EXIT NEGOTIATIONS

[Pannonian]

So would you admit Lloyd George and Churchill to be genuine British liberals, or are they too continental for your taste?

[Husar]

no, you got it. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Concepts_of_Liberty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism

"Friedrich Hayek identified two different traditions within classical liberalism: the "British tradition" and the "French tradition". Hayek saw the British philosophers Bernard Mandeville, David Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, Josiah Tucker and William Paley as representative of a tradition that articulated beliefs in empiricism, the common law and in traditions and institutions which had spontaneously evolved but were imperfectly understood. The French tradition included Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Marquis de Condorcet, the Encyclopedists and the Physiocrats. This tradition believed in rationalism and sometimes showed hostility to tradition and religion. Hayek conceded that the national labels did not exactly correspond to those belonging to each tradition: Hayek saw the Frenchmen Montesquieu, Benjamin Constant and Alexis de Tocqueville as belonging to the "British tradition" and the British Thomas Hobbes, Joseph Priestley, Richard Price and Thomas Paine as belonging to the "French tradition".[24][25] Hayek also rejected the label laissez-faire as originating from the French tradition and alien to the beliefs of Hume and Smith.

Guido De Ruggiero also identified differences between "Montesquieu and Rousseau, the English and the democratic types of liberalism"[26] and argued that there was a "profound contrast between the two Liberal systems".[27] He claimed that the spirit of "authentic English Liberalism" had "built up its work piece by piece without ever destroying what had once been built, but basing upon it every new departure". This liberalism had "insensibly adapted ancient institutions to modern needs" and "instinctively recoiled from all abstract proclamations of principles and rights".[27] Ruggiero claimed that this liberalism was challenged by what he called the "new Liberalism of France" that was characterised by egalitarianism and a "rationalistic consciousness".[28]"

https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?QueryId=21699

You're still confusing me. You called my example from earlier a strawman because it is not what you want. It is something that probably could happen to you in Chile. Chile is a country that follows the Hayek/Friedman principle that was set up by people who were directly educated about it by Friedman in the US, the "Chicago Boys", and they did it under a dictatorship, funnily enough... So here you're quoting Hayek and other people espousing these ideas, but when I talk about the downsides of their relatively pure implementation as seen in Chile, you keep calling it a strawman and say it's not what you want.

Perhaps you want to explain to me what is so great about Chile and its relatively pure implementation of the economics you're advertising here?
Or perhaps it's just that Australia and Canada don't quite follow the ideology you think you want as much as I assume you want it? Do you even want it fully implemented or just to a certain degree? Please enlighten me.
What do you like about it and what not?

[Pannonian]

You're still confusing me. You called my example from earlier a strawman because it is not what you want. It is something that probably could happen to you in Chile. Chile is a country that follows the Hayek/Friedman principle that was set up by people who were directly educated about it by Friedman in the US, the "Chicago Boys", and they did it under a dictatorship, funnily enough... So here you're quoting Hayek and other people espousing these ideas, but when I talk about the downsides of their relatively pure implementation as seen in Chile, you keep calling it a strawman and say it's not what you want.

Perhaps you want to explain to me what is so great about Chile and its relatively pure implementation of the economics you're advertising here?
Or perhaps it's just that Australia and Canada don't quite follow the ideology you think you want as much as I assume you want it? Do you even want it fully implemented or just to a certain degree? Please enlighten me.
What do you like about it and what not?

You won't be able to speak from experience as you're from the German education system, but I can tell you that the pure market liberalism Furunculus talks about is as alien to your average Englishman as the dialectic materialism of Marx and Engels. In the British education system, it's pure Whig up to the end of compulsory education, at which point progressive liberalism takes over, which approaches society from the opposite pole from which Furunculus argues. Pure market liberalism as Furunculus argues it is the realm of the privileged elite, who are the only ones to benefit from it. It only gains traction from its association with patriotism, or more accurately, its opponents' utter lack of it.

[Furunculus]

stuff

your being given philosophical context, not a practical implementation to aspire to.

pannonian above is not quite right, i'd suggest, noting instead that the British education system is pure progressiveism up to the end of compulsory education, something which can just about be labelled 'liberalism' but in fact bears little relationship to classical liberalism of the negative liberty type.

despite this, it cannot be said that britain as a whole has ever attained an acceptance of socialism, with our left wing movement rooted in the labour movement instead. nor too can it be said that we have achieved the level of enthusiam for collective social action and positive liberty as found in france etc.

the explanation of the difference between british and french liberalism being a good primer here.

