Further to this and the comments following this post, I mentioned the mismatch of certain leftist moral markers with aspects of traditional working class / bourgeois morality:
“When seen in context, Thatcher’s ‘society’ quote actually chimes quite strongly with traditional working class / bourgeois morality regarding personal and familial responsibility. A similar moral aspect becomes apparent in discussions of immigration, where many working class people take the view that a person should generally pay into a benefit system before taking from it. This tends to conflict with the view, most common among middle-class leftists, that a newcomer from country X can arrive and immediately make several claims without having contributed via taxation, etc. I’ve read more than one Guardian commentator dismiss the former view as ‘typical of racist little Englanders’, which rather misses the point of contention. Wherever you stand on the issue, and whatever exceptions one might imagine, my point is that quite a few middle-class leftwing commentators have casually dismissed as ‘racist’ a moral argument based on reciprocity and a sense of community.”
There’s another illustration in today’s Observer, in John Lloyd’s review of Andrew Anthony’s book, The Fall-Out: How a Guilty Liberal Lost His Innocence:
“Anthony uses an account of his early years as a vivid, emotively charged account of a working class-born, council house-raised and comprehensive school-educated boy who came to question his parents’ outlook. In one instance cited, his mother asked her local councillor why it was that she, a model tenant for many years, had become a much lower priority for rehousing than a newly arrived immigrant family. The councillor to whom Mrs Anthony complained was Tessa Jowell, until recently Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport; she gave her complaining constituent ‘a brusque lecture on racism’.
This vignette recalls progressive, especially London, politics of the Seventies and Eighties… with an overlay of moralising political correctness which assumed prejudice on the part of a white working class and innocence on the part of those with darker skins. In a comment which must be a painful memory, Anthony observes that at university, his ‘enlightened concern was that [his mother] didn’t do or say anything that could be construed as racist … I was now outside, like an anthropologist, looking in’.”
What’s interesting here, and illustrative of a much wider phenomenon, is Jowell’s apparent readiness to frame the issue in terms of racism, and Anthony’s own apprehension regarding how a person might seem in certain kinds of company. And, again, there’s something grimly amusing about those who most loudly profess to care for “the proletariat” showing sneery disregard for the views and moral values of that same group of people.
Darn. I’ve got work to do, but I keep coming here and getting snagged.
“This tends to conflict with the view, most common among middle-class leftists, that a newcomer from country X can arrive and immediately make several claims without having contributed via taxation, etc.”
At least where I come from, this isn’t the case at all. It’s not a “view,” to start with. It’s the way a non-discriminatory system operates–with universal accessibility. Do we deny recent immigrants or refugees the basic necessities until they have paid enough taxes? Well, not at present, and the proposition sounds a little self-defeating anyway.
Where I would agree with the underlying message of the post is in this respect: there is, in that “society” that doesn’t exist, an implied contract between and among individuals. That means that it is expected that the recent immigrant be a functioning part of the society they have elected (or should have elected) to join. My own country was built upon the labour of immigrants, and the stats are still pretty good, generally speaking, with respect to levels of education (rates of university graduation exceed that of the native-born), although the income gap is actually growing for a number of reasons. (There’s a long discussion there about the factors involved, including the underutilization of immigrants’ skills and knowledge.)
I read Thatcher’s comments in context, by the way, and I don’t think she is merely saying that we have responsibilities to ourselves and to our families. I believe that she is literally denying the existence of something called “society.” I once had a fascinating discussion with a conservative who swore that “society” was an invention, that there were only individuals. I raised the issue of synergy with him, and simply got laughed at, and that was that.
I have never understood, in any case, the conflation of leftwards thinking with what some conservative commentators are wont to call the “nanny state.” I don’t think that leftism equates to the fostering of dependency, but to its opposite: people expressing their full potential, and collectively constructing and maintaining the means to do so. I guess that means my statist days are over. 🙂
Dr Dawg,
“…but I keep coming here and getting snagged.”
Yes, it’s strangely compelling, isn’t it?
“It’s not a ‘view,’ to start with.”
But it very much *is* a view, since the “non-discriminatory” basis you suggest is itself a choice of priorities and discriminations among the many that might conceivably be chosen. One might, for instance, expect newcomers in general to be self-supporting for a given time as a condition of being welcome. This wouldn’t in itself constitute a nefarious or unsupportable position. Please note I’m not *advocating* a position here; I’m merely pointing out the tension between the two broad views, and the way in which some commentators have dismissed any opposition to their own position as necessarily racist or malign, thus short-circuiting discussion.
“I believe that she is literally denying the existence of something called ‘society’… I don’t think that leftism equates to the fostering of dependency, but to its opposite: people expressing their full potential, and collectively constructing and maintaining the means to do so.”
Well, experience speaks differently, at least over here, and I have very little influence over what you or anyone chooses to believe. But I think it requires a fair degree of squinting and determination to read the speech in question, in context, as meaning unequivocally what you take it to mean.
“I believe that she is literally denying the existence of something called “society.””
Then where is it? In what statute was it created? Where is the codification of its traditions and doctrine? We certainly have such things for our culture. And our culture is writ across many forms and folks run entire businesses based on its’ dissemination. So where is the Minister for Society?
Thatcher is alluding to the fact that “Society” is actually made up of families and their neighbours – “society” is so abstracted that it can have no possible agency and becomes the thing to which appeals are made when all others have failed.
Kind of like prayer being the last refuge of the scoundrel. If one can think of no other excuse – then society is to blame. Well society is not to blame. If you broke something, you broke it. If you stole something you stole it.
“Society” has been allowed to become (by the left wings’ inability to hold anyone to a standard or to require the behaviour that is necessary for civility to thrive) the means by which I get stuff at other peoples expense without their explicit consent.
In other words, the view that general tax revenues are just the “governments money”, a virtually bottomless supply of benefits that spring magically into existence. The idea that it doesn’t matter how much of it you take is strongly analogous to the view that submitting fraudulent claims on your household insurance is “cost” free; it isn’t. Everbody else simply pays more in premiums next year. Every pound that “society” spends on people who just don’t feel like being responsible for their own lives is a pound that cannot be spent educating a clever child from a poor family. The idea of “Society” is used in order to avoid the hard choices that come from limited resources.
If you take state benefits without having met any obligation to contribute then you are doing precisely this. I have no objection to a safety net to protect the vulnerable. But Thatcher was talking about the extent to which the impulse to assist ones’ neighbour has been abused by a benefits culture.
I know many people who have lived their entire lives on state benefits. Intelligent, healthy people who simply do not feel it is necessary that they support themselves. I beleive that such people are immoral and have failed to understand that there is a difference between providing for genuine need (the handicapped person who requires in-home care) and simply being a burden on those who do have a sense of responsibilty.
