the Austerity Con or Con

[Serial_Apologist]

If only I'd known about this 2 day event this weekend earlier:

http://www.dangerousideas.org.uk

[amateur51]

If only I'd known about this 2 day event this weekend earlier:

http://www.dangerousideas.org.uk

Bugler!

[french frank]

bump [This is the (pruned) Austerity discussion.] The prunings are here.

[Flosshilde]

Just heard that Ed Balls is floating the idea of depriving 'well-off' pensioners of the fuel allowance, & Cameron is saying that it's safe with him & the savings are negligible. Now, why would Cameron be defending a benefit? Oh yes, because the proposed cuts in it would disadvantage the rich

As it's paid on an individual basis (although a household can't receive more than a total of £300 - or is it £250 now?) & the proposed change would be applied to higher-rate tax payers, it would be quite possible for one person in the household to be on a high rate & therefore not be eligible, while the other person could be on a low rate & therefor receive the allowance. Unless Labour are proposing that pensioner couples should be taxed jointly?

If they want to make any changes & save money, the best move would be to make it payable on receipt of the state pension, rather than at 60, as it is now, & even if the recipient is still working.

[french frank]

Just heard that Ed Balls is floating the idea of depriving 'well-off' pensioners of the fuel allowance, & Cameron is saying that it's safe with him & the savings are negligible. Now, why would Cameron be defending a benefit? Oh yes, because the proposed cuts in it would disadvantage the rich

As it's paid on an individual basis (although a household can't receive more than a total of £300 - or is it £250 now?) & the proposed change would be applied to higher-rate tax payers, it would be quite possible for one person in the household to be on a high rate & therefore not be eligible, while the other person could be on a low rate & therefor receive the allowance. Unless Labour are proposing that pensioner couples should be taxed jointly?

If they want to make any changes & save money, the best move would be to make it payable on receipt of the state pension, rather than at 60, as it is now, & even if the recipient is still working.

Or, with surely minimal administration implications, whack up the top rate of tax - since these are the people he plans to take it from. Since they're already geared up to tax at the top rate anyway, just put the rate up.

[Serial_Apologist]

Or, with surely minimal administration implications, whack up the top rate of tax - since these are the people he plans to take it from. Since they're already geared up to tax at the top rate anyway, just put the rate up.

I agree, ff.

Listening to Balls announcing this, my heart sank: was this really to be the opening salvo from Labour in a pre-election contestation of progressive policy initiatives?

[aeolium]

If only I'd known about this 2 day event this weekend earlier:

http://www.dangerousideas.org.uk

One or two sessions look interesting, though I wonder how many dangerous (or new) ideas there are here. I instinctively have a kind of antipathy towards events where the lecture or discussion constitutes more of a rallying call to a largely sympathetic audience. I'd rather there was some real debate about ideas and a real examination of their implications. There should be the opportunity for the expression of ideas which create a sense of discomfort in the audience by challenging received opinions or orthodoxies.

I think I would have gone to the sessions about future strategies for the left and the one "What's the point of the left?" One of the many desperate features of this age of austerity has been the virtually total impotence of politicians of the left to make any kind of convincing case for an alternative strategy (or to attempt anything alternative in power) Why has the left been largely silent about continental Europe, where the implementation of neo-liberal austerity economics has been far more savage and destructive than anything here? Why has the outcry about individual and corporate tax avoidance largely been led by pressure groups like avaaz and UK Uncut or papers like Private Eye and the Guardian, with hardly a murmur from politicians whether of the left or right? Why is the left doing so badly in elections and opinion polls compared with the right?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

it is a triangulation a la Blair Brown to appear to be soaking the rich innit ....

it is the poor quality of the opposition that makes me despair; all governments are bad by definition almost ....

[Serial_Apologist]

I think the left (of which I still psychologically if not actively feel a part) has never if the truth be squarely faced got over the collapse of the E Bloc - or more precicely the inability of the working class in those countries through utter exhaustion following 50+ years of Stalinism in one form or another to seize, in Lenin's terms, the reins of power and run industry and society democratically from the bottom up, as was the *original* intention, freely-harboured remodelled by a or the New Left (of baby boomers such as meself) of the 60s. And then of course one has to situate any possibility of radical change in relationship with the demographic demise of the industrial working class as capital has regrouped its apparatus of production in what used to be known as Third World countries, while maintaining the finance centres of operation that were supposed to be advanced countries' panacea for the unemployment consequent upon relocation.

