Yesterday, Bernie Sanders’ claim that Donald Trump was “delusional” made world headlines. Fair cop, too. The President does tend to prefer pulling “facts” from his own arse to a more reputable kind of national registry; the Senator makes a good case.
The Senator has long been in the habit of making good cases. He made one against the Iraq War. He proposed that monies from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and other post-crash bailouts, find a way to imperiled mortgage holders before landing back in Wall St –why not save homes and banks? Throughout the presidential campaign, Sanders, a noble American liberal, made plenty of good cases to plenty of fascinated crowds. Not that media were there to report it. Democracy Now once measured more televised minutes of an empty podium waiting to be filled by Trump than those given, in total, to coverage of Sanders’ all-policy speech.
As was evident throughout the election, press remains uncritical of policy and critical only of political personalities. Nothing of the valuable contribution Bernie continues to make in political discussion is reported; he’s gotta call the President names to get any coverage at all. So we don’t get why Trump is a liar. All we get is the declaration that he is.
The continued failure of press to provide any scintilla of policy analysis is what, in great part, led to that liar’s election. If just one outlet of note had really examined just one of the Insane Clown President’s ways to Make America Great Again, America would not now be headed so quickly to history’s latrine. It’s not enough to call, as The Washington Post, The New York Times, MSNBC, Vox, CNN et al did, someone vulgar, unqualified and stupid — a “post-fact” habit if ever there were. It might have been enough to say why his isolationism, so popular with so many US citizens on declining wages, was a bad idea.
[Obama was not more moral than Trump, he was just less honest]
Trump is a liar, of course. And one of the biggest lies he told was that he would “bring the jobs back” to the USA. The case he made to voters, 51% of whom now live on under US$30,000 per annum, was that he would apply big, big tariffs to overseas goods, making the national economy TREMENDOUS by restoring manufacturing jobs.
To a person who doesn’t understand the cycles of capitalism, i.e. most of us, this sounds good. Economies, very complex systems, are opaque to most voters, and it should be the job of press to shed a little light. It’s surely not so hard to explain to people that the US, a net importer, has become reliant on the cheap labour of the Global South; that these jobs, some of which will soon be done by robots, are never coming back; that a tariff on imports will raise the prices of everyday goods and cause many US companies to flee to another nation. “Bring the jobs back” was a lie, but it’s a very appealing one whose faults were never explained to voters.
It was also — I hate to concede — a lie that Bernie told. You can kind of understand how Trump, a genuine thicko, could promise the impossible return to the time of Fordism — local goods and local jobs. Bernie is a bright guy who understands that the late period of intense capital accumulation has changed the Western labour market for good. It doesn’t take long to learn that Bernie has advocated for that solution growing in popularity to Western underemployment, Basic Income Guarantee (BIG). Even the Bernie Bro must concede that their man was, if not as “delusional” as Trump, then certainly deluding the faithful.
But, then again, everyone is. Western labour is in crisis, and the best anyone can come up with is BIG, a temporary fix, initially proposed by Milton Friedman, which will create a new zero, raise everyday prices for the poor and sit as capital in the portfolios of the rich, accumulating interest and creating more wealth inequality — not just a problem on moral grounds but an actual problem for the health of capitalism.
Economists like Steve Keen or Yanis Varoufakis are tolerably temperate on the matter of BIG, describing it as something that will work OK for a while. Entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, much more likely to have influence than guys who actually know something, take more of a “hack” attitude to BIG — it’s this One Weird Trick that will fix everything forever!
[Razer: rich, white finance sector men build their own ‘safe space’ on a floating tax haven]
The C-suite of Uber, also influential, doesn’t even bother to read up on BIG. They say that they have the future of work “hacked” simply by being Uber. Board member David Plouffe claims that his company is “boosting the incomes of millions of American families”, and is the future model for all work, etc. Which is a bit rich, considering that Uber makes no secret of the fact that its business plan is headed toward a driverless future.
To give Hillary Clinton her due, she didn’t even really bother to tell lies about the future of employment. Instead of describing an economic vision that would meet the basic needs of Americans, she just talked a lot about the need for us all to be nicer. Nice, unfortunately, don’t pay the bills of people who vote. BIG might pay them for a while through a crisis cycle. What won’t pay them is some Uber bullshit about a “sharing” economy, and I can’t see how a proposal, famously made by the “elephant graph” guy Branko Milanovic, will work either.