Do I object to having my income taxed to provide remedial help to families who have hit a rough-patch? No.
Do I object to having my income taxed so that healhty capable adults can sit at home all day listening to music and smoking dope? Yes.
Thin Man:
I actually agree with many of your sentiments, although I come at this from a different direction. I spent many years in the labour movement, and was struck by two antithetical philosophies that popped up everywhere: one, that “the union” was a kind of insurance company, the staff did the work, and if you had a problem, “the union” would take care of it. The other was that “You are the Union”: this approach stressed membership involvement, democratic decision-making, ready access to information, and organizing. Guess which approach the “Left” took?
I guess I agree with this, too: “Thatcher is alluding to the fact that “Society” is actually made up of families and their neighbours.” And that’s the crux of the thing, because I think there is much more to society than the sum of those parts. Good grief, even Hayek said as much.
I think it’s important to challenge the casual use of “society” as some vast and nebulous abstraction onto which all manner of fancies, resentments and demands can be projected. (This was, I maintain, the gist of Thatcher’s sentiment in the infamous quote.) If I can appeal to society (as an abstraction) for things I want or wish to happen, then my appeals can be unreasonable, impractical, unilateral and, in principle, unlimited. However, if I think of society as my neighbours, my family, the people I pass in the shops, etc, then my demands will tend to be a little more realistic. And the element of reciprocity – which is surely vital – will be harder to ignore, or forget.
This has obvious bearing on, for instance, benefit claims. If I conceive society as a convenient abstraction – as being no-one in particular or “the government” – it’s easy to make demands that are self-serving, opportunist and non-reciprocal. If I try to remember that my friends, neighbours and family are among those actually footing the bill, then it’s harder to justify demands I might otherwise make. The problem that I and others have alluded to is that, in practice, it becomes very easy to forget, and for obvious self-serving reasons.
Dr Dawg
I am glad we agree. If anything, Thatcher (via Hayek) wanted the whole population to become active members of our “society”. That was the idea behind privatisation – to give the family silver back to the family – or rather have us buy it back – but in buying it back we provided extra money for the treasury to use for social benefits. The knock on effect is that the family silver went from a tarnished mess to being gold plated – all the former loss making wrecks are now profit earning, forward looking compnaies that provide real jobs and large amounts of tax revenue.
Society, and I won’t use scare quotes this time, is the collective experience that we all have of living in a particular national or local environment – it is the shared behaviour and ethos of the group.
Once you allow people to remove themselves from that state of connectedness and resposibility to society, they are then, ipso facto, in opposition to it because they have broken the covenant that was supposed to bind everybody together.
We then arrive at tax payers who resent the things their hard earned money is being used for and benefit recipients who show no gratitude for help they have been given by extricating themselves from the situation that required the benefit.
Personally I believe that non-citizens should have no access to taxpayer money.
It should be funded by VOLUNTARY CHARITY (I put voluntary because most leftists have a problem with this idea). Then we will see whether the plight of the poor people who have crossed thousands of miles through endless other countries really is an issue that people in this country choose to fund.
The Labour party was founded to advance the interests of the labouring classes. It became the “natural party of government” because of working class votes, and the Tories could only win elections to the extent that they could attract a significant minority of those same working class voters. The working class Tories who made the Conservative governments of the 1950s possible were famously ridiculed by Johnny Speight in “Till Death Us Do Part”, in the person of Alf Garnett, the loudmouthed racist bigot. Speight was himself working class, and claimed that his anti-racism came from his being a devoted jazz fan.
Today much middle class contempt for the white working class is still based on the image of Alf Grnett – when it’s not based on the opposite, the chav wigga whose own culture is – literally – a pale imitation of African-American “bling” culture.
Starting at the same time as Alf Garnett, the middle classes started to parody elements of working class culture and make them their own. It would take all the insights of Max Weber, Margaret Mead and Sigmund Freud combined to make any sense of the bizarre speech patterns of Mick Jagger (fake southern US bluesman, fake working class brit, residual toff). He was to be the first of many musical “mockneys”, including Joe Strummer, Nigel Kennedy and Damon Albarn. Nick Hornby’s “Fever Pitch” also saw the middle classes taking over soccer.
During its 17 years of opposition, the Labour party gradually abandoned the white working class. Thatcher had destroyed the industries which employed them and the communities which supported them (“Brassed Off”, even more than “The Full Monty”, shows her vile handiwork). Winning elections now meant winning middle class votes. This is why Tony Blair was always more obsessed with the Daily Mail than with The Sun.
In this rather rambling post I notice I’m talking more about fashion, music, sport and television than social policies, which are more what David is concerned with. I’d like to add a personal note. My father successfully transformed his family from working class to middle class. He went to work in factories at 15, but went to night school and eventually got a degree. His generation believed that hard work and education was a route to betterment, rather than winning the Lottery or Big Brother. I like to think that earlier leftist traditions – the ones which gave us the Workers’ Educational Association, and later the Open University – nurtured that view.
I think it clearer if you separate the two element within this discussion: (1) the racial component and (2) the entitlement model of welfare vs. the contributory model.
Consider the provision of social housing. Initially social (or council) housing was provided principally on the basis of time spent on a waiting list. There was some “need” component obviously, but citizens understood that they had to sign up to the waiting list before they would be granted their turn. That system has been progressively reversed, so now “need” is weighted much more highly than “time in queue”. Clearly the former policy was of the contributory model whereas the latter is of the entitlement model.
The change in policy, clearly has had some impact if we are to judge from the statements of complaints by members of the working class. There is a perception that society rewards families that exhibit no personal responsibility, such as becoming homeless through their own misbehaviour, and conversely penalises upstanding families.
There used to be a phrase for this concept – the deserving poor. No left thinking middle class person would ever use this phrase today because it reeks of Victorian attitudes. They would pretend that modern policy has abolished the concept, whereas in fact they have merely redefined the term. Any policy that chooses party A over party B in issuing welfare has ipso facto said that A is more deserving.
Race only enters this issue because post war immigrants have tended to be of a different race. A policy that rewards “time in queue” will inevitably reward indigenous people over immigrants. One of the reasons housing policy has changed is the fact that such a policy was thought to be institutionally racist. Ironically the modern policy will today penalise the second generation black immigrants compared to the newer East Europeans. I cynically wonder whether the revival of this debate is linked to this realisation?
Georges,
“Thatcher had destroyed the industries which employed them and the communities which supported them (‘Brassed Off’, even more than ‘The Full Monty’, shows her vile handiwork).”
