Double Dip Recession

[Voidka]

So if the Tories dont have a Plan B, what are they going to do now? (Not including blaming the last government even though they have been in power themselves for 2 years!)

Yes cycles and waves are the same thing. I bought Schumpeter's book many years ago, but never read it.

Just looked him up on wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schumpeter

Are you sure he was a Marxist? The way I see it is that he sees capitalism as a good thing, but does believe that it will be eventually destoyed by intellectuals who will bring in socialism in its place. That makes sense if you look at the litterati, chatterati, intelligentsia, Guardian reading greens etc., who are an intellectual force that will limit capitalism and possibly eventually replace it with a less dynamic form of socialism.

I don't know why it's such a mad idea that employees should have a say in the way companies are run - and not just on executive pay, although that seems like a good place to start. Works for the Germans. We've had enough lectures about the German economy from the Thatcherites over the years, funny they never mention that aspect...

The idea that it's a mad idea comes from the mad idea that the employees of a company have absolutely no interest in the company's success.

And the idea that absolutely anyone who is an employee is clearly too thick to understand the business they work in.

i dont think its realistic to expect an employee to know how to run the business. otherwise, why do they only earn say £25k?

higher up the business, views are going to be more grounded in fact.

And of course, it's unrealistic to expect an employee on £25,000 to understand that the chief executive deserves £10,000,000.

Some people only earn what they earn because they like what they do, not because they are too stupid to earn more. And it is known for employees to earn considerably more than £25,000. One's earnings are not inextricably linked to one's intelligence or even to one's understanding of the business for which one works. I wouldn't necessarily rate a board executive's understanding of how a factory production line could work most efficiently higher than that of a worker on the factory floor. Sometimes it's the failure to credit one's employees with any intelligence whatsoever and therefore never to solicit their opinions or give them any genuine incentive to offer them, that causes a business to fail. If I were treated as someone unimportant who was just there for the pay cheque and not for the good of the company, I would tend to behave that way and not stick my neck out and comment on poor working practice or potential improvements in working methods.

I support the idea that employees have an input but that ultimately it is the management who decide.

The german example is a good one. The management & unions have much more of a consensus based approach. But to the best of my knowledge, that consensus does not extend to the unions being able to decide on management pay or company strategic direction. In fact, I dearly wish our unions were more like their German counterparts who try to work with management rather than merely in it for themselves.

So yes, I support the idea that employees have a voice. But not that they have the power to decide. Can you imagine an army where the soldiers get to choose which battles to fight?

And specifically on the pay issue. If I own a small company and I pay my top employee £x a year because i think he/she is worth it. Why is it anyone else's business? Surely in a free society we are free to do what we want as long as it doesn't harm anyone else. Am I harming anyone here? I think not.

And if my company grows to a large one, does this principle change?

1. Some people only earn what they earn because they like what they do which is fine but its hardly the majority is it? plus if someone likes what they do and doesnt want even one promotion, how can they suddenly comment with knowledge on the entire business?

1. the board dont need to know how the production line works, but there needs to be someone between them and the floor that does.

i think you are thinking of v old style top down manufacturing. i dont think you can complete on a global stge without kanban/lean manufacturing which requires input into the process from the shop floor.

the shop floor understand their jobs the best, but not international markets, current fluctuations etc.

Capitalism, Socialism, both depend on the unpaid labour of women. Both systems would fall apart without the exploitation of women, especially their free reproductive services...

But yeah, if I had to choose I'd go for socialism.

To be honest, I find all this splitting hairs over which system is better quite amusing. Look at where the exploitation is, because that's all that counts. All these arguments do is paste it over and invisibilise it.

Any political scientist can tell you that every political system is dependant on women's free labour (particularly their free reproductive services: communism and nazi germany wrote women's reproductive services into their manifestos. Capitalism is not so explicit about its dependency on women, but without the people that women produce, the system would have no customers.
Despite this, women are further exploited in both systems and they are paid the least, have the least job security etc, while men (who are redundant to the system, because they do not produce children for free) actually reap the rewards.
Customers are kind of important to a capitalist system, and they have to come from somewhere.