[Husar]

your being given philosophical context, not a practical implementation to aspire to.

So after I told you why your tax cuts plan is a bad idea, the only answer you have is "but according to my ideology here, it's a good idea!"?
That's it?

[Furunculus]

So after I told you why your tax cuts plan is a bad idea, the only answer you have is "but according to my ideology here, it's a good idea!"?
That's it?

That pretty little voice-over'ed infographic is *one* view, here is another:

https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/upload...Growth-PDF.pdf

Here is a nice chewy extract, that wouldn't easily be put into some chirpy narration for a web-video:

The size of government: maximising growth and welfare

Given the macro- and microeconomic effects of government spending and taxation on growth and welfare, as well as the fact that the provision of certain public goods can be regarded as welfare enhancing, it is reasonable to ask whether there are ‘growth-maximising’ or ‘welfare-maximising’ levels of government expenditure. There is a third statistic of interest, which is the revenue-maximising level of taxation and spending – if the government is spending beyond this level, it means that a reduction in tax rates will increase growth sufficiently that tax revenues will increase. A government spending beyond this level is totally destructive of economic welfare. Clearly, there are growth and welfare maximising levels of government spending in theory, but, in practice, it is much more difficult to identify those levels. Indeed, the growth-maximising and welfare-maximising levels of government spending will depend on a number of time- and context-specific factors (for example, how mobile labour and capital are – if they are more mobile, tax is more likely to be damaging to growth; how efficiently government provides services; and the shape of the tax system).
Despite the practical difficulties, we can make some generalisations and, during this debate, certain rules of thumb – that were based on older national accounts definitions, however – have tended to become accepted by people who have worked in this area (Smith 2006). These included:

• The growth-maximising share of government spending in
GDP was some 20–25 per cent of GDP. This was based on the
fact that ratios in this range were typical of the fast growing
South East Asian ‘Tiger’ economies, countries such as Japan
and Korea in their high growth phases, and even Australia,
Canada and Spain in the 1950s.
This indicative range should
probably be revised down to some 18.5–23.5 per cent, using
current (June 2016) UK definitions.

• The welfare-maximising share of government spending
in GDP was less than some 30–35 per cent of GDP. This
conclusion was based on the work of Tanzi and Schuknecht
(2000) and Tanzi (2008), who examined the effects of state
spending on a range of objective measures of human
wellbeing. They concluded that there was no sign of
improved outcomes for welfare measures once spending had
exceeded these limits. Subsequent methodological changes

• The upper limit on taxable capacity was around 38 per
cent, implying that the public finances eventually became
unsustainable if general government expenditure was
allowed to increase much beyond 40 per cent of GDP. (8)
On current definitions, the upper limit on taxable capacity
in Britain seems to be around 37.5 per cent of factor-cost
GDP (Figure 1), or 33 per cent on the market-price measure,
suggesting that spending only becomes sustainable when it
falls into the 37–38 per cent range.

The ratios calculated using the factor-cost measure of national income would be higher. However, it is not difficult to convert from one basis to another, using the GDP figures in Table 4. It is also worth noting that Mr osborne’s March 2016 Budget target that government spending should be down to 37.2 per cent of market-price GDP by 2020/21 looks at the upper margin of what is reasonable if the aim is long-term fiscal sustainability, but not, of course, if the aim is welfare maximisation. Certainly, there seems little scope for the new Chancellor, Mr Hammond, to relax his predecessor’s spending targets

[Pannonian]

your being given philosophical context, not a practical implementation to aspire to.

pannonian above is not quite right, i'd suggest, noting instead that the British education system is pure progressiveism up to the end of compulsory education, something which can just about be labelled 'liberalism' but in fact bears little relationship to classical liberalism of the negative liberty type.

despite this, it cannot be said that britain as a whole has ever attained an acceptance of socialism, with our left wing movement rooted in the labour movement instead. nor too can it be said that we have achieved the level of enthusiam for collective social action and positive liberty as found in france etc.

the explanation of the difference between british and french liberalism being a good primer here.