Again, I think you have to ask how events would most likely have played out if the dysfunctional, unsustainable industries that Thatcher “destroyed” had remained subsidised at enormous public cost and to such crippling effect. The obvious alternatives to her intervention don’t appear too rosy. In this light, one might argue that the industries in question had already been “destroyed” by previous decades of neglect and mismanagement (across the political spectrum) and that Thatcher’s rather brutal ‘surgery’ was what prevented a much wider and intractable national decline. To speak of Thatcher’s “vile handiwork” seems to suggest some spontaneous ex nihilo vandalism, and rather overlooks the events the made that handiwork necessary.
“Thatcher had destroyed the industries which employed them and the communities which supported them”
What an inversion of the truth. The industries that disappeared were made unprofitable – eaten from the inside out – by Trade Union narcissism. Thatchers’ policies may have actually shut the plants down, but they had been haemorrhaging money throughout the previous 4 governments.
As to the communities that supported them, these again were destroyed by Trades Unions who convinced workers that no business needed to be profitable – that somehow government vodoo economics would prevail. This is patent nonsense. If the unions had been willing to compromise and not simply dug in their heels and put fingers in their ears shouting “LA LA LA LA LA LA” when any solution to our industrial woes was proposed by government or managers – we might have had a more orderly transformation. We MIGHT have been able to save some jobs and factories. The Unions, who could not control their conveners, are responsible the bitterness of the era because of the “class war” nature of their worldview.
Would we want a situation where we still maintained a “Coopering” sector employing thousands of people producing barrels no-one wanted, simply because Trades Union Commie-nazis decided that “uneconomic” was not a valid reason to close down factories? Such a view is utterly foolish.
The 70s were the battleground between the free market capitalist worldview and the socialist command economy worldview. Britain was indeed fortunate that the latter did not prevail, or we would now be living in a country with an economy of third world stature. Thatcher destroyed nothing. She tore down the remnants of industries destroyed by the left and provided a springboard for business to rebuild itself on a sound footing.
“I like to think that earlier leftist traditions – the ones which gave us the Workers’ Educational Association, and later the Open University – nurtured that view.”
They were very worthy achievements. Bevin was self educated through his union.
“Thatcher had destroyed the industries which employed them and the communities which supported them”
This statement is typical socialist hyperbole.
Every year millions of people lose their jobs and soon get another, but we don’t hear about those because they happened one at a time. The main component of this narrative is invariably the damage Thatcher did to the mining industry. Yet it remains a little known fact that more mines were closed under Labour administrations than under Conservative. Mining declined continuously from 1950 onwards and miners were put out of work by all administrations thereafter. There were 800-plus pits and 750,000 miners in 1947, the industry had declined to 170 pits and 240,000 miners by 1983. Why does Thatcher get the blame?
British Rail shed tens of thousands of workers, mainly in the 1960s, yet we never hear wailing tales of the wicked Wilson who destroyed communities. Industry in Britain has been in decline over several decades. Thatcher didn’t cause it, she merely stopped pretending that financial intervention was going to magically turn them around.
Incidentally this whole argument
Don’t leave us in suspense.
In view of the current high price of oil, I wonder if Thatcher’s pit closure programme will one day have to be reversed at even greater expense. With a modernized coal industry the UK could be self-sufficient in energy. We could cease being craven to the vile Saudi regime, to Putin, Ahmadinejad, Chavez…
Thatcher crushed the miners and their communities for political, not economic reasons.
The problem with “free market” economics is that no-one really puts them into practice. Ever since World War Two the US has used a kind of “military Keynesianism” to subsidize its hi-tech industries. I’ve just arrived in Los Angeles on a nice shiny Boeing aeroplane. Most of the R&D expenses in aircraft design come from the military, and are, therefore, paid by US taxpayers.
It was a commonplace that when Ronald Reagan announced his “Star Wars” programme, the “enemy” was not Russia but Japan. The US needed a weapons system that would pump money into hi-tech industries competing with Japan.
I’m going to try and reintroduce a previous argument, in the hope that at least someone will take me up on it. And I promise not to mention Mr Gini and his “Gini Coefficient”.
David’s argument, if I understand it, is that societies are more cohesive the less they spend on welfare. The more they spend on welfare, the more social cohesion breaks down.
All I say is, if that proposition were true, we’d expect Iceland and Denmark to be the most violent places on earth, in which every Friday night plays out like a John Woo movie finale. And we’d expect Brazil and Colombia to be relatively tranquil and untroubled. It seems to me that all the country-by-country evidence is the other way. But maybe David has some country-by-country evidence of his own to back up his thesis.
Don’t get me wrong here. Some societies achieve cohesion by measures that we might not want to take. Singapore has achieved social cohesion partly by adopting extreme paternalistic policies which are probably impossible to introduce into the UK.
“Don’t leave us in suspense.”
Give us a bigger box to type into and I won’t leave half started sentences (that I forgot to delete) at the bottom!!!
Georges,
“Thatcher crushed the miners and their communities for political, not economic reasons.”
Again, this is conveniently ahistorical. But yes, Thatcher was also determined to combat the inordinate, self-serving *power* of the miners’ union leaders, which, lest we forget, had repeatedly threatened the governments of the day, and by extension the electorate. Opposing such power strikes me as a necessary task. Who put Arthur Scargill and his despicable ilk in charge of the country? Why should the various union leaders have been allowed to hold such enormous and disproportionate sway over democratically elected governments? Given their less-than-benign effect on their own industries, their competence with a larger sphere of influence is somewhat suspect.
“David’s argument, if I understand it, is that societies are more cohesive the less they spend on welfare. The more they spend on welfare, the more social cohesion breaks down.”
That’s a bizarre misreading of what I’ve said. I suggest you revisit what I’ve actually argued, which is rather more modest in scope.
The large and troublesome recipient of welfare in Denmark are muslims. They can use this jizya in order to continue in separate colonies.
I would say that this is one good example of non-integration being funded by the state welfarism.
Welfare states teach people to become benefit addicts and NOT to work for things, but to expect them to be provided for them. This attitude is the most harmful.
“I wonder if Thatcher’s pit closure programme will one day have to be reversed”
Perhaps it will. And, if and when we do so, the private companies that undertake such a project will allow those prepared to take risks to make profits from the endeavour, whilst providing gainful employment to those who dig the holes and run the pits. You seem to be asserting that the socialist way of doing things is able to circumvent the cycle of “creative destruction” which makes the capitalist way of doing things so efficient. But what government programs would YOU have shut down to pay the miners wages in the intervening period? How much less a week would each pensioners pittance have been in order to support miners in jobs that couldn’t pay their wages?
