We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Talk about the American off-year elections has been dominated by the Gubernatorial elections (victory for the Republicans in Mississippi – against a trial lawyer, victory for the Democrats in Kentucky – against an ‘ethically challenged’ Republican Governor) and by the onward march of the Democrats in the Washington D.C. suburbs of northern Virginia. And, of course, by the defeat of the voucher plan in Utah by the unions.
However, there is a another side to these elections – tax and spend is clearly not favoured by the voters.
For example, voters in Oregon voted down an increase in the cigarette tax in spite of the money being for more children’s health welfare. And voters in New Jersey voted down a proposal to borrow money for stem cell research. Children’s health welfare, and stem cell research – two poster issues for the left and they were defeated. And defeated in ‘Blue States’.
Also an election in the heartland of the United States caught my eye… the tax-and-spend Mayor Bart Peterson was defeated in Indianapolis by the almost unknown Republican Greg Ballard – in spite of Mr Peterson outspending Mr Ballard’s campaign some thirty to one (thanks to donations from politically connected business enterprises and so on) and the support of the usual suspects (the media and academia).
Message to Republicans:
If you really do oppose tax-and-spend (rather than just pretend to, whilst carrying on in your normal corrupt way) you can actually win in 2008.
Terry Arthur’s 1975 work 95% is Crap was a treasure of my youth (current version is simply called… Crap). I found it a library in Lancing, Sussex one summer holiday whilst staying with my grandparents, and it was a source of both amusement and comfort to me.
Finding a pro freedom, anti big-government book was a rare treat and Terry Arthur’s work was the first humorous such work I had ever read. The endless nonsense taught by schools and broadcast by the media is very painful to people who know it to be nonsense. And from my early childhood I understood that what the teachers said and what was broadcast via the radio and television was nonsense. Terry Arthur taught me to sometimes smile at it, rather than to always be filled with a mixture of rage and despair (although I would not claim that I did not continue to be filled with rage and despair a lot of the time). With this personal history I was eager to read Terry Arthur’s new work – and it did not disappoint.
Mr Arthur examines, normally with total fairness, the speeches and writings of various politicians, journalists and politically connected academics. It should come as no shock to people here that Terry Arthur shows the “reasoning” of these people to be wildly defective – but he also (and here is his true strength) shows their words to be, unintentionally, very funny as well. The ignorance of the “great and the good” (as we say in Britain) is shown in all its glory. But it is not just ignorance of such things as basic economics. The powerful men and women of our time are shown to have no grasp of how to reason. They are shown to contradict themselves, and their “arguments” are shown to be no arguments at all.
What comes over most clearly is the baseless faith in the state that so many of the journalists, politicians and academics have – even when they are claiming to be wary of the ability of government to achieve X, Y, Z. Also the lust for ever more power that lies under the words of these people is exposed. Many of the economic and “social” projects of the powers-that-be (and their supporters in the press and so forth) are also exposed in all their absurdity. So far most people who visit this site will be united in their pleasure at Terry Arthur work – but there are things that may divide us.
For example, Terry Arthur takes a very hostile attitude towards the Iraq war. However, it is at least consistent for someone who (and with good reason) does not believe that government can achieve anything in many fields, to also believe that government will not be much good at “spreading democracy in the Middle East”. And although the source of Mr Arthur’s knowledge of the Iraq war is the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, he shows none of the desire to claim that the war is an evil plot to spread an “American Empire” that one gets from some people connected with the institute.
Terry Arthur assumes that the people involved in the Iraq enterprise were entirely sincere in their motives. Which, of course, makes what he sees as their utter failure more amusing. One can say Mr Arthur is being unfair to some people involved in the enterprise. For example, Donald Rumsfeld is mocked for saying that the whole military operation would only last a brief period of time (at most five months). However, Mr Rumsfeld was clearly in favour of a very different post war plan than the one that was carried out. The Rumsfeld view of the post war operation was very much like that of former General Jay Garner (the first person to be in charge after the overthrow of Saddam) – go in and overthrow Saddam (for supporting enemies of the United States around the world), then elections within 90 days and hand over power. And if the Iraqis made a muck up of things – well that would be their problem. However, it was decided to go in for “reconstruction” and “nation building” before elections and a hand over of power. This was very different from what Donald Rumsfeld had in mind – and it did not turn out well.