British progressivism, of the sort touted by the majority of the British people, is rooted in the idea that the unregulated Victorian past was a Bad Thing, and reforms to bring us to the modern Britain we live in were a Good Thing. Thus one of the most lasting electoral principles is Better Services. During the referendum campaign, this meshed with patriotic arguments, framed as anti-Europeanism, into the infamous pledge: "We send 350 million per week to the EU. Let's spend it on the NHS instead." Few people tout the free market liberalism that you proclaim to be uniquely British. Most hark back instead to the single society of WW2, which ironically was the most regulated Britain has ever been, or they look to the reformist liberalism of Lloyd George, Asquith and Churchill, which reached its apogee with Attlee's Welfare State.

Present the average Briton with two viewpoints, ostensibly describing the same thing, but with polar opposite approaches. Firstly, that the free market is a necessity for an economy fit to provide society with better services. Secondly, that services are a necessity that bolsters the free market. Both describe a balance between the market and the state. The first looks to strengthen the state wherever possible. The second looks to reduce the state wherever possible. The difference is why anyone describing Blair as a neoliberal is talking balls.

And BTW, compulsory history education in Britain is pure Whig, typified by 1066 and All That.

[Montmorency]

Authoritarian liberalism ~ neoliberalism is not about reducing the state, it is about redirecting it into security operations (internal and external) to support horizontally-integrated elite market actors. Let's face it, the Western leaders of the post-Cold War period were infatuated with austerity (which was only continued from, not begun with, 2008) and extremely short-sighted.

Nice article on the "Supermanagerial Reich".

Clickbait title: Neoliberalism is Fascism
Accurate title: The Structures of Governance in Nazi Fascism and Contemporary Authoritarian Liberalism are Convergent

Synopsis:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Third Reich was not Hobbes' leviathan but behemoth, with diffuse sovereignty centered on conservative, military, and business (managerial) elites running heir own fiefdoms with minimal bureaucratic oversight or regulation. Not really such centralized or totalitarian state, especially in early years.
-Cromwell and Long Parliament-

MY THOUGHT: fascism could be called modernist managerial feudalism

In neoliberal era, according to Picketty a stunning devpt: the growth of returns on wages for supermanagerial elite (0.1%) has outpaced that of capital income. Can be explained as rent seeking mechanism toward supranational governance of elites similar to like in legacy fascism.

Almost all wealth of so-called "new rich" in salary and financial earnings of managerial and executive positions (transnational elite), not like the old aristocratic inheritances. Public-private revolving door just like in Nazi Germany.

The most plausible explanation is that supermanagers are paid for governance where the state has been redeployed elsewhere or, even, effectively dissolved. One could think of this as a peculiar kind of rent extraction for the ability to shift seamlessly at the boundaries of these sectors — from one board, to another, from a corporation, to a foundation, to a university, to government, to a think tank and back again.

Nazis pioneered reprivatization, reprivatized many public functions and industries, encouraged influence through political/insider connections and monopolization, consolidation, concentration - just like in our era.

Police (national security?) empowered under nazis as today:

"The general “task” presumed to have been given to the police in the Nazi state — that of safeguarding the state and regime against any disturbance — implies the supremacy of any of its actions (whether in the form of decree, directive, internal instruction, or pure action) over any existing law […] Thus, the police becomes “a function whose activities are determined solely through what is politically necessary […] This means that the police as such can do whatever it deems necessary, without being restrained by legal authorities" [...] This is the necessary “on the ground” counterpart — learned well from colonization abroad — to supermanagerial control of the endlessly complex, newly “marketized” governance apparati, public-private initiatives, and the labyrinthine overlapping jurisdictions between sectors in the neoliberal state.

But fascism and neoliberalism have many crucial differences:

Both fascism and neoliberalism are utopian political projects with different ends, overlapping means and similar causes. The raison d’être of Nazism, for example, was the colonization of Eastern Europe, the internal purge of Jews, homosexuals, the disabled, and other “undesirables,” and the defeat of communism and the left writ large. All of the parties committed to establishing and maintaining the regime were extremely excited at the prospect of the first and the third of these goals, and at least indifferent (but frankly often enthusiastic) about the second. Colonization would be good for business, restorative to the military, and provide Hitler his much-desired Lebensraum for “racial health” and prosperity of the Aryan-German people.