Capitalist free market systems do not claim to have a crystal ball. They do not claim to get everything right every time. They simply have a history of economic growth and of causing less human misery than command economy socialism.
Stats rear their ugly head again. Just because there is a statistical relation that fits your hypothosis, it does not follow that that particular relation is a function of the problem you are trying to describe. Financial stats can only really describe finances. Any statistical analysis which conflates moral questions (social behaviour) with money is surmise and hearsay, because social-behaviour is not a mathematical abstraction.
“The more they spend on welfare, the more social cohesion breaks down.” I would suggest that you have this backwards – the more cohesion breaks down (because individuals do not take responsibility for themselves and government policies are ineffective in dealing with problems) the more we have to spend on social welfare because we cannot face real but painful solutions to our social ills.
Hi
I am a strong opponent of cultural relativism, and allowing immigrant communities to run separate parallel schools and legal systems. That’s Apartheid. I support the French ban on headscarves in schools, and the general policy of laicite in state institutions. I agree that some Nordic countries (and especially the Netherlands) have made big mistakes in this area, as has the UK. I believe the Netherlands now forces would-be immigrants to watch a movie showing topless women jogging and gay couples kissing in public, to make sure people understand the society they are supposed to be joining. Again, I’m in favour of that. Denmark has also tried to stop forced marriages in its Muslim community, by raising the age to – I think – 25? None of these measures seems to me to be racist, and all of them appeal to my left wing beliefs (female and gay equality; giving children from all backgrounds as near an equal chance to flourish, be they the children of Muslims, Christians, Atheists).
I think some hypothetical Friedmanite version of capitalism has never existed, and probably never will. Right now George Bush is intervening in the money markets to protect badly-run banks who made bad loans to homeowners from suffering the fate true free market capitalism prescribes – namely bankruptcy. Is there anyone on this post who wants Gordon Brown to treat, say, Barclays the way Margaret Thatcher treated the coal mines? It’s always political. Homeowners are an important electoral constituency, and both George Bush and Gordon Brown will diverge from capitalist principles to keep those voters content. In her day, Margaret Thatcher applied very different standards to the NUM and the NFU, the latter being one of the only trades unions to support the Tory party.
“intervening in the money markets to protect badly-run banks who made bad loans to homeowners from suffering the fate true free market capitalism prescribes”
In fact the sub-prime loans system was espoused by Democrats to give loans to those with bad credit histories as part of what could be considered social programs. The sub-prime “problem” has actually been an increase of about 0.1% in the mortgage failure rate. The “problem” has been over-hyped and the quick market rebound is an indication of the solidity of current markets.
“Is there anyone on this post who wants Gordon Brown to treat, say, Barclays the way Margaret Thatcher treated the coal mines?”
No – but then Barclays management do not have the political ambition of overthrowing the democratically elected government as part of a class war. Barclays provide savings and loan facilities to millions of hard working people – and sometimes the government has to exercise its’ obligation as lender of last resort. I have no problem with this. I would strenuously object to the government bailing out an unprofitable Barclays for the next 20 years, especially if that unprofitablility were due to staff strikes and closed shop restrictive practices rather than difficult or adverse trading conditions.
The difference between Barclays and the “NUM” (and I find it telling that you call it the NUM rather than the British Coal Board) is that Barclays is a solid, profitable company overwhelmed by short term circumstance. The Mines were long term loss making enterprises whose own staff engineered a circumstance in which they could not be made profitable.
georges,
The BoE make a profit from emergency lending. the emergency rate is 1% above LIBOR. The money was not given to Barclay’s, it was lent overnight, and cost the bank a few million.
Only wage inflation erodes debt,so dropping interest rates will have a counter productive effect on the economy, making inflation rise and imports more expensive.
Is Barclays is Insolvent it should be seized and wound-up. No IFs No Buts.
Georges,
The comparison of the NUM with the NFU is scarcely convincing, as I suspect you know. The political makeup and intentions of the NUM leadership were, at the time, rather unusual, as were their demands and methods. Scargill repeatedly made demands that could never have been met by any credible government. (An £800 million capital investment for a terminal industry? Demands that no pit could be closed as long as it had *any* coal in it at all – however small the amount and however impractical and ruinous it was to extract?) One might suppose – and you’ll like this – that Mr Scargill wasn’t actually motivated by concern for his colleagues, or his industry, or details of pay or conditions, but by unthinking “class war” ideology and deranged fantasies of vengeance.
Of the nine or so coal fields involved in Scargill’s Great Battle, only one voted to strike (and if memory serves by just one or two percent), which possibly explains Scargill’s disdain for democracy even within his own industry. Scargill’s intransigence and impractical demands have been condemned within the trade union movement, as has his opposition to allowing ballots among members. And it’s worth noting that at the time of Scargill’s “class war” miners were among the highest-paid industrial workers in the country. And I don’t recall leaders of the NFU taking violent and illegal action to achieve their ends or, more to the point, threatening “direct action” to “bring down” the democratically elected government of the day.
“I think some hypothetical Friedmanite version of capitalism has never existed, and probably never will.”
Change the last word to “should” and I would agree with you.
Businesses and markets are highly efficient ways to get things done. They do not provide an idealogical path to universal peace and harmony.
Socialism wants us to believe that it does both. It patently does not, as the 150 million corpses directly attributable to its’ implementation eloquently attest.
As a classical liberalist, I believe that most things should be done by private business with Government existing as a damper to soften the violence of the pendulum swings of fortune that can occur and to curb some of the excesses that a totally free market can lead to.
But government should be “lender of LAST resort”, the insurance policy for when something unforseen goes horribly wrong. It should not be the prime mover in almost anything.
Progress happens when governments get out of the way of individual enterprise. However, there will be times when government intervention is required because there is no system that can provide for every eventuality.
“Progress happens when governments get out of the way of individual enterprise.”
Is this really what happens? As I pointed out, the US government has used the military budget to boost R&D in hi-tech industries. Airlines, computers, the internet, communications, these have all flourished because of massive state subsidies from the Pentagon.
Japan’s boom in the 70s and 80s involved MITI (the Ministry of International Trade and Industry) selecting growth areas and directing Japanese businesses into them.
Georges
So what? We need defence and this is not an area that should be motivated purely by profit (though the research money should be spent at private contractors, not state run bodies)- and if we can then spin off research in defence to produce entirely new industries, where is the down side?
That tax money invested in research gets a return, in terms of the taxes raised from the profits of these new industries and the jobs they create. I don’t understand how this is wrong.
I was not opposing the “industrial planning” idea of the state directing and subsidizing industry into lucrative growth areas – actually I was recommending it. I thought you were opposing it. Sorry I misunderstood.
