ALB
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Critisticuffs have produced an article on the so-called “wage-price spiral”:
https://critisticuffs.org/texts/wage-price-spiral
The first part is good but it is not clear where the second part is leading — to the view that credit-financed businesses cause a rise in general price level?
As they point out in the first part, businesses can’t simply fix prices at will. They have to take into account market demand. In fact, businesses always charge “what the market will bear” (or what they think it will). As explained by the business editor of the Times yesterday:
“Until businesses feel it in their sales volumes, they are going to continue to carry on pushing up prices as fast as they possibly can.”
However, at some point a business will “feel it” in its sales volume. At that point it will no longer be able to increase the price of what it sells without losing sales, and so won’t; in other words, the market won’t bear the price increase.
The Tory MPs have chosen the two names — a rich capitalist seeking something to do and a shamelessly opportunist career politician — to go to the habitués of Golf clubhouses and Constitutional Clubs to choose the next Prime Minister.
Last week Sunak accused Truss of promoting “socialism”. According to today’s Times, Truss has “has cast Mr. Sunak as a closet socialist”. So the farce continues.
At least the word “socialism” has returned to contemporary political discussion if in an unexpected form.
I don’t understand the logic of the bit in the first paragraph about the marginal cost of production and incentivising Russian oil exports.
Oil is one of those products which, depending on geological conditions, can be extracted at different costs of production in different places. To meet a given paying demand, the price will be what it costs to extract in places where the cost of production is highest. Or, the other way round, the higher the demand the more higher cost extraction sites will be brought into use (the margin will move). The highest costs sites will just make a normal profit. Sites where it is cheaper make super-profits in the form of rent. Which (rather than normal profit) is the main source of the wealth of the Gulf Sheiks and Russian energy corporations.
The aim seems to be to artificially reduce the price of Russian oil so as to reduce Russia’s rent income while still expecting Russia to supply the same amount but only making normal rate of profit (at least that’s what the first paragraph seems to mean). But of course, as the Russian minister stated, if the price is reduced then so will the supply. Why would Russia forgo super-profits (rent) and be satisfied with normal profit only? The West seems to want to have its cake and eat it.
Anyway, some experts are suggesting that the whole project is ridiculous and won’t work. The West has, in fact, got itself into a mess over this, resulting in higher oil prices and so bigger rents for Russia — and the Gulf sheiks, who Biden is grovelling before to get them to give up some of these to help the West punish Russia.
In their 2002 book on the former USSR Wolff and Resnick argue that the only “communist” element there were the collective farms:
Book Review: ‘Class Theory and History – Capitalism and Communism in the USSR’
This book in fact shows why he (mistakenly) thinks that workers coops are the way out; it follows from his theory of exploitation. But why he has acquired a reputation for expounding Marx’s view is a mystery.
The comedy show continues. Now one of them is accusing the others of supporting socialism:
What he actually said was:
“this something-for-nothing economics is not conservative, it’s socialism.”
Previously he had called it “fairy tale economics”. That was more accurate.
The others imagine that, if the government reduces taxes, businesses will invest more and the economy will grow (capital accumulation will increase). But that’s not the way capitalism works. It is motivated by the prospect of profits, not tax cuts. These might increase the profits they retain but that doesn’t mean they will invest them. You can bring a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.
What’s this about? I am not going to look
at links posted here unless they are accompanied by a few words of explanation. There’s another one further up.It looks as if EU governments are beginning to have second thoughts about just how much pain they can inflict on their population to help Ukraine’s war effort:
If the war isn’t settled by winter the pain can be expected to get much worse with energy rationing as well as higher prices.
While in some parts of the world the result will be bread riots, in Europe it is likely to be pain-inflicting governments losing support or being voted out of office. Already, the main winners of the French elections were two parties opposed to the war while in Italy the government is on the verge of collapse because one of the partners wants to give priority to dealing with the problems of Italians.
The second one is standard in other countries. When Macron said recently that France had to adapt to a “war economy” this was part of what he seemed to be envisaging;
“According to Le Monde newspaper, the government’s armament agency DGA is considering a draft law that would allow the requisitioning of civilian equipment or civilian factories to make weapons.”
One of the candidates for the next Leader of the opposition, the ineffable Liz Truss, has a chequered past. The latest issue of Private Eye (15 July) has dug up that when she in the Young Liberals in 1994 she spoke in favour of abolishing the monarchy and adds:
“But there is more, the Eye learns. Delegates who attended the 1993 conference of Liberal Democrat Youth & Students recall then-firebrand Truss arguing for, er, the abolition of money.”
This is credible. Truss was then a student at Oxford at the same time as some Socialist Party members who had formed an “Abolition of Money” society. So it is entirely possible that she picked up the idea from this student society. Maybe she even have gone to one of their meetings.
But what an opportunist. One moment a Liberal, the next a Tory. One moment a Remainer, the next a Brexiteer. And just to climb higher up the greasy pole.
I don’t think that too much should be read into the Ukrainian regime’s declarations that it won’t “cede” any territory to Russia, ie legally and formally transfer territory to Russia under international law. Nobody expects them to do that, not even Russia.
So this is a bit of a red herring. The fighting can stop without this with the Ukraine regime accepting that, as a matter of fact if not of law, that some of its territory remains occupied by Russia. This has been the case with regard to Crimea since 2014. Ukraine hasn’t ceded this to Russia and probably never will but in practice has accepted the situation.
Other examples can be found in other parts of the world. Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem for instance.
In other words, the war could come to an end without Ukraine having to “cede” any territory. And probably will, when the USA feels that it has weakened Russia enough, which is its declared primary aim.
Meanwhile of course the death and destruction continues.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-62083196.amp
Looks as if the Russian army has been copying the British army’s tactics in Afghanistan — carrying out so-called “field executions” of people suspected of killing their troops. At least the Russian Army tied their victims hands behind their backs before they executed them.
In any event both are “war crimes” under the Geneva Conventions. But where are the ICC investigators? Where are the calls to put the leaders of the UK government at the time (Cameron and Clegg, I think) on trial for “ordering” these executions?
No wonder most states and people outside “the West” are not supporting NATO against Russia in Ukraine since they see the West as hypocrites with double standards.
Meanwhile in Scotland, after taking industrial action, the train drivers there have won a 5% increase. More than the 2% offered by other employers and presumably what other railway workers and others will expect to settle for.
Here’s the exposure of another product of the Ukrainian lie factory which was so over the top that the person responsible got the boot, but not before the lie wasn’t uncritically accepted and spread by the biassed Western media.
Ukrainian official behind Western media reports of Russian atrocities fired by Ukrainian parliament
You don’t want to believe a word the Ukrainian authorities come out with any more than what the Russian authorities produce.
