Charles Moore on Tories and Labour

What are the two main parties' core beliefs? Lord Moore in The Spectator  The Spectator 1 June 2024 asks for clarification about:

 '...current confusion in which Tories hint at approval of socialist principles and Labour of capitalist ones,...' 

What clear choices are there for the ordinary voters on polling day July 4th?

Maybe the only clear choice is about competence? The decline in skills in managing public affairs over the long Tory regime after 5 prime ministers in 14 years does not inspire 'More of the same please'. Is there a chance that a fresh lot would do a lot better? Here's hoping... As Moore implies they are really playing a similar song with only slight variations and they don't have  anything very new to envision us with. Are the Lib-Dems any different?

If we are really in a capitalist system does that explain the growing need for food banks? If it is socialist why are the food banks needed at all with taxes the highest for 70 years?   Has socialism failed too?  Why is it becoming more difficult to buy a house on an average salary? Why are housing rents ever increasing? OK, we are in a mixed system - part socialist part capitalist - but are there any alterative tweaks to think about?

There is a system change that would begin to sort the inefficient running of the economy which the food banks and shortfalls of the NHS show up - after all,  technological success is not an issue so the issue is fairness. A new way would focus on where taxes comes from, how welfare is handled and how citizenship should be fairly recognised.

Tax reform is need to source a large input to the public purse from Land Value Tax  instead of from income tax and other taxes. The property market mirrors the speculative aspect of capitalism and brings  untaxed gains to homeowners when they have done nothing to produce the added land value. What such free lunch do renters get like that? Separating the land value from the house value  (about a quarter or a third of the Rightmove or Zoopla price) shows the value that should be taxed on an annual basis. The amount would need to match the average income tax currently paid so that for the period of the tax reform  any income tax paid would be a rebate allowed  against the charge for land value.  

There is an added green and a housing benefit to land value taxation in that it would encourage the development of land. A house could be enlarged to build rent-producing rooms under the same land tax charge. With more homes built to cover land tax charges on vacant land with planning permission, houses would become more affordable.  The failure to build enough homes has been a feature over decades  - land value tax is an incentive to build more - whilst Help to Buy schemes merely inflate prices by adding new money into the existing housing stock. 

Welfare reform should be included in this LVT tax shift by instituting a regular unconditional Universal Basic Income (aka: Citizen's Income). This should eventually replace most of the welfare benefits which are clearly inadequate given the food banks and housing benefit needed. The individual fine tuning of welfare benefits now needed would be  reduced  bringing large admin savings. The UBI would not be conditional on work and it would be provided for citizens only. These changes would make fairness for people a new feature of our socio-economic system, reducing the centralising nature of the state and curbing capitalistic power.  

Banking reform could add to the UBI sources (see this Blog elsewhere). For other banking reforms and how banking works see:  Charles Bazlinton - YouTube  .

posted  by Charles Bazlinton  author: The Free Lunch - Fairness with Freedom The Free Lunch - Fairness with Freedom 

Communitarian conservatives? 1832 Reform Act follow on? Universal Basic Income, obviously.

The Spectator published this letter recently as the groundswell for an universal, unconditional Basic Income grows ever stronger.   Maybe Basic Income a.k.a: Citizen's Income/Citizen's Royalty will be introduced as the Covid-19 economic outcomes  bite really fiercely. When millions of citizens find themselves having fallen outside the safety net of the patchy monetary and fiscal support schemes. It would start to address the contrasts of income, wealth and ways of life that the current crisis  is starkly showing up. 

Letter 2 May 2020:  
Sir
The leading article ( The case for trust,25 April) tells that The Spectator was fighting for the extension of the franchise prior to the 1832 Reform Act. Is it open to a modern battle at an opportune time to empower many more? Universal Basic Income is surely an idea whose time has come. Under Covid-19, the  government on the one hand is pouring patchy financial support into some businesses through a hotchpotch of measures, while Universal Credit has been shown that it is an inadequate personal welfare idea even in high employment time. In certain ways, UBI would address both these issues rather better by giving  financial backstop to every individual in the new unknown post Covid-19 'normal'.

James Forsyth ( The communitarian Conservatives', 18 April) quotes Rishi Sunak : 'the simple idea that we depend on each other'. The Citizen's Income Trust has done much research and has careful proposals to make UBI affordable and workable. In the times of high unemployment likely to be ahead, Conservatives could catch trending communitarianism by helping individuals and families directly. The time is ripe for a new empowering of citizens.
Charles Bazlinton. 

Empowering individuals and families the  way of Basic Income was mooted by labour at the last election. For the Tory- leaning Spectator to publish a letter on the  subject is interesting. Bi-partisan support?

The Basic Income idea is a theme of  the book : The Free Lunch - Fairness with Freedom. But safeguards are needed in its implementation. 
Posted by Charles Bazlinton.
Author The Free Lunch - Fairness with Freedom. Buy the book: £3 post free.    

After the long Brexit eve, a brighter post-Brexit dawn for citizen empowerment?

The eve of Brexit extends now to two years, but how long yet? Since the referendum we have  been in a state of flummox. The bewildering closeness of the pro-Brexit vote in 2016 is now no more decisive, as a perplexed House of Commons tries to decide on the merits of Mrs May's EU leaving deal. Admittedly such a complex thing as a divorce after 40 years between a largish nation and a larger conglomeration of 27 more is bound to be protracted, and any deal bringing a 'satisfactory' outcome for both sides will get brinkmanship added to the bewilderment. So not much hope for a smooth and speedy deal.