Still Mr Arthur is not writing a history of the Iraq war – and, he could argue, if Mr Rumsfeld really opposed the notion of “nation building” why did he not resign when it was decided that this would be the policy?
However, there are also things that to Americans at least will ring a false note:
Not things like half of high school seniors not knowing that 87% of ten is less than ten. Terry Arthur has always been wary of “statistical crap” and does not claim that exactly half of all seniors in government schools are totally ignorant of basic math – he is just saying that government education is not good, which is true.
However, when Mr Arthur faithfully reproduces the standard Ludwig Von Mises Institute line that the Republican party was founded simply to rob the taxpayers to get money for big business, an American is likely ask “what about slavery?” It is not convenient for pro-Confederacy people to talk about slavery so they tend to down play the anti-slavery motives of the founders of the Republican party – and Terry Arthur’s sources are pro-Confederate ones. Of course, these same sources do not like talking about such things as the Confederacy putting on restrictions on overseas trade (for example demanding that ships using certain ports – which, unintentionally, helped the Union blockade) or that the Confederacy followed a policy of higher income tax rates and more fiat money inflation than the Union did – i.e. that the war was not really about resisting Northern big business subsidies.
Still I am being a po faced over serious person again.
However, there is one point in the book where Terry Arthur does the thing he points at so many of the Great and the Good doing – he says something that is unintentionally funny.
This is where Mr Arthur attacks President Bush for being anti immigrant – for example for ordering the building of a fence along the border with Mexico. As Americans will know, President Bush (wisely or unwisely) showed no interest in stopping illegal immigration for years. Also that he had to be dragged kicking and screaming into approving the fence – and that he still has not built it. George Walker Bush may be many things (good and bad) but anti immigrant he is not.
In a recent visit to the local library I had a look at this week’s edition of the Economist. There was a forty page section on Central Banks (government, or government backed, authorities that control the money supply – such as the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Union Central Bank, the Federal Reserve system, and so on) and couple of other articles on the same subject.
In the few minutes I spent looking at the material there seemed to be little on the money supply. Neither proper definitions of the various measures of the money supply, or information on their growth rates in the various countries over time. Of course, as an arch reactionary, I do not support the existence of Central Banks, but if was to write about them I would give most space to the primary function of these things – rather than just writing about interest rates, price rises (the modern definition of ‘inflation’), unemployment and so on. Unsurprisingly the rate of growth in the money supply may well effect these other things, but to write about them, in the context of Central Banking, without much examination of the record of various Central Banks and Central Bank like institutions in controlling the money supply is rather like writing about a room without really dealing with the elephant standing in the middle of it.
Of course there were other things in this week’s edition of the Economist, but some of this content was also rather odd. For example, we were informed that the Democrats were presently taking a harder line on controlling government spending than the Republicans in the United States.
Now it is quite true that over the last few years the Republicans, led by President Bush, have increased government spending wildly. However the Democrats denounced them for not spending enough money on X, Y, Z, over the same period. Also the article was about now, not the last few years, and presently the Democrats are pushing for vastly more government spending. Not just the Democrat candidates for President of the United States, but the Democrat controlled Senate and House of Representatives as well. These demands for more government spending are far greater than what the Republican candidates for President of the United States or the Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives are suggesting. The article said that the Democrats support a “pay as you go” rule. But this has nothing to do with limiting increases in government spending, all it means is that massive increases in government spending should be matched by massive increases in taxation, and, sure enough, the Democrats support both.
I can only conclude that the person or people who wrote the article either do not know very much about the current situation in the United States, or do not know what the “pay as you go” rule is about – or both.
There does seem to be a basic knowledge problem in the Economist, even on British matters. For example, only last week there was an examination of the pre budget statement. It was not really a big increase in taxation, the Economist declared, – for example there were “many winners” from the changes in Capital Gains Tax.
An examination of the facts should have told the writer or writers of the article that the changes in Capital Gains Tax would mean far higher tax for most payers of it – and that this and the other tax changes did indeed mean higher taxes overall.
Why does anyone buy the Economist when it neither understands the relation of Central Banks to monetary policy or understands the fiscal situation in the United States or even its home country?
