Sunday, 8 October 2017 - 6:16pm
This week, I have been mostly reading:
- Australia's unreported poverty line — Gerry Georgatos in Independent Australia:
If we can begin to be honest about the markers of poverty, unemployment, homelessness, in the least we would have to immediately double the numbers of the poor, unemployed and homeless. By this measure, there are at least six million Australians living in poverty and the proportion in poverty will continue to increase long into the foreseeable future. There are closer to two million Australian children living in poverty rather than the 740,000 children that we are officially told, or allowed to believe, are living in poverty.
- Universities hoover-up the great unwashed — Leith van Onselen, MacroBusiness:
In addition to the lowering of university entrance scores, further evidence that Australia’s universities have turned into quantity-based ‘degree factories’ is also provided in the most recent Department of Employment skills shortages report, which showed there were a record 1 million domestic students enrolled with a higher education provider, 730,000 of which were enrolled in bachelor degrees – an extraordinary amount of higher education students in an economy of 24.5 million.
- FIRE sector vampire continues to bleed economy dry — Leith van Onselen, MacroBusiness:
- The Skills Gap that Always Explains Unemployment — Dean Baker:
There is a substantial segment of elite types who are always happy to hear about the skills shortage as an explanation for unemployment. See, the problem is not the state of the economy and its poor management by economists, the problem is always the ill-trained workers. You don't need evidence for this one, just assert that the problem is workers don't have the right skills and furrow your brow in a concerned manner. Works every time.
- If Africa is rich – why is it so poor? — Bill Mitchell:
Essentially, Gunder Frank argued that it is essential to understand the relationship between the “metropolis and its economic colonies” under capitalism. The underdeveloped countries were in that state because they were functionally essential to making the developed nations at the core richer. This was a very conception of the process of economic development that organisations such as the IMF and the World Bank hold out as they impose neo-liberal policy structures onto the underdeveloped world. What Gunder Frank argued was that these policy structures were not about developing the undeveloped nations but, rather, developing the richer nations further and holding the underdeveloped nations in a state where they could act as resource conduits for the richer nations.
- The U.S. Is Shocked Shocked Shocked! That Russia May Have Meddled With Our Election — Ted Rall:
- Behind the Media Surge Against Bernie Sanders — Norman Solomon:
A few days earlier, the newspaper had front-paged another “news” story hostile to grassroots political forces aligned with Bernie -- a de facto editorial masquerading as news coverage, headlined: “Democrats in Split-Screen: The Base Wants It All. The Party Wants to Win.” In a bizarre disconnect from electoral reality, the article portrayed a party establishment that had lost election after election, including a cataclysmic loss to Trump, as being about winning. And the article portrayed the party’s activist base as interfering with the establishment’s winning ways.
- Theresa May can nail Brexit, she just needs to make sure everyone continues feeling sorry for her — Mark Steel in the Independent:
I think I’ve worked out what’s happening here. It’s a mass psychological test – we’re all being monitored to see at what point we feel sorry for Theresa May. By November, she’ll be at a G8 summit crawling round the floor looking for her contact lens and get tangled in the Japanese Prime Minister’s wife’s kimono, which she’s allergic to so she turns purple, but the blotches on her neck will spell “I’m shit at Brexit” then she’ll get trodden on by a stray llama, and let out a series of growls that accidentally sound like “You can have Scotland for a fiver” in German to Angela Merkel.
- Kensington & Chelsea’s reserves prove people don’t want government to run surpluses — Richard Murphy:
As a matter of fact local authorities need reserves. They are solely dependent upon revenues they can raise from local taxes, central government and the supply of services. They can borrow, but only with difficulty in most cases. And the reality is that they face unpredictable demand for their services and central government has a poor record of responding to their needs in times of crisis. So, they have reserves. These are, literally, a contingency fund for the unforeseen. Kensington and Chelsea has made this fact visible and it seems that people do not like it. What they resent is that they have paid tax without a purpose.
