Meanwhile in England, the Cameron government’s massive slashes to education hit virtually all at once, making an entire cohort of young people know exactly who just did their level best to destroy their lives. This is important, to put it bluntly, young males who don’t have enough money to settle down with a young female are extraordinarily dangerous to the state.
The Conservative austerity measures are destroying the possibility of a future for a generation of young people. There is this weird idea amongst English elites, which I encountered in person during my London visit, that the problem in England is their welfare culture. In other words,after a financial crisis virtually entirely caused by the rich, the response has been to slash spending on the poor and middle class to pay for bailouts for the rich, who, by any sane reading of the crisis, caused the disaster.
So you’re in a boat, and it starts taking on water. You grab a bucket and start bailing. What do you tell the rest of the crew?”Find the hole, and plug it.”…
… If you don’t patch the hull, if you don’t make significant regulatory changes at the same time as you are creating a bailout bill, you’re just buying time. The ship may stay afloat as long as you don’t stop ferrying buckets of money to the financial sector, but it’s still got a massive hole in the hull and it’s still taking on water.
Any bailout bill that does not have significant regulatory changes will not solve the problem. It will, at best, kick it down the road for as long as taxpayers are willing to fork over a hundred billion a month or so to keep it from exploding. It may even make the problem worse because of moral hazard—heads the financier who makes a bet wins, tails the government bails him out.
This has played out again, and again, especially in Europe, where lawmakers do bailout after bailout of banks (they’re not bailing out the governments, they’re bailing out their creditors), refusing to do what must be done, which is a massive restructuring of all the debt in the key nations (100 year bonds, paying 1%, say) or an outright default. They are making ordinary people pay for their masters sins. And they are putting the worst of it on the people who they feel are least powerful: the young, immigrants, the poor and so on.
The response to a system which refuses to do the right thing, which offers Coke-Pepsi politics (if you don’t like Coke, you can always have Pepsi!) is turning more and more violent. If electoral politics offers no solution, people will look for one elsewhere.
Our elites live in a bubble. They think that what happens on the street doesn’t really effect them. There will come a day when many of them will be wrong. They’re playing with their lives, with our lives, and with the lives of their families and loved ones.
What will happen in each country will be different. Some will get a man on horseback, some will screw in the repression and hang on, turning into aristocracies, others may find what many on the left are insisting on, a Robespierre. And maybe one or two will do the right thing, stop the bailouts, stop the reforms, and make a commitment to restructure in a way which creates a future for everyone.
Maybe.
Daniel De Groot
And maybe one or two will do the right thing, stop the bailouts, stop the reforms, and make a commitment to restructure in a way which creates a future for everyone.
Isn’t Iceland the current leading model for this category? Which is probably why aside from a few remarks by Krugman, the only time we hear about Iceland in the press is if they have a volcano blocking air travel these days…
Ian Welsh
Yeah, I’m thinking of visiting in a bit.
But their population is tiny.
Morocco Bama
Excellent post, Ian. Of course, how it will all turn out is an exercise in conjecture, but when you factor in Peak Resources and Environmental Catastrophe, I don’t think restructuring in a way that creates a future for everyone is even a remote possibility, let alone a consideration at this point. Iceland is a case in point. I have said that here before. Yeah, they’ve done many of the positive things of which you speak, but the ship is still sinking when you factor in Peak Resources, Environmental Decay and Sustainability.
Gaius Sempronius Gracchus
Somebody is calling for a Robespierre?
Could you expand on that, a bit?
Thanks.
Ian Welsh
I personally think we can restructure for prosperity. We can’t restructure for prosperity that looks like suburbia, but to be frank, that model didn’t make people as happy as they thought (and think) it does. To go into how is longer than I can write on in a comment, but there have been posts where I’ve touched on parts of it.
Gaius: the purity we demand of our leaders we will get, and then they will enforce it on us. This is implicit in the unwillingness to accept personal failings, and the willingness to accept failures of leadership which is endemic in the left.
Morocco Bama
Gaius: the purity we demand of our leaders we will get, and then they will enforce it on us.
If that’s the measure you were using, then the “Right” has the same insistence as the “Left.” I suppose this is yet another reason I don’t like to categorize myself, because I feel, and think, that to cast your lot with a leader, or leaders, is inversely related to the degree of individual empowerment and the empowerment of the collective. Decentralization without complete chaos is not only possible, but is more than likely the most effective route to social evolution….if Humankind could find a way to give it a try….again, but this time voluntarily, rather than by necessity.
