Young Master Smeet
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Quote:There is nothing very odd about this money creation process that the Bank of England would use. All money, barring notes and coins, is created by banks (including all those familiar names on the High Street) when they make loans. The process is very simple. When you ask for a loan from a bank you do not get given somebody else’s money, although that is the common understanding of the process. Instead the bank simply creates two accounts for you. One is a current account into which they put the money you want to spend, and the other is a loan account, which is the amount that you owe back to them.The important point to note is that there was no money in either account before you asked for the loan, and if you immediately repaid it after the loan was granted, then there would be no new money either because both accounts would be cancelled. It’s the fact that people believe that they can spend the money in the current account that’s been created by the loan that, quite literally, means that banks can creates money out of thin air.Quote:We reiterate: this whole process can be undertaken without creating new debt that will have to be repaid in future. It is instead paid for by creating new money, which is a total different process.
Hmm, where's Major Douglas when you need him?The only way in which this works is by denuding existing assets of value, it might be at a time of real falling investment and prices that the inflation is invisible, and prices don't change, but speaking as someone who has been robbed by inflation over the last couple of years, he's wrong, it is inflationary, the question is the degree of control over inflation: also, the scale of impact it could have, used strategically to clear a few logjams it could create sustained growth, but general pump priming the economy, that is risky.
So, battle is properly joined, and the current shadow chancellor of the Labour party has been saying that Corbyns economic policies would hit the poorest hardest. His economist inspiration has come out to defend himself: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2015/08/03/chris-leslie-has-got-corbynomics-wrong/
Quote:People’s quantitative easing is instead a highly directed process where the debt that is repurchased has been deliberately created and issued either by a green investment bank or by local authorities, health trusts and other such agencies for the specific purpose of funding new investment in the economy at the time when big business and financial markets are completely failing to deliver the scale of investment that is needed to get the UK working again and to restore our financial prosperity. There is no chance whatsoever that people’s quantitative easing funds will leak into asset speculation, and so generate inflation, precisely because to the greatest extent possible banks will be kept out of this loop for the good reason that they have proved themselves unable to manage this type of socially beneficial investment activity.Quote:Third, printing money is not inflationary when there is a shortage of money in the economy. If Chris Leslie is not aware of it, and I suspect he is not, all money that exists in our economy is created either by bank lending or by the government printing it. Those are the only options that are available. And, when there is too little money we risk getting deflation, which is pretty universally recognised as posing a threat to economic well-being because of the risk that it creates that people will stop spending, whether on business investment, or on household goods. Right across Europe, including in the UK, this is the big risk right now. Many European countries already have deflation whilst we have zero inflation, and quite appropriately the target for inflation is at least 2% per annum.In the comments he says it is a mvoe to money creation by banks to money creation by government. Oh, dear. Still, the point remains basically sound that juduiciously printing money through buying back the debt of public bodies could generate growth, and unlock investment in some areas (although debt is deferred taxation, so unless the plan is to never pay back that interest free debt there will be a bite on the bum later). Fundamentally, this plan only works if sufficient profit can be generated through growth to pay for the imaginary spending retrospectively.
Stuart,yes, true, we aren't going to have community of underpants, but you concede the point that the communistic part can be expanded (or shifted) to cover the basic necessities of life for all: we won't all have tickets to the opera; but there are non-monetary methods for dealing with these. Mises is right up to a point (and Hayek to), there always needs to be exchange, but it is exchange of information, it doesn't have to be exchange of commodities. Independence at the firm level within a cybernetic feedback structure should give us the scope to be able to manage.Lbird, from each according to abilities, to each according to needs does break the link between work and reward. Someone who is unable to work still has their needs fulfilled, someone who is a poor worker may well receive more and better than a hard worker.
Lbird,hmm, that kind of was my point that the paycheck is radically dissociated from the work, there is no payment for each operation performed at work, it is generalised. The next step is to generalise it even further, and break the link between work and reward altogether. At work I have free access to water (and a kettle) in some other firms a whole canteen is laid on: but its easier to allocate buffet style than it is to tell everyone they must have custard on their pudding.