As I didn't attend the abovementioned event (because it was fully booked by the time it came to my attention) I don't know how it went, whether it amounted to no more than another preaching to the converted, or whether there's a new emerging generation eager to hear some new conjunction/alliance of the kinds of thinking that brought left intellectuals and dissidents east and west together in the dying days of the Communist Bloc that some of the speakers - Harvey among them - could have addressed and exchanged ideas and practice with.

As bourgeois governments try to work out (or not) economic solutions to self-inflicted problems re failure to forsee the dangers (on their own orthodox terms) of over-dependence on "the service sector", to be of any use the real work of the left - beyond the customary rallying demands of defending jobs, living standards, human and political rights now under the greatest attack in our lifetimes - will inevitably seem peripherally directed towards actions by any groups setting up alternative parallel structures to those dependent on employment or benefits: campaigns/actions against the arms trade; in prevention of ecological destruction; in defense of grass roots suports schemes non-dependent on government aid by and for the disadvantaged. These foci will seem peripheral for now, only coming to mainstream attention where police/state repression is brought to bear on them, but they are likely to become central to any alternative when natural support systems start to fail due to climate change and the lights begin to go out; and I don't think speaking in such terms is alarmist. Harvey has spoken of these things taking off in America.

One thing more should I feel be added. If "the left" applies itself to co-ordinating these new areas of activity it needs also to acknowledge a "spiritual" dimension in what appealed in the early utopians to Marx; it's high time a discussion for far too long hijacked by priests, rabbis and mullahs was given a secular direction concordant with most people's justified skepticism about religion in general - in this country at any rate. We could be in a leading position to point ways forward here: more and more ordinary people find creationist theories, let alone homophobia, racism, sexism etc cringeworthy, compared even to 10 years ago. Oliver James has written pertinently on the unhappiness of "affluenza" and its role in maintaining capitalism. People will soon tire of celebrity culture, the only role model-making culture left to capitalism. There has never been a better time than now to "preach" for a sustainable, bottom-up, non-exclusionary communitarian planned way of running things, I reckon.

PS: returning to topic, if the ruling class comes up with an alternative to austerity, it cannot amount to more than a holding operation.

[teamsaint]

I'll vote for you S_A.

[Flosshilde]

it is the poor quality of the opposition that makes me despair; all governments are bad by definition almost ....

Yes, the opposition's total lack of any response to the government's actions & their divide & rule practices (not just any credible response - any response would be better than the current black hole) is thoroughly depressing. I'm very much afraid that at the next election the Tories will be in with an over-all majority. You aint seen nothing yet!

[Serial_Apologist]

I'll vote for you S_A.

Maybe I should stand as a uni-cyclist...

[aeolium]

Interesting comments, S_A. I agree with you about the "spiritual" dimension, if you mean something more holistic and not purely materialistic. I also think that the 'class struggle' idea, whatever its value as a description of historical social change, is useless as a basis for formulating a programme of change - it simply polarises and draws on hatred rather than anything constructive.

But when one sees the intellectual bankruptcy of European political parties, most of whom are marching to the austerity tune (apart from the nastier ones which are marching to something even more unpleasant), it's unsurprising that there is near total disillusionment with the political process and people feel that change can only come from extra-political groupings, whether communities like Occupy, 38degrees, the Spanish Indignados or environmental groups like Transition here. Why has no progressive politician almost anywhere in Europe, for instance, attempted to tap in to the widespread indignation about banks and tax evasion/avoidance and come up with serious proposals for tackling these failings? My conclusion is that they are not really interested in change, that the status quo is quite satisfactory: all the opportunities for private enrichment, the merry-go-round of non-executive directorships and speaking engagements, the revolving door between business and politics (even the HMRC and business), the lobbying scandals. We are almost back to the C18 world of political corruption, with the political class almost totally divorced from the rest of society.

[teamsaint]

As Aeolium says, there is no chance of parties like the labour party doing anything to change the status quo, since they helped create it. (IIRC, Blairs first 2 actions were to hand interest rates to the B o E, and to create generations of indebted students)

What is really surprising to me, talking to people whether I know them well or not, is how far "alternative " thinking has penetrated. The disillusionment with the mainstream is very real, and not confined to Totnes .

[french frank]

So, on austerity, is the feeling that Ed Balls had it right in 2010?