Kemi Badenoch appointed new Minister for Women and Equalities

[Manteiga]

And International Trade Secretary. I'd have preferred to see her as Secretary of State for Education in addition to Minister for Women and Equalities, but this is good news.

twitter.com/Conservatives/status/1584957913059454976

Labour and Conservatives are both more interested in money than family and community. They are both chasing productivity and growth rather than human happiness and fulfilment.

I'm in complete agreement. Both Labour and Tories are neoliberal capitalist parties, intent on 'growth'.

I watched the 'march of the mummies' yesterday and wondered about exactly this childcare question.

From the left its often positioned as 'keeping women chained to the home as baby making machines'. But in practise, that 'free childcare' (it's not free, it's tax-funded) compels women to pay other women to pay for their children, while they go back to be productive cogs in the machine.

And of course it has very deep and far reaching effects on the humans involved, on families, and thus on society.

I actually think care is probably the single most crucial social issue facing all of us. Especially as the population ages and requires more of it. And given that almost always the burden of care falls to women.

We need jobs to be happy though so too right I want a government who looks at growth not decline of the economy.

Jobs build happier communities too.

We need jobs to be happy - do we?

There’s a lot of unpaid work needing doing and being done, mostly by women, in society. We don’t all need jobs at all. In fact society wouldn’t work well if we did.

Not everyone obviously. Some people would be happier never working,

But yes across a population or community high unemployment is no great shakes.

Above a percentage you’re more likely to see riots and unrest. Other social issues would surface - family stress and DV

I’m definitely not one for high unemployment

'According to a report by Oxfam and the Institute for Women's Policy Research, the monetary value of unpaid care work is estimated at nearly $11 trillion a year.[35][36] This amounts to an enormous subsidy to the capitalist economy, and paying for it would likely render the current system uneconomic, subverting the social relations in the process.'

A woman providing care is not 'unemployed'

This still takes an earner and someone to pay for it.

Obviously if a family decides to do that, great. But wanting no growth and higher level of people out of work wouldn’t help families make that decision anyway.

The previous post was

But wanting no growth and higher level of people out of work wouldn’t help families make that decision anyway.

Nobody has suggested that. At all.

Some people need jobs to be happy - I don’t.

I can’t think of anyone in my family/friend/acquaintance circle whose job makes them happy right now. Maybe one at a push!
I’ve been looking at conversion degrees to do something helpful, allied health care professions or social or youth work, but the education and work environments are so toxic due to IDPOL it’s a lot easier not to (especially as the pay in these fields doesn’t acknowledge the stress).

Completely agree re: Labour. Such a disappointment - completely hollow with no real ideas or proposal to make changes beyond tinkering round the edges.

(throwing Lever/Sunlight Soap into the mix of old companies that believed in quality of life for workers - Port Sunlight is a lovely place to live)

nearly $11 trillion a year.[35][36] This amounts to an enormous subsidy to the capitalist economy, and paying for it would likely render the current system uneconomic, subverting the social relations in the process.'

this is important and obviously of enormous value to society.

.. talking about ‘growth’ and how they didn’t like it

A woman who stays home is not unemployed but still needs a household income (unless they have their own savings which came from a job etc) - so a partner who relies on growth.

You need someone to earn in your household though right?

On a community level wanting decline is madness even if you don’t personally want to work.

This is what I’m responding to

Both Labour and Tories are neoliberal capitalist parties, intent on 'growth'.

Good. I want my dc to work, businesses to thrive, it’s not about sahm which is just a division of labour that families decide on.

So what’s the alternative to ‘growth’?

‘Decline’?

Another interesting example, but one which shows some of the ambiguities and problems, is the company Mondragon.

It is a worker owned cooperative model which came out of the early 20th century. At that time there was an explosion of worker based models, another being the Antigonish movement, that grew up around the idea of local groups of workers coming together and pooling resources, you see co-op enterprises, credit unions were central, co-op stores, learning groups and libraries.

It's very difficult to place this movement on the political left or right, as we think about the right now, anyway. They really sprang from the Catholic Social Encyclicals, which supplied a principle they called subsidiarity. This said that any social activity should take place at the lowest level at which is can in fact function. We tend to think of co-ops and such as leftist, but they really werre not looking for the state to swoop in and solve issues that could be tackled at a lower level.

Mondragon was spectacularly successful in the model they built for this - they solved some of the problems many co-op movements found inherent in their own models - and became a major employer in their region, offering things like health care, pensions, and other supports to employees long before political states began to do so.

Now, the end of the story is that Mondragon still exists, but many people feel their model has been impossibly compromised. Largely this restructuring was a response to the pressures of globalism, cheap labour on a global scale was not something they could stand against as they were - largely they were not selling fancy sleeping bags but things like industrial tools etc.

But what I would point out here with regards to this corporation is that you could make a good argument that this was a fundamentally conservative project, not a project of the left.

