungo. Your language is too neutral. The language of war is an ideological tool of the Conservative forces of evil and the harbinger of abuses of power. Look at how they used the 'war on terror' to inflict turmoil on the world and infringe the rights of all of us pseudo-free individuals.
Big Brother is watching you but don't worry. It's OK because we are at war and the enemy is everywhere and we are infringing your rights for your own security. It's all for your own good.
Now go back to sleep. You have a big day tomorrow making lots of money for me while I pay you a slave's wage
"The cloak of a military campaign against the hapless asylum seekers has been adopted as political camouflage, partly to inflate the importance of what is, by any normal measure, no more than an irritant, and partly to justify the cult of secrecy ("we do not comment on operational matters") that Abbott and Morrison have invoked to cover their own mismanagement. And it appears that there is a fair amount to cover."
Come on Mungo. Your language is too neutral. The language of war is an ideological tool of the Conservative forces of evil and the harbinger of abuses of power. Look at how they used the 'war on terror' to inflict turmoil on the world and infringe the rights of all of us pseudo-free individuals.
Big Brother is watching you but don't worry. It's OK because we are at war and the enemy is everywhere and we are infringing your rights for your own security. It's all for your own good.
Now go back to sleep. You have a big day tomorrow making lots of money for me while I pay you a slave's wage
Ideology and Education
The farce of an ideologically neutral curriculum
"That rule by unelected experts is supposed to be more legitimate and morally superior to rule by elected representatives just shows how anti-democratic our era really is."
For 'legitimate' and 'morally superior one could substitute 'rational' and 'sensible'. It is only the 'unelected experts' who will save us from this disastrous government and the irreparable damage their failed ideology will inflict on us. Rule by unelected experts may be 'anti-democratic', but it is far preferable to rule by this elected swill.
"Ideology isn't a bad thing. Everybody's thought is shaped by ideology, whether they're aware of it or not. But it's ideology nonetheless."
Actually, historians and historiographers define an 'age of ideologies', beginning around the turn of last century and terminating with the end of the cold war. This age was characterised by genocides, wars, suppression, repressions and other events of ideologically driven slaughter, which made the wars of religion in Europe pale in comparison, although these were of course ideologically driven as well. So we can categorically conclude from this that 'ideology isn't a bad thing'.
"The curriculum is explicit, open, and unabashed about its ideological content. It's not buried or implied. It's as bold as a billboard."
True. But the question is whether this 'ideological content' is based on rationality and reason, backed up by evidence-driven facts and the behavioural consequences of these facts, or derives from myths created by ignorance, and blatant manipulation of the sources of information.
This question needs to be applied to every ideology to discern whether it 'isn't a bad thing' or not.
"The sustainability theme is intended to "[create] a more ecologically and socially just world through informed action". That's virtually the definition of ideology: a positive description (we are harming the planet) combined with a normative ideal of a better social order (an ecologically and socially just world)."
Yes, and ideology underlies all thought, and drives the national curriculum.
If only we had a curriculum which produces people able to identify and analyse ideologies.
"That rule by unelected experts is supposed to be more legitimate and morally superior to rule by elected representatives just shows how anti-democratic our era really is."
For 'legitimate' and 'morally superior one could substitute 'rational' and 'sensible'. It is only the 'unelected experts' who will save us from this disastrous government and the irreparable damage their failed ideology will inflict on us. Rule by unelected experts may be 'anti-democratic', but it is far preferable to rule by this elected swill.
"Ideology isn't a bad thing. Everybody's thought is shaped by ideology, whether they're aware of it or not. But it's ideology nonetheless."
Actually, historians and historiographers define an 'age of ideologies', beginning around the turn of last century and terminating with the end of the cold war. This age was characterised by genocides, wars, suppression, repressions and other events of ideologically driven slaughter, which made the wars of religion in Europe pale in comparison, although these were of course ideologically driven as well. So we can categorically conclude from this that 'ideology isn't a bad thing'.
"The curriculum is explicit, open, and unabashed about its ideological content. It's not buried or implied. It's as bold as a billboard."
True. But the question is whether this 'ideological content' is based on rationality and reason, backed up by evidence-driven facts and the behavioural consequences of these facts, or derives from myths created by ignorance, and blatant manipulation of the sources of information.
This question needs to be applied to every ideology to discern whether it 'isn't a bad thing' or not.
"The sustainability theme is intended to "[create] a more ecologically and socially just world through informed action". That's virtually the definition of ideology: a positive description (we are harming the planet) combined with a normative ideal of a better social order (an ecologically and socially just world)."
Yes, and ideology underlies all thought, and drives the national curriculum.
If only we had a curriculum which produces people able to identify and analyse ideologies.
Sunday 5 January 2014
Freedom and Individualism
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-01/burdon-dont-leave-it-to-politicians-to-change-the-world/5180862
"The Abbott Government has done a remarkable job resurrecting a rhetoric of "freedom" and the "individual" which Australian politics has not seen since the Howard years. More broadly, it is reminiscent of Thatcher and her famous quip that "there is no such thing as society", only a collection of individuals.
