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I don't want to sound like a killjoy but the FT's celebrated conversion to Bevanism is nowhere near enough, or coherent... screengrabs par-by-par: 1/ This is self evident... but...
2/ The societies that went into the war were already a) heavily state-used b) solidaristic c) had a culture of co-operation and even class collaboration: neoliberalism spent 40 yrs destroying this... so you can't revive by magic...
3/ It's not just that people with low-paid/precarious jobs are on the front line by accident: that's how Thatcher, Blair, Clinton etc designed the economy: you can't have high risk finance unless poor people borrow a lot of money...
4/ So in the first 2x pars we have a change inventory as follows:
❎Bring back a culture of solidarity, tolerance for working class self-organisation
❎De-financialise the world and abolish precarious work...
fine... and next?
5/ The inequity problem is framed as generational... but the young are not just suffering from lockdowns/lost pay: they are asset poor and the present form of capitalism has no way of making them asset rich...
6/ This is the existential statement for neoliberalism: are the elite prepared to reverse out of 40 years of financialisation, wage stagnation, deregulation (simultaneously with decarbonising the world)?
7/ Reclassifying current spending as investment should be a no-brainer; active role in the economy means not just shaping investment but being prepared to take command of vital sectors in a crisis - medical supplies now, energy in the future..
8/ Labour markets are insecure because that is the very condition of the rate-of-profit restoration that took place from the 1990s onwards. Let's state the objective cleanly - a restoration of the wage share to its pre-oil spike level of 60%... anyone at the FT up for that?
9/ Yes to redistribution: but wealth taxes and financial repression against middle class elderly will not be enough to pay down the debts, nor sustain a state-led economy. The biggest current redistribution has to be onshoring >$30 trillion offshore wealth...
10/ And we need to accept high borrowing, high debt and central bank monetisation in states that can withstand the market pressure... that's the bit the FT leaves out... for the obvious reason that done autarkically it will kill globalisation...
11/ There is zero change of a Bretton Woods style agreement because almost every country is ruled by a self-serving (if sometimes closet) economic nationalism: US, UK, China and even Germany...
12/ So I am really glad the FT has come around to dirigisme, redistribution and state intervention - and for the first time since 2008 I am heartened that the expertise and energy of the establishment (which is impressive) might go into promoting change, not resisting it...
13/ But change won't happen without mass action: from ripping open the London Underground gates in 1940 to the Cairo Forces Parliament in 1944 is what drove the postwar settlement...
14/ Plus economics changed. By June 1940 Pigou, Staffa and Robinson were allowed to "stuff undergraduates like sausages" with Keynesian economics... (Skidelsky Vol 3 p77)... here's to a repeat of that only with post-capitalism, circularity, sustainability etc in the mix 👇
15/ For starters: HM Treasury should start to model fiscal multipliers in a Keynesian way; bring in sustainability economists and peer-production advocates; convert BEIS into a Board of Trade... and cancel the invite to Davos for ppl who don't get it!...
16/ We're going to need systemic change but at a different stage in the lifecycle of capitalism it's no use promising people we can recreate the 1940s: we can do much better than that.. more in my talk at #Resist2020 :
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