- "Bribing voters" and all that: neoliberal contempt for democracy? — John Weeks in the Prime Economics blog:
Social provision rather than commercialization through markets is the underlying political economy of social democracy. Social democrats restrict markets; neoliberals enhance them. The social democratic commitment to universal provision directly contradicts the neoliberal vision of a market dominated economy. Over the last decade neoliberals have responded to the social democratic principle of universal provision by labelling it populism of the left. […] means testing by definition divides households into the “haves” and the “have-nots”; indeed, it reinforces and institutionalizes that division. This division fosters the shirker/striver and undeserving/deserving ideology of neoliberalism. Universal provision unites society rather than dividing it.
- Australia’s housing bubble obliterates all records — Leith van Onselen
- Exclusive: Steve Keen on the secret source of eternal Australian growth — in MacroBusiness:
Australia avoided a recession in 2008 only by adding additional leverage to its already over-indebted household sector, and the only ways that Australia can keep its winning streak on GDP growth going (given that its government is obsessed with trying to run a surplus) is to either to achieve a huge trade surplus, or for the household sector to continue piling on debt faster than GDP itself grows. […] It may continue to [keep credit demand high] for a while, particularly if encouraged by government policies like a renewed First Home Vendors Grant, further interest rate cuts by the RBA, or some policy doozie like letting suckers—sorry, I meant first home buyers—use their superannuation for a house purchase. But it will reach a plateau, and before it does, credit-based demand will at best fall to zero. Far more likely is that it will turn negative, as it has done in every other country that has experienced a recession caused by falling credit, with both the business sector and the household sector deleveraging.
- There is a true oppositional Left forming and gaining political traction — Bill Mitchell:
[The British and French parliamentary elections], particularly the British outcome confirms what we have been noticing for a few years now – there is finally what we might call a true oppositional Left forming and gaining political traction in these nations. This is a Left platform that concedes little to the neo-liberals. It is vilified by the conservatives and the so-called progressive commentariat (such as the Guardian writers) and politicians (New Labour in Britain) as being in “cloud cuckoo land” and predictions from all of sundry of electoral wipeouts have been daily. But the results demonstrated that the message (such as in the Labour Manifesto) resonates with millions of people (40 per cent of those who voted in Britain). It is now a mainstream Left message that has taken over the British Labour Party and the Blairites are hiding under rocks. There is hope. People will only tolerate being bashed over the head for so long. There is now retaliation going on.
- Cognitive dissonance helps old dogs with their new tricks — Suzanne Cope in Aeon:
‘We learned from the rapidly changing views on gay marriage that direct personal contact with gay family or friends had the greatest impact on challenging views,’ said Judith Beth Cohen, an adult learning expert at Lesley University in Massachusetts. ‘In this case, cognitive dissonance came from the human contact, which made an abstraction come alive. Given that most new media feeds people what they want to hear, we need ways to get beyond our bubbles and encounter the “other”, not just virtually but in the flesh.’
Saturday, 7 October 2017 - 6:42pm
I should never reboot my computer.
I am so out of touch that I didn't realise that a new version of Debian came out in June. "Splendid!", I thought. So:
# apt-get update
# apt-get dist-upgrade… then off for a walk while two gigabytes downloaded (really must get rid of all those first-person shooters that are anyway far too violent for a gentleman of my advanced years).
Get through the upgrade, reboot the computer, and my USB WiFi dongle doesn't work. Here's how to diagnose/fix:
# lsusbBus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:8000 Intel Corp.
[…]
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 045e:00cb Microsoft Corp. Basic Optical Mouse v2.0
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 413c:2003 Dell Computer Corp. Keyboard
Bus 003 Device 007: ID 0bda:8178 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8192CU 802.11n WLAN Adapter
[…]Yes, I use a Microsoft mouse. Microsoft branded peripherals have generally been pretty darn good. I think this mouse is at least ten years old, and it's as good as the day I bought it. So now I know the WiFi chipset. I go to the Debian Wiki WiFi page, and find that I need the rtl8192cu driver, which is in the (non-free) firmware-realtek package, which is of course already installed because the blasted thing used to work. So now it's just a matter of:
# modprobe rtl8192cu…and we're back in business. For good measure, I added rtl8192cu to the /etc/modules file, so that maybe I'll survive the next reboot unscathed. Not that I will be rebooting any time soon.