The raison d’être of neoliberalism, however, is to extend market relations and principles to every facet of society, from “the economy” itself to the state all the way down to redefining basic understandings of the human being. Citizens become consumers; humanity becomes “human capital,” people become amorphous, reinventing, endlessly flexible, resilient, risk-taking individuals. Even beyond the human, there are cellular processes, algorithms, and chemical compounds rife for market optimization. Neoliberalism — far more than 1930s-era fascism (although this does appear to be changing with the new and alt-right) — is also a transnational and evangelical project. Instead of only the reliance on brute force that characterized fascist expansion in both its plans and practice, neoliberalism also employs interlocking international regulatory, banking, and trade organizations. Neoliberalism (a term nowadays nearly always disavowed) is confusingly nested in layered combinations of treaty obligations, memberships, and, above all, the private power of capital and finance — as in the European Union. Despite its propaganda, it doesn’t actually seek state annihilation or even the formal end of parliamentary procedure that we saw in Nazism. Rather, it captures and transforms the state, such that its sovereignty is reduced and its power rescinded in some areas (for example, in the retraction of business and finance regulation, even in its ability to collect taxes), but radically expanded in others, regulating labor organization, setting up particular patent processes that can only be maneuvered by a few key corporations, requiring citizens to partake in private economic activity, and even, as a much more basic level, the ever-increasing direct and restrictive governance of the individual.

MY THOUGHT: Author says that fascism has necessary racial and ideological component, while neoliberalism relies on "elite cosmopolitanism with racialized power" necessary for policing and international intervention, but portrays its racism as ostensibly incidental. But fascism usually (Italy, Spain, Putin's Russia) is the same way, not like Nazism (itself often incoherent and fluid), though in fascism racial hierarchies may be more explicit than otherwise.

Imposing "free" trade favors & facilitates concentrated capital/business power. But nazis only cared for capitalism inasmuch as it promotes hierarchy, the nation, and can be bent toward self-sufficiency. Neoliberalism demands perpetual pervasion of capitalism per se.

Tension between democracy and liberal capitalism: democracy > broad base > at least some redistribution and democratization of property. On the fascist side, "Hitler declared that “democracy” (i.e., actual parliamentary control) was fundamentally incompatible with a free-market capitalist economy [...] Göring concluded: “the sacrifices asked for […] would be so much easier for industry to bear if it realized that the election of March 5th will surely be the last one for the next 10 years, probably even for the next 100 years.”" But fascistic ideology was premised at least rhetorically on core democratic fundamentals that allegedly represented the true will of the nation through the leader. The govt sponsored popular mass action, organization, rallies, and "affinity groups" (e.g. Hitler youth, strength through joy). For its part, neoliberalism reacts to

reshape and redeploy government functions and services through “marketization” and hybridizing, and to ***refashion the entire concept of politics itself as yet another market.***" (via homo economicus rationality) "Reducing “democracy” to its most transactional structure — votes exchanged for services rendered, the formal motions of a liberal republican state for at least a plurality of citizens — neoliberalism achieves a feat that the great revolutionary and reactionary movements of the 19th and 20th century never achieved: unique among critiques of parliamentarianism, neoliberalism discourages participation without undermining legitimacy.

"One of the key differences between neoliberalism and fascism is that, more and more neoliberalism relies not on a claim to democratic legitimacy but on a kind of “naturalism”; “there is no alternative,” Margaret Thatcher famously quipped."

Neolib maintains perfunctory nods to formal indicators or metonymy of democratic process. But neoliberalism disprefers popular participation of any kind, except in terms of atomized market relation of individual workers - not even for war (c.f. Mutually insulated military and pop, professionalized volunteer mitary). Neolib prefers a mass state of anxiety and insecurity, bent toward maximizing market efficiency or productivity.

Just as with the Nazi decimation of the formal state, the neoliberal “restructuring” of the state requires the large scale, expansive and expensive rule of supermanagers. The dismantling of democratic oversight and control, for example, although often framed as “efficiency,” inevitably creates either more bureaucracy or more arcane structures.

Neoliberalism suffers from internal crises, and from its exacerbation and inability to grapple with the ecological meta crisis. Neofascism and ethnomationalism are also seeing revivals and new articulation a the world over.

If colonization and eradication were the promises that Nazism would not break — even to its dying minutes — a devotion to solutions found only in the market is the line that neoliberalism cannot cross. Its intellectual and institutional structures are built precisely to prevent the kind of widespread prosperity that was seen by the late ’60s, near full employment in particular.

