Thursday, March 7, 2019

A "Culture of Entitlement"?

Kia-ora


With the current dialog about welfare, It is time to look at the people who are the real  beneficiaries, of the welfare system.
Who use the educated and healthy  workforce, the safe environment and the functioning infrastructure, our taxes and work, provides.
The people who say "everyone should stand on their own two feet", "you don't work you don't eat",  and "take personal responsibility",
The business sector.
What Business wants.
  1. Staff fully educated and trained. "Job ready".
  2. Low wages.
  3. Tertiary education.
  4. Better infrastructure, including power, roads, transport links and other services.
  5. Better Government services.
  6. Protection from crime.
  7. Help with research.
  8. Help with exporting.
  9. Help with business development.
  10. More immigration to keep wages and training costs down.
  11. A pool of casual labour/unemployed, available when and where wanted.
  12. Welfare benefits at starvation level, so people will take any low paid irregular hour job offered.
All supplied by tax payers and/or  employees, at great cost to the rest of us, that pay our taxes......
Now get this.
Not happy with being able to use, tax rebates, PAYE earners cannot, and the numerous accounting loopholes to minimise tax, as well as outright tax fraud, they also want.............
TAX CUTS for business!

What business wants, is a lot of benefits supplied by tax payers, and the unemployed.
But.
They want someone else to pay for it.
"Socialism for Business".
Where is the outrage from the "Tax Payers Union" and the "bene bashers"

Excuses/reasons, for not doing anything about children in poverty.

Kia-ora


This is a re-post from 2013. Unfortunately the need to talk about poverty is even greater now.

Right wing excuses reasons, for not doing anything about children in poverty.
1. “It costs too much”.
2. “Taxation is theft”.
3. “They are not as poor as they are in (Insert a third world Nation with less than half our GDP, and a 10th of our resources per capita)”.
4. “The statistics are wrong”.
5. “It is not as many as they claim”.
6. “You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money”.
7. “I was in a poor persons house and they had “Chocolate biscuits, a colour TV, or, horrors, a bottle of beer”!!
8. “It’s all those solo mothers on the DPB breeding for a living”.
9. “I know a person who…………..”
10. “It is a choice they make”.
11. “It is people who make poor choices”.
12. “They shouldn’t have had kids they couldn’t afford”.
13. “Why should “I” pay for other peoples kids”.
14. “The centre will never vote for it”.
15. “We will do something if finances allow”.
16. “Giving them money made them poor”.
17. “Those socialists made them poor by giving them benefits”.
18. “I pay enough taxes”.
19. “There are no poor in New Zealand”.
20. “Not now, later!”

TPP, Corporate Coup or "Free trade"?

Kia-ora


"Free trade" or Corporate Magna Charta.
The overall benefits of "Free Trade agreements" to participants, especially smaller economies with less economic power, are often dubious, and frequently just a matter of how you rig the accounting. Leaving out externalities, like the increase in numbers on the dole, is common when counting "benefits". As the "parties of business" forget a ledger has two sides.
In fact no country has ever succeeded on exports alone, without a healthy internal economy. Export Share of GDP.
And no country has ever succeeded in benefiting from an export economy, without initial State support of the export sector. New Zealand's successful Dairy industry being a prime example of continued State support. Banned for future industries, if we sign the TPP.
"all major developed countries used interventionist economic policies in order to get rich and then tried to forbid other countries from doing similarly".
Kicking away the ladder. Ha-Joon Chang.
"Freer trade always results in benefits for both countries". Well no.
Even Ricardo never suggested that Britain give up making wine altogether, or Portugal textiles. As usual, simplistic slogans/magical thinking, seem to sway shallow intellects.
One where every country is going to get rich by out exporting every other country.
There are examples of "Free Trade" agreements, such as CER, which have been of net benefit to both countries. Notably where labour laws, the rule of law and democracy, and standards of living, are already, somewhat congruent. (Though it should be noted the Australian banks take more profit out of New Zealand, than the dairy sector earns).
The EU, has worked, as economic stimulus for Germany. It is debatable how well it has worked for Southern European countries. Clever of the Germans to get them to take on debt, from German banks,  to pay for German economic stimulus, though.
Then, there was our abandonment of our own businesses and workers, in the 80's and 90's, in pursuit of an ideological dream thinking that other countries would be mad enough to follow suit. Leaving us nothing to bargain with in future agreements. Only their purpose is mad.
That some have worked, is not, evidence that all such agreements will work. Or that adding services, law making and finance, is a good idea.
TPP
However. TPP ( The trans Pacific partnership) is NOT a "Free trade" agreement. It is an attempt to cement in corporate power, to override inconvenient  local Democracy, and collect rents from local communities in perpetuity.
Since when was giving large companies extra rights in law, and rights to extract even more economic rents, "Free trade"?
TPP gives corporations rights to overrule Democratic Governments.
The proponents of TPP claim that New Zealand has never been subject to an ISDS case. Of course not.
Our Governments in recent years, have been ideologically opposed to legislating against corporations for the common good. They are not bothered about giving foreign corporations rights above individuals and local business. Because they don't want to "interfere" with the "free market", and I suspect, with their own wealth..
We may want our future Governments, however, to legislate for the rights and welfare of New Zealanders and our environment. Not for Nestle', BP, Apple, Orivida,  Amazon and Exxon.
The future under TPP.
We can see the effect of TPP and ISDS in current "Free trade" agreements.
Local and State Governments looking at legislation in terms of "will we get sued" under "Free trade" or ISDS agreements.
Australia being sued by a tobacco company is just one example.
The EU has enough trouble trying to ban bee killing insect sprays in their own courts. Imagine if they had to answer also to "independent" ISDS tribunals.
Osceola A small town of 2 thousand fighting against water extraction.
Under NAFTA's ISDS provisions Canada is One of the most sued countries in the world.
The rest of the world is catching up to Canada. ISDS cases.
Corporate legal rights are already having a detrimental effect on progressive  legislation worldwide. Corporations do not need more rights that locals and individuals do not have.
For example. If Whangarei decides to take dog control, from the foreign corporation that currently has the contract. Having to pay for an ISDS case will give the council pause. A local firm does not have that recourse.   An overseas shipping company  pays extra, to get priority over other companies at NZ ports. A future Government may want to prevent such uncompetitive behavior, because it is disadvantaging coastal shipping.   We decide we want to re Nationalise banking. Because the country cannot afford to bleed so much money to the finance sector. Or close private prisons. Or restrict water extraction. Or cut CO2 emissions.
We don't really know what we may need to do in future to protect ourselves, local business and our environment, from corporations, who have been shown to have no other interests, apart from extracting as much money from local communities as they can.
Benefits?
The most optimistic benefit analysis is less, than the costs of ISDS and extra drug and copyright expense, we will have to pay overseas firms. Not to mention local job losses and even more offshoring of profits.
And giving drug companies, copyright holders and proprietors, rights way in excess of their original contribution.
Of course, our pursuit of pure "free trade" has worked so well? How much has our number of people in poverty increased by, again?