I think it's very extreme to say that every system is exploiting women.

Without women there would be no people, no society and therefore no need for any political system at all. So I am not sure of what your point is.

The point is that while the system depends on women's unpaid labour, (the example I've given is reproductive labour), and that political scientists accept that without the unpaid labour of women all political systems would fall apart [in the case of capitalism, for example, there would be no clients or customers]... women are shafted economically by all the political/economic systems.

Socialism shafts women a little less, though. Which is the main point.

oh and yes, dependancy on unpaid labour, using women's unpaid labour to support an economic system... and then leaving women to rot down at the bottom of the pile... yes I suppose you're right in your assertion that exploitation is the wrong word. "Exploitation" is far too light to describe what's going on.

sakura, the real elite are not capitalist and the real elite don't want more consumers - they want less population. They want population control. It is the real elite who push climate change and say that ordinary people are using up the elite's resources. They want fewer people and they have thinktanks where they discuss how they can sell lower size families to the public.

Birth control, the fall in living standards and austerity are all part of an attempt to reduce family size and decrease the rate of population growth.

The real elite controls the socialists - they dance to their tune and court their media moguls - and the real elite wants zero or negative growth in order to limit population. The real elite pushes the media line to impose extra green taxes on business in order to limit growth of the people, their prosperity and their population. The real elite are not capitalist.

Sakura, you are so right. Globalisation and neoliberalism have further eroded the rights of women. In emerging economies it is women who now make up the majority of poorly paid labour. Not only are women providing cheap(er) labour they are also responsible for reproduction of more workers/consumers.

What I think is interesting is, that again we see a clear division between the public/private sphere. Profits are privatised off the back off cheap female labour and the nuclear family (a creation of capitalism) is responsible for the social inputs that support those profits. The same is happening with welfare, capitalism creates the social conditions under which welfare is required, privatises profit and socialises the social costs in maintaining a healthy supply of worker/consumers. We see this now with the changes to the NHS and Dave's big society, which is an absolute horror story for women.

"Socialism shafts women a little less, though. Which is the main point."

Maybe on paper. I would love to learn which socialist countries "shaft" women "a little less" then the most developed capitalist ones. And no, Northern Europe and Germany is not socialist in its classic definition.

"The real elite are not capitalist" what are they claig?

It was the real elite that set up teh 'Club of Rome' on one of Rockefeller's estates and commissioned intellectual academics and university staff to write reports such as 'Limits To Growth' which fed many of the ideas of the Green movement which continues to push the message of "limits to growth" and even zero growth and negative growth. That is exactly what the real elite want - the super billionaires on their huge estates with the masses outside their gates.

The real elite are an aristocratic elite of Guardians, just like in Plato's Republic, from which communism takes its real inspiration. Just as in Plato's system, they are anti family, since families grow in size, they are anti private property, since prosperity means that the people will increase in sze.

They want to control the masses, the oiks, the serfs on their huge plantations. The real elite are the 1% and we are the 99%. But the real elite are not capitalists, they don't believe in meritocracy or social mobility or prosperity for the poor.

They don't want the oiks to rise above their station, they don't want growth and enterprise so that the mases increase their size, their property and prosperity. The real elite want zero growth and even negative growth.

Does anyone know why the Guardian newspaper is called the 'Guardian'? Why was that name chosen? I don't know the history.

Hmmm, that name again?

Claig, I know. These people had the power in the 20's to massively restrict the money supply and we know what happened then. They have funded both world wars and they continue to profit from both crisis and growth.

Isn't it about time we massively undermined their assets? and therefore their power?

I don't think anything can really be done. They are powerful and super rich, we are hostage to debt and the economy and mortgages etc. They control many political parties and often fool ordinary people into believing that they are on the people's side. When the people become disilusioned with the failures of one party - Tweedledum- , they bring in the other side - Tweedledee. And so it goes, plus ca change.

But they don't want capitalism, because capitalism leads to the increasing prosperity of many ordinary people.