Monday, 2 October 2017 - 7:55pm
THE Coffs Coast already boasts quality fishing but this could be improved.
Coffs Harbour MP Andrew Fraser is encouraging application for the next round of the NSW Government's Recreational Fishing Trust Grants.
Popular projects funded by this grant include fish aggregating devices and artificial reefs.
I had no idea that there were such things as "fish aggregating devices". What an age we live in!
What worries me is the potential for such a device to run amok and go critical. Are there proper procedures in place to keep our community safe in the event of a catastrophic fish meltdown? I expect the half-life of fish is rather short, but that will be of little comfort to those living within the radius of contamination in the immediate aftermath, as they go through the painstaking and rather smelly recovery process of picking tiny bones out of everything.
I suggest that it's only sensible to have emergency response crews stationed by each and every fish aggregation site, equipped with enough lemon juice and tartare sauce to tamp down any impending piscatorial blowout.
Sunday, 1 October 2017 - 7:13pm
This week, I have been procrastinating and not writing an essay:
- Editorial market — Flea Snobbery by Andrés Diplotti:
- What is the Minimum Wage that Will Employ Everyone? — Carlos Maciel at the Minskys:
To find the best wage rate for JG jobs, a few parameters should be considered. First, the JG framework is to create jobs that provide at least a minimum “subsistence” rate, so that workers can live a decent life. As such, it is clear that the JG wage should at least be the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Second, the goal of the JG is not, and should never be, to replace the private sector. So, the JG wage should not exceed the average wage paid in the private sector ($25.31 in 2016). This creates an upper limit. With these lower and upper limits in place we can raise the floor or lower the ceiling, ultimately arriving at the proper wage rate paid by this full employment policy.
Tuesday, 26 September 2017 - 9:41pm
"This begs the question - is the Coffs Coast ready for more decorating/furnishing stores? And if so, which ones?
It seems every time a warehouse or industrial space becomes vacant there are whispers around town of either Myer or Ikea setting up shop.
Matt Blatt, Pottery Barn, Oz Design or King Living? David Jones or Myer? Which business would you welcome on the Coffs Coast"
By Jove, I'm glad there's one media outlet willing to tackle controversial topics like this. I've seen careers ruined and families broken up over less. You, my friend, have opened up a huge can of worms, and absolutely nobody likes worms. Except some fish. And birds. And other worms, I suppose.
The one thing I really miss since moving to Reejnall Australia - apart from civilisation, of course - is Big Jim McSplinter's Family Lifestyle Outlet. We used to love that place, when we were kids. As Pete Smith used to say on the TV ads "If it's made from old fence palings and rusty nails, you'll find it at McSplinter's".
It may seem quaint now, but that was really the dawn of aspirational Australia. To be greeted at the door by a man dressed up in a giant Big Jim costume (usually Big Jim himself in those days), then to stroll through the store, first left, then right, then left, then right, and so on, running a hand over ever more fashionably rustic home furnishings…
Then, while waiting for the staff to securely strap our purchases to the roof of the Toyota Tarago, we'd enjoy an ice cold milkshake in the Antiseptic Lounge, and set to work with our complimentary tweezers. "A McSplinter's family is a family that's up to date on their tetanus jabs," as they used to say, and although it's become much more gentrified and sophisticated in recent years, I still think that this is the sort of business that would attract much-needed multi-story car parks to the region.
