The Conservatives’ new ‘big idea’, the unifying concept that underlies and connects the policies contained in their manifesto, has turned out to be something of a damp squib. For all of the talk of a ‘Big Society’, where every man, woman and child is part of some semi-state voluntary body, in reality it expects too much from people without any incentive for them to take part.
Some of the thinking behind the ‘Big Society’ idea is actually sound: different parts of the country have different needs in terms of state services, and allowing them to organize themselves will promote increased competition between areas. The problem with the current ‘postcode lottery’ is not simply that some areas are have better public services than others, it’s that worse areas have no incentive to improve themselves except in exceptional circumstances. As Hayek argued in The Constitution of Liberty, decentralizing the execution of state services promotes experimentation between areas and increases the likelihood for good practices to emerge.
The problem with the Conservatives’ plan is this: by thinking about society and the market as different things, they are disregarding the immense contributions to society that people make with their jobs. This makes the Conservatives think that they can get something for nothing by getting people to carry out volunteer work in state co-operatives out of a guilty feeling that they contribute nothing to society in their jobs.
The ‘Big Society’ banks on people not recognising the social value of their jobs and feeling morally impelled to volunteer through state-sponsored activities. The Conservatives need to recognise that the free market rewards contributions to society far more than the state, and the only people who will take part in their state co-operatives are busybodies who want to control others.
Voting is a civic duty, but does it really make a difference? For anyone living outside about sixty marginal constituencies, clearly no. You are more likely to be run over outside the polling station than your vote changing the balance in Parliament.
Even if it did, would that make a difference to how the country is run, since the main parties seem to share so many of the same metropolitan, nannying, spin-ridden presumptions? Well, yes: however much all politicians claim they will cut taxes and improve state services, it is plain that some believe in more state control of our economic and social lives, and others in less.
Nevertheless, what we need is something that none of them promise: a complete overhaul of our political system. It has become a presidential system, though Britain does not have a constitution that can contain presidential power. It has become the Prime Minister and a bunch of unelected party apparatchiks who decide policy. Ministers, the civil service, Parliament, even the courts are elbowed out of the way.
The problem is not how to choose our leaders, but how to restrain them. Parliament used to be there for that purpose, but with 120-odd ministers owing their pay and perks to the Executive, it has become a Downing Street poodle.
If I lived in a marginal seat, I would vote for the strongest Parliamentarian, someone who might hold the Executive to account. Since I live in a ‘safe’ seat, what can I do? Well, I might just ‘spoil’ by ballot paper by writing in a message that all of the candidates will see. That I want a Parliament that represents the people and returns power to us – not the present system of elected dictatorships.
Efficiency savings are all the rage now that government spending is coming under increasing pressure. The idea is to reduce spending ‘without damaging the frontline services that we all depend on’, apparently saving money without affecting the delivery of health care, education or whatever the particular area happens to be.
Many members of public will recognise a worrisome implication in this notion; if the same service can be delivered with less expenditure, where was the money going beforehand?
This gets right to the heart of a difficulty with valuing public services. Because no market forces are involved (in most cases they are free at the point of use) it is extremely difficult to measure efficiency. When measuring the efficiency of a private firm, you can look at the inputs (money invested) and compare it with the outputs as valued by the market.
But this methodology becomes a lot more difficult when public services are involved. The inputs can be defined well enough, but who knows how to value the output? What do you define as a useful output for a school? I can’t see a way of measuring the amount of education a school produces in order to compare this to the input.
This problem, I think, leads to the extremely difficult philosophical problem of attaching a value to lives saved by the NHS in order to prioritise spending. Quality Adjusted Life Years, or QALYs, are currently used as a metric for comparing the payoffs of medical procedures in some areas of the NHS, but this method is far from perfect.
It is difficult to see how budgets can be systematically prioritised when one understands the issue there is with defining outputs provided by public services. Looking at the issue of public sector output in this way helps to explain why public services have at times been underfunded for the purpose at hand, and at other times seem to have money to waste on endless consultants and all manner of shiny billboards.
Nevertheless, efficiency savings are only pledged in certain areas. One could interpret this as a sign that government expenditure is working at capacity in other areas. But judging from the expensive cut of many civil servants’ suits I see when out for my lunchtime walk, I’d say there’s some squeezing to be done yet.
As we enter the third day of the election campaign, voter turnout is again shaping up to be a hot topic for commentators and politicians alike. Newsnight have made the customary ‘lets find out why voters feel so disconnected and disillusioned with politics by visiting a generic working class area and talking to real people’ report.
The solutions being floated seem largely to resolve around an influx of new, energetic, honest MPs who would surely never take advantage of their positions of power in the way the current lot have. As I’ve said before, the problem of corruption is systemic and structural, so I don’t hold out much hope for the prospects of the new lot.