Meanwhile urgent matters outside the all-absorbing black hole that is Brexit are neglected. The Universal Credit rollout continues to falter, and volunteer food banks (e.g.The Trussell Trust) get busier relieving the poverty arising from government failure to think the UC project through. Deaths of street beggars have increased with the average age of death of people in their early forties. These are shocking facts. As Bishop David Walker stated on BBC Radio 4 today  (appx. 3 minutes in): The reason so many are increasingly on the streets is they are 'simply there because they are poor'. They are falling through the holes in the welfare safety net, and clearly UC is not helping. The long eve of Brexit is being characterised to ordinary people by such as a parliament fossilising into a prolonged talking shop on only one subject and steadily rising deaths of beggars on our streets - a symptom of a failing welfare system. If such things happen in a relatively benign economic scenario imagine the challenges when a downturn comes. If over 600 MPs and their staff cannot sort out such fundamentally vital human problems is not our democratic system under question? A government with a large majority can choose what it will do, our government has no majority so why can't MP's combine cross-party on non-Brexit essentials?  

The shelving by government of new drone regulations in early 2018 has brought us this last week to the closure of Gatwick airport apparently through one nuisance drone. This bizarre aggravation just adds another notch to the failure tally of a government refusing to, or incapable of, focus on anything outside Brexit. UK people are being extraordinarily patient.

David Walker: The reason so many are increasingly on the streets is they 
are 'simply there because they are poor' 

The Conservative government is running scared of Labour waiting in the wings to take over and tries to frighten everyone of the possibility. Mrs May, having declared her, albeit deferred, resignation as party leader is now a self-wounded warrior leaving no obvious candidate to lead into the next election whatever Brexit deal triumph she may be able to surprise us with.

It seems Labour is aligning with issues the public feel need sorting:

• affordable housing to bring a lost generation of renters into home ownership 
• re-nationalisation of railways and water to stop the gravy train of top management and shareholder rip-offs at the expense of consumers
• the scrapping of universal credit to set in place a fairer system 

Let's hope what they are planning are long-term solutions. Look no further than this blog for:

• monetary policy so as to buy up utilities with fiat money at no interest and debt (this blog Dec 15, 2017)
• the replacement of Universal Credit with non-means-tested Citizen's Income (this blog Jan 30, 2018)
• the funding of Citizen's Income through land value tax, matched with income tax reduction (this blog Jan 30, 2018). 

Will there be a brighter post-Brexit dawn? If Conservatives can't get the vision and leadership for citizen empowerment maybe Labour will. Something must be done. 

The Free Lunch - Fairness with Freedom  UK £3 (post free). 

Sir Vince Cable: Brexit - causes and outcomes

Sir Vince Cable came to Winchester last week for the Winchester Festival and said we may see him around a bit in that city as he is now involved with local people who are setting up Hampshire Community Bank, a non-profit bank as per the German Sparkassen model.  On Thursday he was in Winchester to promote his book: After the Storm, which is an insider account of his time as minister in the coalition government from 2010 to 2015.

On the recent Brexit vote to leave the EU he referred us back to a paper he wrote on the politics of identity - see this 'revisting' of that 1994 paper  published by Demos in 2005 - as: Multiple Identities - Living with the new Politics of Identity . His writings showed how we are in an era when the traditional 'left/right' political classification is less and less meaningful, with people acknowledging quite different identities for themselves as the old often class-based identities fade. We now have a kaleidoscopic array involving nationality or region of origin, religion (with many sub-divisions within), or based on multiple identities such as Scottish and British and European. He says the term 'multi-cultural community' is unhelpful in describing what is actually often a very complex situation. Such phrases may stereotype and mislead into regarding very varied groups as monolithic 'vote banks' for political purposes. What we need - he quotes Trevor Philips - is a need to create a sense of shared identity called 'Britishness'. 

With the measures that followed the 2007/8 financial crisis the financial system has been kept afloat (like a heart attack victim being kept alive) with artificial injections of  ultra-cheap money, with interest rates set near zero and going lower. They are 'lower than Babylonian times' - we are in an Alice in Wonderland situation. The ongoing result is that economic output has been lost and wages are stagnant. On the other hand another effect is to pump up asset prices (property and shares). If you are a homeowner and live in Winchester or London you are considerably wealthier through this cheap money policy, but if you live in Barrow, Blackpool, Middlesborough or Hull you don't see this. Sir Vince said that the resulting envy and resentment found an outlet in a vote to leave the EU.  He also said that globalisation means that such countries as China became competitive and that many people in western countries are suffering lower living standards thereby. Elsewhere, such as in the US, this resentment  of growing inequality has appealed across the political spectrum where even the old right (Republican) wing headed by Donald Trump is gaining support as well as, to be expected, the socialist Bernie Sanders. In the UK many Labour supporters moved in the UKIP direction in the 2015 election crossing old party lines.  

Post Brexit he sees Mark Carney at the Bank of England as competent and following a predicted policy for pumping cash into the system. The £ exchange rate has dropped - which is 'no bad thing'; property prices have fallen - which is 'no bad thing'. It is likely that net bank lending will fall, but he hopes the British Business Bank will help new lending to firms and head off disaster. The next phase may involve a recession or at least an economic slow down. He is encouraged that his successor in the Business Innovation & Skills Dept. Sanjit Javid is prepared to borrow to invest, in such as housing and the railways. He hopes that a re-orientation of the economy is being planned with a long-term industrial strategy involving such as pharmaceuticals, aerospace, car production and training. 