Sunday, 24 September 2017 - 6:12pm
This week, I have been mostly reading:
- No, the “grown-ups” won’t save us: A favorite Beltway fantasy bites the dust again — Heather Digby Parton in Salon:
One would have thought Americans had learned their lesson after having lived through the disaster of the George W. Bush years. But 16 years later the Republican Party served up another unqualified, ill-equipped nominee, and he, too, became president without winning the most votes. Once again the establishment tried to reassure the public that he would be held in check by the vice president and the respectable appointees: Gen. Jim Mattis at the Pentagon, Gen. John Kelly at Homeland Security and — after the first choice was fired — Gen. H.R. McMaster as national security adviser. Since the military is the only institution left in America that maintains even the slightest respect among the public, this seemed like a good idea. These men had commanded legions; surely they could control the likes of President Donald Trump.
- Intellectual Property Is Real Money — Dean Baker in Jacobin:
The idea of imposing a 20 percent tariff on imported shoes or steel would send any mainstream economist into a frenzy. They all know how tariffs distort the market, leading to waste and corruption. But when it comes to patents and copyrights, the difference we are talking about — between the protected price and the “free market price” — is ten or even a hundred times higher than it would be otherwise.
- Are Students a Class? — Michael Hudson:
In view of the fact that a college education is a precondition for joining the working class (except for billionaire dropouts), the middle class is a debtor class – so deep in debt that once they manage to get a job, they have no leeway to go on strike, much less to protest against bad working conditions. This is what Alan Greenspan described as the “traumatized worker effect” of debt. Do students think about their future in these terms? How do they think of their place in the world?
- Monopoly has a Magic Money Tree, just like the real world — Richard Murphy on a point previously made by Stephanie Kelton:
Monopoly reflects real life perfectly: the central bank can never run out of money. If it does, it can just create some more.
- #1317; In which an Adult has Fantasies — Wondermark, by David Malki !:
- Slow Crash — Andrew Cockburn interviews Michael Hudson in Harper's:
Wall Street’s investment banks and bondholders were rescued, not the economy. The debts were left in place, and continue to grow not only by compound interest but by arrears and penalties compounding. The proportion of national income paid as interest, insurance fees and economic rent is rising faster than the economy is growing. Banks lend mainly to other financial institutions. They don’t lend to factories that are creating jobs. They don’t lend out for goods and services. They lend to other financial institutions. The whole economy has turned into trying to make money on speculation and arbitrage, not on producing goods and services, not on hiring people to actually do work. The economy therefore is very fragile.
Sunday, 17 September 2017 - 7:11pm
This week, I have been mostly reading:
- My “Nonviolent” Stance Was Met With Heavily Armed Men — Logan Rimel of Radical Discipleship:
I never felt safer than when I was near antifa. They came to defend people, to put their bodies between these armed white supremacists and those of us who could not or would not fight. They protected a lot of people that day, including groups of clergy. My safety (and safety is relative in these situations) was dependent upon their willingness to commit violence. In effect, I outsourced the sin of my violence to them. I asked them to get their hands dirty so I could keep mine clean. Do you understand? They took that up for me, for the clergy they shielded, for those of us in danger. We cannot claim to be pacifists or nonviolent when our safety requires another to commit violence, and we ask for that safety.
- The First White President — Ta-Nehisi Coates in the Atlantic:
Trump is the first president to have served in no public capacity before ascending to his perch. But more telling, Trump is also the first president to have publicly affirmed that his daughter is a “piece of ass.” The mind seizes trying to imagine a black man extolling the virtues of sexual assault on tape (“When you’re a star, they let you do it”), fending off multiple accusations of such assaults, immersed in multiple lawsuits for allegedly fraudulent business dealings, exhorting his followers to violence, and then strolling into the White House. But that is the point of white supremacy—to ensure that that which all others achieve with maximal effort, white people (particularly white men) achieve with minimal qualification. Barack Obama delivered to black people the hoary message that if they work twice as hard as white people, anything is possible. But Trump’s counter is persuasive: Work half as hard as black people, and even more is possible.
