POLL: Are John McDonnell’s plans to revolutionise the economy feasible?
The shadow chancellor is planning to revolutionise the financial sector.
Take a look at the video in John McDonnell’s tweet, below:
Brilliant speech by the People's Chancellor, @johnmcdonnellMP, including reference to a financial transaction tax, and transplanting the 'magic money tree' from the Cayman Islands.#ChangeIsComing https://t.co/uxN5qapJlW
— Chris Williamson (@DerbyChrisW) September 15, 2018
Mr McDonnell rightly states that the finance sector should be the servant of the nation’s economy, not its master – that its responsibility is to generate the wealth we need to pay for the advances we want – and I hope nobody reading this would disagree.
He goes on to make several suggestions about how to make this happen – a financial transactions (“Robin Hood”) tax and tackling tax evasion are top of the list.
But will his ideas work? Let’s have a poll.
[polldaddy poll=10110122]I would appreciate your detailed opinions as well – please send them in as comments.
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I am not convinced that your poll is working, Sir.
It seems tto be working just fine.
If you consider austerity to be a policy driven by ideology that has impoverished the people, then it is obvious that reversing the govt cuts and tax cuts for the rich will produce an equal and opposite effect. While for the last 40+ years Neoliberalism has held the academic economists in its thrall, the obvious effect on driving inequality to almost medieval levels has begun to dawn on them. MMT is now gaining traction. It is a non-idelogical method that describes the positive effect of govt actually doing the job it should in providing housing, infrastructure, education and healthcare as being beneficial to the whole economy and to the well being of society.
Mike you should read Richard Murphy’s Tax Research blog
I cannot vote for a party that is intent on pursuing more Austerity. Ignoring the anti-semitism rubbish, THIS is a deal breaker for me.
Maybe I’d have been tempted not to respond if I was James Meadway. He’s dug himself a pretty immense hole here, but let me look at why. This is important: Meadway revealed just where Labour economic thinking is right now. Unpacking what he says reveals what he is saying.
First, it is that Labour thinks it has to live in fear of the money markets. And so bankers. And so their supposed ability to manipulate exchange rates.
Second, it shows that Labour is committed to leaving bankers (Carney & Co) in charge of these issues.
Third, it seems that Labour does remain committed to mainstream economic thinking, call it neoclassical or neoliberal if you wish.
Fourth, it thinks that to go back to a belief in full employment and the use of fiscal policy to achieve that and growth is a ‘regression in left economic thinking’.
And, fifth, Meadway apparently thinks that achieving the goals of full employment and growth will leave the currency valueless.
I think these are all entirely fair extrapolations. On the basis of them is also possible to say that Meadway thinks Labour thinks, as Liam Byrne said, that the money can run out, and that it may have actually done so.
And that he thinks banks will be setting the agenda for Labour.
And that austerity will remain in place.
And that all the possibilities of fiscal policy; the power to create money to achieve social goals and (as importantly) to create the means to settle tax to keep inflation under control in that situation should all be ignored.
In other words, and let’s not be too unsubtle about this, what Meadway is saying is expect Labour to deliver more Tory economic policy. Howard challenged him on this, and decoding his reply his response was ‘markets won’t let us do anything else’.
Richard Murphy goes on to say:
There is no surprise here: the reason why I refused the job of being McDonnell’s chief economic adviser in 2015 (Meadway was to be my deputy) was because McDonnell was adamant that he had to sign up to Osborne’s fiscal charter that required balanced budgets. That is still Labour policy, bar borrowing for investment, but with that borrowing to, however, be financed at market rates, and so be entirely within the goodwill of the banking system as Labour wants to see it. I maintain that in the circumstances I was right to quit: I could never have lived with such a timid approach towards the economic policy that this country needs for the radical transformation that is required to provide us with the basis for prosperity in the 21st-century. Meadway obviously can, and is delivering what John McDonnell wants in the form of deeply neoliberal, and profoundly conventional thinking. He can’t even get his head around the fact that tax plays a fundamental role in MMT.
And if you want to know why I think Labour is not a radical party capable at present of delivering anything like the change this country requires because it is led by people far too right wing, and far too conventional in their thinking to do so, that is it.
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2018/08/06/labours-chief-economic-adviser-confirms-it-is-committed-to-the-thinking-that-will-deliver-yet-more-austerity/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+org%2FlWWh+%28Tax+Research+UK+2%29
John McDonnell is a good man who has the people of Britain at heart.
The Rich have got away with it for far too long, time to reverse the trend.
Austerity’s sole purpose is genocide of the poor (published science into world history) and is dereliction of duty of government in a recession, as only by government spending creates money into the economy, in an economic downturn as the banks cannot do it.
Under austerity, both young and old have died in huge number over the last 10 years. By design. Because that is what austerity has always done. The high death rate this decade, has been the same as the decade of the 1890s, yes the Victorian era.
The under age 64 / quicker deaths in retirement by 20 per cent increase of working class pensioner poverty (the majority of us) since 2011-2013 start of austerity, included the 1950s ladies thieved our state pension for half a decade and our collateral victims of the I Daniel Blakes (Ken Loach endorses the BackTo60 campaign, for example).
Now the CAC have rejected for debate, GREY SWANS’ Motion to Labour’s Annual Conference, so ensuring that the vital but still lost Grey Vote is not gained by Labour to achieve a majority (closest to 326 elected Labour MPs) government for Jeremy Corbyn, from 2nd early election (most recent rumours on front page of Financial Times, Saturday September 15, 2018).
Grey Swans’ Motion was based on the state pension policies of Attlee, Harold Wilson, Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell MPs.
Right now Labour’s Manifesto state pension policies are like a table lain with only salt and pepper and no meal.
Give Grey Swans the state pension policies that would win big, and leave us to gain the vital Grey Vote for Labour, locally, nationally and internationally. The Grey Vote starts from age 50 and they are within the mass of working class who vote for no political party at all. It is the non-voters that are the reason the Tories win.
Austerity has more then doubled the debt because there’s no grout. Any business man will tell you to invest to get growth
So far we are under a system organised and directed by the central banks, these people do as they please create inflation or deflation they are always in profit.
This system is coming to an end, they were hoping a different president in USA therefore they could hide the future crach under a third world war and reproducing the same agenda, lucky for us Mr Trump won and is going to disclose a lot of hiden stories to us and help us to abolish all the central banks and to nationalise them to serve the people.