Would "QE for the people" help the economy?

George Osborne has reconsidered his proposal to slash tax credits; so far, so good, many will think. But does "austerity" harm the economy, and would its opposite help?

When those who have most get more, it seems they invest it, so that doesn't stimulate consumer demand (though it seems to inflate asset prices).

Conversely, if the poorer sort receive more, presumably they will spend it - but on what?

Almost everything extra they may buy will have been imported, so although there would be a boost to GDP and to some extent domestic middlemen would have a bit more profit, the trade balance would worsen. The total debt then increases and is recycled as loans to UK plc, or purchases of UK assets.

What can be done, in a money-shuffling way? Not much.

Tax? Business entities swell through M&A and have the resources to pay superaccountants to find ways to avoid paying UK tax. Individuals taxed too highly begin to value more personal time over potential extra earnings (unless they have massive City incomes).

Interest rates? Significant raises in interest rates would rapidly cripple the public finances and depress demand in an already stagnant economy.

Flogging the family silver? We are running out of things to sell (Birmingham has lost Rover, HP, Cadbury's and both major breweries, just to offer a touchstone of how things are developing).

Is there a way out of this trap?

Maybe the government could transfer its attention from money to real things - the making and selling of them. A review of trade agreements - fighting our corner - would be good.

Hmm.


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Wrong moves

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told the crowds gathered in central London for a march against climate change that they had a message for the politicians gathering in Paris for talks next week - "Do what you are sent there to do."
Source

Decades ago I was playing a league chess match somewhere in Coventry, can’t recall exactly where, can’t even recall who I played for.

Anyhow, there came a point where my opponent took one of my pawns with his knight and at the same time threatened my rook. Chess is very psychological; players sit almost head to head and inevitably body language plays its part. My opponent took my pawn with a tiny flourish, clicked the chess clock and sat back with a look of muted but perfectly obvious satisfaction. Unfortunately for him it wasn’t actually a good move.

I ignored the threat on my rook, pushed a centre pawn onto the sixth rank and the game was effectively over. My opponent’s sense of shock was painfully obvious, even more obvious than his satisfaction had been about a minute earlier.

As in chess, so it is in life. There is no going back once a wrong move has been made. Inevitably there are consequences and although the complexities of real life always offer up new opportunities, they are never exactly the ones we had before the wrong move.

Was Jeremy Corbyn’s election a wrong move? Of course it was – the possibilities stemming from a capable Labour leader are gone. Now it is too late because he has to be ousted in some way and that problem is down to another wrong move – Ed Miliband’s changes to the Labour leadership election rules.

Former Labour leader Ed Miliband is facing calls to apologise for the "disastrous" voting system being used to elect his successor.

Mr Miliband changed the system under which he was elected to "one member one vote" and allowed the public to take part for a £3 fee.
Source

There are only so many wrong moves any individual, institution or country can afford to make. The Labour party has made two in quick succession. The sense of shock is still painfully obvious but Labour has lost more than a game of chess and so have we.

It's less than three months since Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader but already newspapers address talk of a "plot" to stage a "coup" within the party.

The i and its sister publication, the Independent, report the calls of four backbenchers for Mr Corbyn to step down, with one saying the party is in a "terrible, terrible mess". Meanwhile, the Times says some senior figures have been consulting lawyers over a way to both unseat him and ensure he cannot be re-elected.
Source

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Teach everybody the Koran

Raedwald proposes regulating the content of the Koran and policing its followers; I differ and offer this approach instead, saying there:

I think the way forward is in influencing interpretation rather than Bowdlerising. The Bible has parts that should also make us squirm, e.g. Exodus 22:

"18 Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" - King James I had a merry time on that - and among the 613 Mitzvot commandments:

"611.Always to remember what Amalek did (Deut. 25:17) (CCA76).
612.That the evil done to us by Amalek shall not be forgotten (Deut. 25:19) (CCN194).
613.To destroy the seed of Amalek (Deut. 25:19) (CCA77)."

Some say the Amalekites were indeed exterminated and so these injunctions are now redundant; others say the Armenians are Amalek-descended (see http://www.schechter.edu/AskTheRabbi.aspx?ID=530)

Fact is, most people are selective about their religious practices and if society in general is running smoothly they don't concern themselves with the bloody bits. Education and open (liberal in the best sense) discussion are needed - evil festers where the like-minded gather and develop their groupthink and ideological drift. That goes for our homegrown WBRI-classified soi-disant-patriotic Jew-and-Muslim-haters, too.


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Coming up for air

Sometimes I browse the internet and I’m overwhelmed by the volume of material which is too good to miss but I don’t have the time because there is far too much of it. Yes much of it is dross, but the dross is easily avoided. The good material is radical too and that’s the point. Having it so easily available is like coming up for air after a lifetime spent underwater swimming through the murk and rubbish.

Much of it comes down to language, pointed, witty, accurate, iconoclastic language. Yet the problem with language is that we can’t have our own private version. Wittgenstein pointed this out although it is obvious enough. So we can’t possess language, can’t think in our own personal language, can’t use anything but the tools we have in common, the tools which evolved to channel our thinking to make it easy, automatic and thus efficient.

As we know, this why all totalitarian societies control language. Control language and you control thought. It might be expected that North Korean would be a ferment of covert dissatisfaction but it probably isn’t anywhere near as radical as one would suppose. Control permissible language and to a significant degree you control that covert language we call thought.

Yet things are obviously changing. To my mind, since the arrival of the internet the public domain has become far more varied, interesting, probing and amateur. Not amateur as in inferior to professional, but amateur as in unpaid, unscripted and uncontrolled by big business or big government.

Amateurs with relevant experience, abilities, nous and the ability to express themselves as if they too have come up for air and are enjoying every minute of it. Loose cannon in best, most productive, most interesting, most fascinating sense of the term.

We still see lots of professional radicalism, especially on the BBC, but the establishment radical seems to be on the wane. Amateur internet radicals are smarter, wittier and much more in tune with the causes of our many problems. They have stories to tell, know how to tell them and the establishment wilts in the face of their blunt and pithy honesty.

Look at the way Prince Charles flounders around trying to speak his mind on issues he does not understand. Too old, too hidebound, no exposure to the best of the internet – that’s my impression of him. So he sinks and sinks again, becoming a figure of fun, contempt, an icon of the old ways, a lost soul.

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Quote of the day

"I have come to think, especially since my trip to Spain, that civil liberties must be protected at every stage... The trouble with an all powerful secret police in the hands of fanatics, or of anybody, is that once it gets started there's no stopping it until it has corrupted the whole body politic."

John Dos Passos


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If...

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Thanks

We live like kings and queens.

The house is warming as we wake. The bed is soft and clean, free of lice and fleas. Touch a button and the finest musicians play in our chamber as a pink dawn brightens the cold eastern sky. We read news from around the world, gathered overnight and printed three days' ride away, while drinking tea from India and China (six months by sail). Rising, we wash in heated water, dress in freshly laundered clothes and breakfast on plentiful hot food that needs no spice to mask rottenness.

And all without a single servant to scold.


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