I have considered over the last couple of days whether or not to write about an event. I feared, and still fear, that many people will either think I am making the whole thing up or that, at least, I am exaggerating to make a more ‘entertaining’ story. I am not making this event up, and I am not exaggerating – but I have no way to prove this.
Anyway here goes…
On Tuesday I went to an event ‘East Midlands Expo’ organized by the ‘East Midlands Region’ government. These ‘Regional’ governments are not desired by the public – but they are forced to pay for them anyway. The event was supposed to be about the ‘environment’. It was held in the buildings that form part of the Rockingham Speedway. This is sporting facility that is on the outskirts of the town of Corby in Northamptonshire.
Why this site was chosen I do not know. If the public were intended to attend this event it was a very bad choice of site – but if the event, and the cost of it, was meant to be hidden from the public it was a good choice of site. I overheard someone pointing to the helicopters that seemed to be flying round the site and saying “they are to keep the public out” – but I do not believe that to be true (it was just a coincidence).
There were some members of the public at the event. Some confused looking children, some in yellow helmets, were led around to various places. A few of these children were brought in to be photographed when a government person presented a cheque [pdf document] to two women dressed as ‘Eco-Pixies’.
However, nearly everyone at the event was either a councillor, a Local Government Officer, or a representative of a commercial enterprise trying to sell something – via various stalls. There was one stall that did not seem to be trying to sell anything – it was from the Romania government and its function at the event seemed to be to publicise Romania. This led a Local Government Officer I talked with, to describe the event as “Eco-Pixies meet Romania” – although, as far as I know, the Eco-Pixies did not visit the Romanian government stall. There were some stalls, outside, that were selling actual products (bread, cheese and so on) but the main stalls inside the event were from various large enterprises trying to interest politicians and officials in their services (to be paid by the taxpayers). The objective seemed to be to ‘network’.
Outside there was also part of a building made of straw. Not panels made of straw, just bales of straw. There were also various ‘workshops’ which were conducted in the English language – but a highly distorted form of it. As I went around talking to people and visiting stalls I found myself having difficulty in suppressing high pitched involuntary nervous laughter (what British people call “the giggles” – which is not as pleasant as it sounds) and I had to retreat to the toilet to recover – in order to avoid being rude.
After I recovered I took the special bus back to Kettering.
However, the events of the day had disturbed me and I went shopping, buying lots of ‘bad’ things. For example, bread and cheese, which I could have bought from the stalls outside the “Expo” – but I felt uncomfortable buying things there, I intend no disrespect to the people at the food stalls – perhaps the most honest people at the event.
Bread is denounced because of carbohydrate, and cheese is denounced because of fat – especially the high fat ‘Danish Blue’ cheese that I bought. I also bought alcohol for the first time in months, partly because alcohol had just been denounced on BBC Radio 4 that morning “there is no safe lower limit” (this did not concern driving – it was meant as general health warning). The alcohol I bought was Yorkshire ‘Old Peculiar’ beer – which I thought fitted the peculiar nature of the day. My shopping the local supermarket which might be considered environmentally unsound, but many of the organizations at the ‘Expo’ were rather big so I suppose the organizers are not totally against big business.
Anyway I then ate some bread and cheese and drank my beer in an effort to calm my mind – but I was not totally successful.
There have always been rich leftists, people who have either inherited money or have made money in business, and yet choose to subsidize groups and individuals who wish to increase taxation, government spending and regulations – but there seem to me to be more of these rich leftists than there used to be.
To some extent this can be explained by the dominance the left have in such things as the ‘education system’, including most private ones, and the broadcasting and, in the United States anyway, the print media. If the political atmosphere is dominated by ideas supporting such things the Welfare State, high income tax rates, inheritance tax, endless regulations and so on, even some of the people most directly hit by such policies will support them.
It is also the case that some rich people will, in public, support such ideas hoping that, in private, they can avoid their effects. For example some rich people controlling powerful corporations supported the New Deal of President Franklin Roosevelt (although most wealthy people did not) hoping to both avoid high taxes personally and even to direct government subsidies to companies they controlled, and to direct government regulations to destroy their competitors – this has come to be known as “corporate welfare”. And this attitude can be traced back to those businessmen who supported ‘anti trust’ regulations (hoping to use them on their competitors) and, long before this, the passage of a ‘national bank’ for ‘cheap money’, ‘internal improvements’ (i.e. pork barrel road projects and the like) and a ‘protective tariff’ , which is to say a tax on competitors, that were suggested from the time of Henry Clay and before.