It’s important to acknowledge that voter turnout will likely be low because of a mixture of the relative lacking diversity between the three main parties on many key issues (NHS, welfare and tax reform) and also because of the current electoral system and over-centralisation.
Indeed, Game Theorist Ken Binmore has pointed out that individuals, recognising the relative futility of one vote under First-Past-The-Post will rationally calculate that in many cases it is simply not ‘worth it’ to get out and vote.
Decentralisation, I believe, is crucial here. It seems clear to me that when decisions are made on a more local level and voters can see more clearly where money is spent, turnout is likely to be higher. As it stands, from the perspective of numerous voters, putting a cross on the ballot paper signifies support for a group of people who are distant, legislating in the mysterious world of Westminster and largely unaccountable for up to five years. Democracy must be more responsive and immediate if the electorate is to be truly engaged.
Conservative proposals on the issue seem attractive. But given previous governments’ records on constitutional reform, I’m not holding my breath.
Gordon Brown has decided to make his National Insurance rise, “a tax on ordinary families" in his own words, one of his hundreds of stealth tax rises, the defining diving line of the election. After Mandelson finally nailed the coffin of Labour’s relationship with business last week, this final ‘come back’ attempt has left Gordon and Labour in full view, caught on the wrong side of the line.
Gordon’s election argument is that we should not risk the recovery. George Osborne’s and the Conservative Party’s tax cut will directly benefit seven out of ten families and indirectly helps us all, but Gordon notes that it will lower government revenue by around £6 billion, and thus he argues, take money out of the economy.
Fundamentally, Gordon must answer how the tax cut would take money out of the economy. Unless his vision of the economy is severely impaired, so that it includes only the actions of government and not the people (I wouldn’t put it beyond him), his argument is a manifestly illogical and economically illiterate.
If Gordon were re-elected, and came knocking at your door, and the door of your employer, to collect his national insurance tax, he would take money out of your pocket and that of your employer. He would thus take money out of the economy.
Now it is true that the government would then spend this money. They might channel the funds (that he seized from you and your employer) through layers of bureaucracy (wasting it inefficiently along the way), and then ‘invest’ in a big government scheme that is probably not needed, makes the problem worse and creates new problems, is over budget beyond belief, and infringes on your fundamental freedoms. Gordon will have employed people, may have developed some capital, and hence would have undertaken some economic activity.
However, Gordon’s economic activity comes at a steep price. Remember that Gordon has to take money from you and your employer. Any of Gordon’s economic activity comes at the expense of that which you and your employer would have spent that money on instead. It is an unseen opportunity cost, the loss is that which might have been. Had the tax not been collected, you and your employer would have had more money to save and spend. These actions would have led to economic activity too.
Gordon can only sustain his argument by claiming that he will spend your money better than you can. So, either he has no understanding of the economy or he is showing his true Socialist stripes. The latter case is no more promising. Whilst Gordon’s tax rises may be stimulating his own activity, the net result is destruction.
It is not just that Gordon Brown is wrong to say that tax cut will take money out of the economy, he is also wrong to think the tax could stimulate the economy. Taxes disincentivise economic activities, drive the productive and mobile away, and take money out of the productive sector of the economy. The only way to deal with the economic mess Gordon has got us into, of stagnant growth and astronomical debt, is to stop over spending and go for growth with tax cuts that will stimulate wealth creation, boost our economic competitiveness and support job creation. Gordon’s stance confirms the death of New Labour.
Washington and New York aren't typical of America, of course, but travelling through these cities, I am surprised by how unpopular Barak Obama has become. Even among Democrats (and there are a lot of those in both cities). The mood is one of disappointment, and promise unfulfilled.
Odd, you might think, given that Obama has successfully steered through the passage of the healthcare bill, his flagship measure, in the teeth of Republican opposition. But frankly, that again is just a promise, and people actually want to know how the measure will impact on them before they start cheering too loudly. And while the one success is merely promise, the failures are real. Obama's economic package was sold on the basis that unemployment could soar past 8% without it. Well, it's already done that, standing at about 10%. The signs are all around. The overseas wars seem to be carrying on as strongly as ever. No change there.
Perhaps the most significant disappointment, however, is that Obama promised to break the mould of partisan, Republicans vs Democrats politics. Sick of Washington's name-calling political culture, that was something that thousands of independents wanted to hear. But the healthcare debate became a straight fight between the parties, and Obama seemed quite unable to get minds to meet. Indeed, his measure seems, to the independents, to have made partisan divisions worse.
And it is independent-minded citizens who are behind America's astonishing Tea Party movement and all those Town Hall meetings. Ordinary citizens, just fed up with politics and politicians, wanting to get them out of their hair. It's a powerful national movement that has taken the politicians unawares.