In 1939, Max Horkheimer famously wrote, “whoever is not prepared to talk about capitalism should also remain silent about fascism" [...] Anyone who takes seriously the threat of the newly empowered reactionary right, must take seriously the role neoliberalism has played in laying out the red carpet for its arrival. Instead of handwringing over liberal dead letters, we must come to terms with the fact that we have already been living in a form of deeply destructive authoritarian liberalism for nearly four decades now.

KEY WORD: AUTHORITARIAN LIBERALISM

Like mid-1930s Germans, too many are quite simply comfortable with the rolling slow-motion horror that has been neoliberalism. They view the Trumps and the Le Pens and the Erdogans, and so forth as a new crisis, a sudden shock to the system.

People fear Trump because he would increase state repression and punitive incarceration, the police state and deportation and immigrant harassment, surveillance state, persecution of Muslims on mass scale, and economic enervation. ***But neoliberal rule has already given us all that.***

While their economic nationalisms are doomed and their ethno-nationalisms are abhorrent, the Trumps, Le Pens, and Farages are correct that the “established order” is not delivering for the vast majority of people. Furthermore, people do not simply feel more and more disenfranchised, they quite simply are.

***

If there is going to be a politics that overcomes the new fascist threat, it must address the fact that the crisis is not now, the crisis has already been for some time. By focusing only on the threat of our homegrown Hitler caricature we have failed to notice the facts right in front of our faces: the uniquely parallel structures, the same winners, the similar losers, the crimes, the human degradation. We are already living in our very own, cruel 21st-century Supermanagerial Reich.

***

In the end it seems the trouble is a more historically-recurrent one of failing to take into consideration sufficient stakeholders. You can't recursively concentrate wealth and power in fewer hands forever, it always leads to unrest among the unrepresented.

Funnily enough, our society mirrors the stagnation of the Soviet Union. Governments have made decisions to deliver us a certain standard of living, but this standard of living is much too low and alienating (really declining) and its unsuitability for most people cannot be assuaged entirely with increasing state repression and pervasive warmaking.

The Soviet Union collapsed in the wake of popular unrest, of course. Their government acknowledged the outcome and made the decision not to escalate with violence...

[Furunculus]

very interesting, but where does this fit into the debate where it is now, or even the broader terms of the topic at large?

[Pannonian]

very interesting, but where does this fit into the debate where it is now, or even the broader terms of the topic at large?

The British people do not want to deregulate in order to move even more wealth into the hands of the few. Your argument in favour of these principles is wrong, and your argument that this is distinctively British is even more wrong. The British people want wealth to move in the other direction, if not in terms of ready money, then certainly in terms of Better Services. As shown in the belief of the Brexit Dividend, and More Funds for the NHS.

"We send 350 million per week to the EU. Let's spend it on the NHS instead."

Fulfil this pledge, and I'll have no arguments with Brexit, for they'll have owned up to their promises and kept them.

[Furunculus]

The British people do not want to deregulate in order to move even more wealth into the hands of the few. Your argument in favour of these principles is wrong, and your argument that this is distinctively British is even more wrong. The British people want wealth to move in the other direction, if not in terms of ready money, then certainly in terms of Better Services. As shown in the belief of the Brexit Dividend, and More Funds for the NHS.

"We send 350 million per week to the EU. Let's spend it on the NHS instead."

Fulfil this pledge, and I'll have no arguments with Brexit, for they'll have owned up to their promises and kept them.

That is *a* view, but I've seen nothing to convince me that we harbour the same collectivist ambition that permits taxation approaching half of gdp, or that we desire to regulate the freedom to do socially 'bad' things to the same extent.

P. S. are we not now spending 350m on the NHS now?

[Montmorency]

That is *a* view, but I've seen nothing to convince me that we harbour the same collectivist ambition that permits taxation approaching half of gdp, or that we desire to regulate the freedom to do socially 'bad' things to the same extent.

P. S. are we not now spending 350m on the NHS now?

Isn't that a framing issue?

Most people don't think or care in terms of GDP-proportionate spending, and those who do usually do so from a status-quo bias.

On the other hand, if you get down to it, you might find that people favor a social contract framed in terms of caring for and investing in one another as the overarching principle.

[Pannonian]

That is *a* view, but I've seen nothing to convince me that we harbour the same collectivist ambition that permits taxation approaching half of gdp, or that we desire to regulate the freedom to do socially 'bad' things to the same extent.