To general laughter he reminded the audience that the Tories campaigned in May 2015 on the slogan 'Cameron or Chaos'. He did not agree with a legal challenge to the Brexit result, we need to get on with the new situation, although some fellow Lib-Dems think differently. He sees the consequences of Brexit to be massive. He is appalled there was no planning for a possible Brexit vote. The bureaucratic changes needed will involve a huge amount of work and take a very long time.    
Audience Q&A's: 

• He expected City of London employment to drop from 750,000 to 550,000. 
• He said that the country needed to be told to expect problems, anything falsely optimistic would bring later resentment. 
• Aligning with his identity analysis and from his experience in the Coalition for 5 years, would he support the suggestion that prospective MP's (should an early election be called) might stand branded Conservative/Coalition; Labour/Coalition; Lib-Dem Coalition so that voters could be encouraged to vote for national unity? He said that he thought the overall opinion was that the Coalition brought better governance. Someone had likened it to decision-making 'in concrete' rather than 'in jelly' otherwise. He said old loyalties are fading, parties are fragile, but how do you change the dynamic?  He thought there might be a  move to the centre with a resurgent Lib-Dem, a Labour breakaway and the Greens. Given such a scenario the suggestion was a possibility. 
• On the continuation of UKIP as a party, he couldn't say. Maybe the UKIP voters will stop voting, continue to, or move (back?) to other parties? 
•  What were his views on lobbying by big business? He thought that if it is done openly it is fine, as ministers must listen to concerned people. What is to be avoided is behind the scenes influence.  
• How could young people be encouraged to vote? He said that David Willetts in his book 'The Pinch' examined the great change that has happened between the generations recently, with life chances severely curtailed, for example in abandoned hopes of house buying for young people in their 20s and 30s and on quite good salaries.  There has been a breakdown in the contract between the generations and young people are abandoning participation in the system due to cynicism.  Sir Vince gave no solution himself.

Sir Vince's 'multi-identity' analysis gives the ideas in the book The Free Lunch - Fairness with Freedom a fresh boost. The idea is that the citizen should be placed at the centre of political thinking to bring extra basic rights to empower them. Policies would cover the financial redirection of resources, the simplification of welfare and taxation, less intrusive bureaucracy, reduced housing costs and steadier economic growth.  Whatever identities each citizen identifies themselves with would make no difference to their new basic citizens' financial rights. Rather than people opting out through alienation it would encourage their participation through inclusion. We are approaching confused and uncharted waters in political life and peaceful yet radical changes are needed to foster unity and co-operation. 

Posted by Charles Bazlinton. Author, The Free Lunch - Fairness with Freedom       

Charles Bazlinton is a director of Local First CIC which is promoting Hampshire Community Bank

Centre ground politics: Citizen at the centre, Mr Corbyn?

An opportunity is available for a new politics in the UK that would advance the cause of the citizen, through a clear focus on citizen themselves, as viewed without the ideological spectacles of conventional party politics. Will Labour's Kendall, Burnham, Cooper or Corbyn manage to lift their heads from accepted wisdom? 

The Tories have set their jib and are teasing Labour to follow on and endorse their poverty-extending austerity policies, which are unhelpful to the promotion of a sustained economic recovery. As Matthew Parris in The Times (Sat 25 July 2015), has it, this is a manifestation of the 'supermarket view of politics' of our day - where voter footfall governs nuances of narrowly similar policies from all parties. Cleverly, through this shared view of what is important, Labour is in thrall to Tory policies which seem primarily designed to discomfort the opposition rather than benefit the nation itself. [See: How did the Tories do that?] Labour follows Chancellor Osborne like a dependent poodle as the Labour leadership crisis now demonstrates. The critter is not rebelling, biting off its lead and morphing into a mistress of its own destiny, but is keeping in close step. Except that Jeremy Corbyn is creating differentiation as he attracts attention with his refreshing straight talking which is panicking the three other leadership contenders - and bringing great ire from Tony Blair.

The return of the dark ages of Old Labour supposedly embodied in Corbyn belies that he has actually said some quite positive things, which any reasonable person might agree with. Such as establish a national investment bank for innovation and high tech investment  [see: Marianna Mazzucato] ; create QE for people instead of for banks; strengthen tax avoidance regulation; shift the tax burden to wealth and companies and off consumption and individuals; re-nationalise the natural monopoly of the railways.  What will be the outcome of Mr Corbyn backing into the limelight? Does he view politics through the old view: the 'dead hand' of the state - or will we get citizen-centred politics, which some of the above seem they might be?

The Universal Credit scheme is taking for ever to transform the benefits system - will it ever work starightforwardly? The Citizen's Income Trust  has proposals for a  better answer, a revenue-neutral Citizen's Income as a right for all. This would bring many benefits such as: reward unpaid carers, enhance the living wage of workers and foster job creation by small and struggling businesses; bring freedom through work/life choices that are pro-family; remove benefit traps and make work pay; enable charitable donations for community-inspired projects; and overall reduce poverty and raise living standards for countless individuals, families and groups.  Any Tory or libertarian should be able to see the individual-enhancing benefit of a Citizen's Income removed from bureaucratic means-testing, but would  Labour actually dare to introduce it and in one bound make real the doubtful 'living wage' of George Osborne? The citizen would be placed firmly at the centre of government policy making through a Citizen's Income as of right. But would Labour dare itself to trust the people this way?