Broadly it tends to get placed as a third way approach along with the Distributists - people like Chesterton, and Belloc. Their claim was that the left and right were mirror images - one took the money of the people for the state elites to control, and the other took the money of the people for business elites to control. In all cases human autonomy and community were compromised.

So, one thing I would say about growth is that it's historically very abnormal.

It's really only in the late 19th and 20th century that you have these kinds of high levels of economic growth, or that people thought that was important or necessary. Before that the idea was much more steady state.

There are economists now who argue that the growth explosion is an historical aberration and can't be maintained without problems, and that chasing it prevents more stable, healthy models being looked at.

Unfortunatly that kind of change is deep economics and I can't see how any traditional political party could grapple with it in a global economy. It's a collective action problem a lot like climate change. I almost think doing anything about it would depend on nation states withdrawing to some extent from globalism.

Look where we are though in those centuries - medicine in particular, but also social change which I benefit from as a woman, that striving does have issues but I’ll gladly take this time over earlier centuries, despite those frictions.

Population growth in itself well may reverse. It does bring new problems as ageing population but at least not constant need to share resources around millions more.

"Minister for Women" is an acceptable shorthand for "Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for Women"

We need a purpose in life, certainly. A reason to get up in the morning. A job can provide that purpose. So can raising a family. A lot of people who retire without hobbies to occupy their newly found spare time will struggle to stay healthy.

To be clearer the jobs to be happy was on community level.

A community without the opportunities to thrive will see many more issues than others. At some point, over 30% unemployment iirc, you’re more likely to see riots and civil unrest.

I’m not drawn into the idea we don’t need growth and it’ll be lovelier. High youth unemployment in particular I’d try to avoid.

Indeed Frys and Caburys are really good historic examples. I don't think you can call them examples of the left either.

If memory serves they come from the Victorian rather conservative values consistent with many of the religious movements of the time such as the Methodists. These promoted the concept of dignity through hard work. The thought was that those given the opportunity to work and willing to work hard were 'morally better' in someway.

These religious movements were typically working class or lower middle class rather than middle class. We see a lot of this attitude still today in slightly different forms - its not a creation of the modern daily mail by any means. But crucially this was supported by the local community.

We see the common theme about the decline of community as part of our wider social problems but little discussion about ways in which we can create it in new ways. This is where the internet fails to provide for human needs and we can't get away from this dilemma. We need to do more to address it.

The victorian idealists who saw workers as an asset rather than a commodity to be exploited.

The philanthropy of the Victorian era where people left public legacies for the betterment of society, don't really exist in the same way in the uk either.

When the Conservatives wanted to push this idea with Big Society what didn't happen was this investment from big businesses or economic elites which would mirrored the past.

Instead it was pushed purely onto the middle class and working class, which ultimately is unsustainable with an aging population.

I also think one of the consequences of covid and Brexit has been to highlight issues with supply chains and our lack of production sector and the problems generally with outsourcing. What we perhaps need to start thinking about is if we 'buy british' and pay more for labour and better quality products it well be perversely cost effective if it means you have people who are less dependant on the state to top up their income and we keep money within our tax system rather than it going elsewhere.

This again, could be seen as right wing and nationalistic, however it has left wing economic benefits which also make sense.

Now I'm massively pro-EU but I think the way our economy has ended up structured has become problematic in the context this and the EU. That does come down to national government failures of planning and long term economic strategy not just the evil EU though.

I think we need to start to see things more as 'counterweighting'. The public interest is served best by balancing competing interests across the board.

Economically and politically.

For that we actually have to talk to an engage with both Labour and the Conservatives rather than encouraging screaming at each other.

Sorry, rambling and increasingly off topic but I'm fed up of threads like this where it is just so pathetically tribal.

Its so fucking self defeating and against our own interests.

I do think we need to feel that we are making a valuable contribution to our communities in order to have purpose and fulfilment. That is I think something which has been true for as long as we have existed.

Broadly it tends to get placed as a third way approach along with the Distributists - people like Chesterton, and Belloc. Their claim was that the left and right were mirror images - one took the money of the people for the state elites to control, and the other took the money of the people for business elites to control. In all cases human autonomy and community were compromised.

This is really interesting Mangy, I need to look up more about these people.

I also think one of the consequences of covid and Brexit has been to highlight issues with supply chains and our lack of production sector and the problems generally with outsourcing. What we perhaps need to start thinking about is if we 'buy british' and pay more for labour and better quality products it well be perversely cost effective if it means you have people who are less dependant on the state to top up their income and we keep money within our tax system rather than it going elsewhere.

Absolutely this. I do think that stability and sustainability are the better way forward so neither endless growth nor inexorable decline.

I think that relying on what we can do in the the UK, buying British, buying local, paying more if we can for British products made by craftsmen and women would better support our communities and societies and making us less dependent on overseas markets for things which can be produced here would benefit security and stability. It also resolves issues such as ill gotten gains from slave labour or exploitative labour far from our shores.

Absolutely this. I do think that stability and sustainability are the better way forward so neither endless growth nor inexorable decline.

Yes!