George, you said “David’s argument…is that societies are more cohesive the less they spend on welfare…”
“…if that proposition were true, we’d expect Iceland and Denmark to be the most violent places on earth.”
Well first of all, I didn’t see David or anyone else making the case that that violence and lack of social cohesion are synonymous.
Focusing on cohesion, a more reasonable indicator of social cohesion within a society can be found in it’s most basic bond, that which occurs both within a family — and perhaps even more importantly, in societal terms, *between* families — by way of marriage. This traditional blood-bond functions as a socially-enforced acknowledgment of our direct economic interdependence to each other, including that of children to their extended families, and of reciprocal social needs and responsibilities that occur within functioning communities.
You invoked the examples of Iceland and Denmark as examples showing that the welfare state does not create a concomitant lack of social cohesion. Well, Iceland has the highest rate of non-marital births in the world — approximately 65 percent; in Denmark, the figure is 45 percent.
It’s instructive to look at Norway, too. Forty-seven years ago, before the oil boom and the extended welfare state, fewer than 1 in 50 children were born out of wedlock; today, the figure is approximately 1 in 2. It’s hard to not see that as a breakdown in the very bedrock of social cohesion.
We have such opposite views. To me it’s obvious that widespread violence on a massive scale is the strongest possible indicator of societal breakdown. For you it’s the proportion of births “out of wedlock”.
In Iraq illegitimacy is uncommon. But in every other respect their society is being torn apart. Brazil has 150 murders per day – a figure well ahead of many war zones. The idea that these societies are in better shape than Iceland I find incredible.
I’ve worked a lot with Icelanders, and I’d say they are, alongside the Japanese, probably the most cohesive nation in the western world.
This is about the point where I wish that Prof. Rosling’s gapminder.org software had axis data for “portion of births out of wedlock”, and for “portion of murders per population”.
I mean, I think that raising children in traditional families is good, and I think that violence and fraud are bad; I just wonder what the actual numbers say about their societal correlations.
I couldn’t possibly agree with you more George, but I would go even further: A religious civil war isn’t just an “indicator” of societal breakdown, it *is* a societal breakdown.
My passing point on that issue was as narrow as this: “Lack of social cohesion” isn’t synonymous with “violence”. A Nepalese village, say, that absorbs (dish)-imported American or Chinese values might lose a lot of its social cohesiveness over time, but that doesn’t translate into its denizens running around killing and assaulting each other.
And of course, although Germany in the 30’s had a great deal of social cohesion, their behaviour was very standoffish, very “rough”.
Hence, not syonymous, etc.
BTW I didn’t say that Brazil and Iraq, or Darfur, are in better shape than Iceland, or that this is due to their lower number of out-of-wedlock children. But as it turns out, I didn’t have to. /:>)>
Returning to David’s post, or a portion of it, here in Canada, too, progressive state-promoted “left” values are pretty much opposite to the values of the traditional “proletariat”. Traditional working-class values — hard work, self-reliance, a belief in the family sticking together — are now labeled by the progressives as “right wing” or “American-style” values, while the state-promoted values of the party of “the people” tend overwhelmingly to reflect the views of urbanites who are educated and/or well-off, i.e. privileged.
“Returning to David’s post…”
I’d actually forgotten how this thread started. My, how far we’ve roamed. I’m still not sure how my fairly unremarkable comments on personal responsibility were misunderstood as some kind of “thesis” or a global solution to criminality and anomie. I can’t imagine suggesting such a thing without the involvement of hard liquor, nipple clamps and a revolver.
> Japan’s boom in the 70s and 80s involved MITI (the Ministry of International Trade and Industry) selecting growth areas and directing Japanese businesses into them
The subsequent 20 odd years of depression are to be ignored I expect?
georges
I would oppose the “industrial planning” idea of the state directing and subsidising industry” – I dont believe the government has any role in subsidy and certainly no role in planning.
The idea that you can “plan” business in this way is to remove the very possibility of efficiency that markets bring. Companies must be allowed to fail if they are not “fit” to compete.
Do you really think that we would have the Internet or the IT industry as they exist if some government committee had sat down and planned them?
The very crux of classical liberal thought is that benefits arise because no-one is in charge of the whole market and no-one prescribes what the outcome should be, this is the space that permits the unexpected outcome like the internet. It is the lack of of control that defines the market.
I might risk some of my savings to invest in something like the “Walkman”, but governments will not, because governments will never think of the Walkman in the first place. It is the lack of control that allows the unexpected idea to flourish. Can anyone give me an example of a planned economy creating a totally new market like that of the walkman?
By pitting different ways of doing things against each other and having companies compete we get consumer choice. The centrally planned industry is not in true competition and is therefore driven by the political requirements of its planners and not by the needs of the consumer of its goods. This difference is well illustrated by the British and German car industries. British Leyland, centrally planned, stopped being about building cars and became an expression of the political differences between unions and government, the industry became the battleground. The energy of the industry was directed, not into building the best possible car for its customer, but at “winning” the political battle. BMW competed with Audi and Mercedes to make the best car. I think the outcome speaks for itself. Needless to say I now drive a German car, because there are NO British cars left.
I have no problem with government acting tactically within the market to solve short term or particular problems (like the sub-prime mortgage wobble) but government is totally unsuited to running and directing business because you CANNOT run business by politics and have that business thrive.
David: “Who put Arthur Scargill and his despicable ilk in charge of the country?”
And why do they still keep rearing their ugly heads?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3850251.stm
“…the man who has a bust of Karl Marx and a portrait of Che Guevara in his office”
Can we hose him off the face of the planet? I mean, legally?
Only if we form an alliance with the Therkkon People of Planet Vlankke. These are the only people I know who have developed a fully operational Galactic Space-Hose with the accuracy to target specific, discrete organisms on distant planets.
If we form an alliance with the Therkkons, of course, the question of legality will become … how can I put it? … academic …
I like the way you think. Come the Glorious Revolution, I’ll be needing a chief of secret police.
“Do you really think that we would have the Internet or the IT industry as they exist if some government committee had sat down and planned them?”
Luckily, we don’t have to ‘think’ about it.
The Quaero project, a French initiative to build a European rival to Google…
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/07/0637205
Read it and weep.
“Do you really think that we would have the Internet or the IT industry as they exist if some government committee had sat down and planned them?”
Hmm, I think you should read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET
the article begins:
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) developed by DARPA of the United States Department of Defense was the world’s first operational packet switching network, and the predecessor of the global Internet.
Gosh, I can’t go away for long without a veritable explosion. David, I will take your comment about liquor, nipple clamps and a revolver to heart.
