My political blog and other musings

All good things must come to an end........

2009-12-30T05:43:00.000-08:00

And as the year draws to a close, have decided to close this blog. I hope that my readers [wherever they may be] have enjoyed reading it. Goodbye for now.....

FDR quote

2009-12-29T03:48:00.000-08:00

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." -- Frankin D. Roosevelt

On hypermobility

2009-12-23T12:53:00.000-08:00

This article by Simon Jenkins draws attention to the 'hypermobility' of life for many (mostly affluent) citizens of the developed world. We travel further than in the past to get to work; we travel further and more frequently to go on holiday and we are travelling further than previously to meet friends & family over the Christmas/New Year holiday period.

This hypermobility means that there is more strain on our transport infrastructure than in the past. The system is thus working at full capacity and, if adverse weather conditions afflict it, it gets disrupted and there is no slack in the system to deal with it. To some degree, this is the fault of inadequate investment in the past and in the present. The State and private companies have not invested enough in our transport infrastructure and in equipment to deal with the contingency of heavy snow. But we, as travellers, tourists and commuters, are also putting more strain on the system.

Although travel and mobility is a good thing, it is not without consequences with regard to the environment and to the fraying of social capital in localities [as people use their home merely as a dormitory in between going to work, going shopping and going on holidays]. Perhaps we should stay put more. And public policy should aim to ensure that homes and workplaces are fairly close together and linked by good, adequately funded public transport.

China and the Copenhagen Conference

2009-12-23T12:46:00.000-08:00

This article argues that China prevented a strong deal being reached at the Copenhagen conference. It seems to me that the Chinese government prioritises economic growth over all other factors - and so is not prepared to cut China's carbon emissions in case this hinders economic growth. However, it is harsh to single out China for taking this economically-centred view, lots of people in other countries take this view as well. Perhaps it is inevitable that humans will have short time horizons and so be worried about falling potential economic growth over the next few years/decades rather than long-term issues to do with the environment and global warming.

Arguably, China has more justification to take this view than people in the developed world. After all, China has a lower standard of living than Western Europe or North America. As such, an extra dollar of output means more to the average Chinese than to the average inhabitant of the developed world. Also, of course, China can say that - although it may have become the largest polluter recently - historically it has been Europe and the Americans who have contributed to the lion's share of human CO2 emissions. They would therefore argue that it is those who started the pollution first who should make the biggest and firmest cuts. Of course, while this dispute takes place, the environmental situation is not helped. China, as well as other developing countries, will probably be amongst the first to suffer if weather patterns are disrupted and if floods take place. Much of China's most productive land is low-lying and it needs good weather and good harvests to feed its people.

Pop songs and cognitive biases

2009-12-22T14:23:00.000-08:00

This article on Stumbling and Mumbling rather amusingly points out what the author sees as cognitive biases in pop songs. Who would have thought that, when Alexandra Burke sings about bad boys catching her eye, she is illustrating sampling bias? Or that Cheryl Cole is illustrating the sunk cost fallacy?

Of course, it could really be that when Joe McElderry or Miley Cyrus sing:

Ain't about what's waiting on the other side
It's the climb

They are actually indicating a sympathy for the views of Eduard Bernstein who, after all, said "the movement is everything, the goal is nothing"! ;)

Reasonableness in pay for both the public and private sector

2009-12-22T14:15:00.000-08:00

The view of the House of Commons Public Administration select committee that there should be a High Pay Commission is commented on by Polly Toynbee . Aptly, she points out that it is inconsistent to expect it only to look at public sector pay without reference to the private sector. The high levels of remuneration some bosses of public sector organisations get are normally justified on grounds of comparability with top jobs in the private sector. Unless private sector remuneration becomes more reasonable, it will be hard to toe the line that those in the public sector should get much less.

Of course, the government does not have direct control over the remuneration of private sector firms. They can pay their bosses what they like. And, arguably, it would be too blunt a tool to fix regulations regulating the level of remuneration directors and other senior staff can take home. The Right would also denounce it as a violation of people's economic freedom to operate firms how they like.

However, it does strike me that it is hard to justify anyone getting paid much more than the £200k a year the Prime Minister gets. As such, I would say that much higher income taxes should be introduced on incomes above that figure. If private firms [and remuneration committees in NDPBs and other public sector organisations] want to pay their top people more than that, then they can - but the tax system should tax those earners more, as they are most able to afford it. In addition to the proposed 50% rate, perhaps there should be a 60% or 75% rate on earnings above £250,000.

