It's amazing how everything requires the overthrow of market capitalism

We have Julian Baggini, a philosopher - supposedly someone who therefore knows how to think - telling us that the cure to obesity is the overthrow of market capitalism:

If the government wants to help people to eat better, its main priority should be ending what is often called food poverty – more accurately described as poverty, full stop. The poorer you are, the more likely you are to be overweight, almost certainly because of the way poverty limits your food choices. If people cannot afford good food, or the fuel to cook from scratch at home, telling them to eat less and better is pointless.

Of course we should all try to take responsibility for our own health. But we can be responsible only for what we have the power to do. That is limited not just by basic biology, but by what is on our shop shelves and in our wallets. Tackling those problems requires controls on business and greater redistribution of wealth. The government rejects both on ideologic grounds, and instead promotes dieting and personal responsibility, preferring flawed common sense to the evidence.

Good food being defined as food not processed by the Big Bad Companies which must be controlled etc.

One useful filter for an argument - it is only a filter, not a proof against - is that if the course of action is what would be recommended anyway then we can discount this particular justification for it. The Guardian’s opinion pages are going to recommend less income inequality, more control of business, because the Sun rises in the East so this particular, obesity, justification doesn’t carry that much weight.

We can also discount it because it doesn’t make sense. The claim is that eating processed supermarket food is cheaper than home cooked. This simply is not true in any manner. The saving is in time, not money and while time is indeed money confusing the two at this point leads to the wrong conclusion. For if it is time to home prepare food that is lacking then it is the dual earner family that is to blame, not the food factories.

But look deep into the heart of the argument here. The base human problem since Ur of the Chaldees has been how does everyone get enough to eat so that they don’t starve to death? We have, in this past century in this country, rather later in many other places, finally solved this problem through industrial, free market, capitalism. The claim is now that because the poor can eat we must therefore overthrow the system that allows them to do so. Truly, any reason at all to overthrow the system, even the successes are to be used as evidence against.

As to the actual claim itself, food poverty, the average household weekly food bill is £61.90. If you prefer to do it over the income range, for the bottom decile it is 53 % of the top decile’s or about 65% of that average. We assert that it is entirely possible to eat healthily on that sum. We’ll even prove it if anyone is looking for a TV show - “ASI Does Benefits Street” has a ring to it. No takers? Then that initial claim isn’t something that people really believe, is it?

People do indeed question what doesn't seem to work Polly

Polly Toynbee is outraged - outraged - that people are questioning the Wonder of the World that is the National Health Service.

The clapping has died away, paper rainbows in windows curl at the edges, and the NHS is under siege. “Support for the NHS may soon start to crumble,” reports the Centre for Health Communication.

“Start to? It has,” says one seasoned hospital chief executive I check with regularly. Emails thump into his inbox daily from angry patients waiting for diagnostics and treatments: “They’re coming direct to me now.” As 50,500 people across England have been waiting over a year, he says, “my waiting times are horrible. Pre-Covid I had just four people waiting for a year, but now it’s over 1,200 – and we’re absolutely not the worst.”

Well, yes, quite, if the thing that swallows 10% of the entire nation in order to provide health care isn’t providing health care then there will be some questions asked. And rightly so we would think.

We can even provide some guidance as to what those questions should be. You know, things like whether a Stalinist bureaucracy is quite the way to be doing things. Even, did the NHS England, a slightly more outsourced and marketised service, perform better or worse than the less so NHS Wales and NHS Scotland?

In fact, we should be asking the one grand question - is the NHS the right way to be gaining health care? Given that the complaint is that it’s not delivering it at present that seems to be the important one.

Sure, let's have a shorter working week

We’ve no problem with everyone gaining more leisure time. It is what has been happening these past couple of centuries as the increased wealth and income of free market capitalism leads to people choosing exactly that. True, the choice has oft been to reduce household labour more than market but then that’s the choice people are making so why shouldn’t we run with that - the people get what the people choose sounds like a decent enough outcome to us.

We would also note that absolutely nothing in this field is going to make sense without considering the basic human economic unit, the household - it is not the individual.

That doesn’t mean we support every such proposal of course:

A four-day week in the public sector would create up to half a million new jobs and help limit the rise in unemployment expected over the coming months, according to research by the progressive thinktank Autonomy.

The report points to the German Kurzarbeit scheme as an example to follow and then misses the two important points of that very scheme.

