Given that I am so hostile to the dominant ideology of free market neoliberalism and active in its denunciation, friends frequently challenge me to provide an alternative. When I give them my thoughts on that they then ask me why I have never written of this in this blog. They are of course correct, and, until recently, it had never occurred to me. People like me should be tasked with providing alternatives given that there are none being provided in mainstream society. Many of my following thoughts are also applicable in the United States, although the average American will be horrified and immediately condemn me for communism, which of course is nonsense. As I keep telling you, I am not an 'ist' and have never advocated any form of 'ism'. In addition, it is no use simply condemning the following as socialist or communist because they are no such thing and indeed much of what I will advocate can be found in Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall, so, if I am a socialist so are they.
There is no doubt that we are in a crisis, and my arguments are designed to address this crisis, they should not be interpreted as an ideological position. They are what I feel are necessary in the short to medium term to recover some form of civilisation and decency. I will not rehash all the statistics about poverty, foodbanks, malnutrition, inequality etc. as you are all very aware of them yourselves, even though some of you may be indifferent to them, but will merely give you some of the things that
I would do as social and economic imperatives were I given the opportunity. My proposals are not in any particular order of either merit or necessity as I have not planned this post and am simply making it up as I write. If I were to do this properly I would take far more care. Anyway, the immediate priority of any recovery is a massive and significant redistribution of resources in tandem with the creation of jobs, homes and an efficient welfare system. A low wage multiple job economy is stupid and I don't apologise for reminding you that Adam Smith also condemned a low wage economy as economically nonsensical. If the bulk of your population has little income, who are you going to sell your goods to?
As the biggest potential employer in any nation is its local government I would free local government from the shackles of the pigsty and allow them to create jobs and local opportunities for their own communities. They must be given powers of local taxation for which they will be responsible to their local electors and by which they can recoup the functions they have been forced to hand over to a rotten and corrupt private sector. That criticism of the private sector is not ideological, it is empirical given that the private sector has abysmally failed in almost every area it has been given responsibility for. There cannot be, nor ever should be, a profit impetus in public service, all surplus that may be, or can be, generated within the public sector must be immediately reinvested. We must have a radical change in taxation and divert much of our tax away from indirect and onto direct. I would immediately reduce VAT for example and put the reduction onto income tax. I would immediately outlaw the bonus system. I find this system abhorrent and completely insensible. People get paid for a job and the incentive for you to perform that job to the best of your ability is to avoid the sack if you don't, that is how 'normal' workers live. I would severely restrict corporate salaries and transfer the money saved to the workers in such corporations as it is they who actually create the wealth and their increased wages will stimulate economic activity instead of that money disappearing into foreign banks where it does no good.
There must be large-scale public spending on job creation, paid for largely out of taxation instead of borrowing. Firms that we all know pay no or little tax would be immediately billed for their deficit and if they still sought to avoid taxes their licence to operate in this country would be immediately withdrawn and all their assets nationalised. Councils would be required to embark on large-scale council house programmes and the bulk of the managerial staff in all public sector services, but particularly the NHS, would be replaced and their salaries downgraded. If they don't want to do the job there are plenty of people who will, and, given the persistent negative reports we get about the efficiency of such managerial staff they will never be missed.
I could obviously go on, but these are just some of the things I feel must be addressed as a matter of priority. I could tell you so much more I would do politically, but that is for another time. If anyone wishes me to expand on this please ask, you have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
No comments:
Post a Comment