Morocco Bama
I personally think we can restructure for prosperity.
I would be glad to be the one wrong in this estimation. My preference, obviously, is for it to be as you say it could be. And yes, of course, prosperity, as always but never is, needs to be defined….as does “everyone.”
Ian Welsh
The right, in fact, is very forgiving of personal failures like infidelity, prostitutes and whatnot. The left is not.
Prosperity: meeting basic Maslovian needs + the possibility of creating meaning within our lives. A purely consumer society is not truly prosperous, imo. We need to move back to a producer society.
Morocco Bama
The right, in fact, is very forgiving of personal failures like infidelity, prostitutes and whatnot. The left is not.
I don’t know….it’s a little more nuanced than that. Of course, let’s keep in mind that
“Right” and “Left” are inadequate descriptors in all of this, but the reality is, people believe in the descriptors even if the descriptors don’t accurately describe them. That being said, it’s a matter of what “Team” one is on. Team Right is forgiving of their leaders’ infidelities, and Team Left is forgiving of their leaders’ infidelities. Team Right is unforgiving of Team Left’s leaders’ infidelities and Team Left is unforgiving of Team Right’s leaders’ infidelities…..more, or less. Case in point was Clinton’s “indiscretions” and the two teams’ reactions and responses to them.
In regards to a definition of prosperity, I agree with you that the current definition, or lack thereof, i.e. suburbia and consumerism, is not prosperity, as many are led to believe, but without further elaboration of the term “producer”, I can’t automatically agree to it as a path to prosperity. Isn’t Civilization marked by, among other things, production? Doesn’t production, or hasn’t production, ultimately lead/led to accumulation and hasn’t accumulation led to pronounced hierarchy and economic disparity? I’m not eschewing production as valuable out of hand, but production unchecked by a balance of environmental parameters will inevitably lead to the same collapse, just a longer time horizon than zealous consumerism.
Ian Welsh
Producer society means ordinary people making things, and thus not being disconnected from the what they consume, which is often effectively magical.
Creating is healthy.
Ché Pasa
The right, in fact, is very forgiving of personal failures like infidelity, prostitutes and whatnot. The left is not.
All too true, for reasons that defy comprehension.
A purely consumer society is not truly prosperous, imo.
Also abundantly true.
The mass consumer economy is being dismantled in the west, transferred to the extent it can be, to Asia and in dribs and drabs elsewhere. On our own, we are unlikely to revive the consumer model in anything like the near term.
But we can — and by “we” I mean far more than just Americans — create a prosperous and sustainable economy outside or beyond the consumer model. The process is made much more difficult, however, by the continued subservience of our captured governments to the Overclass.
Until that’s settled, tumult such as we’re seeing is inevitable — and possibly necessary
Z
I read that the gathering protesting the killing of a resident of Tottenham sparked into a riot when one of the police manhandled a female protestor. Not that there weren’t plenty of other justifiable reasons to riot, but when the authorities rough up a woman, it unites and enrages the populace much more than when it happens to a man.
Women have played a large … and largely unappreciated … role in the recent revolutions as sparks, leaders and organizers. In the u.s., women are probably going to have to play a large role as well.
Z
Morocco Bama
Interesting graph here. I think Haiti is the future for most of us. Yes, it doesn’t have to be, but considering the ingredients, cake and pie aren’t in order…unless, of course, they’re made from mud. The Haitians are some of the most creative people on the face of the planet. That’s especially meaningful considering their “well-being.”
http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/4521/deadcatbounces.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6gmB-jYd-c
Bourdain’s great.
Lisa Simeone
Indeed. William Morris and his adherents fervently believed this, and practiced what they preached. Unfortunately, the beautiful things they produced turned out to be too expensive for most people. The lifestyle they advocated was great in theory — and for a while, in practice — but ultimately it failed.
Not trying to be the fly in the ointment, just pointing out how difficult this transition is.
Ian Welsh
If your lifestyle is considered a hobby to most of society, a society which is set up deliberately to make it not work, it will probably fail, aye.
Lisa Simeone
Technically O/T, but related to economics — the law of unintended consequences:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/opinion/how-congress-devastated-congo.html?src=recg
Morocco Bama
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. This one is worth more, IMO. Contrast it with the Official Chinese Government statements about the S&P downgrade of USA’s creditworthiness.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_AYwY74fDryU/So9qOO1KbyI/AAAAAAAATUI/Il_Opm17TTA/s400/Warren+Buffett+advertisement+in+China+1.jpg
Who are the Communists? Here’s a hint….it’s not Van Jones per Glenn Beck. Those who are self-admitted Communists are not the real Communists….at least here in the U.S, or the West.