Currently our socio-economic system is heavily biased towards those who own property. It is not every citizen that experiences the wealth-creating effect of property ownership. Renters are forever disadvantaged also-rans, whilst freeholders stack up a 'free lunch' of property wealth brought to them by the society-inspired wealth enabled by everyone, including the renters. No individual can ever create a rise in the value of their own land apart from being a minute part of the creative community that surrounds them.

Taxing land values on a annual basis would, along with a Citizen's Income, correct this lifetime imbalance in fairness.  A simple, revenue-neutral way to introduce it would be to levy a tax on the location value of the land alone (excluding the building value) and allow a reduction in £1 of income tax paid for every £1 land location value tax paid. Houses would become more affordable and wider ownership encouraged, more houses would be built to maximise the income from a given plot of land to pay the levy. The income tax / land value tax swap would avoid a disruptive change in finances for most households. Income-poor property owners could be allowed to defer some of the tax until the sale of the property.  The current favouritism towards property owners would be reversed bringing a new consensus - the promotion of the common good. Debt through mortgage would reduce as prices eased, releasing the income from normal jobs away from payments to bankers into useful goods and services. The evidence of a failed market shown, for example, by the pressures of international buyers on house prices shows that the land monopoly needs to be constrained to function more fairly than now. Land location tax is a major part of that answer.

Encouragement of new local community banks funded by local councils, social enterprises and a national investment bank should proceed apace.  With 7 years between now and the financial crisis it is high time that an alternative to the out-of-scale international banks is needed for local investment.  Small local banks are essential, scaled to fit the needs of small and medium sized firms which are beyond the marketing scope of the current high street banks. This too would be a policy that puts the citizen's needs at centre stage in terms of financial help for their enterprises, instead of as a supplicant at the door of the high rolling bankers only seeking mega-deals. The credit supply is artificially throttled through a lack of suitable local bank outlets. This failed market needs policy encouragement to make it function for the good of all.

Old Labour wanted the state in the centre ground of too many areas of life that are best handled by individuals, families and groups - as has been shown by deregulation. Conservatives see the free market as the answer to all, despite the existence in plain sight of obvious market failures. Recent government promotion of  housing purchase schemes, for example, are clearly counter-productive as they feed the heated house price frenzy thereby blocking off those still unfortunate to be excluded.

Conventional  politics fights over the centre ground. A new politics is needed that firmly puts the citizen at the centre ground.

Posted by Charles Bazlinton, Author: The Free Lunch - Fairness with Fredom which explores this theme of the citizen at the centre.  
The author is promoting the establishment a Local Community Bank which will pass profits to local good causes. 
                                                                                                                                    

ABC Justin Welby and the Banking Commission Report (not...quite)

We woz robbed? Archbishop Justin Welby at packed St Paul's Cathedral last night gave very muted toots to his trumpet about the wrongs of banking as compared to what we have become accustomed to hearing from him. His was the keynote speech on: 'The City and the Common Good: Good Banks. Timing was all. The Parliamentary Banking Commission report has just been completed but before full publication all participants are gagged. Chairperson Stephanie Flanders warned us that that Welby could not speak about anything that gave away the contents so rather than a tirade on the evils of bank, bankers and banking (we woz  robbed) he mostly gave us positives as to what the wealth from banking ought to be achieving (we were enlightened), with the odd toot from the embargoed report detected.

He was shocked on returning to modern London after 20 years away. It is a brilliant centre of world finance which draws in talent but warned of a danger that like in ancient Sparta, the power centre with its ever higher property prices might result in it being 'served by its surrounding serfs' in areas away from the wealthy centre.  He quoted St Basil speaking to the wealthy (para 329): A great torrent rushes, in thousands of channels, through the fertile land: thus, by a thousand different paths, make your riches reach the homes of the poor' .  Wealth is to be held adventurously and generously, to find fresh channels for wealth to good purposes, whilst we should prick the bubble of self-regarding activity by wealth makers.

One biblical theme was from the Good Samaritan. The GS did not rush by - some did then, and today some of those in fast moving trading rooms might do now.  The event was recounted by Jesus in answer to a question: Who is my neighbour? The GS was a natural enemy of the victim and had no obligation to help. Another bible based theme was the model of the body: when one part hurts all other parts feel that hurt , with exhortations to stop fighting each other but work together for the common good, fullest participation and for 'human flourishing'. We have to recognise that humans are all fallible but we have to believe in them - Jesus offers salvation thus to humanity. Separately regulation, markets and moral sentiments are necessary but not sufficient alone to achieve the order needed, we need a combination of all. Liberty exists under authority, but what is legal is not necessarily right. There has been a breakdown of co-operation, trust and relationships. There will never be perfectly good banks because there are no perfectly good people. The differences in society cannot be eliminated without good banks.

Fellow panellist Anthony Jenkins , Barclays CEO, plugged 'moral capitalism' and the good things his bank is doing. John Fingleton (ex-Office of Fair Trading) championed strong competition, good markets and Adam Smith and criticised the banks for having to be dragged to good behaviour. He quoted JR Hicks 'the best of all monopoly profits is a quiet life'. Justin Welby gave a responsive toot that there are no efficient markets (the events of 5 years ago showed that) and another one from Adam Smith that when people of the same trade meet together they very often start to conspire against the public. 

