Take that, George!

Those who, like me, have been increasingly frustrated by the prevailing flavour of reassurance, and the serious absence of facts, around the Fukushima story, may enjoy the response to George Monbiot from Helen Caldicott.
. Tweet

Ambassador for Outrage

It was Terry Jones, the Python not the Koran-burning cleric, who first made me conscious of the increasingly wayward behaviour of abstract nouns. First we were launching wars on them (Terror being the foremost example) and now we share diplomatic representatives with them. David Cameron has apparently appointed an Ambassador for the Big Society. It made me wonder whether we couldn't have ambassadors for a whole range of abstract nouns and concepts. And if you're asking, mine's a pint of outrage, although the position of Irony Tsar would also appeal should it soon fall vacant.

The latest target for my roving outrage is the abysmally poor quality of the campaign over AV. I have yet to receive my 'independent' leaflet from the Electoral Commission but have been out delivering the Yes leaflets and have received a No leaflet through my door. The arguments in both are tendentious, misleading and entirely negative. How can it be that the Yes campaign can think of no better arguments in support of the case for creating genuine democracy than that it might make politicians feel more insecure and that they would consequently work harder? This has only a marginal connection with relevance and also serves to reinforce the myth that politicians are lazy.

I was, of course, predisposed to feel more negatively about the No campaign's leaflet, although the level of deceit and determination to mislead shocked even a campaigner hardened by as many political battles as I am. Meanwhile the media debate, led by the now ennobled John Reid, scraped even lower into the barrel of vintage scare-mongering by suggesting that AV would serve the interests of the BNP.

Barbara Panvel, a challenging rival for my claim to the position of Outrage Ambassador, has produced an excellent blog post detailing the funders of the No campaign, which is portrayed as a 'coalition of City billionaires, Tory peers and trades union barons backing the campaign to oppose a change in Britain’s voting system'. Barbara's judgement on the message to keep the open and simple system we current use: 'It is OPEN: to lobbying. It is SIMPLE: those with the longest purses are heard with the deepest respect.'
. Tweet

Elite's Marginal Productivity Challenged by Nobel Renegade

In spite of the fact that he is clearly right, and that he is in the sort of position where holding critical views could have some impact, I cannot feel warm about Joseph Stiglitz. It must be the years he spent at the World Bank drawing a fat salary while the Bank's policies caused starvation and death. Although the black mark is partially expunged by his dissent and subsequent sacking, it still recalls a bank boss who takes his large pension and then joins the Rotary Club after retirement. And of course Stiglitz has never returned his 'Nobel Prize', suggesting he still revels in the acclaim of his dubious peers.

But bitterness aside, let's enjoy his latest offering published in this month's Vanity Fair. The article begins with the commonplace and yet shocking statistic that the top 1% of US citizens take nearly a quarter of the country's income each year and own 40% of its wealth. As recently as 1986 the comparable figures were 12% and 33%. This extraction of value by the plutocrats has been bought largely at the expenses of the professionals.

There is a useful phrase in the article which I think we could make much of: 'Trickle-down economics may be a chimera, but trickle-down behaviorism is very real.' The lifestyles of the wealthy, which in an earlier age we would have considered beyond our station, are now advertised to us as something to aspire to. Such luxuries and long-haul flights and fast cars are considered as rights, and greens who suggest that they may need to be restricted are painted as killjoys if not oppressors.

Stiglitz argues rightly that the justification for the growth in inequality on the basis that wealth creators have to be rewarded so that the economy can boom, and that this additional output will benefit us all, is unsupported by evidence. What he fails to notice, and what makes the need to end the extraction of value by the wealth so urgent, is that this economic growth is actually undermining the conditions that enable any economic activity at all to take place.

This is the argument offered by the eco-socialists, their so-called 'Second Contradiction of Capitalism'. A green economist would probably find a more grounded and passionate response: the greed of the wealthy, and the economic growth it is linked to, is killing the planet and destroying all our lives.
. Tweet

If you want to save the species, get political

Is has become increasingly apparent during the past couple of years there is an inability amongst a wide range of people in politics and media to think about more than one issue at the same time. Since the financial crisis and the advent of deficit-vision any thought of showing concern for the environment has entirely evaporated.