If Horace wants to make alliances with the Therkkon, he has no right to discuss morality here. We have nothing in common with silicon-based life forms. I suppose now he will brand me as an unreconstructed carbonist. So be it. A line must be drawn somewhere.
But when my fellow-countryman EBD says something like this:
“Traditional working-class values — hard work, self-reliance, a belief in the family sticking together — are now labeled by the progressives as “right wing” or “American-style” values, while the state-promoted values of the party of “the people” tend overwhelmingly to reflect the views of urbanites who are educated and/or well-off, i.e. privileged.”
I must protest. Winter is coming, and we’ll need some straw for the horses.
Wedlock in any case is not an indicator of social cohesion–one needs to look at the makeup of households, and if strong bonds exist, not whether they are bound together by a ring and some vows. In Iceland, I would suggest that the family units are strong, without benefit of clergy.
“without benefit of clergy.”
I mean, “with or without benefit of clergy.”
georges
Are you suggesting that the engineers that created TCP/IP had any idea that their research would lead to the commercial internet, or the explosion of PC ownership, or Internet shopping, or the creation of ADSL and Broadband technology. Are you suggesting that the Government officials who decided on military budgets that included research funding in advanced computer communications had similar foresight?
What actually happened is that the US Government gave money to the military to pay for the defence of the country.
The military realised, “Hey our missile codes might not get through if the commies blow up a main telephone exchange. Can we do anything about that?” and paid DARPA (an umbrella organisation that funds research by private corporations) to try to develop a communication technology that would not be susceptible to a nuclear attack.
The researchers devise a cunning system to distribute packets of information over mulitiple network paths, so that if one pathway is blocked, the system will simply re-route the packets via another path. So now their missile codes are able to get through no matter what. The original research was supposed to develop a way to get launch codes and command instructions to remote locations. It was never forseen as a general messaging tool.
Then some nerd working on the project (I don’t know who)says “Hey – I can write short text messages and use the addressing and routing protocols we’ve just developed to deliver them – without requiring a direct line between me and the person I want to send the message to. We’ve invented the connectionless messaging protocol!”
From this research we then see the totally unexpected outgrowth that became ARPANET (a general military communications system that replaced leased line and telex type systems). The academics and researchers who built arpanet then realised that this toy had another use and built the JOINT ACADEMIC NETWORK: JANET….and so on and so forth right up to todays applications like Youtube and Amazon.
At no time did any politician or government planner draw up a specification for a super-duper global networking system that would allow us all to download porn at 8MB per second.
Government simply seeded some research. Private and individual enterprise did the rest.
You will notice that in stuck-records example of French internet thinking, they did not invent anything new, but simply wanted a state sponsored rival to Google. Maybe if the French had split $2billion dollars among several groups of really clever French academics and business men, and said invent something the French can be really proud of, they might have seen the development of the next Internet. But they had a political motive. They wanted Google with “Frenchness” or something. The result a complete turkey for which they and their partners cannot even agree a basic specification.
Gratuitous aside: On the subject of DARPA…
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2007/03/great_strides_f.html
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor there were 9 million Americans without a job. Even with all the efforts of FDR, American market capitalism had completely failed to solve the problem of mass unemployment. What got America back to work was government war spending and the draft. And amazing it was. Within a year of entering the war, American industry was producing more weapons than all the other combatants (on either side) put together. This was Keynesianism on a massive scale.
The lesson was not forgotten after the war. Military spending was seen as a key lever of economic planning, a key way to pump money into the economy. It was a way to divert from capitalist market economics without admitting that’s what you were doing.
We can debate what threats America actually faced after World War Two, and how well-targeted American defence spending actually was. I’m certainly not taking a pacifist line on this. But it’s noticeable that, even though the US spends more on defence than the next 14 nations combined, when it faces a full-scale ground war, (as in Vietnam or Iraq, for instance) it often fares very badly. I think this is precisely because most of the spending is intended to achieve other objectives than military objectives.
Now, I don’t object to the state using taxpayers’ money to subsidize hi-tech industries, so that America can better compete against the Japanese in the 80s (Star Wars) or the Chinese now. I just think it’s better to be honest about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
Georges,
You appear to be sidestepping each rebuttal as if it hadn’t been registered, rather than contesting it, conceding the point or revising your assertions.
“I think this is precisely because most of the spending is intended to achieve other objectives than military objectives.”
If you’re going to assert this, I think you really ought to specify what those “other objectives” are.
georges
War spending is war spending. The government then has a simple goal. Win the war. All other considerations are secondary. And please don’t forget that the US did not nationalise any industry. All of their armaments were produced by private companies – the USG simply paid for them.
American market capitalism was never set up to “solve the problem of mass unemployment”. It is a system under which capital is raised to run businesses; employment is simply one component of that process, not its purpose.
Indeed it is the attempt by Governments to produce full employment that created the problems of the 70s that we have been discussing.
georges
“I don’t object to the state using taxpayers’ money to subsidize hi-tech industries, so that America can better compete against the Japanese in the 80s (Star Wars) or the Chinese now”
You appear to be conflating subsidy and defence spending. Since it is the first duty of any nation state to defend itself and its citizens, it must have a defence strategy. That strategy requires expenditure since the resources used must come from somewhere. Such spending is not a subsidy, it is direct cost bourne by the tax payer since that is the only sensible way to fund it. Why would using your national expenditure to give your nation a competitive edge be somehow underhand or suspicious, which is what you seem to be implying?
Subsidy is the artificial support of trade which is unprofitable.
“US spends more on defence than the next 14 nations combined” but it also has a GDP about 6 times the size of the next, and has been called upon to be the worlds policeman. As a nation, it has a strong tradition of defence and military spending.
Please enlighten me as to what the real motives of the US Congressional Arms Appropriation Committee and the UK Department of Defence are.
“Indeed it is the attempt by Governments to produce full employment that created the problems of the 70s that we have been discussing.”
That should have read
“Indeed, it is the attempt by Governments to produce full employment that created the conditions in which government policies and union power collided, producing the industrial unrest of the 70s that we have been discussing.”
My Bad.
Since World War Two the US defense department has grown to become the biggest consumer in the US economy. It is also the biggest funder of research at American universities. The spending decisions it makes have massive effects on the US economy – more than that of any other player in the US economy.
I would find it incredible if those who determine its spending aren’t very well aware of this. If it chooses to spend money in an area of the economy it will transform that area, create an economic “boom” in that area, make what used to be unprofitable profitable. Defence spending has helped get many technologies started, and funded their basic research. This IS subsidy. Often it goes to industries and technologies where America wants to establish a commercial lead against international rivals.