Milanovic suggests that one way to prop up a job market and make room for migrants is to strip job-seeking migrants of some of their citizenship rights. The guy means well, but this latter day Snowy Mountains Hydro plan stinks of fascism and failure. Isn’t taking away the rights of workers, both migrant and non-migrant, what got us into this wealth inequality mess in the first place?
That there are so few thinkers and leaders prepared to candidly discuss the future of work, both in the West and Global South, is a terrible worry. If I were a Millennial facing a driverless, wage-less future, I’d either be stuffing myself with brunch or screaming at the ALP, “LABOR IS IN YOUR NAME, YOU DOUCHES. DO SOMETHING”.
Or, maybe I’d just be stuffing myself with the paralysing equivalent of brunch over at News Corp. This piece yesterday typifies the refusal by all press to talk about how kids are actually going to survive a workless future. Meet Anna! She’s fuelled by passion and the entrepreneurship! Meet Alisha! She follows her dreams! Meet our thicko journalists, who regurgitate promotional reports from one of the big banks, right in the middle of the finance pages.
I’d find this “self-employment is great!” naivety more repulsive if it were not just one more repulsive response to the urgent question of all our incomes. When not even Bernie can outrun the “delusion” of which he rightly accuses Trump, the future of work looks pretty bleak.
You make Trump sound like a coprophile, daubing in his own “facts”?
There are different versions of the basic income guarantee or universal basic income, of which Friedman’s (the negative income tax) is only one. In general I think it’s possible to distinguish between the business/right-libertarian versions of BIG/UBI, the point of which is really to ‘save the system’ (as Helen implies), and leftwing ones, which are rooted in a desire to change it. Lately left thinkers like Guy Standing and Paul Mason have argued that BIG/UBI is a necessary, though limited, step in the transition to a world in which paid work is bound to play a less central role. (I’ve tried to sort out some of these strands and make the left case for BIG/UBI over here — https://tinyurl.com/haxlnhv — if anyone’s interested.)
Thanks Richard, will check it out. I think there is real promise in it. The BIG issue for me is what people will do with leisure hours if they have them. Become creative and sweet spirits, or spend their time turning their ploughshares into armour.
Who can say how that would go. That is the one major advantage of a jobs guarantee rather than a UBI, but I live in this dreamworld that people with time on their hands will enjoy themselves. Ha!
Hey, thanks, R. I will certainly go read.
BIG is really interesting. I am most convinced by the pro arguments of post-Keynesians that it will work in the West for a while. Just a while. As you know, these people are sensible enough to believe in cycles of capitalism, and not the myth that “cronies” ruin it. These people are actual political economists. As Keynes was. They don’t think economies just happen according to mathematics or some silly idea about human nature. They look at human and political behaviour.
There are some really convincing arguments from the Left *against* it, though. One of them being that it will cause a rise in living expenses (different from “inflation”, as we know) in those shuttered towns that most need it. When supermarkets re-open, supermarkets will charge, for example, whatever the hell they want. Varoufakis who advocates for it admits in one of his speeches on the topic that the outcome “will not be deflationary”. I see prices going up. I see employers, who already have such a free hand, exploiting workers, and expecting many to simply work for tips. I also see that we have lurched so far to the “centre” (read: absolute belief in the neoliberal wet dream) that the conditions around BIG are unlikely to be favourable. It’s like those guys who write ecstatic books about the wonderful future of robots. Yes. It *could* be wonderful. But only if we get to share in the profits, as well as the increased “leisure”. Leisure is no fun without sustenance.
The other problem is the universal aspect. If I use my BIG to pay you rent (and that’d be around the figure it’d have to be to become meaningful) then you take my BIG on which you earn interest and earn interest on your own BIG. You have capital. I get to make sure that you have more of it. As I’m sure you’re agreed, wealth inequality is bad. It’s bad for capitalism. It’s bad for democracy. It’s also just bad.
I know Uncle Milty is not the last word, and not one to be dismissed because the idea was popularised by him. It’s still a similar plan, though.
I would say that cutting out bureaucracy does have its benefits. The torture welfare recipients are subject to is insane. But I really can’t see in the current climate BIG, the new zero, being nothing but a big excuse to cut social services.
“For Bertrand Russell a guaranteed income had the potential to marry two radical traditions: anarchism and socialism.”
Bertrand Russell, love the way he thought. A reconciliation between anarchism and socialism would see me in my happy place. Of course I also loved his ‘in praise of idleness’, which although peripheral to this conversation may give a hint to how we might use more leisure time. Thanks again Richard.