- Humans are intrinsically anti neo-liberal — Bill Mitchell:
One of the great casualties of this neo-liberal dark age that we are living through at present and which began in the 1980s (if not a little earlier) is that society has been subjugated to economy. In the 1980s, we began to live in economies rather than societies or communities.
- Why Economists Have to Embrace Complexity to Avoid Disaster — Evonomics publishes an awe-inspiring excerpt from Steve Keen's new book:
The reason that aggregating individual downward sloping demand curve[s] results in a market demand curve that can have any shape at all is simple to understand, but—for those raised in the mainstream tradition—very difficult to accept. The individual demand curve is derived by assuming that relative prices can change without affecting the consumer’s income. This assumption can’t be made when you consider all of society—which you must do when aggregating individual demand to derive a market demand curve—because changing relative prices will change relative incomes as well.
- Capital is failing Australia not labour — Leith van Onselen at MacroBusiness:
In 1974, the share of TFI taken by wages was 62%, whereas as at December 2016 it had fallen to just 53% – a 9% decline. By contrast, the share of TFI taken by profits was 17% in 1974, whereas as at December 2016 it had risen to 26% – a 9% increase. Moreover, the fall in workers’ share of TFI has nothing to do with productivity. […] Australian labour productivity (real GDP per hour worked) has risen by just under 80% since 1978, whereas real average compensation per employee has risen by just 28% over the same period.
- An Open Letter to My Online Student — Peyton Burgess at McSweeny's Internet Tendency:
Did you get my email regarding the Extra Credit assignment? You could benefit from the Extra Credit assignment. Many of you could benefit from it. Nobody has emailed me yet to say how generous it was of me to offer the Extra Credit assignment. Online Student, you have never responded, and I fear you never will.
- Donald Trump has just met with the new leader of the secular world – Pope Francis — Robert Fisk, the Independent:
For more and more, the Good Old Pope is coming to represent what the Trumps and Mays will not say: that the West has a moral duty to end its wars in the Middle East, to stop selling weapons to the killers of the Middle East and to treat the people of the Middle East with justice and dignity.
- Meet the CamperForce, Amazon's Nomadic Retiree Army — Jessica Bruder in Wired:
Many of the workers who joined CamperForce were around traditional retirement age, in their sixties or even seventies. They were glad to have a job, even if it involved walking as many as 15 miles a day on the concrete floor of a warehouse. From a hiring perspective, the RVers were a dream labor force. They showed up on demand and dispersed just before Christmas in what the company cheerfully called a “taillight parade.” They asked for little in the way of benefits or protections. And though warehouse jobs were physically taxing—not an obvious fit for older bodies—recruiters came to see CamperForce workers’ maturity as an asset. These were diligent, responsible employees. Their attendance rates were excellent.
- The Dystopia We Signed Up For — Chelsea Manning in the New York TImes:
The real power of mass data collection lies in the hand-tailored algorithms capable of sifting, sorting and identifying patterns within the data itself. When enough information is collected over time, governments and corporations can use or abuse those patterns to predict future human behavior. Our data establishes a “pattern of life” from seemingly harmless digital residue like cellphone tower pings, credit card transactions and web browsing histories.
Thursday, 14 September 2017 - 11:50pm
FEDERAL Member for Page Kevin Hogan took to social media to explain why he voted in favour of banning full facial coverings at the Nationals conference in Canberra last Sunday.
"It was to ban full facial coverings in certain public places. Many countries have already done this, including Germany, France and Belgium, to name a few,” Mr Hogan wrote on Facebook.
He wrote the ban would have included full face helmets, bandanas and burkas in certain public spaces.
"Given the importance of facial recognition technology in criminal investigations, this is a public safety issue. For banks, service stations and other such places, it is an important safety issue,” he wrote.
This is a tremendously brave stance from a forward-thinking public servant. Given also the extraordinary advances in genital recognition technology, it follows that nothing less than mandatory full public nudity is required for the purposes of potential criminal investigations.