Can we have a future, with capitalism?

Kia-ora


I'll come clean. I am a capitalist. I've started two businesses, one not so successful, due to injuries and health issues at an inconvenient stage. Though we did OK in the end. Another which shows all the signs of a healthy infant. I don't expect we will make a fortune, but it will make, enough. Currently I work for a multinational.
It is one of life's irony's that someone like me, an advocate for the mixed economy, Democratic Socialist, model that has proven the most successful economic system, to date, is considered any way, radical.

No one has yet found a better system for allocation of day to day resources, within a community, than a market capitalist system.
You see potential customers for your market garden or building skills, you invest in training as a builder, buy a set of tools, or in a plot of land and seeds. If you do it well, you make a good living, but how much profit you can make is limited, by the fact there are many other small builders and market gardeners, and your potential customers can see who grows the best vegetables, or builds houses that stay up. At this level a "free market" works fine. The economy is pretty much in a steady state, as is the use of natural resources.

As soon as you grow the community larger, than one where everyone knows the skills and honesty of the other members, you need ways of ensuring those with market power do not accumulate too much of the communities wealth. Basically that real contributors to the community don't lose out to cheats, resulting in the breakdown of the system

No capitalist society has succeeded without a healthy dose of co-operation, common infrastructure, goods and services and regulation, "socialism". Countries that are, "successful" by all our normal measures, have an economy balanced between private and State. The most successful have high progressive taxation, and a State share of the economy, around 50 to 60%. Ours is down to 28%, and it shows.

Without the rule of law, healthy and educated  workers, public infrastructure and regulation of the "cheats" if you like, we cannot have a successful business, and wider economy.
Private provision of mass 'public' goods has proven to be incredibly inefficient, and wasteful. like our power companies.

It suits Bill Gates, and others, to attribute human advancement to capitalism, a self justification for having extorted extreme wealth.
Others attribute advances to human co-operation in developing infrastructure and services, laws, and sharing wealth and advancement, which capitalism can never deliver.

Both are correct.

The USA's post war advancement was due  to high taxes, socialist redistribution, a high quality public education system, State sponsored research and innovation, public infrastructure spending, anti trust laws, banking regulation and a large middle class.
All were needed to make capitalism work.
The concentration of wealth and power with late stage, insufficiently regulated, monopoly  capitalism, and the winding back of social infrastructure and redistribution, is causing the USA's decline.

In our example of small community capitalism above, people pretty much get out what they put in. The market limits how much they can take as profit. A "steady state economy, without growth, is possible.
You are buying yourself a job, if you like.

In a truly free market, an impossibility of course, where there is perfect information and competition, there cannot, of course, be any profit. "Free" marketeers/"free traders", don't want a "free market", they simply want one distorted in their favour.
Any business knows, that to make a profit you have to distort the market in some way. Convince people you are better than your competitors, get Government to legislate in your favour, or give you subsidies or public goods, or use monopoly or oligopoly power, to eliminate competition and keep wages low. Your profit is always someone else's loss.

Capitalism requires "growth" to function?
The motivation behind capitalists' is profit. Getting out more than you put in. Why start a business and take that risk, if you are going to make the same amount as you would as an employee.
However most people do make less than they put in, so that others can profit.
Many functioning businesses don't make a real profit. Including most of our essential small businesses. They make enough.  Small builders make a good living. But you could hardly say they take out more than they put in. The degree of competition precludes that. Building material suppliers, however, make huge profits in New Zealand, because they are a duopoly. Big box stores, and banks, are extremely effective, in removing wealth from communities.

In a finite world, the exponential growth required to make increasing  profits, and pay interest, is not possible.

Capitalism is cannibalising, the human and natural environment, it needs to survive.

The concentration of wealth and power insufficiently regulated capitalism, and excessive profit taking, has caused, now works against the survival of human civilisation. With the wealthy opposing any attempts to limit the damage.