|
| |
  The economy cannot be saved |
| |
 | Reported by guardian.co.uk
on Thursday, 1 October 2009
(on October 1, 2009) |
|  Related Tweets
 Related Headlines
 Full news story |
The boom years never really happened - but Labour won't accept itI could have attended the Labour party conference.
But I thought: why squander a trip to the seaside? Yet I am still amazed by the timid mendacity of the event.
There they all were, still hoping against hope that they'd soon gain full credit - and another term in power - for "saving the economy", while at the same time promising earnestly to tackle the social problems that they were voted in to curb 12 years ago.First, why don't Labour politicians grasp that the "economy" they fostered is not worth "saving", because it exacerbated the very social problems that they are presently wringing their hands over (again)? Second, why don't they grasp that the "economy" they fostered can't be "saved" anyway? It is all over, because it was a mirage.The transition from a manufacturing to a skills-based economy, started under Thatcher in the 80s and continued so enthusiastically by New Labour, has been a failure.
Its triumphs would be rubble were it not for the scaffold of bail-out support that has been erected around it.It's no use crying that the crash was caused by "international conditions".
Not long before the financial meltdown, Labour was thrilled to observe that London had recently overtaken New York as the most powerful financial centre in the world.
Britain played a huge part in setting those international conditions, under a chancellor who thought he could harness the cash generated by a free-market economy to deliver on public services and make everybody happy.Everybody isn't happy, as the polls show only too clearly.
Yes, we are pleased that the NHS has improved, albeit patchily.
No, we are not sure that new school buildings make those institutions better able to cope with the multiple problems some pupils arrive with.
And, anyway, does the construction of such edifices, under private finance initiatives, really qualify as "fixing the roof while the sun was shining"? John Maynard Keynes wouldn't have said so.
But he wouldn't have claimed that boom and bust could be banished either.Keynes, now, would be advocating the use of government money for home-building and railway-investment programmes, two things Britain needs very much but cannot afford, precisely because Brown was - and is not - a Keynesian.
If those very things had been attended to years back, we probably wouldn't be in quite the mess we are in now.The big growth areas in the boom were real estate and its support services, wholesale and retail, and the financial sector itself (all massively dependent on the housing bubble).
Otherwise, there wasn't that much growth, except in good old manufacturing - which has proved quite resilient to efforts to outsource it.
Without house-price hyperinflation caused by a supply and demand problem, there would have been no boom to speak of.That so-called economic wonder carried a huge social price.
Those locked out of the housing boom - people on wages too low to compete in an aggressive ownership market, or on benefits - did not feel they were part of this miracle, for the good reason that they were not.
During the summer, the news that around 60% of council tenants got their rent paid by the state was greeted as some kind of judgment on the sort of people who "got" social housing.
Instead, it is an illustration of how ghettoised Britain has become.Did people on benefits "swing" their council flats because of the good schools and hospitals in the area? I don't think so.
It is in economic black spots that improved public services have penetrated the least.
But somehow, despite their ill health, their low life expectancy, the misery etched on young faces laid waste by hard lives, the poorest and the most destructively, nastily angry are pointed out as the people who are spoiling a lovely paradise for no good reason that any politician can think of.For social capital has also been squandered in the last 12 years.
Labour got its landslide victory in a rejection of Conservative ideas that the poor, the ill-housed, the addicted, the depressed, the ignorant, brought it on themselves.
People had experienced the effects of public service cuts and job losses within their own families, and they understood what havoc was wreaked.Now, our society is atomised, and the most cursory glance at the bottom quintile is enough to justify contempt and repulsion.
They are bad - bad parents, bad kids, bad lots, just bad.
Yet their biggest problem is that the jobs they would once have had are now done by people in China.
The skills-based economy has passed them by.
They are not equipped to be part of the service industry.
They are, economically, non-people.The sad thing is that the western political classes do understand that the financial crisis has been a game changer.
They know they cannot maintain control of globalisation.
That's why they acquiesced so politely to the notion of the G20 as the primary generator of economic policy.