However, such wealthy business men did not tend to support high taxes on themselves or regulations that would hit their own companies – let alone a Welfare State to provide everything from ‘the cradle to the grave’ for the general population.
One can be cynical and point out that, for example, the Kerry family (Mrs Kerry having inherited the Heinz fortune from a her first husband) avoided the high taxes that they demanded others paid, and many of the billionaire backers of Senator John Kerry in 2004 also found one way or another to get collectivism to work in their interests (such as Warren Buffet’s use of the threat of inheritance tax to get family owned business enterprises to sell out to the corporation he controls). But there is not just cynical calculation here – many of the super rich really do seem to believe in the modern ever expanding tax-and-spend Welfare State and seem to believe that regulations (what they think of as laws) can make various ‘social ills’ better rather than worse. In these days of the ‘social gospel’ many very wealthy people seem to have a faith in government, as long as this government is in ‘Progressive’ hands, that many ordinary ‘Red Necks’ and the like think absurd. Unlike in Latin America, the American poor, at least the ‘Red Neck’ part of it, do not tend to look to government and ‘redistribution’ to make their lives less hard.
“It is the war stupid”. No, with respect, this was going on long before the Iraq war, and support or opposition to the Iraq war cuts across people who oppose or support ‘Progressive government’. Many ardent libertarians and conservatives oppose the Iraq war and some socialists, such as Christopher Hitchins in the United States or Nick Cohen in Britain, support the war.
If there was no Iraq war such mega rich people as George Soros, Peter Lewis and Marc Cuban would still be supporting every ‘Progressive’ group they could find, so “it is the war” will simply not do.
To some extent one can look at structural factors.
People who actually make things, what Marxists used to call ‘industrial capital’, are far less likely to be leftists than people in the world of banking and related activities…what Marxists used to call ‘finance capital’ – although many people in the financial world are certainly not leftists. Especially if the person one is talking about either built up or inherited a single manufacturing company in a certain line of work rather than just buys and sells companies that do anything or nothing – a Mike Dell is much less likely to give money to leftist groups than a Warren Buffet, and even Warren Buffet is not the same sort of person as a George Soros, perhaps being closer to actually making things has an effect. A Mike Dell is no more likely to be a leftist than the founders of Ford, Goodyear, Du Pont or the other manufacturing companies.
Manufacturing companies may indeed like ‘cheap money’ (i.e. low interest rates created by the credit money expansion of central banks) but they are less closely connected to the process that certain people in the financial world and the head of a industrial company is less likely to benefit personally from such things (at least not in a huge way) than a partner in a finance house. ‘Progressive’, ‘compassionate’ judgements from the Federal Reserve are not likely to give the head of a manufacturing company enough personal money to buy himself the Governorship of New Jersey – for a man who is a partner in a finance house it is a different story.
People do not tend to like to think of themselves as corrupt, so a person who benefits from ‘Progressive’ policies may hold, even to himself, that he supports them out of compassion for others – and show other ‘compassionate’ political opinions. But it is, as I mentioned above, much more than this. Many of these people really do support various ‘compassionate’ and ‘Progressive’ political policies even if there is no way at all these policies benefit them.
And nor is it just the people in the financial industry.
In Australia there is a budget surplus, unlike most nations. Taxation, in total, is lower than almost all other Western nations. Unemployment is about 4% of the workforce – the lowest it has been for decades. Both industrial output and GDP are growing at more than 4% (higher than almost all nations in the Western world), and this growth has been going for years.
And everyone tells me that Mr Howard is going to lose the general election.
Why? Someone explain this please.
“It is Iraq” – but Australia has had virtually no casualties in Iraq. I can not believe that the nation that suffered the mass murder of its citizens in Bali is going to submit to the will of Al Qaeda (which is what running away from Iraq would be).