According to this ideology, individual freedom is more important than the common good of society. Moreover, the individual is seen as separate from and superior to the ecological community. Two recent actions from the Commonwealth Attorney General George Brandis illustrate this perspective."
No one is free or has freedom without funds, income. This focus of the LNP on these concepts is really just a reinforcement of all that I have been saying about their ideology. This is really just old-fashioned laissez-faire, free-market, neoliberal ideology and you can substitute any of these into much of the rhetoric issuing from any of their mouths. Only those who have disposable income above and beyond that required to sustain life under present socioeconomic circumstances can have any modicum of 'individual freedom'. The wage slaves generated by the semi-free market can have no freedom nor the mortgage slaves generated by the housing bubble. These segments of society are generated and exacerbated by neoliberal ideology practiced and promoted by the LNP. They have successfully sold it to just enough of the electorate to gain office by manipulation of the media and the creation of myths through deliberate misinformation and repetition.
Thatcherism and Reaganomics have been tried and gave us a global financial crisis and a series of crises, noted by the experts in the centre, including the ongoing consumption crisis, the emissions crisis, and the wealth gap crisis. Business as usual is not an option, yet that is what we are getting. Conservative parties around the world stand for the preservation of the status-quo. The status-quo will generate at least a six degree world by 2100, capable of supporting perhaps a human population of one billion people. It is a death sentence for at least 6 billion people in other words.
In the meantime the largest coal mine in the world has been approved for Queensland, arguably corruptly considering it is owned and operated by a federal MHR, and the Russians are intent on finding and taking oil from the Arctic Ocean. A six degree or higher world will not be averted unless most of the fossil fuels remaining in the ground are left there. These changes need to happen NOW. They can not possibly happen under conservative governments. The USA has gone down the progressive road. France turned left with the election of a socialist president. When it came our turn to elect a government to lead us through these challenges, we stuck our heads back in the sand and retreated into the false comfort of this sort of conservative fairy world. I am forced to use the term 'we' for the electorate. I did not vote for these bozos and neither did many.
The "limits to growth" are being reached. It appears that the intelligentsia and the public service in this country will be able to constrain the willful damage this government is intent on inflicting on us and we await a leader of sufficient stature from the ranks of the progressive sections of our political elite.
"The Abbott Government has done a remarkable job resurrecting a rhetoric of "freedom" and the "individual" which Australian politics has not seen since the Howard years. More broadly, it is reminiscent of Thatcher and her famous quip that "there is no such thing as society", only a collection of individuals.
According to this ideology, individual freedom is more important than the common good of society. Moreover, the individual is seen as separate from and superior to the ecological community. Two recent actions from the Commonwealth Attorney General George Brandis illustrate this perspective."
No one is free or has freedom without funds, income. This focus of the LNP on these concepts is really just a reinforcement of all that I have been saying about their ideology. This is really just old-fashioned laissez-faire, free-market, neoliberal ideology and you can substitute any of these into much of the rhetoric issuing from any of their mouths. Only those who have disposable income above and beyond that required to sustain life under present socioeconomic circumstances can have any modicum of 'individual freedom'. The wage slaves generated by the semi-free market can have no freedom nor the mortgage slaves generated by the housing bubble. These segments of society are generated and exacerbated by neoliberal ideology practiced and promoted by the LNP. They have successfully sold it to just enough of the electorate to gain office by manipulation of the media and the creation of myths through deliberate misinformation and repetition.
Thatcherism and Reaganomics have been tried and gave us a global financial crisis and a series of crises, noted by the experts in the centre, including the ongoing consumption crisis, the emissions crisis, and the wealth gap crisis. Business as usual is not an option, yet that is what we are getting. Conservative parties around the world stand for the preservation of the status-quo. The status-quo will generate at least a six degree world by 2100, capable of supporting perhaps a human population of one billion people. It is a death sentence for at least 6 billion people in other words.
In the meantime the largest coal mine in the world has been approved for Queensland, arguably corruptly considering it is owned and operated by a federal MHR, and the Russians are intent on finding and taking oil from the Arctic Ocean. A six degree or higher world will not be averted unless most of the fossil fuels remaining in the ground are left there. These changes need to happen NOW. They can not possibly happen under conservative governments. The USA has gone down the progressive road. France turned left with the election of a socialist president. When it came our turn to elect a government to lead us through these challenges, we stuck our heads back in the sand and retreated into the false comfort of this sort of conservative fairy world. I am forced to use the term 'we' for the electorate. I did not vote for these bozos and neither did many.
The "limits to growth" are being reached. It appears that the intelligentsia and the public service in this country will be able to constrain the willful damage this government is intent on inflicting on us and we await a leader of sufficient stature from the ranks of the progressive sections of our political elite.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)