What a name, both Rich and King in it, advocating for a UBI. Ironic?
Even more ironic DB is the fact that I was paid a gargantuan fee for that piece and never have to work again 🙂
I wonder about the inflation point, Helen … There’s certainly a very lively argument about whether or not BIG/UBI would raise prices to a degree that wiped out any benefit to the recipient. No doubt it would have some effect, though a lot of the reading I’ve done suggests that the effect it would have is often overstated. (And remember that upward pressure on prices was always one of the reasons given to keep workers’ wages low in the past — back in the days when there was a danger of them actually rising.) I do agree with you that any BIG/UBI we’re likely to get is almost certain to be used as an excuse to cut services, which is why I think framing it in left terms, and treating it as one element in a broader program, is so important. Ideally such a program would include reform of the tax system, such that your landlord would have cough up a bit more to the ATO.
It’s quite possible this thing is coming anyway. If we bring a bit of Thomas Paine to the table, perhaps the Friedmanites won’t have it all their own way.
A federal government Job Guarantee is an essential policy. It can be used to widen the concept of paid work, improve the quality of jobs in the private sector not just the public sector, and promote price stability and sustainable resource use. We also need significantly more public sector jobs of the conventional kind, particularly in social and community services, infrastructure, project management, science, education, and environmental services. Our polity mindlessly places voluntary fetters on the hands of the federal government when the federal government can and should be mobilising all available real resources in sustainable, socially useful ways. The most under-used real resources is labour. The labour under-utilisation rate in Australia is a massive 17 percent. The constraint on the federal government is availability of real resources for sale in Australian dollars. The constraint is NOT financial.
I dunno if it has to be a job guarantee. This presupposes that all of us actually feel useful and productive in work. I have certainly had jobs where I have felt like I was performing no useful function. As does most anyone in a cold call sales centre.
We just need to make sure people have money if we want this capitalism thing to survive.
We can and should provide a Job Guarantee that pays a living wage and that designs a job that fits the worker, rather than forcing the worker to fit a pre-designed job. The key is to take the job-seeker as you find them. Launching a business or charity is a job. Raising a child is a job. Caring for an elderly person is a job. Educating yourself is a job. Creating art or music or drama or sharing skills in those areas is a job. A vast variety of activities that are socially useful, meaningful and interesting to the people who do them, and currently defined by our culture as leisure, hobbies, or unpaid service can and should be converted into paid jobs as required to meet people’s desires for paid work. Paying a person a living wage for contributing something would be much better than giving everyone a meagre stipend for being alive.
Being alive is a “job”.
The idea that we make a monumental cultural shift to redefine what everybody does anyhow just seems both difficult and unnecessarily moralising.
The entire point of BIG and why it may succeed is that it’s simple. It avoids the massive task of logging hours and determining “productive” behaviour.
I get that the moral impetus of JG is kind. It’s also based in an idea of the “good” citizen and the idea that capitalism can work as it is if only we work it.
Keynes did some useful stuff to patch things up on his day. That cycle is over.
All these measures to save wage labour are futile. Productivity will continue to increase, replacing elbow grease with machines until nothing important (agriculture, manufacturing, construction, resource extraction, logistics) is labour intensive. Like UBI and BIG the JG is a bandaid. It can’t stop the death of jobs, just try to patch over it. A real solution would tackle the problem head on and start at the assumption that jobs are going away and a new way of organizing labour is necessary. People need to start thinking about this so the end result doesn’t suck and allow a small number of parasites to suck the world dry.
The longer the problem remains unsolved the worse the standard of living will get for workers.
” Nothing important (agriculture, manufacturing, construction, resource extraction, logistics) is labour intensive. ”
So only jobs usually done by men are “important”? Caring etc jobs are labour intensive, but they’re “women’s work” right, so not important?
You may have mistaken a description of how things are for a prescription.
Think Draco refers to that labour from which most wealth is extracted; jobs to which the productivity measure is applied. Not a statement about what work should be valued. A statement about what work is.
Also, women are very active in manufacturing. Some of our clothes were probably made by female slaves burned in a Bangladesh fire.
Good on you for standing up for my gender. I think you misfired, though.
Thank you for highlighting this, I don’t think many people would be aware of this.
How we treat our unemployed & underemployed is shameful, they are treated like a criminal underclass, but in a large amount of cases their job loss/casualisation, is not their fault.