At the time of the Star Wars programme it was agreed it would take decades and decades of research to get anything that could hope to intercept an all-out Soviet nuclear attack. But the research money was being put into US hi-tech industries which needed to gain an edge over rival Japanese companies. At the time US car workers were taking sledgehammers to imported Japanese cars, and the economic fear of Japan was a major factor in the weapons procurement policy. Star Wars was a covert way of subsidizing key US industries.
When it’s come to actually fighting, the US is often being overwhelmed by lo-tech adversaries. The Vietcong used improvised bamboo darts laced with cow dung more effectively than the US used helicopters. In Iraq, improvised roadside bombs are proving lethal to US troops.
georges
I still don’t understand what is wrong with using the nations wealth to benefit the nation.
No area in defence spending can be called unprofitable (though projects can fail and hence money can be wasted, increasing the overall costs of individual projects).
The question of pricing defence items is complex. But if your enemy has a particular kind of bomb that may wipe out a city, it becomes cost effective to spend the cost of replacing a city to develop a defence. It is not the same as choosing between competing car manufacturers for example.
The US military is not the biggest US consumer. The US consumer is the biggest consumer (Consumer spending accounts for about two-thirds of U.S. economic activity – 2/3 of $13.4 Trillion= $8.9 Trillion ) whose spending somewhat dwarfs the Military budget of $439.3 Billion.
Medical spending for example far exceeds defence spending, Medicare itself has a budget of $2.7 trillion over the next decade or $270 billion per year.
Servicing the National Debt cost $406 billion. The US Government is spending almost as much on its’ national “credit card” debt as it is on defence. Such figures hardly mean that the Military is somehow skewing the whole economy.
Please explain why military spending is such a downer. I, myself would be in favour of increased military spending both here in the UK and in the US. And if those increases improve our economy, provide jobs and tax receipts from spin off industries and make us more secure – WHOOPEEE! we’ve hit the jackpot.
I simply disagree that Coalition forces have been “overwhelmed” by low tech weapons. Casualty rates are lower than in any conflict previously fought by the US since the Civil War.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_casualties_of_war
In fact annual US casualties are lower now than they were during Clintons period in office when the US was not strictly at war.
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/10/us-lost-more-soldiers-annually-under.html
How can this be described as overwhelming?
Sorry – suffering from premature post button syndrome again.
I should have added the following to the above, just after the medicare line
“Annual expenditure on Education in the US in 2004-5 was $536 billion dollars. Why is this amount not a spending decision that has a massive effect on the US economy?”
My bad.
I feel like I’m talking at cross purposes.
I am not saying defence spending is necessarily bad. America has enemies, and needs to defend itself against them. I am not calling for the disarmament of America.
My real point is this. Since the 1930s – if not earlier – governments and senior businessmen have known that pure laissez-faire capitalism, of the sort which supposedly Thatcher learned from Hayek, just doesn’t work. The state has to take some role in guiding the economy. This doesn’t require the direct state ownership of industries. The Soviet system is not at all what I’m recommending. In the US, defence has become one of the easiest way to provide subsidies to new industries. The historical reason for this is that it was defence spending which rescued America from the recession of the 1930s. Does anyone on this thread dispute this?
As the responses to my posts show, there is great reluctance to admit that this is what is being done. It means admitting America doesn’t actually practice the pure form of laissez-faire capitalism which it often preaches to the rest of the world. I don’t have a problem with this, because I don’t think pure laissez-faire capitalism works. I don’t think Soviet-style command economics works either. What I think is needed is judicious state guidance of the economy.
There is an obvious parallel with arguments about “free trade”. America, Germany, Japan, South Korea, all these countries nurtured their breakout industries under heavy protectionism, only exposing them to “free trade” when they were already strong enough to survive in the international marketplace. Now, of course, they advise poor countries to embrace free trade from the off. This is hypocrisy, and it is resented.
Dr Dawg said:
“If Horace wants to make alliances with the Therkkon, he has no right to discuss morality here. We have nothing in common with silicon-based life forms. I suppose now he will brand me as an unreconstructed carbonist. So be it. A line must be drawn somewhere.”
Brand you a carbonist? Not at all, doctor. You’re better than that. You are, though, quite clearly, a siliphobe. What people like you fail to remember – or, at least choose not to remember – is that when the Universe was run by silicone-based life-forms there was peace and harmony across planets. It was a time of great scientific and cultural advances. All life forms, regardless of their biochemical basis, were respected and valued. And I see no reason why they shouldn’t now have a fully-functioning intergalactic hose.
Perhaps we should accept that carbonist hegemony will soon come to an end. The hosers are poised for takeover.
Regarding US casualties. I think it’s simplistic to compare casualties on American soil in the Civil War with those in Vietnam or Iraq. Rightly or wrongly, most Americans probably consider the Vietnam and Iraq wars to be “optional” rather than necessary. Casualty figures for the Vietnam war are disputed, but I believe the Americans suffered 50-60,000 casualties, as against maybe 2 million Vietkong. Whatever the actual figure, it’s obvious that these relatively low casualties were enough to turn many Americans against a war which it seemed they did not have to fight, against an enemy which did not directly menace American territory. French casualties were much lower in Algeria than in World War One, but France gave up in the former and went on to victory in the latter.
georges
I know of no politician or serious economist who has ever claimed that the US has a pefect laissez-faire economy. Perhaps it might be possible to run such an economy – I don’t know – it has never been tried.
I don’t beleive that America preaches “purity” of form. It simply behaves as one actor on the world stage, whose system has made its own citizens the richest in the world.
By the way, I do dispute that defence spending rescued the US in the 30s. Recovery from the crash and world wide depression of the 20s was already well underway by the time the war started. Simialrly in the UK and indeed in Germany, the economy was recovering quickly and Hitler was able to claim credit for this which boosted his popular power.
“If one defines economic health entirely by the gross domestic product, the U.S. had gotten back on track by 1934, and made a full recovery by 1936, but as Roosevelt said, one third of the nation was ill fed, ill-housed and ill-clothed. See Chart 3. GNP was 34% higher in 1936 than 1932, and 58% higher in 1940 on the eve of war”
and
“The economy grew 58% from 1932 to 1940 in 8 years of peacetime, and then grew 56% from 1940 to 1945”
so in fact pre war growth was stronger than war time growth.
both quotes : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_the_United_States
Most Western countries have vested interests that cling to subsidy (Farmers being one of the worst culprits.) This is not so much a problem of the capitalist system, but a political one – since politicians cannot piss off certain of their constituent groups. We shouldn’t subsidise and protect unprofitable industries as I have said before. Continuing subsidies are the shame of political weakness.
We certainly should not be encouraging developing countries to adopt our bad habits and we should push as hard as possible to remove our own dead weight industries. I believe the French are finally beginning to grasp this nettle by cutting subsidy to uneconomic vineyards. In this regard, More Faster Please.