“It is Kyoto” – but this agreement did not even limit India or China (the latter the biggest producer of C02 emissions), even the Democrats in the American Senate were not interested in ratifying such an absurdly biased agreement. Why should Australians wish to do so?
No I do not understand. Why should Australians wish to throw away their economy? All their prospects for prosperity tossed away on unlimited power for the unions and endless government Welfare State spending. I do not deny that most Australians are going to do this (I can not argue with a nine month opinion poll lead), but I do not understand why they are acting in this self-destructive way.
The prize for the most stupid comment of the debate goes to Senator John McCain for saying that he wished “interest rates were zero”. Senator McCain also said that he did not understand monetary policy, so he could just have been joking, but as he has previously expressed admiration for Alan ‘Credit Bubble’ Greenspan I can not be sure. Senator McCain also had problems hearing some of the questions – although no one else had a problem with this.
Ron Paul gave a good explanation of the bad effects of the expansion of the money supply by the Federal Reserve system. This explanation was clearly wasted on John McCain, who suggested in total seriousness that Ron Paul read Adam Smith’s ‘Wealth of Nations’ – which is absurd as Ron Paul has indeed read this book, and moreover because it showed that Senator McCain had misunderstood Congressman Paul to mean that the rich are rich because the poor are poor – when what Ron Paul was saying was that one of the bad effects of an expansion in the credit-money supply is that it tends to help rich people at the expense of the poor (which is not the same thing at all).
However, Congressman Paul did rather spoil things by waving his arms about and by the way his voice goes up and down for no reason. Still this is a matter of style – other people may like the Congressman’s style. What is not a matter of style was Ron Paul’s failure to mention Social Security or any of the ‘entitlement programs’. He even implied, constantly, that most Federal government spending goes to the ‘military industrial complex’ when most such spending has not in fact gone to the military since the 1960’s.
And whatever one may think of the present military campaigns, a claim that they are being fought to benefit the ‘military industrial complex’ merchants-of-death is absurd (even if one ignores the point that a lot of stuff is imported these days anyway).
Of course most of the other candidates did not talk much about the Welfare State either. They made ritual attacks on “domestic spending” but that was about it.
Tom Tancredo did make the point that most Federal government spending goes to the entitlement programs (those unconstitutional things that have been growing like cancers for decades), but he mostly twisted every question into an immigration question (for example to attack John McCain). I know that Congressman Tancredo is upset that there are sometimes no immigration questions in these debates – but twisting more than one question into an immigration question is not acceptable.
Fred Thompson said that the present entitlement programs were unsustainable in the long run and suggested (as first steps) people being allowed to use some of the Social Security tax to set up private investments, and that government benefits should be indexed to prices (not to wages). But he did not say much more than that. Senator Thompson also had the most stupid question of the debate directed at him (by some MSNBC moron whose name I did not catch) “who is the Prime Minister of Canada?” – “Harper” came the reply, but what was the point of the exchange?
Duncan Hunter gave me the impression, as he always does, of a good soldier who somehow found himself in the House of Representatives. He would be ideal man to be in a dangerous situation with, in that he would know what to do – and is also honourable (so he would not just save himself – indeed he would lay down his life to help the poor sap with him). However, his political policies (protectionism and so on) would have terrible results.
Senator Brownback was big on “family values” and being “pro life” (a not so veiled attacks on Rudy G.), but he also said he was in favour of an “optional flat tax” – so he did remember he was in a debate about economic policy.
Mike Huckabee, the Governor from Arksansas, told various folksy stories, which as usually did not seem to mean anything. But he also repeated that he was in favour of getting rid of the income tax. The Governor also said he would not have vetoed the SCHIP expansion. I suppose he squares the circle of no income tax and wild Federal government spending by supporting a sky-is-the-limit Federal sales tax.
Rudy G. did fairly well defending free trade and pointing out the tax cuts he made as Mayor of New City city. He also stressed his faith in technology and what human beings could do if freed from high taxes and regulations. However, he was rather vague in dealing with what government spending he would cut.
I am uncertain as to what Governor Mitt Romney said as I was distracted by the big neon sign saying “this man is dishonest slime” that I see over his head whenever he starts speaking. This may well be unfair to Governor Romney, who may be a very nice man in private life, but it is the impression I have of his public performances.