The greatest applause from the capacity crowd for the supporting panellists came from Laura Willoughby's spirited speech as leader of the Move Your Money campaign who reported that in 2012, 2.4 m people moved their accounts from the big banks to smaller and other banks (-5% market share).  She accused banks of hiding information from customers 'it's what they don't tell you that matters'. She likened Anthony Jenkins' talk to a political election speech. She asked if regulators had been asleep or blind? 

She gave a shout for new homes for our money such as credit unions, mutuals and good banks such as Handelsbanken which have local autonomy.  We as customers are more likely to change marriage partners than change banks, we behave as hostages to them. Indeed the banks have taken the country hostage. I felt that she was tooting on behalf of what Justin Welby was not able to say and by the length of the applause the crowd showed their feeling for her analysis. Justin Welby when asked by Stephanie Flanders if our society was 'held hostage by the banks' said: 'I cannot comment'. Which was probably as big a toot direct from the still secret report as we got.
posted by Charles Bazlinton author The Free Lunch - Fairness with Freedom which 6 years before the crisis suggested solutions to the problems which the Archbishop is highlighting now.

Big Society is the way? Taleb, Rafael Behr, David Cameron, Civil Society Forum in agreement?

Nassim Taleb who wrote The Black Swan is interviewed in The Times (UK) today. A Black Swan event is one that is very rare, an outlier, and is a random shock that catches almost everyone by surprise - such as the banking crisis which came along just after his book was published.  Wikipedia says that the main idea in Taleb's book is not to attempt to predict Black Swan Events, but to build robustness to negative ones that occur and being able to exploit positive ones. 

He has a lot to say on banking: ' Banks have now just become a machine to pay big bonuses'...'Have you ever heard of a bailout of restaurants? We should transform the economy into something that looks more like the restaurant business'... 'You have to bring back economic adventures, not bankers and bonus earners'. He says it is essential to decentralise: 'Labour believed that if a pin dropped at some hospital in the Lake District someone should hear it in Whitehall '. 

Taleb has the ear of a Prime Minister Cameron. 'When I speak to David Cameron and his staff I feel as if I am talking to myself, we think alike.' 

Taleb's views have a resonance with talks by speakers at the session run by the recently formed Civil Society Forum one of the School Of Commoning  recent series of Quilligan Seminars.  The School of Commoning's approach is that the earth's resources  should be handled for the long term benefit of all with domination replaced by partnering and responsiveness to everyone. The recognition between public and private makes this a non-socialist way for the future.  The seminar on 15th May on Organisational Practice and the Commons  had Tim Harle of the Bristol Business School saying this was a time for looking forward for new patterns of self-organised behaviour. Leadership is needed, self-organisation is not totally spontaneous.  Trust emerges from personal interactions. 

Eileen Conn had a similar theme in her 'Social Eco-System Dance'. She sees many of our problems in society due to a painful interaction between the dynamics of the vertical hierarchical system of the organised work world and that of the horizontal peer system of ordinary, neighbourly, community actions. Blind unawareness of the horizontal  by the vertical brings pain and blunts the effectiveness of both.  Another illustration was the invisible nature of the horizontal system as being like the root system of a grass plant which is the only obvious part to the eye. But both systems are essential to each other and respect is needed to nurture the spirit of the invisible. Many organisations are not visible and not counted.     

These themes: from Taleb, to the School of Commoning, to the  Civil Society Forum are those of the book The Free Lunch - Fairness with Freedom. It themes are also aligned with those of the Tory Big Society idea which is clearly still (just) alive in 10 Downing Street - Taleb: 'Political leaders need to think of new ways of protecting their countries from future shocks'.  Exactly -just what The Free Lunch's aims would bring. But why after two years of Tory power is the empowerment of citizens to enable them to cope with future shocks, so moribund?  Even Rafael Behr in the New Statesman 26 May admits  'The Big Society was never a bad conceit' (but it was sold badly). Perhaps Labour will grasp the message.

posted by Charles Bazlinton

A policy roar for Ed Miliband?

The Citizen's Income Trust (CIT) has just published its latest newsletter 2012-1 at http://www.citizensincome.org/
From the website: 
'One of the reasons for current interest in a Citizen’s Income and in benefits reform generally in UK is that at the moment there is little financial incentive to take a part-time job, even if that would fit with someone’s caring responsibilities. With a Citizen’s Income the situation changes considerably, to the advantage of the household’s income, carers’ ability to care for dependents, and the economy'.


Read more about the Trust's researches into various levels of the Citizen’s Income:
 'which is an unconditional, non-withdrawable income for every individual as a right of citizenship...
'Both of these schemes are revenue neutral, that is, the income tax rate won’t need to rise...


The CIT is a tireless promoter of this reform which any politician who wants to gain some leadership for positive thinking could surely dare to openly welcome? They say that Ed Miliband is struggling for a cause that would identify him as the originator of it, (apparently some of his ideas are being taken on by the Coalition and even acknowledged as theirs by voters).


Lord Glasman in the New Statesman (9 January 2012) writes 'Ed is going to have to show some leadership and courage'. What's holding Ed back from calling for a Citizen's Income? Might Ed 'Timidband' disprove the 'overcautious' summary of his first year as Labour leader with a policy roar that would out-trump Iain Duncan Smith's welfare reforms and identify Ed  M with every citizen? and help the ailing economy to boot?

