#1375

Put her Grand Ribbon of the Order of Merit on the wrong side?

#1376

Whose productivity graph is that? It’s not the UK’s.

#1377

Her scales fell out

3 Likes
#1378

it’s US but it also shows another general trend of neoliberalism’s scrubbing out of economic market truths and replacing them with 1%er logic

the relationships between growth, productivity, wages, employment (and inflation, cost of living, number in poverty etc) have been slowly diverging from the classical model since the late 70s but have been blown to pieces since the last crash & the austerity/class politics that followed

low unemployment should mean high employment and thus high productivity & high wages in a supply-demand economy with jobs a plenty etc. but the metrics are fucked

#1379

No this doesn’t follow. High employment can only lead to higher productivity if output grows too. So your “jobs aplenty” get out has to have the rider that there are jobs aplenty with the potential for high output.

And then we complete the circle and end up back where we started, namely that we have a stagnant economy, where artificially high employment is traded off against low productivity.

#1380

Cheeky:

1 Like
#1381

“no one has good answers”

imagine being a grown up and writing that

1 Like
#1382

Roy Walker’s first stab at a catchphrase needed work.

4 Likes
#1383

This reply made me lol

8 Likes
#1384

nice!

the question bloomberg poses there is more to do with wages though, iirc. i don’t get how you could ask that since the answer has been given time and again since roughly the dawn of capitalism.

#1385

that’s great

#1386

well, that’s my point - that the standard mechanisms and metrics have been replaced by the artificial framework of neoliberal ideology
wherein the overlords say (both actually and increasingly structurally)
‘we’ve made this fantastic win (low unemployment) so if the economy isn’t moving forward & there’s no money in your pocket, it’s your own fault’ crack of whip ‘Oh, you’re working as hard as you can are you? you’re exhausted from the back-breaking labour & stress of daily life are you? Well do you know what…it’s the bloody foreigners and the cripples that aren’t pulling their weight, they’re the ones making it hard for you’

which is where Hammond’s comments come; his lashing out in order to paper over his failure to handle the economy (yes, of course it’s his job to set the conditions for output growth, thus productivity - one of which conditions is creating meaningful employment rather than fraudulently accounting low-unemployment) is not just some brash excuse, it’s actually the ideological gospel of 1%er neo-liberalism which is increasingly structurally implemented

and once full brexit is in and the state apparatus of the NHS, education etc is dismantled/sold off & the markets are deregulated it will be fait accompli

#1387

i would say everything in the paragraph following this are standard moves of the capitalist class though, i’m not sure how new any of it is.

#1388

Yes this is basically what we both said. And that’s all there is to it. It seems weird that he would bring it up though, it’s not like everyone’s hanging on his every word at the moment.

#1389

Re: their readership - You’ve seen the ‘Irish have lost’ woman in that video right?

2 Likes
#1390

Reckon they’re killing their own cats, so to speak - or at least not covering things that would be damaging in the normal run of things.

Wouldn’t be surprised if the queen announced she was enlisting to fight in Afghanistan tbqh.

1 Like
#1391

to an extent, yes

but even standard evil capitalism recognises that maintaining a healthy & skilled/educated workforce operating within a carrot & stick social contract is a key aspect of productivity and that good governance keeps the whole thing from toppling over/blowing up and that ‘acts of God’ can intervene to bring flood, famine, disease etc

in the neoliberal model the areas of health, education & social stability are not viewed as input drivers toward a good economy but rather as markets to be exploited directly, that protections (regulations, state ownership/managment etc) are obstacles to the exploitation of these commodities and that it is the 1%ers themselves that should be allowed to intervene and ‘free up’ this capital as the gods of wealth creation, that no area or sector is out of bounds for exploitation and that anything & everything should be considered only within the frame of the ‘bottom line’

of course, this is an extreme simplification and neoliberalism is a direct descendant of a certain kind of capitalism which is probably more correctly termed econo-fascism or something, actual fascism masquerading as fiscal policy rather than religious or social doctrine (and inseparable from the structural biases that have brought us here and built the now).
A Tory hard-brexit will be the neo-liberalists’ fait accompli across the UK-US axis and fuck knows what happens in 30 years time or so when productivity will be entirely based on algorithms, AI & robots serving the monied classes while the non-citizens are traded for offal or something. The neoliberals (or their willing bidders) are all there on the benches closing in on the kill.

And then I look across at Corbyn’s lot & I try to hope & believe that there are still public servants there and I know there are people who believe in the many & not the few but I cannot help thinking that it’s the ultimate in political naivety to think that the Tories are going to create the structure for total de-regulation of the UK and then let Labour waltz in and quickly build a socialist utopia for the workers where Amazon where about to build drone-policed megacities …or Wish Fulfillment Municipalities with St Bezos Robohospitals or whatever they’re going to brand them as

#1392

in short, I think neoliberalism is much closer to a hi tech Baronial feudalist cartel than it is to agrarian or merchant market capitalism though it is born from such

#1393

well some evil capitalists believe this but only in terms of how it will aid them extracting more value from their workforce, and i doubt many give much of a shit about healthcare considering there’s always someone waiting to fill a role.

but but this is why any good socialist would not think this - it’s called a class struggle for a reason, nobody should go in expecting it to be easy, or that it will happen overnight. the theory was always that it will reach a crisis point where circumstances become so intolerable that the wealthy have their assets seized by force and redistributed to the general population.

we have to make a couple of arguments to people. one is that if monied interests can use their influence to terrify people into voting against their own interests in order to preserve private capital then we by definition don’t live in a democracy and we need to remove these people from their positions of influence, as well as strengthen unions and bargaining power short-term. the other is that we do have the resources to take care of everybody despite what the tories and businesses say, and you can either have a society with millionaires and people making 150k a year working in marketing and PR or you can have a society without poverty and inequality, but you can’t have both. winning that argument through the results of good policy is one way to start, but it’s a long, long process, which is why i think it’s imperative that if a labour government gets into power they do everything possible to prevent the tories ever regaining control of government. boundary changes, gerrymandering, whatever it takes.

we are totally off the subject of brexit :grinning:

#1394

brexited from the brexit thread