The Brave One is a good film, and I would encourage people to go and see it. Even though this means putting money into the pockets of Time Warner, which is hardly my favourite corporation.
– warning: spoilers follow … → Continue reading: The Brave One: a film well worth watching
Burma is a good example of ‘gun control’, i.e. a state of affairs where firearms are a legal monopoly of the government forces. One side has good intentions and the other side has loaded rifles, and the result (so far) has been the same as it was in 1988 – or even back in 1962 when the late General Ne Win first set up his socialist administration.
However, me being a cold hearted man whose mind starts to wander even when shown scenes of murder and other horror, the situation reminds me of the philosophy of David Hume. This mid 18th century Scottish philosopher claimed that government was not based on force – but rather that it was based on opinion. Hume did this to mock the claim that there was a great difference between the ‘constitutional’ government of Britain and the ‘tyranny’ of France – under the skin both sides are basically the same, was his point.
This was part of David Hume’s love of attacking what his opponents (such as Thomas Reid) were to call “Common Sense”. David Hume was involved in what are now called ‘counter intuitive’ positions. Hume claimed (at times) that there was no objective reality – that the physical universe was just sense impressions in the mind. This did not stop him also claiming (at times) that the mind did not exist, in the sense of a thinking being, that a thought did not mean a thinker – that there was no agent and thus no free willed being.
Whether David Hume actually believed any of this – or whether he was just saying to people “you do not have any strong arguments for your most basic beliefs – see how weak reason is”… is not the point here. The point is that many people. including many people who have never heard his name, have been influenced by the ideas of David Hume.
For example, Louis XVI of France did not actively resist his enemies, going so far as ordering others, such as the Swiss Guard, not to resist, because he had read David Hume’s History of England – it was his favourite book. In his history Hume claimed that Charles the First did not get killed because he lost the Civil War (as a simple minded ordinary man might think) – but because he had fought back against his enemies at all. If he had not resisted his enemies, they would have seen no need to kill him (a clever counter intuitive position).
So Louis XVI did not resist. It is possible that he was given cause to doubt Hume’s wisdom right before his enemies murdered him, and so many others, but we will never know the answer to that I suppose.
In Burma, as in so many other places, many people seem to have thought that opinion, namely the good intentions of the majority, were more important than firepower – they appear to be mistaken.
“You are showing lack of respect for the dead” – perhaps, but I am warning people not to stand against men with rifles when you are unarmed. Get the firepower, one way or another, and learn how to use it, then you may have a chance at liberty – you can not have it, or keep it, without firepower. And that remains true even if you win some soldiers over to your side with appeals to their reason.
Neil Cavuto (of Fox news) to Alan Greenspan.
“Did you keep interest rates too low for too long, creating a bubble?”
Mr Greenspan to Mr Cavuto.
“Collapse of communism in Eastern Europe… [blah, blah, blah]… the Third World… [blah, blah, blah]… the rise of investment in China…”
Draw your own conclusions.
When the Labour party came into office in 1997, government was already vast. Mr Major, the Conservative Prime Minister, had allowed government Welfare State spending to greatly increase, “we have spent more money than Labour promised to spend” was his boast, and the tide of European Union required regulations was in full flood.
Since 1997. after an initial lull, government Welfare State spending has continued to increase at a tremendous rate, taxes have greatly increased (and become vastly more complicated ) and most of the few limitations (the so-called “opt outs”) that Mr Major put on the flood of EU required regulations have been removed. There were also “little” things under the Labour government – like the looting of the private pension funds via a tax increase first considered by the ‘conservative’ government headed by Mr Major, the re-nationalization of the railways (most British people do not seem to know that “Network Rail” is 100% government owned) and the selling off of most of the nation’s gold reserves for fire sale prices.
Mr Brown.the current Prime Minister, has been in charge of the Labour government’s economic policies over the last ten years and his policy has been to have vastly more government spending, much higher and greatly more complex taxes, and more power for the EU, and so on. And so Mr Brown has been called a ‘Thatcherite’ by this week’s issue of The Economist. Now if you have read the above paragraphs you will understand why I find this… odd.
However, I suppose one could make a case.