In the book The Free Lunch - Fairness with Freedom the  Citizen's Income is called the Citizen's Royalty which gives the idea of a right to something that actually originates with the citizen. LINK:  Read the book and follow the reasoning.   

posted by Charles Bazlinton 

  

FPTP good / AV better

Tomorrow in the UK we vote in a referendum for an Alternative Voting (AV) system to replace First Past The Post (FPTP). Much confusion reigns in the media as to the merits of each side. 

For those of us championing for such important issues as: monetary reform; for a more enlightened taxation system with Land Value Taxation; for a non-means tested Citizen's Income and for other nudges into more fairness and freedom, AV seems the right way to go. What it would mean is that whilst I may have a strong party affiliation or perhaps a floating party affiliation I am to be given a extra opportunity to give my opinion on other issues without feeling I am wasting my vote.  OK, candidiates for such 'minority' issues are unlikley to get elected but what their appearance on a ballot ticket signifies is that people who have never seriously considered them would be asked 'what do you think about this?' So an election becomes a combination of the election of a candidiate and an opinion poll on other issues. 

Nations seem to slowly grow into more democratic ways and the time of monolithic parties may be fading in the UK. The fine tuning of democracy needs the new issues of the future to be given space beyond narrow, timid party dogma.  It is oddly patronising to suggests that AV is too complicated to understand.  People can work out what their preferences are. 

Anything that gives a slightly raised platform  to individual candidates who stand for important focussed issues is to be applauded and AV might do this. What may happen is that the main parties will take on the  'minority view' that seems to be attracting lots of 2nd & 3rd preference votes. So reform would be helped along by the exposure given.

See: this website for a view on how AV could help fix the banks.

Posted by Charles Bazlinton. Browse/buy the book.  Buy the book on EBay.

Big Society. Is it The PITS? (The Pie In The Sky)

The UK media is awash with sceptiscism about David Cameron's Big Society. No one knows what it is.  It seems part of a modern trend such as subsidiarity (EU Maastricht Treaty 1992) whereby the centre only does what those at national, regional or local level cannot do best for themselves. Communitarianism was another idea in the same vein: empower the smaller groupings that people identify with, so they decide what they want to do for themselves. These ideas beg the question as to who assesses the outcome of  the achievements possible at the various levels? What standards are expected before you let it happen? Or do you just let the locals get on with it and end up with varying standards from place to place? 

But Prime Minister David Cameron is cutting his own Big Society feet off. George Osborne is axing government spending and those very people who might do the Big Society work (charities and voluntaries)  are being starved of funds as the local authorities have to spread  the funds thinner and leave them out.

The book The Free Lunch - Fairness with Freedom unlocks the possibilities of subsidiarity, communitarianism and The Big Society. The key is: the Citizen's Royalty (same as: Citizen's Income; Citizen's Dividend). The idea is to start to pay everyone a regular monthly payment without any means testing at all. Children to get it as well as working adults and pensioners. The Citizen's Income Trust shows how it is workable and affordable without any new source of funds.  In Iran they have just launched such a scheme.  For further funds a good start is to raise money from banking - suggested in the book years before the bank crisis hit us. The government should become the sole producer of credit and issue debt-free interest-free money for the public investment that we normally borrow from banks. (Google: Monetary Reform). The savings made by cutting out banks who create such money at the moment, could add to a Citizen's Income for all. No new taxes: restribution of wealth that is already being taken. It would transform the financial sector and make a safer money world for ordinary people.

It could mean the Big Society coming to birth. For unless huge numbers of people are given the means (i.e. money) to help dedicate their time and resources and carry out Big Society work on the massive scale that David Cameron's vision demands, it will fail. 

Advice to the PM: find a way to start a Citizen's Income or drop the Big Society idea fast.  People are chuntering about it already and your government is barely six months old!  But establish this idea and you would be remembered as a pioneering Tory who empowered  individuals, families and groups and sorted welfare at the same time.

Question: What is the Big Society?
Answer: It's what you start to get when you give everyone a Citizen's Income.

posted by Charles Bazlinton  

           

Get more land (Big Society method)

In the UK, planning policy over the past decade or so has meant that houses are being built at high density with tiny so called 'gardens'. As discussed in The Free Lunch - Fairness with Freedom  this does not necessarily help to promote a more ecologically favourable outcome. For more on this read the book. Look at the arguments for lower densities. 

But there is one measure that local people can use to give themselves more space. If 6 residents in an area wish to have land to grow food they are empowered by the  Small Holdings and Allotments Act 1908  to ask their Local Council to set allotments up and the Council must make efforts to acquire land. Many people, for £20 or less for a year's rent for a part-plot, would welcome the opportunity to have a bit of land to tend. Most District & City Councils will already have allotments but many small Parish Councils do not.  It is a simple procedure for the Parish Council, once having received a petition from at least 6 residents to budget up to, say £10,000, to set up allotments. If they need to raise their council tax amount next year there should be time to set that in motion because the most difficult factor is usually finding suitable land which may incur delay. 

Land can be rented, say on a three year extendable lease, or bought. Parish Councils can borrow money over a long period which makes a land purchase affordable even to a few hundred council tax payers in a small Parish Council's area.

