Spending cuts causing public backlash against coalition, says opinion poll

[ttosca]

? Guardian/ICM poll: 62% say austerity measures harm economy
? Half of voters unimpressed by coalition's record
? Only half Labour voters think Ed Miliband would be good PM

The tide of public opinion has turned against coalition spending cuts, according to a Guardian/ICM poll which shows a majority of voters now believe excessive austerity is doing more harm than good to the economy.

The research ? carried out this week before Labour's annual conference ? finds overwhelming public concern about the speed and pace of cuts in the face of the return to economic crisis and fears of a double-dip recession. Only 32% agree with the statement "the government's tax increases and public spending cuts are essential to protect Britain's economy".

Almost twice as many, 62%, now agree 'the cuts are too deep and too fast, they will harm Britain's economy more than they help it". Among voters only Conservatives are largely in favour of the coalition's programme - with 67% of definite Lib Dem and 87% of Labour supporters opposed.

www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/sep/23/public-opinion-turns-against-cuts?newsfeed=true

jack-

Ttosca - I think you'll find the USSR was run by a grand plan

Not really, no. There was no blueprint for Communist USSR. The details were worked out as it went along. The idea was a good one "To each according to their need, from each according to their ability". However, for various reasons, not least of which the Soviets were under attack, a deeply centralised state was formed. From the moment you have unaccountable centralised power and lose democracy, you no longer have a socialism.

I'm not convinced by the idea that an economy can be run by people acting for social good.

It's not about charity. It's about producing things which are needed and that the majority of people want. At the moment, you could have thousands of workers working in a factory for an expensive car which none of them can afford. This occurs because production occurs to profit, and it is still sometimes profitable to produce cars which 1/10,000th of the population can afford for a high price, than it is to produce a car which everyone can afford for a lower price.

Assuming that you can 'persuade' everybody that acting for 'social good' is the thing to do - how does each individual know what action to take?

Who does what work can be determined by local democratic councils. The community decides what is needed and people work out how it is to be made.

I struggle with ethical shopping choices & I really do try. Balancing organic, local, free-trade etc. is a head-ache. Imagine if every action was based on perceived 'social good'. Which job to take? how many children to have? Whether to be a working mother?

I agree there is a difficulty there. That's because Capitalism is necessarily amoral. You can try to shop 'ethically', but then you're also likely to pay more for your goods. Sometimes it's not feasible to act 'ethically' when you simply can't afford it. It's more 'ethical' to take the train and pollute less and free cities from cars to make them friendlier to pedestrians. A poor person can't make that choice, though, if driving a car to work is three times cheaper than taking the train because a privitised rail system extracts maximum profit from what is an essential public service and exploits its monopoly.

So I don't think 'ethical Capitalism' is a long term solution, as well intentioned as it is.

As for businesses - how will they decide - how much to pay staff? how much to charge customers? What products to design? Where to manufacture?

The staff are the business - or at least they will be when the public own the means of production. There is no split between the two, that is the point. They will be paid as much as everyone agrees they should be paid. Since there is no need to make profit, they can be paid, in theory, as much as the value they produce. However, they may be paid less in order so that the company can invest in order to expand or research. Alternatively, there may be a different system altogether where people aren't paid a money wage.

BTW - You can kinda factor 'social good' into capitalism by charging for externalities. Whilst consumer power can often be a force for social good (helped now by the Internet).

I'm sort of familiar with that theory, but I don't know much about it. AFAIK, you'll need heavy state intervention in order to impose taxation and penalties to influence demand and prices. The problem is that the state has been considerably weakened in the past few decades and is set to be further weakened. Furthermore, Capitalists will always fight for 'free-market' libertarianism - at least until they need to be bailed out by the public.

ttosca, one of the major arguments against communism (or fascism for that matter - they're both more or less the same) is the tendency to create an inconveniently large pile of dead bodies in a worryingly short time. At least with libertarianism (or any small state 'minarchism') there is no centralised powerbase to create such systematic havoc.

Free Market Capitalism, meanwhile, has lifted more people out of poverty in a shorter time frame, and feeds more of the world?s poor, than any other method of government that has been tried to date.

MrPants-

ttosca, one of the major arguments against communism (or fascism for that matter - they're both more or less the same) is the tendency to create an inconveniently large pile of dead bodies in a worryingly short time.

You probably mean State Capitalism, where there is a dictatorship, like China does and Russia had. The people fighting for a better world who are on the streets now are not fighting for authoritarian State Capitalism.

At least with libertarianism (or any small state 'minarchism') there is no centralised powerbase to create such systematic havoc.

There doesn't need to be. Who says there needs to be centralisation in order for mass murder and oppression and exploitation to occur?

Free Market Capitalism, meanwhile, has lifted more people out of poverty in a shorter time frame, and feeds more of the world?s poor, than any other method of government that has been tried to date.

This is simply wrong by virtue of the fact that there has never been free market Capitalism anywhere. It simply cannot exist. The state is needed, at the very least, to enforce contracts, to print money, the create and and enforce laws. Furthermore 'unregulated' Capitalism can't exist either, because you need the state to bring in anti-monopoly or anti-cartel laws in order for markets to function minimally.

Secondly, for a long period of time when there was Capitalism before social-democracy, it was not Capitalism which brought wealth and security to the masses. Capitalism before labour fought back with socialism through trade unions and social struggles benefited only a very tiny tiny minority of the population - kind of like what we're seeing more and more today. It was socialism which created the middle-classes, not Capitalism per se.