Firstly, Autonomy says that those working fewer hours should lose none of their income and that’s not how the Germans do it at all. They, correctly, note that if the workers are getting these shorter hours for free - at no loss of income - they there will be a certain excess of demand. Such schemes are costly and it’s only by distributing that cost around all involved, employers, taxpayers and workers, that we’ll gain the optimal amount.

The other mistake, and it’s a biggie, is where Autonomy says this should apply. From the German justification:

And companies retain firm-specific human capital, while avoiding the costly process of separation, re-hiring, and training.

It works if highly skilled labour, that difficult to find and hire or train once done so, is retained. So, the lads at Autonomy suggest that:

Aside from potential lay-offs, hospitality, retail and the arts are already associated with low productivity, stagnant wages and insecurity, with any further damage to these sectors likely exacerbating these problems.

The scheme should be applied to sectors where none of those hold true. Insecurity is, of course, the other way of describing how easy it is to hire and fire in the sector. Further, there’s the blinding silliness of looking to subsidise low productivity jobs. It is their destruction and replacement with higher productivity ones that drives the increase in the wealth of the nation. Higher productivity and wealth being what allows us all to take some portion of that as greater leisure, as we have been these past couple of centuries.

Sure, subsidising jobs for luvvies gets the luvvies on side but we need a better justification for spending £9 billion than that.

This plan is just another example of people not understanding the very issue they hope to discuss. Tsk, must do better.

A Mars a day helps the economy work

Gary Becker pointed out that irrational, or taste, discrimination is costly to the person doing the discriminating. There are entirely rational forms of discrimination, of course - making babies works rather better with the appropriate mixture of gametes and gonads for example. But that taste kind, to refuse to hire blacks, or women, or the short or tall - as opposed to not hiring one armed paper hangers - rebounds upon the person making the choice.

Talent is scarce and by refusing to hire what there is this lowers the price of talent to all competitors. That redounds upon the discriminator through competition from that talent now elsewhere.

The usual response to Becker’s point is yes, true, but no one actually works that way. Thus we need laws against that discrimination. Except:

Despite its secrecy, Mars is remembered fondly by those who worked there. Leighton, who helped transform Asda’s fortunes before selling it to Walmart in 1999, said: “They gave me the greatest quote of all time, which was, ‘Your job, Allan, is to get more brains than anybody else, and remember that 50% of the brains in the world are female and brains have no colour. It will take people a long time to work that out.’ They told me that 35 years ago — and they were right.”

Actual evidence that people have indeed been noting that point about talent and discrimination for more than a generation*.

It also doesn’t take much. Just a few following the self-interested precept of no taste discrimination upsets the stable structure and brings about that end of it. Which is why the Jim Crow laws were even institute in the first place. That battle for talent, that competition, would undermine the discrimination therefore laws were imposed to insist upon it.

If we need, as history showed we did, laws to maintain the discrimination and, in a free market the discrimination gets undermined by simple good sense and greed, then why do we need laws against the discrimination?

*In Sir Pterry’s phrasing, just more than a grandfather

Does Owen Jones actually read his own columns?

Enquiring minds would like to know:

If any good is to come from this national disaster, it is to re-evaluate every aspect of our society, including allowing greater flexibility for workers: a happier, less-stressed worker is more productive, if an economic case is needed to strengthen the human argument.

The age of coronavirus has exposed multiple injustices in British life, not least the total lack of protection afforded many workers. From the precarious lives of the gig economy workforce to the greater death toll among poorer workers, the consequences of stripping workers of rights and security could hardly be starker.

The gig economy might not be perfect but it is most certainly an increase in the flexibility of the lives of the workers. Presumably this makes gig economy workers happier, less-stressed and more productive. Why then the opposition to this desirable state of affairs in the very next paragraph?

To be ever so slightly more serious, yes, increased flexibility does mean less security. So, which is it that is desired, should be aimed for? Our own prejudice would be that the economy contains a multiplicity of options so that both employers and employees can self-sort into whichever blend they themselves desire. You know, a market economy, where there is a market in the structure of employment.

Of course, that not just implies but ensures liberty which presumably is why the opposition to it.

Now it's the stiff upper lip that must be abolished

Apparently the children of Britain are terribly upset. The cause?

“Children and young people talk a lot about the pressure that get placed on them to do well,” said Richard Crellin, one of the authors of the report. “We reflected this could be linked to a pressure in British society to take things on the chin and have a stiff upper lip. Young people across the UK told [how] they feel judged if they don’t succeed first time.”

Mark Russell, chief executive of the Children’s Society, added: “As a society we can’t be content with children in the UK being the most unsatisfied with their lives in Europe. It has to change.”