P. S. are we not now spending 350m on the NHS now?

Are you deliberately miscontruing the pledge? The promise was to spend the money that was previously sent to the EU, ie. the 350 million per week that was previously spent on EU dues should be added to the NHS budget. Not 350 million per week to be the budget. And not raise taxes in order to claim that this is the Brexit dividend. Same level of taxation, 350 million per week extra for the NHS.

"We send 350 million per week to the EU. Let's spend it on the NHS instead."

The above was from the official Leave campaign, with Boris Johnson (currently a cabinet minister) among others campaigning in front of it.

[Pannonian]

Isn't that a framing issue?

Most people don't think or care in terms of GDP-proportionate spending, and those who do usually do so from a status-quo bias.

On the other hand, if you get down to it, you might find that people favor a social contract framed in terms of caring for and investing in one another as the overarching principle.

Or less abstractly, people want Better Services.

[Montmorency]

Are you deliberately miscontruing the pledge? The promise was to spend the money that was previously sent to the EU, ie. the 350 million per week that was previously spent on EU dues should be added to the NHS budget. Not 350 million per week to be the budget. And not raise taxes in order to claim that this is the Brexit dividend. Same level of taxation, 350 million per week extra for the NHS.

"We send 350 million per week to the EU. Let's spend it on the NHS instead."

The above was from the official Leave campaign, with Boris Johnson (currently a cabinet minister) among others campaigning in front of it.

He's already said he's never going to feel pinned about this, because he's not aligned with the mainstream Brexit promoters and only considers himself a fellow traveler. Find another angle if you intend to discomfit him.

Or less abstractly, people want Better Services.

I worded it that way because I think a large majority of people in most countries would agree with that articulation. The one catch is that people differ on the particulars, the exceptions, exemptions, limitations, concerns...

As for "Better Services": like basically every country in Europe, Sweden has been continually cutting both taxes and services for decades. In 2014,

According to polls, 90% of the Swedish population wants to get rid of venture capitalists in the public sector and 80% would agree to pay higher taxes if welfare levels are increased. The support for the welfare state is still intact and has even risen slightly during the last decades.

However, both the major social democratic and conservative party have agreed that there will not be tax hikes under any circumstances, only cuts.

I don't know what the popular support for More Taxes = More Services might be in Sweden today, but clearly the far-right option of the Swedish Democrats has taken advantage of the situation by being pro-ethnonationalist and pro-welfare. That means dudes like Kadagar.

The Swedish general election is coming this September, and the Social Democrats are are neck-and-neck for the lead with mainsteam parties...


So @Furunc, the syllogism is clear: a vote for tax cuts and pro-market is a vote for fascist renewal in Europe.

[Husar]

That pretty little voice-over'ed infographic is *one* view, here is another:

https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/upload...Growth-PDF.pdf

Here is a nice chewy extract, that wouldn't easily be put into some chirpy narration for a web-video:

Just because I know you will hate me for saying that: The IAE spawned the aforementioned Atlas Foundation...
And it shows everywhere in the language that their concerns are purely monetary, like when they say investment in education is only viable when a reduction in taxation does not lead to stronger economic growth...
One could also ask whether growing the economy is really the only goal a country should have?

The part you quote only repeats what you said, I cannot find the part where they show when the taxes catch up after a tax cut and calculate that against inflation and the "damages" done in the meantime to show how long it takes for the benefits of a tax cut to actually be noticeable in terms of higher tax revenue.

And what does this mean?

Looking at the expenditure side, Table 15 reveals that only
10.4 per cent of government expenditure is accounted for by the
two ‘primary’ government functions of external defence and the
maintenance of law and order. Even adding in debt interest only
brings that total to 15.5 per cent of government spending or 7 per
cent of factor-cost GDP. This contrasts with the three big items
of social protection (14.1 per cent of factor-cost GDP), health
(8.5 per cent) and education (6 per cent).

Are they implying the latter items are less important than the "primary" ones?

I may look further into it later, but I don't have the time to read all of it unless I'm willing to seriously tax my own economic growth so to say...

[Pannonian]

He's already said he's never going to feel pinned about this, because he's not aligned with the mainstream Brexit promoters and only considers himself a fellow traveler. Find another angle if you intend to discomfit him.

He was trying to argue that his free market liberalism was somehow distinctively British, unlike the alien continental mindset of looking to bolster society. I pointed out that reformist liberalism was the mainstream British political worldview, which is some way towards social democracy on the social scale, and that his free market liberalism is as alien to the British mainstream as dialectic materialism. As a marker of that, I pointed him to the most well known pledge of the Leave campaign, and stated that, if they can fulfil this pledge, I'd have no problem with Brexit, as they'd be keeping their promises after winning the vote.