A cynic may say that such a policy is only designed to increase the standing of northern MPs relative to those in colder climes, but who can honestly say they don't want to see their elected members fully exposed in certain public places?
Sunday, 10 September 2017 - 4:55pm
This week, I have been mostly reading:
- Demon-Haunted World — Cory Doctorow at Locus Online:
The basic theory of cheating is to assume that the cheater is ‘‘rational’’ and won’t spend more to cheat than they could make from the scam: the cost of cheating is the risk of getting caught, multiplied by the cost of the punishment (fines, reputational damage), added to the technical expense associated with breaking the anti-cheat mechanisms. Software changes the theory. Software – whose basic underlying mechanism is ‘‘If this happens, then do this, otherwise do that’’ – allows cheaters to be a lot more subtle, and thus harder to catch. Software can say, ‘‘If there’s a chance I’m undergoing inspection, then be totally honest – but cheat the rest of the time.’’
- Widening inequality is largely a US and UK phenomenon – why? — by good lord, it's Vince Cable, new Lib Dem leader!:
[…] there is abundant cross-country evidence that too much inequality can harm economic performance, and that redistributive politics can do good. Studies suggest that higher levels of inequality are associated with unproductive rent-seeking; contribute to financial instability; feed asset bubbles rather than productive investment; weaken demand and encourage high levels of household debt; and lead to underinvestment in education and health.
- Nature Does Not Grade on a Curve — Ian Welsh:
One of the problems with de-naturing (with living in almost entirely human made systems, and with pushing those bits we don’t control off into ghettos as we would illness), is that it means most people almost never experience a benchmark that isn’t set by other human beings. They feel, in their guts, that if only other people are convinced, any problem can be fixed or finangled. No. The bear doesn’t care that you can’t run fast enough because TV is funner than going for a jog, and nature doesn’t care that shareholders needed value and that oil barons didn’t want to be a little poorer (or whatever). And neither will those who suffer from climate changes due to our ethical monstrosity and sheer incapability.
- The Future of Work, Robotization, and Capitalism’s Ability to Generate Useless Jobs — Rutger Bregman:
The time has come to stop sidestepping the debate and home in on the real issue: what would our economy look like if we were to radically redefine the meaning of “work”? I firmly believe that a universal basic income is the most effective answer to the dilemma of advancing robotization. Not because robots will take over all the purposeful jobs, but because a basic income would give everybody the chance to do work that is meaningful. I believe in a future where the value of your work is not determined by the size of your paycheck, but by the amount of happiness you spread and the amount of meaning you give. I believe in a future where the point of education is not to prepare you for another useless job, but for a life well lived. I believe in a future where “jobs are for robots and life is for people.”
- Ransom — Flea Snobbery:
- Even when wars end in the Middle East, superbugs and aggressive cancers caused by conflict fight on — Robert Fisk in the Independent:
A Medecins Sans Frontieres analysis – presented at the conference by Abu-Sitta and Dr Omar Dewachi who co-direct a newly created Conflict Medicine Programme at the AUB supported by Jonathan Whittall of Medecins sans Frontieres – said that multidrug resistant [MDR] bacteria now accounts for most war wound infections across the Middle East, yet most medical facilities in the region do not even have the laboratory capacity to diagnose MDR, leading to significant delays and clinical mismanagement of festering wounds. Beyond the physical damage caused by weaponry, Whittall added, “destroyed or degraded sanitation facilitates the microbiological seeding of wounds. The body, weakened by the wound, is reinjured when it interacts with the harsh, physically degraded environment.”
- The bitcoin and blockchain: energy hogs — Fabrice Flipo and Michel Berne in the Conversation:
In a 2014 study, Karl J. O’Dwyer and David Malone showed that the consumption of the bitcoin network was likely to be approximately equivalent to the electricity consumption of a country like Ireland, i.e. an estimated 3 GW. Imagine the consequences if this type of bitcoin currency becomes widespread. The global money supply in circulation is estimated at $11,000 billion. The corresponding energy consumption should therefore exceed 4,000 GW, which is eight times the electricity consumption of France and twice that of the United States. It is not without reason that a recent headline on the Novethic website proclaimed “The bitcoin, a burden for the climate”.