Stuart,we already have 'within firm communism' so most of the supply chain is communised, the only matter is to open that out to a within society communism. We don't charge co-workers for our time, and we don't engage in market activity when we co-operate within firm, we carry out instructions and tasks as concretely defined, and get our paycheck at the end of the month. Large firms have already outscaled the intentional communities Engels described.
An article I never get tired referring to:https://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/works/1844/10/15.htmEngels in his discussion of intentional communities discusses very clearly how he understands socialism to be (pace the myth that he and Marx never discussed socialism itself).
Quote:When one talks to people about socialism or communism, one very frequently finds that they entirely agree with one regarding the substance of the matter and declare communism to be a very fine thing; “but”, they then say, “it is impossible ever to put such things into practice in real life”. One encounters this objection so frequently that it seems to the writer both useful and necessary to reply to it with a few facts which are still very little known in Germany and which completely and utterly dispose of this objection. For communism, social existence and activity based on community of goods, is not only possible but has actually already been realised in many communities in America and in one place in England, with the greatest success, as we shall see.Quote:We see then that community of goods is by no means an impossibility but that on the contrary all these experiments have been entirely successful. We also see that the people who are living communally live better with less work, have more leisure for the development of their minds, and that they are better, more moral people than their neighbours who have retained private property. And all this has already been acknowledged by the Americans, British, French and Belgian ‘ s and by a large number of Germans. In every country there are a number of people who are busy spreading the ideal and have already taken up the communal cause.Corbyn has now hitched his way onto the Robin Hood Tax:http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-robin-hood-tax-is-a-more-sensible-and-fairer-way-of-helping-our-economy-to-recover-10429501.htmlStandard criticisms apply, taking that tax out of profits hits investment and dents recovery, so it can't be used to directly fund consumption.
hmmm, they may accept the losses with more grace if they don't have an army to call upon, and the state machine is busy being converted to helping co-ordinate meeting those urgent needs.Just to take an example, I have been involved in a society that has a Royal Charter, and they had to apply to the privy council to alter it (a formality, largely, but still). It wouldn't be unreasonable for the democratic population to have some say on the charters of firms, and their objects and declarations of principles…Just because we don't go to Fourier-esque levels of description, doesn't mean that we don't have som idea of how socialism could work, especially as so much is already happening within capitalism that we can use for our ends.
Stuart,the full plan has already been published:http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/In fact, it's only one small fraction:
Quote:Article 22.Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.Article 25.(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.We have the method to realise this in charities, and trade unions and other organisations. At the firm level, each organisation need only set out its objects and how they relate to realising that plan, and the local key performance areas, in an iterative process down to the team level: it doesn't necessitate central control.For instance, article 25 had (finally) been recognised as a right to access to clean water, what is needful is that our organisations are freed to up pursue these aims without the distortion of private profit.
The plan seems to have been pretty ingenius:
Quote:Suppose, for example, Company A is owed €1m by the state; and it owes €30,000 to an employee — plus another €500,000 to Company B, which provided it with goods and services. The employee and Company B also owe, respectively, €10,000 and €200,000 in taxes to the state. In this case the proposed system would allow for the immediate cancellation of at least €210,000 in arrears.[…] Organisations or individuals could buy credits from the tax office online using their normal bank accounts, and add them to their reserve account. These credits could be used after, say, a year to pay future taxes at a discount (for example, 10 per cent).http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/27db9c44-3483-11e5-bdbb-35e55cbae175.html#axzz3hA3vriCXGiven that the requirement to pay taxes is the bedrock of fiat currency, that is a prrallel currency in all but name, but a pretty nifty bit of footwork.
Well, couple of quickies. Democracy isn't answer to economic question: but freedom is, as is information. Economic actors need freedom to act/react and information has to be transmitted accurately and quickly. A chief objection to markets is that the information they convey is slower than modern communication resources, when I can access a real time database of stocks and publicly declare my interest so others can see real time demand, what need then of pricing?Of course, numbers remain relevent: Gale-Shapley stable matching algorithms could be used for allocation of resources such as housing, and adjusted winner auctions could be usd at a strategic allocation level:http://www.nyu.edu/projects/adjustedwinner/(And who knows what else bright spark mathematicians and their deep inductive thinking might come up with if we actually ask them, instead of asking them to produc algorithms to get an edge on the stock market).Yes, abundance doesn't mean each gets their own personal Death Star, but that each may actualise themself, and develop freely as a human behing without fear of material constraint or enslavement to their work.