[Montmorency]

He was trying to argue that his free market liberalism was somehow distinctively British, unlike the alien continental mindset of looking to bolster society. I pointed out that reformist liberalism was the mainstream British political worldview, which is some way towards social democracy on the social scale, and that his free market liberalism is as alien to the British mainstream as dialectic materialism. As a marker of that, I pointed him to the most well known pledge of the Leave campaign, and stated that, if they can fulfil this pledge, I'd have no problem with Brexit, as they'd be keeping their promises after winning the vote.

OK, but regarding your satisfaction with Brexit...

You aver that you want tomorrow to be like today insofar as you can plan ahead. How would 350 million pounds more NHS funding relative to something or other satisfy that priority (and funding is funding for the government's purposes, you don't receive a treasure chest of gems that could then be directed to a different account receivable, so '350 million pounds more NHS funding" is just what the Brexit blandishment means in practice)? Could you really set aside wider economic and political concerns surrounding Brexit, concerns you've been consistent with for years, for this low, low, price in NHS spending? Does the government's current policy agenda accomplish this rather modest boost to the NHS?

Doesn't seem coherent on those terms. Without further ragging, I think you were just trying to advance the position that you would be more supportive of Brexit if you considered Team Brexit to be trustworthy - is that fair?

[Pannonian]

OK, but regarding your satisfaction with Brexit...

You aver that you want tomorrow to be like today insofar as you can plan ahead. How would 350 million pounds more NHS funding relative to something or other satisfy that priority (and funding is funding for the government's purposes, you don't receive a treasure chest of gems that could then be directed to a different account receivable, so '350 million pounds more NHS funding" is just what the Brexit blandishment means in practice)? Could you really set aside wider economic and political concerns surrounding Brexit, concerns you've been consistent with for years, for this low, low, price in NHS spending? Does the government's current policy agenda accomplish this rather modest boost to the NHS?

Doesn't seem coherent on those terms. Without further ragging, I think you were just trying to advance the position that you would be more supportive of Brexit if you considered Team Brexit to be trustworthy - is that fair?

If they can add 350 million pw to the NHS's funds without increasing taxes, wouldn't that mean that the economic argument works out? FWIW, May has said that the NHS will indeed be seeing such an increase in funding. But the talk is that taxes will be raised to pay for it. Which begs the question of Brexiteers, what happened to the 350 million pw that we used to send to the EU, if any increases to the NHS's funding has to come from additional taxes.

[Furunculus]

[delete]

[Furunculus]

Are you deliberately miscontruing the pledge? The promise was to spend the money that was previously sent to the EU, ie. the 350 million per week that was previously spent on EU dues should be added to the NHS budget. Not 350 million per week to be the budget. And not raise taxes in order to claim that this is the Brexit dividend. Same level of taxation, 350 million per week extra for the NHS.

"We send 350 million per week to the EU. Let's spend it on the NHS instead."

The above was from the official Leave campaign, with Boris Johnson (currently a cabinet minister) among others campaigning in front of it.

rofl, what do we really care about here? whether [our] beloved NHS gets the funds it so deservedly needs, or, how we came by them?

besides, am I really hearing this right; a labour person compliaining about raising taxation (a moral necessity) to pay for the great secular holy of holies (the NHS)?

:D

[Furunculus]

Isn't that a framing issue?

Most people don't think or care in terms of GDP-proportionate spending, and those who do usually do so from a status-quo bias.

On the other hand, if you get down to it, you might find that people favor a social contract framed in terms of caring for and investing in one another as the overarching principle.

no more than anyone else 'frames' the issue around what we want our gov't to do.
"how will we support [our] NHS?"

So @Furunc, the syllogism is clear: a vote for tax cuts and pro-market is a vote for fascist renewal in Europe.

In europe?

Just because I know you will hate me for saying that: The IAE spawned the aforementioned Atlas Foundation...

One could also ask whether growing the economy is really the only goal a country should have?

Never hate, Husar, just amusement.

Yes indeed, the possibility exists for fundamentally different social compacts built around the collective expectations of those who constitute society. Clearly, some have gone further than others in sacrificing their individual (negative) liberty to build their collective (positive) liberty. It is a valid choice - who could argue otherwise - but it is not the only 'valid' choice.