But when our government allows companies to get away with purely illegal behaviour, ie stealing from employees, cleaning out the company coffers and escaping overseas, and funnelling their large fortunes into overseas accounts where the government can’t retrieve our tax payer’s money back from. This is a prime example of a number of colleges over the last 5-10 years, and the employees of these organisations are left to pick up the pieces, often without super, or their termination pay, I know personally many people who have gone through this and one relative of mine 3 times, this has to stop and forensic auditing of all company accounts has to happen, so as to hopefully prevent this becoming a commonplace rort.
We have a government that has got sucked into a trap of allowing commercial interests to overtake our country’s reputation, allowing organisations to treat staff as disposable tissues to be dispensed with when their done. Domino’s & SEVEN 11 are a prime example, and what about the ones that nobody has been brave enough to stand up and expose, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
There is a lot that needs to be happen before we start replacing people with robots, getting our organisational cultural with proper payment for services rendered, treating people with respect would be a good start.
“….. is BIG, a temporary fix, initially proposed by Milton Friedman, which will create a new zero, raise everyday prices for the poor and sit as capital in the portfolios of the rich”
I always read BIG as being funded by steeper progressive taxation HR, such that a person earning say, multiples of the average wage would end up no better off – a BIG less that amount in increased taxes. All earning above that being taxed more vigorously again, or some portion being made up in company taxes that actually get collected.
In which case they wouldn’t have new capital in their portfolios. Of course, it would require some repairs to the ‘more loopholes than net’ tax system, but there you go.
Dog’s:
Yanis Varoufakis has argued that a BIG ought to be paid for from capital’s share of income, rather than raising taxes on other humans. See https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/basic-income-funded-by-capital-income-by-yanis-varoufakis-2016-10?barrier=accessreg
Tell me if ther’s a hole in my reasoning:
There are three things that we can tax. Three ways for society to levy funding for societal services from the people using those services for their own ends. In most cases, the government is the clearing house for funds to be used for society’s benifit.
We can tax a person’s net consumption, where we request that a person gives us value in rough proportion to those things that they use for themselves. The more they use, the more they pay.
We can tax income, where we request that a person gives us value in rough proportion to the net premium that others place on that person’s contribution to the economy. The more they earn, over and above their own basic requirements, the more they are obliged to return to the economy. If a person’s income is less than their basic requirements, this is where welfare, or a UBI or a negative income tax is necessary.
However despite both of these, some people are able to salt away some of the economy for themselves, and once they do then that value is currently theirs forever. In fact, a great deal of the economy seems to be tied up this way and the people who ‘have’ tend to ‘have more’ each year, and the amount that they draw for consumption from this value – capital – is less than the amout that accumulates. This accumulation of value bypasses the income taxes above.
It is chiefly used to make sure that yet more value will accumulate next year the same way, and it works. For all the talk of ‘investment’ the point of investing capital in anything is to make sure that the premium returned by the invested capital accumulates to the owner before any other entity. The people who own this capital have won, and will continue to win more and more as time goes on. The only way to return this value to society is to ask for some of it back.
I can’t see a way around it. We need to work out how to tax capital.
You’re a Piketty guy?
Yeah I think so.
That’s literally what Capitalism is, though. It is the ism that’s all about capital and production of profit. If the capital could be taxed (expropriated) such that no capital can grow it wouldn’t be capitalism anymore, though you would be left the the National Capital in the hands of the state. And we all know how that turned out 😉
You can certainly increase taxes on capital but to what end? Our government for example is just as likely to spend money on jets that can’t fight or a billion dollars for a concentration camp on Manus island than it is to spend it infrastructure and services.
Not tax it away, just y’know, a bit. Enough that some of the locked up value is returned to society and cycles around a few times before it gets trapped back in, someone’s capital store. Those people who are good at accumulating capital should keep doing it, but perhaps they should pay a tithe.
Helen’s right, this is my take on comprehending Piketty’s argument. Capital owners have won and they enjoy the benefits of winning, but the current economic settings make it easier for the winners to win, more. They shouldn’t be told to stop winning, but maybe they should have to take those advantages and start playing on a harder level.
Look, James. As much as I’m on the Draco side of things and see capitalism as containing the Roundup-resistant seeds of its own monstrous self-eating weed, I’d rather talk to a Piketty guy like you than a deluded neoliberal.
The formulation “r>g” is inevitable. But I probably won’t argue too much with anyone who tries to equalise things a bit. I mean, we need people to be alive to see the end of capitalism.