In a sad report on the Transition Network website we learn the consequences of a shift in one administration from fluffy Lib Dem to market-hard Tories (that of Somerset County Council). The article quotes the authority's new hardline budget strategy: 'some services will be stopped completely e.g. climate change work, work on renewable energy, natural environment policy and delivery'. They have also sacked their Climate Change Officer. In the world of deficit-think, the environment is entirely forgotten.

The absence of any analysis around political economy was one of the criticisms most frequently made in the early days of the Transition movement, especially by academic commentators. Rupert Read, for example, made the case some three years ago that Transition Towns play a valuable demonstration role but cannot offer a sufficient response without taking politics seriously. Rob gave a spirited defence of the need for unleashing the powers of positive thinking and creative community action.

Like Rupert, and many other green politicians, I have been engaged in Transition initiatives from the start. And from the start I was well aware that any political support demonstrated by 'grey' parties who have always been adherents of the prevailing political and economic culture, whose existence relies on the power structure that is killing the planet, could only ever be partial and opportunistic. What has happened in Somerset appears to validate the view that inspiration, hard work and bright ideas, while important, are insufficient without political analysis, strategy and action.
. Tweet

Unprincipled Universities

Although they are happening outside the arena of mass media, the discussions taking place over the threats to academic freedom resulting from the marketisation of our universities are anything but academic. They are a matter of principle, and in this case the principle has a name: the Haldane Principle. Rather disappointingly the Haldane in question turns out to be Richard Burdon Haldane, not the more glamorous and famous J. B. S. Haldane, geneticist and biologist, who was his nephew. The Haldanes were a family of Scottish aristocrats and the kind of erudite and radical men who we have often had to rely on to guarantee our basic freedoms.

Haldane established the principle that it should be those who do research who control how public funding is allocated, rather than the politicians who use their work. While this system has severe limiations, resulting in a club mentality and favouring the mainstream at the expenses of the cutting-edge, it has limited the influence of political bias in the allocation of research funds that come from the public purse. This system, which has operated since the establishment of the University Grants Committee in 1904, has now been abolished by stealth.

First we have the new delivery plan from the Economic and Social Research Council, with its key priorities clearly informed by the ideology of the government. The first priority to 'Enable the development of robust government and private sector strategies to ensure sustainable growth' leaves little space for an economist who might consider the encouragement of growth to be the primary threat to environmental and social health, while the suggestion that 'Social scientists also work directly with business to help people learn, enhance performance, innovate and deliver at speed' sidelines my key research question: 'What if business is the problem?'

In this context the second priority, 'Creating a better understanding of how and why people and organisations make decisions, and how these can be managed or influenced' and its supporting statement that 'research demonstrates and evaluates how interventions can promote a beneficial change in the behaviour of citizens' becomes rather chilling. Once it would have been the role of social scientists to ask what would be meant by 'beneficial'. Now this is assumed by the first priority and our job is rather to find the most efficient ways to manipulate citizens into the path chosen for them by the corporate-dominated politicians.

And now we reach the nub of the matter. Priority 3, 'Developing ways to enhance the role and contributions of citizens, voluntary sector organisations and social enterprises to create a vibrant national and global society' appears innocuous at first, but begins to seem more sinister once you read it alongside the phrase 'big society' and in conjunction with a recent article from the THES describing pressure that was brought to bear on the ESRC's oppo in the humanities field: the AHRC. A stronger article in Sunday's Observer is quite explicit about the pressure put on the AHRC to invest a significant proportion of its money into justifying the Big Society, at risk of losing its funding altogether.

The justification for the Haldane principle is that public money, raised from taxation, should be invested for the benefit of the public. It also assumes that researchers, rather than politicians, are best placed to decide how that benefit might be determined. Funding councils have assessed competitive bids for these funds on the basis of quality, not political acceptability. The abolition of this principle in favour of research priorities determined in Conservative Central Office gives an interesting new twist to the adage that 'knowledge is power'.
. Tweet

Living Off Immoral Earnings

The most interesting message from what was a widely trailed and rather dull budget, was the implicit view it gave of the Tories' perception of our country and its people. The announcement of an intention to make us the cheapest country in the G7 and the emphasis on the phrase 'open for business' made Osborne come across as less of a worthy guardian of the nation's finances and more of a rather desperate pimp. The graphic indicates that, even before the 2% cut in corporation tax, our rates were much lower than the other major capitalist economies. This is the explanation for our failing infrastructure and highly unequal income distribution.

