My friend Prof. Mary Mellor had this letter in The Guardian this morning. I share it with her permission:
Both your editorial (The Guardian view on the UK falling apart: Labour must reject the orthodoxy that caused it to crumble, 4 September) and Owen Jones are right to be concerned that the Labour party is disappearing down a neoliberal rabbit hole. Unwilling to challenge the inequalities of market economics, Labour is only left with the hope of a level of growth that seems increasingly unlikely. A pluralist economics would recognise the weaknesses of a market that encourages greed and opportunism, while people drown in debt and a cost of living crisis. It would also be aware of the extent that the market relies on state investment and spending – witness the massive state rescues in the 2007-08 financial crisis and the pandemic.
Neoliberals may reject this as believing in magic money trees, but the demonstrated power of the state to create and circulate such huge sums of money must be the key to an economics based on fairness and social justice. The aim would be to create true wealth as wellbeing – what could be called “wellth”.
Prof Mary Mellor
Mary Mellor is absolutely right.
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I too have sent a letter to the Guardian in response on this very topic, asking for thatcherism to be repudiated by Laboured and name dropped your Taxing Wealth launch too as a means to find new ways to do things.
Fingers crossed.
What does the research show on the link between printing money and inequality?
That trolls like asking questions irrelevant to the matter being discussed.
Nice one!
My own research suggests that my A.I. controlled state of the art printing press capable of producting perfect Euro50 and Euro100 notes is making me very equal with the 1%.
Sadly, the Uk gov (that indeed does control its own printing presses) – seems unwilling to embark on a similar experiment in wealth creation. Can’t think why – its fun & legal in their case.
Gotta go – the Dom Perignon & caviar is waiting
Neo liberalism in practise seem to be more about the concentration of wealth (upwards) than wealth creation. It was never about equity. Not that the definition of wealth is clear – beyond financial wealth. The UK only makes the top ten of The wealthiest nations if ranked in total cash terms. We keep hearing we are a wealthy nation,. Against other counts we are lower, and due to failure to manage and invest in the whole economy the trend is down. On the asset side of the economy we should account for natural wealth, human wealth, social wealth and intellectual wealth and at the end of the day health is the ultimate wealth.
For 13 years the value of our national wealth has been allowed to decline. Inequity has grown massively. Job done?
Labour’s policy of ignoring inequalities and letting growth sort it out is the same as Liz Truss “growing the pie”.
Richard, I am really glad you are turning to wellth (quality of life). When you start to measure wellth, you see it is subject to an extreme law of diminishing returns.
Trivial example: You go for your walk by the river, finishing with a coffee. If you took a longer walk and drank four cups of coffee, it would cost four times as much, but would you be four times happier?
More seriously, the current financial system is designed to deliver the minimum increase in overall wellth, for the maximum amount of money. Fewer and fewer people benefit and as they are already well-off, their increase in wellbeing will be small.
I am sure a derivatives trader is happier when a trade gives a £1 million profit, but it is one person and their increase in wellth will be small.
Stopping a million children from going hungry each week would provide a massive overall increase in wellth, for a quite moderate cost.
Wellth is about the most mispriced commodity one can conceive of.