Notorious P.A.T.
“Somebody is calling for a Robespierre? Could you expand on that, a bit?”
Even a few people on this site seem to want a reign of terror. “Kill a few bankers and the rest will fall in line” etc.
“when you factor in Peak Resources and Environmental Catastrophe, I don’t think restructuring in a way that creates a future for everyone is even a remote possibility”
We could easily build enough concentrated solar power plants to give everyone lights, a refrigerator, clean water, etc. That wouldn’t look a lot like what we have now–the automobile would go the way of the sailboat–but we could do it. The sun isn’t going anywhere.
Morocco Bama
We could easily build enough concentrated solar power plants to give everyone lights, a refrigerator, clean water, etc. That wouldn’t look a lot like what we have now–the automobile would go the way of the sailboat–but we could do it. The sun isn’t going anywhere.
This is such incontrovertible bullshit, I don’t know where to begin, so I won’t. Here’s a starter (see link for those who care to be realists). I’ve said this before at this site, the “everyone can have a pony” mentality has to go. Either everyone has it, which is impossible considering the constraints, or no one has it, or everyone shares a few. One way or another, a drastic change in lifestyle will ensue. Either it happens voluntarily, or it happens involuntarily. Since most people currently either deny outright the issue of environmental constraints, or believe “greening” things up, i.e. solar power, will alleviate the issue of constraints, it’s most probably going to be involuntarily.
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/
Morocco Bama
Even a few people on this site seem to want a reign of terror. “Kill a few bankers and the rest will fall in line” etc.
Who?
However, now that you’re on the topic, how do you presume to get the bankers to fall in line. Voting for someone to try to do it for you? That’s rather cowardly, I would say….getting someone else to do your dirty work. Even if you could manage to pull that off….meaning voting someone in who attempted to do that, how would they go about it? You don’t think there would be violence, or the threat of violence to pull that off? You think that the “Bankers” will just lay down and take it and fall in line….when they own the Government, along with all the other Corporations, lock, stock and barrel? Do you think you are going to appeal to its conscience….when there is no conscience in which to appeal?
Ian Welsh
The goal for any new regime is not to get us a hundred years, it is to get us another 40 to 60 years. Your great grand children, alas, will have to solve their own problems.
Notorious P.A.T.
Please respond to what I actually wrote. I didn’t say we could give everyone whatever they wanted, only that we can support the people we already have. You said “when you factor in Peak Resources and Environmental Catastrophe, I don’t think restructuring in a way that creates a future for everyone is even a remote possibility” but it’s obvious that we could give everyone a future if we wanted to. By “future” I mean “continuing to be alive, and eating food rather than grass or each other”. Obviously the world can’t continue to consume more for all of eternity, but that’s no reason to stock up on gold and board shut the windows.
We could even give a lot of people a better life than they have now. The US, with 5% of the world’s population, uses 25% of the world’s energy, but leaf-blowers and bottled water plants aren’t making us any happier.
Someone in the “If you’re pro-Obama you’re an idiot, on the payroll, or evil” said that if a few bankers were killed, that would give the oligarchs pause.
“how do you presume to get the bankers to fall in line?” First let’s get back to what kept them in line from the 1930s to the 1990s.
Notorious P.A.T.
“Your great grand children, alas, will have to solve their own problems.”
If we do this right, though, their problems will be “solar plant #243 needs maintenance and the nitrogen vats need topping off” rather than “the Earth is becoming uninhabitable by humans and entitled sociopaths own almost everything”.
Petro
Discussions of “concentrated solar power plants,” I assume presume a distribution grid.
Please take into account the amount of energy needed to bootstrap such a system (i.e., manufacture the plants.) Perhaps if we had undertaken this project 30 years ago – maybe 20 – we could excuse the burn of fossil fuels necessary to set that bit up. I don’t think the sun is enough to build such plants.
Please take into account the amount of energy needed to maintain these plants and, since I’ll (dubiously) grant you the existing power gird, maintenance of said grid.
Please take into account the gross inefficiency of converting solar energy into electricity, transmitting it across a very lossy electrical grid, and reconverting the remaining power into motion and heat, also very lossy.
