Thursday 15 April 2010

Propaganda and its Guises

"Dear Sir,
As expected, a key election issue concerns how much to cut government expenditure in 2010/11.   The main opposition party now proposes to cut an extra £6 billion, on top of the measures already planned by the government.   This cut is described as efficiency savings.   But in macroeconomic terms it is just a cut by another name.   It will lead directly to job losses and indirectly to further falls in spending through the standard multiplier process. This is not the time for such a destabilising action.   The recovery is still fragile.   Firms and households are saving more to rebuild their balance sheets, so that firms are investing less and households are spending less.   Only when the recovery is well underway, will it be safe to have extra cuts in government expenditure.   The first step is to make sure that growth returns, and thus that tax receipts recover.   Rash action now could imperil not only jobs but also the prospects for reducing the deficit."

Reading that letter makes me sigh.   Of course it would be nice not to cut, particularly if you look at the world with keynesian eyes, as Skidelsky does.  But  others, with other eyes,  do not intend to cut out of sheer viciousness -  though the temptation to remove 'jobs' which are nothing more than client-state sinecures is strong.

The economic incompetence, nay true economic illiteracy of Brown, left festering at the heart of our country's economic governance for far too long by the New Labour power compromise, requires immediate cuts. International creditors have held off until May, after that, the deluge if inappropriate keynsian partisanship attempts to encourage the big state, anti-democratic, 'progressive' authoritarian rule.  

The attitude displayed in this letter is nothing to do with economic truth, or even economic best practice. Old men seeking self-justification for an intellectual stance they have held all their lives and cannot bear to recognise now is inadequate for dealing with the economic circumstances to which our country has been reduced,  should be aware that letters of this kind to the newspapers are nothing more than propaganda dressed as technical judgment.  They are propaganda for a discreditable, corrupt, anti-democratic bully and his party, posing as defenders of the poor and providers of equality and a fair chance for all.

Keynes is an Angels hero. This, however, is not about economics. It's about democracy and the assault being mounted on it by the usual suspects: by those who think they are qualified and equipped to tell us what to do and constrain us, attack us, wage war on some of us, if we won't.

After  thirteen years of anti-democratic government, some have wondered if a  kind of Truth and Reconciliation commission might be needed to mend the damage done by self-styled and appointed-among-themselves shepherds of us the poor people, and bring them to book.   Angels recommends the measures adopted in Italy after the overthrow of Fascism - another, if cruder,  exemplar of economic corporatism, social bullying, and war-mongering.

UPDATE

The letter has been published in the Times.  Among others, after Skidelsky, it is signed as you would expect by: Richard Layard, David Blanchflower, Victoria Chick, Partha Dasgupta, Richard Portes and,
in collaboration with,  Aubrey Silberston!
 

8 comments:

Weekend Yachtsman said...

Interesting to compare Broon with Mussolini; apart from the lack of military paraphernalia (indeed, the lack of any military knowledge or understanding whatever), it's an apt comparison.

It seems to me that "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato" seems to sum up Broon's approach pretty completely.

hatfield girl said...

Brown is far too degraded a political specimen to be a serious Mussolini contender. He is, I fear, the pathetic puppet, or should that be puppy?, of other powers, as is his entire court. Not that Mr and Mrs Brown, particularly Mrs, are not very keen on retaining the trappings of house and car and plane.

hatfield girl said...

Though you have caught him in that quote to perfection, Yacht.

Antisthenes said...

This is the sort of rhetoric that the voters want to hear, anything else is an unpalatable truth. It works along the lines that sticking your head under the bedclothes then the burglar cant hurt you. Well it worked for me when I was a child and it works for the average voter. The Keynesian dipstick knows that and he and the other socialist dipsticks are playing that card for all it is worth. As a child I also believed in fairies and heroes coming to the rescue if things got bad and eventually everything would be put right by the wave of a wand or the arrival of knight in shinning armor all at the 11th hour. The dipsticks are playing that card as well as the voters want to wait too, thinking that by some magic if nothing is done now it will all be put right later.

That is why the polls are so narrow fantasy is winning over reality.

Elby the Beserk said...

Given the manifestos, and given what the main parties are putting out as daily fare, one would not know that we are in an economic crisis the like of which almost none of us have ever witnessed before.

I've been flip-flopping, with regard to whom I might vote for. We have an excellent sitting Lib Dem MP, however, his party leader is a nincompoop, and the flighty talking of post-election pacts with Labour make me very wary indeed.

Also, we have an excellent Tory candidate, and there is a part of me that wants to vote for her - this is a marginal Lib Dem .v. Tory seat - to try to ensure that Any Party But Brown has a workable majority.

Yet the nearer the election gets the more weary I feel about it. I can't summon the energy to read the papers, happily we have no TV to throw heavy objects at when the loathsome Brown appears, and I wonder whether a Tory victory will make the slightest difference. I want a party to which all that Labour stand for is anathema, not one heading towards Labour Light Blue, and I want a party that is firmly committed to unshackling us from Brussels. The EU is even less democratic than the UK, so regardless, we end up enslaved.

I didn't vote at the last election, for the first time in my life. Partly as I was in Cornwall and had not arranged a postal vote, but that itself was the result of utter ennui with the political process.

I have applied this time, but seem to be heading once more to a "bollocks to the lot of you" scenario which could see me waste my vote on UKIP.

There is a big chunk of me that WOULD like to vote for Cameron; but the Tory party I see is not geared to the Libertarian I am for lack of a better label.

Yours, confused of Frome...

hatfield girl said...

Elby, she said in a fierce angelic voice, You put yourself in the mindset of waking to find Brown has been re-elected, refuses to stand down....

Then you go right along to the polling station, hand Pig into the care of the Conservative lady outside for a moment, and vote for the candidate most likely to defeat the brownite apparatchik creep standing in your constituency.

And if you don't the brownite apparatchiks will steal your vote, so at the very least go down there and spoil it.

And take all the family with you.

At the very least, make sure no-one else is voting in your name.

Elby the Beserk said...

HG,

Last election

LibDem - 22000
Tory - 21500
Labour - 5000

We have had NO Labour canvassing or electoral material; indeed, I only learnt the name of the candidate a month or so back, and have already forgotten it; an avid reader of the local rags, he has not made a single appearance in them, whilst Heath & Rees-Mogg are always featured.

As noted, either will I know make fine MPs, and Heath already is one. And yes, I know, it is my duty to vote Brown out, and I am sure I will do. Will I feel represented? Personally, maybe, but not for my political views. Am I that extreme?

hatfield girl said...

Your constituency really gets to the point, doesn't it Elby. You feel the Liberal is a decent MP but if his party is to support Brown's continuing in office....

And it's no good the Liberal Democrats saying they won't accept Brown continuing as prime minister. We've been through all of that for years. They're going to lose seats if they don't join the Brown Out party and only after that will consider alliances. And they're going to have to declare where they stand before the vote because we can't take the risk of any more Brown Labour.