The most extreme example of differential casualties is probably the Soviet Union in World War Two and Afghanistan. In World War Two over 10 million Soviet soldiers, and 14 to 17 million Soviet civilians, died. In Afghanistan the official casualty figure is just 14,000 (the real figure is probably much higher, but still nowhere near WW2 levels).
I love that I have absolutely no idea where this thread is going to end up. Sorry, carry on.
I was checking this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment#United_States_Bureau_of_Labor_Statistics
In 1933 unemployment was around 25 percent of the labour force. It moved down and then back up again during the following years. But the really big drop is obviously caused by the war. Around 15 percent in 1940, down to 2 percent in 1943.
“French casualties were much lower in Algeria than in World War One, but France gave up in the former and went on to victory in the latter”
Thats because the French are cheese-eating surrender monkeys who have had no military pride since the days of Napoleon.
All joking aside, this is a matter of personal conscience and I will say that I support the war.
I happen to believe that it is worth the cost in blood and treasure to defend the values of the West against terrorism.
I think in particular that Islamism represents an existential threat to the hard won individual freedoms that we enjoy in the west and I believe that the volunteer soldiers who fight on our behalf are the finest examples of that western tradition.
It sickens me to see news of DePalmas’ new movie for example, which casts US soldiers in the role of rapists and murderers based on a single event when our enemies set 5 year olds on fire, or use them as cover for suicide operations or have handy torture manuals in cartoon form so that illiterate jihadis can use them.
Or in next door Iran, where a drink and a shag gets you 80 lashes, or where teenage homosexuals are publicly hanged, or 16 year old girls are hanged as unchaste for arguing with a judge.
WARNING the links are not for faint hearted.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/08/22/iraq.boy/
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0524072torture1.html
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2007/08/iran-releases-photos-from-public.html
http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2005/10/shocking_new_ph.html
I personally think that this ideology must not be allowed to spread.
georges
“In 1933 unemployment was around 25 percent of the labour force. It moved down and then back up again during the following years. But the really big drop is obviously caused by the war. Around 15 percent in 1940, down to 2 percent in 1943.”
Whatever effect military spending has had, you still have not explained why military spending is any “worse” from a free market view than spending on education for example?
In both cases it is the nation state investing its resources in itself. What makes defence spending “evil” and education spending “good”?
To try to bring the discussion back to its roots, how does this relate to your comments about Thatcher not supporting the NCB and other dysfunctional nationalised industries with subsidy?
President Eisenhower (a former General) said in his closing address to the nation:
“A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction…
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
I think that’s about right.
If anyone else uses the phrase “military-industrial complex”, I swear I’m fetching the hose.
“the m*l*t*ry-ind*str*al c*mpl*x”
Oh georges, georges, georges….
Yeah but Truman put tanks on the lawn of the Whitehouse and LBJ wore a lime green polyester suit.
We are straying close to the realms of twooferism now.
I am expecting Agent Mulder to appear any second.
Seriously, georges
You have been listening to too many “college know-it-all-hippies”** if you think that Eisenhowers description applies to the US. It might apply to North Korea. But seriously, are you suggesting that America is a military/police state, where the civilian population and civil freedoms are at the mercy of the military?
** see
http://www.southparkstuff.com/season_9/episode_902/
– really, if you can, download the episode, its’ a scream (and yes – I have been called a “South -Park” republican
http://episodes.southparkstuff.com.nyud.net:8080/download/season9/902_www_southparkstuff_com.zip
I was hoping to find a recording of Randy Newman singing “Life Isn’t Fair” which would have been perfect for this thread. Alas, I couldn’t, but you might like to look at this, which is imperfect, but only just, for this thread:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1Vb0Mu0mhlw
I’m not suggesting the US is a police state – nor was Eisenhower. He was simply warning the citizenry to be on their guard against “undue influence”. I think that’s fair.
In the UK we’re painfully aware that our governments pay bribes and even procure prostitutes to see to it that British defence firms secure Saudi contracts.
I think georges is ideologically blind to the fact that transferring money from productive parts of the economy to subsidise inefficient industries harms the economy.
I guess he may also suffer from blindness with regard to protectionism, whereby business owners can rip-off consumers in their home country.
Economic guiding hands tend to invest in one thing only, their own egos.
georges, you are being an arrogant culturalist. “Bribes” are part Saudi and Arab culture! I hope your not one of those losing your multi-cult values?
“In the UK we’re painfully aware that our governments pay bribes and even procure prostitutes to see to it that British defence firms secure Saudi contracts.”
Why georges, you cultural imperialist you. You’re just imposing your western values on Saudi princes.
Hey – if some sheik getting his rocks off gets us a multi-billion pound contract, I say how much would be it worth to get the whole Saudi population laid?
Hell, for £100 billion I’d toss some Saudi Salad myself.
I don’t have an ideological position on subsidies or protectionism. All I’m doing is observing the fact that the US, Germany, Japan and others initially protected their industries until they were strong enough to survive under free trade. It worked for them.
I hesitate to ask what “tossing salad” entails. No, scratch that. I’ve just been handed an explanatory note. Heavens.
David
“I hesitate to ask what tossing salad entails” – then perhaps a different version of the vernacular maight be something like:
“Hell, for £100 billion, you can grab my ankles and call me Mary”
Is that less difficult to decipher?
Getting back to the article. I find it a bit sad that Anthony’s mum seemed to think public housing was going to be where she would be spending the rest of her life.
The problem is that for too many people welfare has become a (miserable) way of life rather than bit of help through a rough patch. The situation in remote aboriginal communities in Australia is an extreme example of how much damage this outlook can do.
On the subject of foreigners getting government aid, I think it reasonable that refugees fleeing repressive regimes like those in Iran or Sudan get a little help settling in.
Jamie,
My impression is that the issue concerned immigration generally, i.e. economic migration, rather than refugees specifically or legitimate asylum seekers. I guess the examples you mention could fall under the category “exceptions one might imagine.” Again, the points I hoped to convey were (a) the tension between the two broad views, (b) the inhibition of discussion by insisting on skin colour as the default motive, and (c) the subsequent fear of how one might seem in dissenting, i.e. a “racist little Englander.”
Down here our immigration department are pretty keen on making sure economic migrants can take care of themselves before giving them visas. So debate on immigration tends to be about our refugee intake.
Regarding welfare my favourite phrase was “If we give you a ladder we expect you to start climbing”.
So much of the “welfare” state spending is failure rewards, funded by fining financial success! You don’t have to be an economist (i.e. incentives matter, discuss) to see that this isn’t exactly good.
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