This is the paper that appointed Larry Elliott as their economics editor. A guy that even Iain Dale had become exasperated with, not to mention his senior role at the Green New Deal Group.
This is Gramsciite group think at it's most obtuse and obdurate. These far left Keynesian knuckleheads have never made sense before and are now flying off the wall with lunacy.
When the French tried this back in the (I believe) the early 2000's, essentially it was nothing more than a horribly expensive and complex wealth transfer.
While labor productivity did increase for the French (because they were essentially forced to squeeze productivity out of fewer labor hours), the volume amount of labor didn't change.
Ergo - overall production and economic production didn't change, while employers basically cut back on hours, force employees to compensate for the lower hours with increased productivity, and didn't hire anybody new.
In short, this is nothing more than a very expense transfer of wealth.
Whereas it would have less administrative costs to simply tax the productive members of society more to give the parasites a stipend of sorts, no, we must beleaguer them with hiring quotas, administrative costs, etc. that cost more than the mere increase in the tax rate that would be required to pay the parasites to go away.
Essentially all this is, is nothing more than a very expensive program to create "make work" for worthless people so their feelings won't be hurt.
Or to put it more simply:
Option 1 - Tax people more to pay for handouts to worhtless people
Option 2 - Force a lower work week on the productive components of society to create make work for the worthless people, which will not only gum up the works, but MORE LIKELY result in the productive components of society streamlining their operations instead of bearing the administaritive burden and costs of hiring idiotic morons.
I notice that none of these so-called "top economists" are mentioned by name.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't...but this IS the Grauniad, remember.
ReplyDeleteThis is the paper that appointed Larry Elliott as their economics editor. A guy that even Iain Dale had become exasperated with, not to mention his senior role at the Green New Deal Group.
This is Gramsciite group think at it's most obtuse and obdurate. These far left Keynesian knuckleheads have never made sense before and are now flying off the wall with lunacy.
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2010/06/guardian-economics-editor-cant-count.html
http://www.greennewdealgroup.org/?page_id=2
Its in the Guardian. They have always been so out of it that they make the NY Times seem rational and conservative. - minuteman
ReplyDeleteThe New Economics Foundation is backed by George Soros. What do you expect?
ReplyDeleteCaptain, you ought to explain why this is such a bad idea - if you'd asked me a year ago, I would have said it was plausible.
ReplyDeleteSince then I've read Rothbard, so I know why this idea is idiotic, but for most people some elucidation would be in order.
And I think you're a hell of a lot more qualified to explain why than me.
Fair Enough Aurini,
ReplyDeleteWhen the French tried this back in the (I believe) the early 2000's, essentially it was nothing more than a horribly expensive and complex wealth transfer.
While labor productivity did increase for the French (because they were essentially forced to squeeze productivity out of fewer labor hours), the volume amount of labor didn't change.
Ergo - overall production and economic production didn't change, while employers basically cut back on hours, force employees to compensate for the lower hours with increased productivity, and didn't hire anybody new.
In short, this is nothing more than a very expense transfer of wealth.
Whereas it would have less administrative costs to simply tax the productive members of society more to give the parasites a stipend of sorts, no, we must beleaguer them with hiring quotas, administrative costs, etc. that cost more than the mere increase in the tax rate that would be required to pay the parasites to go away.
Essentially all this is, is nothing more than a very expensive program to create "make work" for worthless people so their feelings won't be hurt.
Or to put it more simply:
Option 1 - Tax people more to pay for handouts to worhtless people
Option 2 - Force a lower work week on the productive components of society to create make work for the worthless people, which will not only gum up the works, but MORE LIKELY result in the productive components of society streamlining their operations instead of bearing the administaritive burden and costs of hiring idiotic morons.
Spread the work schemes are covered in chapter 8 of Hazlitt's book.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.fee.org/library/books/economics-in-one-lesson/#0.1_L9