http://labourlist.org/2015/07/education-is-a-collective-good-its-time-for-a-national-education-service/He fleshes out more policies:
Quote:In a fast-changing world where new technology is making new industries and making others obsolete, we need an education system – a lifelong learning service – that offers new skills and understanding throughout our working lives….In 2020 we should start by reversing the cuts to the adult skills budget and expand it into a lifelong learning service by adding 2% to corporation tax (still comfortably the lowest in the G7). This funding would be hypothecated to expand adult learning into a lifelong learning education resource. The extra tax revenues brought by a high skill, high productivity and high pay economy will fund further expansion.A National Education Service will give working age people access throughout their lives to learn new skills or to re-train. It should also work with Jobcentre Plus to offer claimants opportunities to improve their skills, rather than face the carousel of workfare placements, sanctions and despair. We need a return to ambitious joined-up government.Actually, I recall this being a flashpoint issue in the election: we were at an FE college that seemed to be facing heartbreaking levels of cuts (it's students had a lot of learning disabilities and seemed to come from some very marginalised communities). I was insistent that education should be for its own sake, not to feed the labour market.What's even more heartbreaking, is what he is proposing is hardly that radical at all really, and just shows how little we matter in capitalism. (and yes, the cuts to FE are a scandal, that will haunt for years to come).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02y2ffnSome quotes from the transcript:
Quote:JEREMY CORBYN:(over)… where there are natural monopolies like Royal Mail, like the railways, it seems to me counterintuitive that we spend a great deal of money on investing in railway infrastructure, billions, and we then hand it over to train operating companies to run it. I think it is much better if we bring the railway system as a whole into public ownership. It’s not some extreme position. It’s supported on opinion polls by 60 to 70 per cent of the electorate.Quote:ANDREW MARR:Which reminds me slightly of the old days of Tony Benn, the alternative economic strategy and all of that. If I’d asked Tony Benn what his politics were and asked him about Marx, I think what he would have said is Marx was right about a lot of economics and wrong on the politics and his politics came from the English radical tradition, the Levellers and so forth. Is that by and large where you come from too?JEREMY CORBYN: Where … Well Marx obviously analysed what was hap pening in a quite brilliant way and the philosophy around Marx is absolutely fascinating. Does it all apply now? Well obviously philosophy applies at all times. Do we then take that as a way in which we ensure that people have reasonable security in their lives through public ownership of the major monopolies, then I think that is a fair point to look at. It’s not unpopular with the public. We’re after all subsidising the railway system to a massive degree. The nuclear power industry expects us to pay for their clean-up costs when they decommission nuclear power stations. The water industry are constantly sniping around wanting support for new infrastructure projects. If we’re investing in infrastructure, then we the public should get the benefit of it.Quote:ANDREW MARR: Do you regard yourself as a Marxist?JEREMY CORBYN:(sighs)That’s a very interesting question actually.ANDREW MARR: Thank you.JEREMY CORBYN:I haven’t thought about that for a long time. I haven’t really read as much of Marx as I should have done. I’ve read quite a bit, but not that much, and I think Marx’s transition of history and the analysis of how you go from feudalism to capitalism and move onto a different stage is fascinating. So we all owe something to him. Probably inside you, even you do. You think you do?ANDREW MARR:(over)Well I remember Francis Wheen said we should regard Marx as a great Victorian novelist, a great observer of the scene, and I think I would probably go along with thatQuote:Some things can’t be replicated in pixels or even by a 3-D printer. Clothing, food, housing, fuel and computers can only be replicated by employing the labor power of exploited workers.That's just flat wrong, they are building houses in China using 3d printers, printing will enable production of clothes from gloop. Robots are increasingly doing the extractive work: this is a problem for the logic of capital, and it is a political problem.
Twitter has exploded since Blair's intervention, and, say what you like, Corbyn has class: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jeremy-corbyn-slaps-down-silly-6113455%5B
Quote:The left-winger was confronted with the claim Tony Blair won more elections than any Labour leader – and butted in: "Harold Wilson won more actually."