After all, between 1979 and 1982 both taxes and government spending vastly increased in the United Kingdom (that was one reason why the world recession was worse here than in other lands – although the BBC broadcast about ‘cuts’ every day of this period of out-of-control government growth. Also in 1986 Mrs Thatcher agreed to the EU ‘Single Market’ which the EU used to require the tide of regulations that has flooded us since then.
However, Mrs Thatcher moved Chancellor Howe and replaced him with Chancellor Lawson. Nigel Lawson, for all his lack of understanding of monetary policy (he greatly expanded the money supply in the late 1980s as part of a scheme to rig the exchange rate between the British Pound and the German Mark, thus creating a boom-bust), at least believed in reducing, and making less complicated, taxes and controlling government spending. The fiscal policy of Mr Lawson, supported by Mrs Thatcher, of lower and less complicated taxes and controlling government spending is the exact opposite of the economic policy Mr Brown has followed. Although Mr Brown, via the “independent Bank of England” controlled by its government appointed board, has, like Mr Lawson before him, vastly increased the money supply in recent years – in spite of his claim not to want to create “boom and bust” (perhaps Mr Brown shares the demented notion, spread by the media and the “education system”, that boom-bust under Mr Lawson was caused by tax cuts).
So either Mr Lawson and Mrs Thatcher were ‘Thatcherites’ or Mr Brown is – Mr Brown and Mrs Thatcher can not both be Thatcherites.
There is also the point that Mrs Thatcher returned to private enterprise many state owned companies – whereas the Labour government has, as I pointed out above, re-nationalized the railways – network rail. Mrs Thatcher also regretted the flood of EU required regulations, feeling that she had been tricked, whereas there is no such regret from the current government. There are also other things, such as the PC policies of the present government (“diversity” and so on), but The Economist may have covered itself here by saying that Labour had “humanized “Thatcherism” by adding “social liberalism” to it – I suppose all this politically correct stuff could be what they mean by “social liberalism”.
However, there was also another part to The Economist article – this was the implication that “Thatcherism” was too free market and, therefore, bad. It was claimed that those Conservatives who wish to return to the principles of limited government and national independence that Mrs Thatcher believed in are fools – who did not understand that the lady won three landslide election victories for quite different reasons.
“Thatcherism”, we were told by The Economist, is understood by the British people to mean wicked “greed” and other such (the vast salary increases for certain people connected with central and local government under Mr Brown, and the vast increases in income for top people in certain politically connected companies and “charities” is somehow not “greed” – perhaps because of their PC “social liberalism”). So the Conservatives would be mad to return to it. The fact that millions of Conservative voters simply stayed at home, and have continued to stay at home, after Mr Major abandoned the principles of Mrs Thatcher was not even mentioned. This is more than a minor oversight.
So, according to The Economist, Mr Brown is a “Thatcherite” (although with a bit of PC “social liberalism” on top), but it would be very silly and wrong for the Conservatives to return to “Thatcherism”.
All very odd.
On ‘Any Questions’ (BBC Radio 4) this week, whenever David Cameron’s name or policies were mentioned there were hoots of contempt from the audience. This was not a Labour or Liberal Democrat audience as the show was being broadcast from Stamford, one of the most conservative towns in England.
Also the panel treated Mr Cameron with contempt – not just the socialist and the Liberal Democrat (Greg Dyke ex-Director General of the BBC) but the two conservatives – the conservative (not Conservative party) ex-editor of the Sun newspaper and R. Johnson (sister of Boris Johnson).
At least it seems no one is fooled by ‘Dave’ any more.
By the way it was also funny to hear the “culture clash” between the socialist (Tariq Ali the student radical from the 1960’s) and the good people of Stamford.
He wanted to talk about revolution and the Iraq war – and they asked questions about people putting their shoes on train seats and about what was the members of the panel favourite song to sing in the bath.
Mr Ali clearly hates the English – especially when they are being Hobbit-like (perhaps he suspects they are just playing). As a serious future dictator he refused to reply to the silly questions of the Hobbits and got upset and snobbish. I was so upset for Tariq that I laughed and laughed.
I wonder if Mr Ali suspects that at least some of the people in the audience were not unfamiliar with serious things, indeed violent things. After all there are a lot of ex military people in Stamford – and not wildly far from the town are the Fens.
For a little while I actually felt optimistic.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