Solar is feasible, but only as a very local solution, and in combination with other use-appropriate solutions. Conventional refrigeration is a non-starter, but solutions for that.
To much to go into here – but suffice to say there will be no “national” infrastructure solution to energy use.
Petro
(Ack. Sorry I got sucked into the OT…!)
groo
…a massive restructuring of all the debt in the key nations (100 year bonds, paying 1%, say) …
haha.
(I was planning a very critical commentary, but I could not keep it up .)
So I just comment on your ironic point, cited above:
Which is very important, because it is symptomatic of the whole edifice.
…100 year bonds, paying 1%…
This is all about ‘discounting the future’.
A harmless abstraction for the uninitiated , but a centerpiece for anyone, who is really concerned.
The debate started with the Stearn review, where it became obvious, that even with the -ahem- the eviol twins US and GB the discounting differed substantially, als 1.5% for the British and some 3% for the US-Americans.
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_discount_rate
Which means that -numerically in the near-term- the Americans are approximately twice as ‘optimistic’ than the British.
Which is funny in itself, and one rare measure for ‘optimism’.
Continental Europeans are , if it is measured at all, much more pessimistic.
And this is a very central issue:
HOW DOES ONE JUDGE THE FUTURE?
This determines current action!
groo
Just as a note for the uninitiated.
A POSITIVE discount rate signifies, that it is better to shift any problem-solving into the future.
A NEGATIVE discounti rate (we are getting poorer in the future) implies, that we better act NOW than LATER.
As simple as important!
The debate concerning the discounting rate is actually the most important!
Goes back to Hegel and Marx.
And further, if You will: Cyclical time.
Where the discounting in the average is ZERO.
Understand?
No.
Anyway.
Mandos
The right is forgiving of these because they are sexual failures and are the flip side of patriarchy. They’re only forgiving of them in male sinners, who can cover it up by making the symbolic (and sometimes real) gestures in favour of male supremacy. Let’s not cover it up completely with words like “infidelity”—the right accept male infidelity, and it accepts rape.
The left is not forgiving of these things because it was, at one point, influenced by feminism.
Let’s put these things in its proper context.
Mandos
The non-responsiveness of electoral politics is not only the fault of the elite. It’s also a case that the left has missed opportunities and overestimated the distance between the elites and the public, including (especially) in the USA.
For people who (rightly) criticize the “rational actor” model of economics, there’s an awful amount of reliance on the concept. So no one will notice the man on horseback when he arrives.
Bernard
Robespierre has already been unleashed by the Right. a long time ago. the Reign of Terror has been going on a long time. every now and someone is made an example to shut up the rest. things have gotten so bad now, the occurrences are more frequent and easier to see.
the number of Americans alone dying from the policies enacted by the Right has been quietly growing, but remain untold, like the number of Iraqis who died for the Right’s Terror on Brown people.
the violence is just being ignored and dismissed, as an isolated incident, like some lone “Wolf”, as in McVeigh, Randolph or like the nutcase in Norway. The Right will never admit to being responsible for “encouraging lunatics”. Never will.
We are living in a very violent time where the forces of the Right have unleashed a type of violence Robespierre couldn’t conceive of.. our Government uses it every day, except now the Government uses it on us.
the Left shut up a long time ago, after losing one leader after another to Lone Wolves or fatal airplane crashes.
Ian Welsh
I have repeatedly mentioned ordinary people’s complicity in what the elites have done. Nonetheless, more blame is due to elites.
Mandos
I get that you’ve said so, and I even agree with it, but I think we differ on the manner in which it has taken place. I don’t assume, a priori, that The Public has done something that is necessarily against its rational interest. It depends on who we define as The Public—raising inescapable identity-politics questions—and what we define as its subjective interest, which are not necessarily economic. Didn’t someone say, “Man does not live by bread alone” or something like that? The Public may well have mostly serving what it considers to be its interest; the alignment with the elite may be more “conscious” than for what people give it credit.
StewartM
Notorious P.A.T
And how is this going to happen?
The more I think about it, the 1930s was an aberration. Because under Hoover the rich had lost tons of money in the collapse, the country was in a panic in 1932, which gave FDR the opportunity to rebuild things in a fashion–while not perfect–which was more right than wrong.
Now the elites are wiser. The response of 2008 was interventionist. It was classic Reaganomics: shovel more money to the top to make sure no rich person lost a cent. If need be, make up for it with austerity on everyone else.