Is there a message here for David Cameron? His Big Society concept seems a refreshing alternative to the Big Government obsessions of politicians from all sides. A society in which the power of self-determination is returned to citizens. It would be a powerful election slogan, like Obama's. And the lesson is that, if elected, he actually has to deliver this thing that independent voters are yearning for. If it turns out to be business as usual, his government won't last the year.
Seamus McCauley is horrifed by the effect of online targetted advetising upon politics. Essentially, it's possibly to target such advertising so precisely that only the losers from a particular political proposal will see the ads. So instead of everyone considering said policy, only those who would suffer are alerted to it and of course, only those who would lose from it are likely to start shouting about how it shouldn't happen.
Seamus thinks this is a horrible idea:
But as soon as parties start targeting just those who lose out...well, no policy will be allowed to have any losers at all. Or even any perceived losers, potential losers or possible losers. Every policy will have to be good for everyone, or good for everyone that ad targeting is sophisticated enough to isolate.
At a time when hard decisions have to be made this will mean entirely bland decisions.
Me personally of course I think this is an absolutely marvellous idea. Quite blindingly wonderful in its implications for the political system. For of course there are very few policies indeed which benefit everyone. Defence of the realm, the existence of a functional legal system, low and easy taxes to pay for them...our own namesake had something to say on this point didn't he, that this was all that was required to carry a nation from barbarism to opulence?
Other than those three necessaries, there really aren't all that many policies that benefit everyone. Thus government will be dissuaded from having any policies than those three. Who would have thought it, the minarchist State brought to you by online advertising technology?
The clan called Conservatives has taken a hesitant step out of the dense underbrush of the dark forest. For months, they approached selection for a new Forest Chieftain using rites dictated by the ruling clan called Labour, supported by a band of Westminster Chatterers. These ancient rites are a zero-sum game of keeping every tree, however diseased, for fear of destroying the entire forest. No tree can be cut or trimmed unless it is “paid” for with equivalent tithes on the people, resulting in a forest that isn’t growing but rather suffocating its demoralised inhabitants.
The rites of the ruling clan and its supporters are daunting. The Oracle Jeremy Paxman demands how 15 billion trees can be cut without diminishing the forest; the Sage Vince Cable claims he’s been warning about this for years; the Upstart Philip Hammond rattles off 10 billion from conifers, 6 billion from oaks, 3 billion from leaf collecting and 2 billion from beyond the swamp; the Apologist Liam Byrne splutters that there is no alternative to the ruling clan’s failed strategy.
Yes, they’re all furiously counting the trees – some old and rotten, others tall and majestic and still others young but struggling to catch any sunlight. Howling wolves and swarms of midges scare the bejesus out of these hapless beancounters who clutch clipboards in the belief that this forest can only be endured, not tamed.
Now, along comes Sunny George Osborne from the Conservative clan with his startling notion that Labour’s increase in workers’ tithes (mysteriously called National Insurance) is a bad thing for clearing and taming the forest. For an instant, a hush falls over the sylvan thickness. But only for an instant; the ruling clan and its fellow-travellers soon fill the air with the sounds of scribbling pencils, clicking calculators and wails of “infidel, heretic”!
Sunny George may not yet be a true believer but he’s showing doubts about the old orthodoxy after wandering close to the edge of the forest where he caught a glimpse of its extent. He saw too many dead trees that need felling, too many overgrown trees that need coppicing and not enough space for young saplings.
With the call to repeal the workers’ tithe increase, Sunny George recognized a healthy forest needs more lumberjacks, tree planters and carpenters. He was soon encouraged by support from beyond the forest that the tithe increase would surely reduce the numbers of these artisans. This support came from what the old guard derided as “busy men” but these lived in seemingly happier places and were fearful of being swallowed by the encroaching forest.
The last time Sunny George suggested cutting tithes, his clan became wildly popular. However, it soon resumed the old faith and the new believers drifted away. Sunny George’s rediscovery of tithe-cutting might re-ignite faith in a better way of taming the forest.
David Cameron’s ‘new era’ of conservatism has often come under criticism for its internal ideological contradictions and its lack of direction. However, from the outset Cameron has emphasized the importance of community. He has rallied against our ‘broken Britain’, encouraged us to ‘hug a hoodie’ and declared that ‘there is such a thing as society, it’s just not the same as the state’. The latest Conservative campaign for ‘Big Society not Big Government’ marries these ideas to foster a sense of community and responsibility, and a reversal of state centralization and power.
Cameron argues, quite rightly, that local groups, charities and communities are both capable of and prepared to deliver a range of public services better than central government currently does. If powers to run particular services are handed to local communities, the outcome will be services that are both tailored and accountable. The Conservatives also believe that harnessing the power of ‘Big Society’ will help tackle social breakdown, and with the right resources, it will almost certainly make a more efficient use of taxpayers’ money.