Council allotments are a longstanding and proven example of what David Cameron says about his Coalition Government's  'Big Society' idea: a 'big advance for people power'.  Perhaps the legal model of popular local demand for allotments could be the way forward for all sorts of new local initiatives, although to have to act after the request of 6 residents to keep the local pub open might be pushing it a bit... 
posted by Charles Bazlinton

New fairness contrast in manifesto?

The voters are engaged in this election like none other in recent times. In the ITV debate last week the personality of Nick Clegg became visible. His normal context has been House of Commons amid constant yah-boo from Tory and Labour -  but for 90 minutes last week he was seen as a political leader and as normal. The shock rocketed him and his party up the polls leaving Tory, Lib-Dem and Labour within a few points of each other. So what can any of them do to break ahead? 

Here is a choice policy, long advocated on The Free Lunch, and how they might use it: The Citizens Royalty (aka: Citizens Dividend/Income, a non-means-tested benefit to every citizen). It has been costed as fully affordable when compared with the current welfare & tax regime. It would sweep away the worst complexities of the current benefit system. If necessary the allowances and tax rates for the higher paid could be adjusted at the top end to claw some back. 


So what bits of their manifestos are involved?  The Lib-Dems will give you a new tax-free allowance on the first £10,000 earned. Standard rate taxpayers will be £700 better off. But this does not give a single bean to those earning very little or nothing (i.e. the poorest). So not so fair for them - but a Citizen's Royalty would put actual money in their pocket.  The Tories are giving £150 (again through a tax allowance) to married people - not so fair to singles  - OK that's the point, but a Citizens Royalty would help married, singles and children (these are already getting a bit of one with Child Benefit). Nothing special on tax help from Labour. They abolished the 20% tax band so aren't really bothered about helping the low-paid apart from forcing them through the Labour welfare/tax credit obstacle course, which could be dismantled wholesale through the Citizen's Royalty.

If any party really wants to raise levels of fairness, as all say they do, a Citizen's Royalty would be an obvious way as it helps the poorest most. If they want to save costs of bureaucracy the Citizens Royalty would do so.  If they want to bring in a Big Society with individuals and groups sparing time to take over state-run things, the Citizen's Royalty would provide a new source of funding at the individual and family level so people could manage financially better and spare the time to help, or donate to others who could.

The Citizen's Royalty would help bring a sense of citizenship in the immigration debate. Every immigrant on becoming a citizen, would get the Royalty but only after say 20 years. It would make a financial difference to being British. 

If the Lib-Dems can give away £700 through tax allowances and make it affordable another party could probably give away £500 as a Citizen's Royalty to everyone. That is a good level to start at but there are  sources of redistributable wealth for the Royalty that are even now  going to bankers and landowners in huge amounts. Read The Free Lunch - Fairness with Freedom. If you want to help a political party in the next two weeks show them this page. Desperate times need desperate measures - they might help themselves and bring us a fairer society. It's that desperate.

 

Party manifestos or real insight? Try Fred Harrison's latest book : 2010 The Inquest

Party manifestos are rolling off the presses for the UK election. We are having the big 3 this week. Labour - the market has failed we need more government to sort it. Conservative - join the team and take responsibility yourself. (Lib-Dems', due later.) 

A quick glance shows that both Labour and Tory have features that are and are not according to Free Lunch principles. The market which involves unfettered banking built on privatised credit creation has manifestly failed and will continue to fail until credit creation is democratically monitored and managed. So far no party is going anywhere near this issue. The financial system will stagger on in decades ahead failing repeatedly, with the general public in hock to banks, paying interest and capital for common facilities when this need not be.  Labour's nanny-state tendencies make it fiddle around at the edges whilst neglecting this fundamental issue. The Conservatives want us to 'join the team', get stuck in and sort out our schools, start new schools, sort out the police, etc, etc. Good principles in theory. But when can we break up the bankers' team and capture for society the profits which are only available because the community enables them?  What the Tories need to be talking about is the ultimate 'joining the team' : Citizenisation. This would be the  real empowerment of citizens through such features as: fundamental reform of taxation, simplicity in welfare, entrepreneurial encouragement, eliminating the black economy and making offshore tax havens pointless...

Conservatives are promising a small tax allowance to all married couples, Labour are giving a Toddler Tax Credit  - all these are based on earnings and work. No one is yet talking of the true basis for citizenisation - the Citizen's Royalty (Citizen's Income) . A regular payment because you are a citizen. This is affordable and would take the place of the tax allowances and the  complex welfare system. 

AND...what you really need to get reading in this week of manifestos is Fred Harrison's: 2010 The Inquest. It is about to be released and I will be reviewing it shortly on this blog page. This book will give you more insight into real political issues than a multiplicity of manifestos.    
           

Bank Taxes. Werner: 'A diversion and a waste of time.'

Governments are talking about arrangements to levy a bank tax as an insurance fund or a  feed  for  bailout funds when future banking crises happen. It is stated that: 'It will be similar to pollution taxes on industry to discourage damage to the environment.' Germany has already set up its bank levy, but Prof. Richard Werner of Southampton University in a BBC World Service Radio interview with Jon Bithrey 1st April 2010  says that such taxes really only 'give the impression that something is being done' - they are to show that governments 'are being tough on banks'. These levies will not address the problem and  they are a diversion. In proportion to the massive sums necessary for bailouts from taxpayers they are very small, says Werner. He says the way to address the problem of boom and bust cycles, is to ensure that bank credit is restricted for speculative purposes.