The idea that China could be an industrially colonial outpost, meekly making the things that we couldn't afford to buy if we made them for ourselves, is history.
The west owes China too much money to remain its economic master.
Brown himself realises all this, although he is unable to talk of anything more specific than: "The first Labour government of this new global age."The political classes understand that the socio-political transition to this new phase of globalisation is going to be extremely painful.
That's why the G20 nations are in agreement that fiscal stimulus must continue.
The west is keeping things ticking over, and hoping that human resilience and ingenuity will find a way back to the norm of perpetual economic growth, like it always does.But the idea of perpetual economic growth, even if it can be massaged back to life in the short term, has had its day.
Even if it were sustainable on its own terms, it would still annihilate us.
Just over 160 years ago, John Stuart Mill was musing on the possibility of the "stationary state", warning that the consequence of unlimited growth could only be environmental destruction and a reduced quality of life.
"It is only in the backward countries of the world that increased production is still an important object," he wrote.
"In those most advanced, what is economically needed is a better distribution." But for Brown, the dream of revitalised growth is still ravishingly seductive.
It's his only model for political success.
|
|
|
| Recent related news |
| |
Huffington Post
4 hours ago - Politics | Dave Lindorff: Obama Must Dump The Bums In Treasury, End The Wars And Start Leading
If you are sitting in class taking a test, and you\'ve chosen to sit amongst your bone-headed,... »related headlines & tweets» |
Huffington Post
12 hours ago - Politics | Bob Burnett: Creating the Jobs America Needs
While financial markets believe the great recession is over, millions of Americans continue to... »related headlines & tweets» |
FinanzNachrichten.de
1 day ago - Markets | White House backs Geithner, says saved US economy
WASHINGTON, Nov 19 (Reuters) - The White House on Thursday voiced its backing for U.S. Treasury... »related headlines & tweets» |
Huffington Post
1 day ago - Politics | Carla Seaquist: Recovery Without a Reckoning
How can you have a recovery if the party that caused the crash refuses rehab?
The economy is like... »related headlines & tweets» |
guardian.co.uk
2 days ago - Science | Green technology lights the way
A new, government-sponsored, awards scheme is helping to showcase the UK's innovation in science and... »related headlines & tweets» |
| |
Huffington Post
2 days ago - Politics | Dave Johnson: The Problem With A Jobs Bill - And With Everything Else
The country needs a jobs program and needs it right now. Cash for Caulkers would be a good start. A... »related headlines & tweets» |
Car and Driver
3 days ago - Automotive | Hyundai Unveils New 2.4-Liter Direct-Injection Four-Cylinder
Hyundai today unveiled the direct-injection version of its 2.4-liter four-cylinder engine, which is... »related headlines & tweets» |
Huffington Post
4 days ago - Politics | Barbara B. Kennelly: Passing the Buck to an Entitlement Commission
In classic Washington style, so-called fiscal hawks in Congress have selectively redefined our debt... »related headlines & tweets» |
Huffington Post
4 days ago - Business | Dean Baker: Unemployment Solution: Pay People to Work Shorter Hours
As part of the Roosevelt Institute\'s 10-part series on the Jobs Crisis, running on the New Deal 2.0... »related headlines & tweets» |
Huffington Post
4 days ago - Business | Andy Stern: Goldman Sachs: It's Time to Put Country Before Company
I love the America where women like Maria Guerra, a janitor from Chicago, who worked hard her whole... »related headlines & tweets» |
| |
Huffington Post
5 days ago - Politics | David Sirota: Afghan Escalation Would Make One-Year Pentagon Budget Almost As Big as Entire 10-Year Health Bill
In pitting the 10-year cost of Democrats\' health care bill against the 10-year projected cost of the... »related headlines & tweets» |
|
| |
Tweet the News!
Facebook
E-mail
Twitter
Mixx
StumbleUpon
FriendFeed
Top News RSS Feed | News for my Website | Archive | Advertise | Help | Contact us | Bookmark