- The Varieties of Populist Experience — Robert Skidelsky:
To be sure, support for a leftist program certainly exists in France. About 20% of voters backed the left-wing populist Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the presidential election’s first round. In the second round, one particularly illuminating Twitter hashtag was #NiPatronNiPatrie (“neither boss nor country”), reflecting many voters’ dissatisfaction with the election’s choice between neoliberalism and nationalism. The task of the left is to direct attention to the truly problematic aspects of global economic integration – financialization, the prioritization of capital over labor, of creditor over debtor, of patron over ouvrier – without lapsing into reactionary politics.
- I wrote ‘The Art of the Deal’ with Trump. His self-sabotage is rooted in his past. — Tony Schwartz in the Washington Post:
The Trump I got to know had no deep ideological beliefs, nor any passionate feeling about anything but his immediate self-interest. He derives his sense of significance from conquests and accomplishments. “Can you believe it, Tony?” he would often say at the start of late-night conversations with me, going on to describe some new example of his brilliance. But the reassurance he got from even his biggest achievements was always ephemeral and unreliable — and that appears to include being elected president. Any addiction has a predictable pattern: The addict keeps chasing the high by upping the ante in an increasingly futile attempt to re-create the desired state. On the face of it, Trump has more opportunities now to feel significant and accomplished than almost any other human being on the planet. But that’s like saying a heroin addict has his problem licked once he has free and continuous access to the drug. Trump also now has a far bigger and more public stage on which to fail and to feel unworthy.
- Renegade Shorts - STEVE KEEN on Government Surplus:
- Australians don’t loiter in public space – the legacy of colonial control by design — Aaron Magro in the Conversation:
While towns and new suburbs in the young colony were deeply influenced by European urban design, a key feature was excluded – the piazza. Governor Richard Bourke made very clear to surveyors that new towns in New South Wales (which at the time encompassed present-day Victoria) must not include public squares as these could promote rebellion.
- Free Time and the Pressures of Employability — David Frayne at Zed Books:
The notion of employability has risen to remarkable prominence in the early part of the twenty-first century, where it forms the lynchpin of a neoliberal political philosophy, in which the state and employers are no longer committed to, or deemed responsible for, providing citizens with lasting and secure jobs. Those politicians who champion neoliberal policies have glorified paid employment, whilst at the same time dismantling the social protections that have traditionally insulated citizens against the uncertainties of the labour market. Within this context, the capacity of individuals to work relentlessly at their employability has come to be understood as the crux of national and individual prosperity.
Thursday, 7 September 2017 - 6:21pm
I've been meaning to go through the literature on every thrust and parry in the ongoing argument between proponents of a Job Guarantee and those of a Basic Income, and put together a thorough response. That's not going to happen in the next month or so, so in case I get hit by a bus, here's two paragraphs of where I stand (or don't stand) in the debate, lifted from a comment I just posted on Neil Wilson's blog:
Basic income vs. job guarantee is a false dichotomy that ill serves anybody who takes sides. There is undoubtably some overlap in that they both aim to reduce hardship and stimulate demand, but as far as I can see they’re mostly orthogonal in the range of problems they can potentially solve. Also they’re both programs that we already run, in the sense that we (in developed sovereign currency economies) already have a labour buffer stock program — unemployment — and a basic income, set at the level of zero.
I’m totally sold on (at least my understanding of) the job guarantee as a better implementation of a labour buffer stock, but I don’t think that “with a job guarantee in place, no matter what the particular circumstances may be, anywhere and forever, no level of basic income other than zero could be justifiable” is a defensible argument. And it runs counter to the general MMT stance of “these are the economic policy tools available; how you choose to use them is a political decision”.