Those who gain from the budget proposals are not shy about expressing their delight, as a lengthy selection of comments on the FT website demonstrates. Entitled 'Business Speaks' it may have provide an apt title for the budget as a whole. Round 1 was the attack on citizens' incomes in last autumn's public spending review; round 2 is the sharing out of the proceeds to business bosses and their shareholders.

While the Tory action in favour of the interests of capital is true to form and unsurprising it follows the years of New Labour governments that did nothing to defend the interests of the class that party was formed to defend, but implemented policies to enhance in the share of the national product going to capital. The tax burden on individuals has increased rapidly (from £48.8bn. in 1989/90 to £109.5bn. in 2002/3 and £156.7bn. in 2008/9) while that for corporations has grown more slowly. Despite a massive growth in corporate profits during the same period the tax they paid rose from £21.5bn. in 1989/90 to £29.3bn. in 2002/3 and £44.9bn in 2008.*

And a political elite that pimps its people often pimps its environment too. So the land is opened to rape and pillage, with local development plans torn up, depriving the elected politicians who know and care about their local area of any power to resist development for the sake of profit and growth for the sake of growth. Greenbelt, habitat for rare species, valued leisure environments - none shall stand in the way of a few more points on GDP and larger profits for property developers and the construction industry. The decision to remove the need to apply for change of use when converting office buildings and shops to houses is typical of the drive for profit rather than a policy of considered economic development. The designation and auctioning of development land is another example of the heedless generation of cash.

The phrase 'race to the bottom' was revived to describe the situation where corporations rule the world and can force governments to outbid each other to cut taxes and environmental standards. There is no evidence that this improves the economic performance of countries, and it is frequently disastrous in social and environmental terms. We only have to look across the Irish Sea to see where the policy of making yourself cheap for business, the 21st century version of the putting out system perhaps, leads to. If unstable, unreliable growth, with the returns shared unequally and at the expense of social cohesion and environmental destruction are what you are looking for, then you can be sure you have the right Chancellor to provide it.

*Adam, S. and J. Browne. 2009. A survey of the UK tax system. London: Institute for Fiscal Studies.
. Tweet

Japan's Accidental Intervention in the Currency Wars?

The Japanese situation makes clear the need to restore democracy to the world's economy. We need to take power back from the capital markets and the speculators and return it to politicians who are responsive to their people. At a time of such dire national crisis, how can it be right that Japan's politicians have to be distracted by the need to appease those whose only interest is to extract value from the country?

The unexpected response by the foreign exchange traders to the greatest natural disaster in Japanese history was to force up the value of the Yen. As usual in economics, the raised value of the Yen cuts both way for the Japanese. In the short term it will make it cheaper for them to import the goods and resources they need to rebuild. In theory, in the longer term it will make their exports more expensive and so will impeded recovery. In fact, given the failure of electricity supplies and the consequent decline in production, this is likely to be less of a concern to the people of Japan.

It is, however, of concern to Japan's competitors. Hence the decision by the G7 countries to intervene in the foreign exchange markets by selling their stocks of Yen in order to reduce its price. The figure shows the immediate success of this market intervention yesterday, both proving the self-interest of G7 governments and giving the lie to their repeated statements that the markets rule supreme.

But why the rapid rise in the Yen (illustrated in the second graphic) in the first place, when the performance of the economy from which it arises will clearly be severely impacted by the destruction of infrastructure and power shortages? The answer appears to be that Japanese institutions and the government are expected to repatriate Japanese savings held overseas. The resulting firesale of US bonds and stocks could be the event that pulls the plug on the USA's 40-year beano at the expense of the rest of the world.

In spite of the very low returns, the Japanese and Chinese have continued to hold US debt, allowing US citizens to consume way beyond the level their productive effort merits. The power of the dollar as the global reserve currency permits this, but that power has been challenged during the recent 'currency wars'. If the Japanese crisis forces that US to the negotiating table to agree a fairer system of international exchange, it might prove to be a dark cloud with a silver lining for us all.
. Tweet