That does rather misunderstand the stiff upper lip part, which is that we shouldn’t let anything so transient or feeble as other peoples’ opinions of us to make any difference. The injunction is not, as they seem to think, not to emote, but rather not to worry about such foolishness.

Still, we think it rather an insight into the size of the project being demanded. This isn’t about the economy, or even economics, the task is to dig up the entire society. Still, one point we can make in mitigation. The claim is that children don’t enjoy their lives in Europe, something already solved when we left Europe back on Jan 1 this year.

Just something that annoys

The act of a stock market listing does not create millionaires. The act of building something that is worthy of a stock market listing does:

The Hut Group is expected to pull the trigger today on a £4.5 billion stock market listing that could put the online retailer’s founder in line for one of the largest windfalls in corporate history and promises to create hundreds of British millionaires overnight.

Matthew Moulding, 48, who started the fast-growing company in 2004, will be awarded shares worth about £700 million if the company’s valuation reaches £7.25 billion in the next two years as part of an incentive scheme.

Mr. Moulding’s deal post-flotation is not the bit that we’re grumbling about. Rather, that part about creating hundreds of millionaires overnight.

No.

The company has been handing out equity to the people that work there all along. OK, fine. That equity has some value when the company is still private. Sure, the flotation gives a public calculation of that value. It might even increase the value as a result of greater liquidity and so on. But those employee stakes in the company are not worth nothing the day before flotation and then millions the day after it.

The value created has come from building the company, not from floating it. Therefore it is the building of the company that creates the millionaires, not the flotation.

This is more than mere pedantry and sniping at journalistic language. If we don’t all understand where value comes from, how it is created, we’re never going to get questions like the taxation or other treatment of value right, are we? Let alone how to set up the system so as to create more such value.

Cunning Tory Plan to Offload Scotland

The Chancellor has a mighty task to restore the economy and then balance the budget.  The cost of keeping the Scots in the style to which they have become accustomed is one item on the Treasury hit list. The Barnett formula hands Scotland an extra £6.5bn, paid for by the rest of Britain, not to mention this year’s unprecedented package of support for Scottish businesses and around 900,000 individuals. How can those costs be recovered?  

If the UK Government were to agree to the SNP demand for a second referendum and recommend independence, the contrary Scots would immediately vote for retaining the Union. One is reminded of the 40 year old still living in the parental home and complaining about the catering.  Saying “leave” does not work.  In our case, changing the locks did and we are still family.  

Throughout the pandemic, Scotland’s First Minister has demonstrated her enthusiasm for upstaging the Westminster government in much the same way.  If Scottish independence is to be brought about, it must look as if she has won against all the odds. 

The UK Government has made it clear that the Scotland Acts reserve decisions on independence referendums to Westminster.  Their position is that it is outside the competence of the Scottish Parliament to legislate for, and hold, such a referendum. That is undoubtedly so for decisive referendums, i.e. ones that would commit both governments to Scottish independence, but it may not be so for advisory ones, which could be regarded as glorified market research. Some lawyers believe the existing legislation to be unclear on the matter. 

According to the House of Commons library briefing paper What’s the process for a second independence referendum in Scotland?: “It is not clear as a matter of law, however, if the Scottish Parliament can unilaterally hold a referendum on independence. Only if it was judged that such a referendum ‘relates to’ the Union would it likely fall outside competence. Importantly, this debate has not been resolved.” 

This view is supported by the Institute for Government: “However, the matter has never been tested in court, so there remains some uncertainty about whether Holyrood could hold an advisory referendum without consent.” Remember that the 2016 Brexit referendum was, technically, only advisory but once approved, unstoppable.  

Here is how the offloading Scotland plan would work.  When the Scottish Parliament passes legislation for an advisory referendum, Nicola Sturgeon will make a big fuss about democracy and freedom but Boris Johnson will reject the demand citing the grounds above. It is reported that she will take legal action, presumably escalating the issue to the Supreme Court which now has two Scottish judges. The Supreme Court is not known for rubber-stamping the UK government’s legal interpretations. Remember proroguing. Johnson will grandstand his shock and horror when Sturgeon wins. 

But the plan is a bit more cunning than that.  The future EU trade deal is stuck on EU fishing rights in UK waters; solve that and a deal should fall into place.  The UK should compromise by allowing EU fishing in Scottish waters but not in those of the rest of the UK.  It should be signed and sealed before the end of 2020. The Scots voted to stay in the EU so they should be delighted by that. 