Anything  can be purposefully used for good or ill.  Hammer? - build or kill; Chemicals? -  cure or kill; Nuclear reaction?- energy or bomb.  So the uses of, and by-products from, some activities are so socially or environmentally harmful that the freedom of individuals to do just what they like has to be curbed - e.g. prison, health and safety controls, fines, levies, etc.  So we tolerate the dumping of rubbish on a landfill site as long as a levy of £48 per tonne is paid to compensate for the pollution problems caused.  

Credit creation too is an amazing device - but with good or ill outcomes.  Some ill ones: Housing & industrial boom and bust, wild speculation, investor wipe-outs, regular lurches into poverty, etc, etc. But does anyone seriously suppose that a levy 'like a pollution tax' will deal adequately with the new disruption caused, as unfettered commercial banks get their way again in future?

No government would allow private individuals or groups to create and disseminate nuclear energy, dangerous drugs or weapons without maximum transparency and control. Credit creation can be highly beneficial when directed democratically to the common good, but it is toxic in the wrong hands - as we are now seeing.  

The subtitle of the book: The Free Lunch, is: Fairness with Freedom, and these qualities are usually at the heart of the debate at every stage of democratic development - even now in this banking crisis: Fairness for whom? Freedom for whom?  

UK Election 2010 - Rescuing Gromit

Wallace has a manic quirk to his personality that compels him to solve simple problems in quite unnecessarily complicated ways. This leads to tension, danger and near disaster and it is always up to Gromit his faithful long-suffering mouthless hound to save the day. For instance in the film A Grand Day Out, when Wallace finds that he is out of his favourite cheese, instead of doing the obvious thing and buying some at a shop, he invents a rocket and takes a trip to the moon to dig for some. And in The Wrong Trousers, Wallace, through his creativity for making pointless devices merely to get himself up in the morning, brings horrors as one of his designs develops a sinister gene. Enormous fun and hilarious nonsense.

There is a modern parable within 'Wallace and Gromit' relating to our political system. Have you noticed that in solving one problem in society, almost inevitably the solution brings with it a host of annoying, counterproductive effects? These themselves need more tweaking and cause more problems, and on… The growing nightmare needs more bureaucrats, more form-filling, more quangos…But the political masters merely seem to want to retain power rather than solve anything long-term. Do they ever ask: What are we doing this for? Where are we headed? If Wallace were a politician you can hear him saying with an inevitable financial crash just round the corner: ‘No more boom and bust, Gromit. On no, no more boom and bust’.

But there is a wealth of ideas out there that have been talked about for years that would bring long lasting transformations to society through simpler means. The extraordinary thing is that such ideas rarely reach the ‘independent’ national media. Monetary reform for instance which should be the hot topic now, is given virtually no space, despite the current work of James Robertson and Joseph Huber and Richard Werner Instead, a myriad of complex Wallace-like banking regulations are being dreamt up to allow bankers to get back to their self-serving monopoly without the embarrassment of another bust too soon.

After a decade of a Labour government it is reported that poverty is getting worse. The maze of regulations of the tax-credit system catches the poor out and they can end up with a tax rate as high as top earners or even have to repay benefits. Has no one heard of the simple reform that would solve such problems, championed by Malcolm Torry and many other like-minded people world-wide?

If the media / government is really interested in preventing a new housing boom and crash (after this crash has finally reached its low point), editors / ministers should be rushing for the researches and policies of such as Fred Harrison, Dave Wetzel, Carol Wilcox , Chris Huhne, Tony Vickers and the books from publisher Anthony Werner and the important findings of Bryan Kavanagh in Australia.

Just as Gromit always recues Wallace from his follies, so we voters bail out our political masters. We have to, as we are the only ones who together have enough money to do so. This year the UK election is soon to be upon us. Just as Gromit needs rescuing from his dependence on his crazy master so we should try and rescue ourselves this year with our votes. 

Do we really want another decade of Wallace-politics? Do we want complexity for its own sake, when simpler solutions are possible which will turn us towards a truer measure of the fairness and freedom that we all want to be possible? 

For a readable summary of the better future we could move towards, go to: The Free Lunch

For when we climb out of this hole: Citizenisation

The UK's Sunday Times (ST:19 Oct 2008) covers the various crises that any reader of The Free Lunch (TFL) would have been ready for since its publication in 2002. They would also be familiar with The Free Lunches’ solutions that would bring the hope that such cataclysmic times need not recur.

• The ST has a letter from James Glover about the way the Bank of England has ignored house price inflation when setting interest rates (see TFL p.141).
• A ST article reports that major house-builders Barratts and Taylor Wimpey are trying to sell thousands of acres of land: Where they not aware of the approaching end of the 18 years land price/house price cycle? (see TFL p.113).
• There is much newsprint on the ongoing banking crisis which is a culmination of many years of wild spending of money that banks make out of thin air (see TFL p.43-46).
• Also - the need to address the shortfall in income for those reliant on dividends from bank shares (see TFL ch 3). The Australian government is reported as counteracting a bleak Christmas by giving special payments to pensioners and families (TFL ch 3).

When we start to surface from the abyss of this multifaceted crisis what direction will be headed in? Will the state be more fully in control or will we be? The Free Lunch calls the second way citizenisation – a cumbersome word for a neat idea. It is practical, it is very hopeful. Is it possible? Read The Free Lunch (www.the-free-lunch.com) and make up your own mind.