We are headed for another such collapse, and their response will be the same. There will be more bailouts of the rich. Sure, ordinary people won’t like it, but the politicians are bought and if voted out their replacements will continue the very same policies. Because they too will be bought. Citizens United was decreed to make certain of that.
Moreover, we are seeing a rollback of the franchise. As more people sink economically and want to vote against the system, expect more obstacles placed in their using their only resource to fight back: the vote. Voting is not an “inalienable” right here in the US, it can be taken away, de jure or de facto. And then there is the question of those voting machines.
In short–we’re fast becoming the world’s biggest banana republic.
So how do you end it? I see either a) utter economic collapse, when the elites have gone through the country’s wealth and so can no longer can afford their self-protection force, or b) violence, which scares at least the smarter among the elites into making concessions for reasons of self-preservation. I don’t see economic pressure and boycotts as working because the goal of the elites has been to transform their revenue streams into something you can’t avoid paying (hence, are not boycottable). How do you boycott Koch Oil, when oil is used in everything from the food you buy to its packaging to household chemicals?
-StewartM
StewartM
Mandos:
Sarah and Bristol Palin?
-StewartM
Mandos
Agreeing or disagreeing? Bristol Palin redeemed herself by playing born-again virgin for a bit. If Sarah had been actually caught sleeping around (AFAIK never), I have no idea how it would have worked out, but not like Newt.
Mandos
Now *that* is pessimism. Really, it boils down to the question Ian’s been asking: at what point does elite chicanery become hubris (“overplaying their hand”)? Is it going to be sooner than we think?
StewartM
Mandos:
Usually the Men of the Right do the “born again bit” too after having been caught in flagrante delicto, with their fair share of wailing and gnashing of teeth. After a few mea culpas have been issued and tears have been shed, they are welcomed back and we are admonished by right-wing commentators “this is a personal tragedy, we should all look the other way as Mr. (or Mrs) X resolves their problems”–while they are allowed to keep office, of course.
Only the Left joins the Right in insisting their wretched sinners be banished for the same sins. Ian is right.
Now, you may claim that this is a good thing, that we hold our own to standards that the Right does not. Fair ’nuff. But it has the practical effect of discouraging anyone who has any skeletons in their closet whatsoever on the left from seeking elected office. You have to be a saint in your personal life to run as a progressive. Or you’d better be, because even then, the Breitbarts of the world are going to make stuff up about you.
-StewartM
StewartM
Mandos
Now *that* is pessimism.
Just reality. Let me give you a tour de supermarket sometime. Every time you purchase something, you’re purchasing oil. And you don’t know where that oil is coming from. We’re talking about *food* here, the necessities of life. Koch Industries has its revenue stream locked down; you are giving Charles and David money all the time to use against you.
Moreover, as the results of Citizens United shows, you’re an idiot of a CEO if you’re like Target and openly give to controversial causes and invite a boycott. No, you give it to essentially money-laundering front groups instead.
What’s interesting about this ruling is that the Supremes essentially allowed CEOs and boards to use of the money of the nominal owners of the company (the stockholders) without their knowledge and consent. As a result of this money laundering, the stockholders are left in the dark just like everyone else on how the company’s money is being used to support political causes they might not agree with. Citizens United essentially gives CEOs and boards blank checks to donate to political candidates and causes with other people’s money.
I’d like to here one of those big “property rights” libertarians defend THAT one.
According to the results of Wisconsin last night, a state with a history of progressivism as proud as any, where a determined recall effort failed to recapture the state senate—well, if you were one of the oligarchs, wouldn’t you be your partners in crime giving high-fives now?
-StewartM
Notorious P.A.T.
“Please take into account the amount of energy needed to bootstrap such a system (i.e., manufacture the plants.)”
We don’t have enough energy to build anything?
“Please take into account the amount of energy needed to maintain these plants”
How much energy is needed?
“Please take into account the gross inefficiency of converting solar energy into electricity”
Solar plants are more efficient than coal plants.
“transmitting it across a very lossy electrical grid”
We could build an electrical “superhighway” of high-voltage direct current lines to carry across several states, or produce hydrogen fuel during off-peak hours and ship it across country. Also many people would, likely, move to be near these plants once solar power became cheaper than other types, just like they moved west when transportation became cheap and easy, moved south when electricity (and thus air-conditioning) became cheap, and moved west when their farmland dried up and blew away.
“reconverting the remaining power into motion and heat”
Electrical motors are very efficient.