UK national debt not that high

2009-12-22T14:11:00.000-08:00

This article shows that the UK's national debt is quite low compared to other G7 countries, such as Japan and the US. The British national debt was at a low level to start off with, prior to the current recession, of 44.1% of GDP. It has thus grown by a bigger fraction because it was starting from a smaller base. £200bn of debt when the outstanding debt is £600bn looks bigger than a £200bn increase when there is £1trn outstanding.

Even if the forecasts that debt could rise above 100% of GDP prove correct, then the UK would still be in a better fiscal position than a number of other countries are at the moment. In Japan, the debt-to-GDP ratio is 218% and in Italy it is 115%.

Lack of prominent political figures apart from party leaders

2009-12-22T14:08:00.000-08:00

This article points out that there are a lot less political figures given prominence nowadays in reporting than there were in the 1970s and 1980s. Nowadays, it just seems to be the party leaders that get coverage. In the 70s and 80s there were people like Ken Clarke, Keith Joseph, Michael Heseltine, Roy Hattersley, Denis Healey and so on who the public knew and who had a high profile. The current concentration on party leaders seems to me to be a bad thing and be contributing to the presidentialisation of our political system.

Increasing levels of myopia

2009-12-20T11:27:00.000-08:00

This article points to figures on the increasing prevalence of short-sightedness in the US, a phenomenon which is also evident in most other countries.

Myopia has increased, as the tables show, in both black and white Americans and among both men and women. Looking at the tables, it seems that the highest rate of myopia is among women aged 25 to 34, where it is 49.1% - almost half of the group.

There are various theories as to why myopia has increased, but it could be because we are spending more time indoors, exposed to artificial rather than natural light, and spend a lot of time reading, looking at TV/computer screens and doing other 'near work'.

The sentiments behind the right-wing 'backlash'

2009-12-19T05:34:00.000-08:00

This piece on Liberal Conspiracy points to this article on the mentality of the right-wing "backlash" sub-culture in the US. Some of what is happening in the US is happening here in Britain as well, although taking slightly different forms given our different politics.

Elements of the modern Right seem to have become obsessed with the idea of their own supposed victimisation. As Sanchez says, "The secret shame of the conservative base is that they’ve internalized the enemy’s secular cosmopolitan value set and status hierarchy—hence this obsession with the idea that somewhere, someone who went to Harvard might be snickering at them."

As an example, Sanchez looks at what some right-wingers who own SUVs who view this ownership, not as morally neutral but as positively virtuous seem to think. He says "Apparently the “moralistic critique of their consumption choices readily inspired Hummer owners to adopt the role of the moral protagonist who defends American national ideals.” Note two things here. First, this is classic ressentiment: It’s not just that SUVs are great in themselves because they somehow “embody” some set of ideals. They’re good just because they symbolize an inversion of the “anti-American” values of critics. Second, think what it reveals that people feel the need to construct these kinds of absurd rationalizations—to make their cars heroic rather than simply denying that they do much harm. It betrays an incredible _sensitivity_, not to excessive taxes or regulations on the vehicles, but to the feeling of _being judged_."

This is an interesting psychological process - and this sense of supposed victimisation and the feeling that intelligent, well-educated 'liberal' people are looking down on them - fuels the resentment that is needed for the right-wing 'backlash' to gain support among certain categories of people. Being a psychological process, not a process motivated by concern over policy, it is not something that can be resolved when the Right wins elections - and even when they controlled all 3 branches of government in the US from 2000-6. As Sanchez says, "Even if conservatives retook power, they wouldn’t be able to provide a political solution to a psychological problem, assuming they’re not willing to go the Pol Pot route." .

However, of course, this presupposes that politicians and commentators who tap into this right-wing backlash actually want to provide a political solution. In fact, I suspect they want to keep their supporters angry so that they can motivate them to campaign and to vote. The psychological process is such that it can build up election-winning momentum but is not dissipated by the actual victory, since it is incapable of being resolved by mere election results or mere tax cuts or deregulation or incremental policy changes here and there. They still feel angry and this can then motivate them to go out and vote the next time too.