Cameron has said that the ideas of Big Society could transform Britain as profoundly as the establishment of the welfare state. However, it is hard to see how the policies announced will bring about such radical change. The use of £100 million in unclaimed bank deposits to fund a ‘big society bank’ and the training of community organizers to spur on community action are hardly dramatic measures to revolutionize the way we view the state. The announcement of a ‘Big Society Day’ is gimmicky and faintly embarrassing, while plans to ‘judge’ civil servants on their participation in community services undermines the separation of the state and community and the ethos of voluntarism.
This said the idea of a cohesive society is a powerful one and something that Cameron draws upon time and time again. His recent announcement that he is prepared to be as unpopular as Thatcher suggests that should he take power, he will be prepared for determined and decisive action. The ‘contracting out’ of public services to society may become a worthy idea if pursued vigorously and I for one would be delighted to see the remit of the state shrink, as people begin to take responsibility for themselves and others around them.
Inevitably, most of the focus in last week’s Budget was on the level of public sector net borrowing. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, took great delight in announcing that this year’s PSNB was down to £167 billion – an horrendous figure but slightly less horrendous than the £178 billion forecast in the Pre-Budget Report.
Normally, an £11 billion improvement in the PSNB over a matter of months would have justified nationwide rejoicing. However, we live in desperate times for public finances so the updated figures are merely less awful than previously.
But buried in the Budget Statement was a rather curious announcement on the unglamorous issue of potholes.
The Chancellor stated that ‘the bad weather of the last few months has taken a damaging toll on their (roads) condition. So I am providing £100 million to pay for vital repairs to local roads throughout the country’.
It is perhaps ironic that, just days ago, parts of the sea defences at Leith near Edinburgh - close to the Chancellor’s Edinburgh South West constituency - were breached: road repairs will presumably be required there.
And, after a gruelling winter, such expenditure is much needed nationwide. Many will argue that the actual road repair bill will far exceed £100 million. Even in parts of London, which had relatively moderate snowfall levels during the winter, potholes abound – thereby boosting the demand for new tyres.
On a more academic level, the £100 million potholes policy is pure Keynesianism. With high unemployment and low private sector investment, this policy could easily have been extracted directly from the General Theory.
Of course, in Adam Smith’s era, tarmac roads were unknown. Fellow Scot, John MacAdam, only began building such roads some years after the great man’s death in 1790.
But, if he were alive today, would Adam Smith have supported such public expenditure on potholes?
The Conservatives’ new ‘big idea’, the unifying concept that underlies and connects the policies contained in their manifesto, has turned out to be something of a damp squib. For all of the talk of a ‘Big Society’, where every man, woman and child is part of some semi-state voluntary body, in reality it expects too much from people without any incentive for them to take part.
Even if it did, would that make a difference to how the country is run, since the main parties seem to share so many of the same metropolitan, nannying, spin-ridden presumptions? Well, yes: however much all politicians claim they will cut taxes and improve state services, it is plain that some believe in more state control of our economic and social lives, and others in less.
Efficiency savings are all the rage now that government spending is coming under increasing pressure. The idea is to reduce spending ‘without damaging the frontline services that we all depend on’, apparently saving money without affecting the delivery of health care, education or whatever the particular area happens to be.
As we enter the third day of the election campaign, voter turnout is again shaping up to be a hot topic for commentators and politicians alike. Newsnight have made the customary ‘lets find out why voters feel so disconnected and disillusioned with politics by visiting a generic working class area and talking to real people’ report.
Gordon Brown has decided to make his National Insurance rise, “a tax on ordinary families" in his own words, one of his hundreds of stealth tax rises, the defining diving line of the election. After Mandelson finally nailed the coffin of Labour’s relationship with business last week, this final ‘come back’ attempt has left Gordon and Labour in full view, caught on the wrong side of the line.
The clan called Conservatives has taken a hesitant step out of the dense underbrush of the dark forest. For months, they approached selection for a new Forest Chieftain using rites dictated by the ruling clan called Labour, supported by a band of Westminster Chatterers. These ancient rites are a zero-sum game of keeping every tree, however diseased, for fear of destroying the entire forest. No tree can be cut or trimmed unless it is “paid” for with equivalent tithes on the people, resulting in a forest that isn’t growing but rather suffocating its demoralised inhabitants.
Inevitably, most of the focus in last week’s Budget was on the level of public sector net borrowing. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, took great delight in announcing that this year’s PSNB was down to £167 billion – an horrendous figure but slightly less horrendous than the £178 billion forecast in the Pre-Budget Report.