[Pannonian]

rofl, what do we really care about here? whether [our] beloved NHS gets the funds it so deservedly needs, or, how we came by them?

besides, am I really hearing this right; a labour person compliaining about raising taxation (a moral necessity) to pay for the great secular holy of holies (the NHS)?

:D

I'd like the Brexiteers to keep their promises. Do you think Leave should keep its promises?

[Furunculus]

I'd like the Brexiteers to keep their promises. Do you think Leave should keep its promises?

To the best of their ability, yes.
Might be better to suggest they not make promises they cannot reasonably keep, because it is not within their gift to do so.
but that applies to both sides.

[Montmorency]

If they can add 350 million pw to the NHS's funds without increasing taxes, wouldn't that mean that the economic argument works out? FWIW, May has said that the NHS will indeed be seeing such an increase in funding. But the talk is that taxes will be raised to pay for it. Which begs the question of Brexiteers, what happened to the 350 million pw that we used to send to the EU, if any increases to the NHS's funding has to come from additional taxes.

OK, but government expenditures at the order of 350 million is a tiny fluctuation that could come from anywhere, from an active decision to sell a few bonds for that single purpose to a quasi-random change in balances due to population change, changes in usage or consumption, or short-term rebalanced revenue collection, which in turn could knock on from miniscule changes in the world economy. Hard to identify a single explanatory variable like "Brexit".

Does that really compensate for what you revealed is disrupting JIT logistics and business stability, unavoidable border friction at Dover and other ports of entry, losing place in the EU deliberative process? It's hard to reconcile with your attitudes in this thread.

In europe?

Well, you are in Europe and this is a thread about Europe. I think it also proves likely to apply throughout the world.

Oh, and good point to recall that the "West" still sets an example to the rest of the world, and Western economics drive politics elsewhere (and between each other) - can't forget the relational factor, countries are not fixed unitary actors. Internal policy is not the only story.

Chain shift!

[Furunculus]

Ah, in that case:

I don't accept that a vote for tax cuts and pro-market is a vote for fascist renewal in the UK. I'm not qualified to comment on Europe as a whole, not least because it constitutes dozens of separate nations each with their own political history.

[Pannonian]

OK, but government expenditures at the order of 350 million is a tiny fluctuation that could come from anywhere, from an active decision to sell a few bonds for that single purpose to a quasi-random change in balances due to population change, changes in usage or consumption, or short-term rebalanced revenue collection, which in turn could knock on from miniscule changes in the world economy. Hard to identify a single explanatory variable like "Brexit".

Does that really compensate for what you revealed is disrupting JIT logistics and business stability, unavoidable border friction at Dover and other ports of entry, losing place in the EU deliberative process? It's hard to reconcile with your attitudes in this thread.

Experts in the fields (areas supposedly benefiting from the "Brexit dividend") have already demolished May's claims of how the increases will be funded (within hours of her announcements), so it doesn't seem that hard to add things up and compare the numbers. If you want to buy something from me, does it really matter how you pay for it? But if you want to buy something from me, but preface that with rummaging around in my till, it doesn't take much to put two and two together to work out where you found the money from.

To the best of their ability, yes.
Might be better to suggest they not make promises they cannot reasonably keep, because it is not within their gift to do so.
but that applies to both sides.

If they can't keep their main promises, but try to do what they promised they wouldn't do (get a worse deal than Norway, which was Leave's assured model of Brexit), then what kind of mandate do they still have?

[Furunculus]

Are you.... Putting words in their mouth?

[Seamus Fermanagh]

...Might be better to suggest they not make promises they cannot reasonably keep, because it is not within their gift to do so....

If this standard were rigorously applied, all governance would cease. Our politicians simply could not function under such a crushing limitation.

[Pannonian]

If this standard were rigorously applied, all governance would cease. Our politicians simply could not function under such a crushing limitation.

Given the Tory government went to the polls with the aim of strengthening their position, and lost the slim majority that they had, it wouldn't be stretching the argument to say that the mandate for a radical free market Brexit, aka hard Brexit, is not there. It would even be the mathematical truth if the anti-hardBrxiteers and the opposition can drum up more MPs than the hardBrexiteers. OTOH, PM May is saying that Parliament should not obstruct the government in its work. I'm not sure where she thinks her government gets its legitimacy and authority from though.