Nick Sibley has an alternative plan for the same outcome. Brexit would be cancelled; England and Wales would secede from the union leaving the United Kingdom of Scotland and Northern Ireland with the UK’s international obligations including the EU membership which both nations so much desire and the national debt. 

Putting levity to one side, Downing Street either wants to retain, indeed bolster, the union or it wants Scotland to leave. If the former is the case, ignoring the warnings that the door may be open to a Scottish unilateral advisory referendum, smacks of General Percival’s 1942 defence of Singapore. He refused to listen to intelligence that the Japanese were coming from the north when he knew they would attack from the south.  It would be a simple matter to pre-empt any Supreme Court ruling by passing fresh legislation reserving any Scottish independence referendum, including advisory and parliamentary polling, to the Westminster Parliament. 

If Downing Street is not that foolish, and surely it cannot be, then the only logical alternative is that it has a cunning plan, perhaps along the lines of the one outlined above, to offload Scotland.

To argue with George Monbiot

Monbiot is still getting the basic environmental question wrong:

The formula for calculating people’s environmental footprint is simple, but widely misunderstood: Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology (I = PAT).

He then goes on to claim that people using higher technologies have greater environmental impact. This is wrong. The T should be used to divide, or perhaps the T should be a number less than one if we are to multiply.

This is, after all, the only way the equation makes any sort of sense at all. The base human technology is hunter gatherer - this existed in our ancestors before hom. sap. did. If there were 7 billion of us trying to be hunter gatherers then the entire environment, tree trunks, seaweed and grasses all, would be eaten within a month. We 7 billion of us using higher technologies than that base one are indeed having an environmental effect but rather less than that. T moderates the effect of P and A upon I, not multiplies it.

Getting this wrong means absolutely every conclusion drawn from the mistake somewhat suspect.

Still, there is comfort here:

But, as there are some genuine ecological impacts of population growth, how do we distinguish proportionate concerns about these harms from deflection and racism? Well, we know that the strongest determinant of falling birth rates is female emancipation and education. The major obstacle to female empowerment is extreme poverty. Its effect is felt disproportionately by women.

So a good way of deciding whether someone’s population concerns are genuine is to look at their record of campaigning against structural poverty. Have they contested the impossible debts poor nations are required to pay? Have they argued against corporate tax avoidance, or extractive industries that drain wealth from poorer countries, leaving almost nothing behind, or the financial sector in Britain’s processing of money stolen abroad? Or have they simply sat and watched as people remain locked in poverty, then complained about their fertility?

We point out - again correctly - that it is the rising incomes that enable that female economic emancipation. It’s only when human muscle power is not the energy source for production that women do indeed have an equal chance. Which is why we have, all along, gloried in that economic development of those poor places precisely because it leads to that emancipation - and, as Monbiot points out, solves that population problem if indeed there is one. You know, that neoliberal globalisation which has produced, in this past generation, the greatest reduction in absolute poverty in the history of our species.

Not that anyone will ever be able to convince Monbiot of that but the rest of us should take note.

Jobs are a cost not a benefit

We seem to be at the “Now That’s What I Call Economics” stage of repeating our greatest hits. Here it is Richard Murphy and Colin Hines who need to be reminded of the basics of economics - jobs are a cost of doing something, not a benefit.

Richard Murphy and Colin Hines stress the importance of the government spending money on creating jobs as well as on infrastructure to deal with the impact of coronavirus on people and the planet

No, we never do want to “create jobs”.

The catalyst for this is the need for new jobs in every community to counter the political, economic and personal trauma that will come in the wake of the coming tsunami of lost livelihoods across the country.

This is to entirely miss the vital distinctions necessary.

We desire that all be able to consume, that’s true. This means both that things are produced so they may be consumed and also that people have incomes so they may collect those things that they consume. This is not, absolutely not, the same as the desire to create jobs.

A job is the use of human labour to do something. We would much prefer - for we like leisure - that the consumption and the intermediary, the income (or, given that a real income is by definition what can be consumed, these two being the same thing) could be achieved by not having to employ that cost, the human labour.

We would, as we have been doing these past couple of centuries, like the machines to be doing the work.

This insistence upon “creating jobs” is to make the mistake Milton Friedman warned against. We want the ditch dug, certainly, we want everyone to be able to consume but issuing teaspoons isn’t the way to do it.

Jobs, the uses of human labour, are a cost of doing something, not a benefit. Thus those prancing about shouting about how many jobs their scheme will provide are preening themselves on how expensive their plan is. Which is not, when we come to think of it, very economic.