Economics, Business & Mankind, one perspective (5)

Work, salary, profit or according to Marx’s Salaries, prices and profits, Mordillat and Rothé explore in The capitalism laws, a serie for Arte TV, the concepts of The Capital with 21 economists, sociologists, lawyers, historians and anthropologists from various countries. Uberisation is treating human work as a good.

We thought we were dealing with economists, but we realized that many were pure specialists of one small segment of economy, knowing everything about it without being connected to the reality or the economy as a whole and they were without a perspective. One, asked about what is work? replied “you know, this question doesn’t interest the economists”. We had to look for other researchers. In our 1975 La voix de son ma?tre they were C.E.Os and the public was invited to criticize. And we do it again. TV debate is an illusion, nobody thinks deeply and changes his mind. Our work is within the Foucault’s perspective in The order of the discourse i.e. the discourse is the place for the fight for power.

Some liberals pretend that the present excess of profits is generated by the lack of competition. The general accepted idea is that the public doesn’t understand the economy, it is an idea developed by the editors promoting the neo-liberal argument: ? You don’t understand anything, shut up, listen to specialists and obey ?. We just promote something different: “Think, agree or not, it is not useless …” When the public is treated in a clever way, its answer is clever. It may be hard debate like for one the subornation relation is a pillar of the Labor Code while for another one this link may disappear. We had proposed alternatives; the decrease of the work time, the sharing of the added value, sharing of power in the companies between capital and the workforce. In The capitalism laws we simply deliver our own analysis. And we cannot contest that Marx and Engels had asked the good questions nor disqualify Marx by assimilating him to Stalinism or Leninism. The American researchers we met have read Marx without being necessarily Marxist; almost all mentioned the question of the class fight from an American standpoint: the blacks against whites, the women against men. One at MIT pretended to be Keynesian but behind him the poster was Marx. We bet on the intelligence of the elected persons. Giacometti sculpted lean ladies saying: ? I suppress everything which is not necessary”.

In three weeks, the impeachment of Donald Trump has gone from implausibility to near certainty. I’m talking about fanatical centrists who played an outsize role in elite opinion and media coverage. Some of us have argued that today’s Republican Party is a radical force increasingly opposed to democracy. The G.O.P. hasn’t suddenly changed, Trump hasn’t somehow managed to corrupt a party that was basically O.K. until he came along. Anyone startled by Republican embrace of wild conspiracy theories must have slept and wasn’t paying attention when most of the G.O.P. decided that climate change was a hoax perpetrated by a vast global scientific cabal. Anyone shocked by Republican acceptance of the idea that it’s fine to seek domestic political aid from foreign regimes has forgotten that the Bush administration took us to war on false pretenses. Trump isn’t an aberration, he’s unusually blatant and gaudily corrupt, but at a basic level he’s the culmination of where his party has been going for decades. And U.S. political life won’t begin to recover until centrists face up to that uncomfortable reality. The above is coming from Krugman. The following is coming from U.S. women. Trump has already faced allegations from nearly two dozen women, our book reveals another 43 allegations, bringing the total to 67 accusations of inappropriate behavior. In short, far from being occasional or accidental, his alleged misconduct with women was regular and widespread, Trump repeatedly and systematically engaged in aggressive sexual pursuit of women over many decades and following discernible patterns, one was a predilection for young models.

Hayek is an economist who stated in 1976 that Keynes is “a man of great cleverness but with a very limited knowledge in economy.” Hayek opposes the constructivist intellectuals who build ? society projects ? of whom he denounces the ? scientism ?. In an epistemological perspective, he tries to prove that nobody can understand the world in its globality including the governing people. Hayek preferred the ? organized structures ? or ? institutions ? which result from many individuals but are not for accomplishing a human goal. They originate in a serie of tries and errors not despising the rationality of the previous guys. He was a supporter of Pinochet in Chile: ? I would say that – as long term institutions – I am totally against dictatorships. But it may be a necessary step in a transitory period. Sometimes, a country may need for a while one kind or another of dictatorial power. Personally, I prefer a liberal dictator to a democratic government lacking liberalism. In Chile for example we will see a transition from a dictatorial government to a liberal one. It is worth noting first that the militaries lasted from 1973 to 1989 and killed thousands of victims and second that von Hayek was born Austrian in 1899, went to the New York University in 1923 then became English in London in 1938, goes to Chicago in 1950 and comes back to Fribourg (1962) and Salzbourg. Stiglitz just said that ? the Hayek vision which states that the market works perfectly by itself and is self-regulating is wrong. ? Some consider that Hayek vision of the information contained in prices and the coordination of the actions of the economic actors by a spontaneous reaction is a major contribution in economy and others contest it as a poor understanding of the theory of information.

The Triumph of Injustice review – how to wrest control from multinationals (Oliver Bullough) is about Saez and Zucman’s radical approach to reducing inequality.

The global economy crashed more than a decade ago and the progressives are still grasping for an answer; thinkers from the political left should have been at the forefront of the debate about reforming the financial system. There have been imaginative initiatives with regard to the exchange of financial information between countries but they have hardly set the public imagination alight. It has allowed frauds, fools and fanatics to dominate the debate, claiming to speak for globalisation’s victims but acting instead in the interests of its biggest winners; their answers are the same: fewer taxes, fewer regulations and smaller budgets. The left is partly a victim of its own previous successes, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton era promised downside-free government: economic growth for the good of everyone, intense relaxation about the filthy rich, light touch regulation of the banks and social spending with the proceeds. The apparent success of this approach ensured both the Labor party and the Democrats lacked new ideas once the economy collapsed. There was no money left and it became apparent that their political houses had been built on sand, since then, a small group of economists has been analyzing the structure of the globalized economy to build the foundations for a new approach to organizing our societies. Doing what Keynes did 80 years ago. Foremost among them is Thomas Piketty, whose monumental Capital in the Twenty-First Century was a sensation when published in 2014; his fellow travelers have done equally valuable work (and in mercifully shorter books), such as this latest study, The Triumph of Injustice. Saez and Zucman are French and work at the University of California, they analyze how the super-rich dodge taxes, what this means and what to do about it. In an age when many left-leaning people yearn for a time machine, it is a bracing and brave formulation of a radical new approach to public funding. The wealthy should pay higher taxes but dismiss the logic of the third way, theirs is a cogent, reasoned and practical argument against the “tax competition” that has sent so many corporate profits to Ireland or Bermuda and they give clear and compelling policy solutions to change the direction of society itself.

The authors’ argument is that decisions on tax are the most important that a democratic society makes since they shape everything else. Anyone should defend liberal democracy from the twin threats of inequality and multinational corporate power, we should take control, but for real, this time. “Wealth is power. An extreme concentration of wealth means an extreme concentration of power,” they write, “We could have chosen to coordinate and we’ve chosen not to. We could have chosen to prevent multinationals from booking profits in low-tax places, but we let them do it. We can make other choices, starting today.” The primary focus of The Triumph of Injustice is the US, which has gone further than other western countries in allowing the very wealthy to opt out of the obligations of citizens altogether: for the first time in modern history, income from capital is now taxed more lightly than income from labor, so rich Americans pay a lower rate of tax than schoolteachers. Britain too has slashed spending on tax enforcement, cut corporate tax rates, the rates paid by the richest in society, and introduced exotic loopholes to lure multinationals to our cities. The proposals put forward by Zucman and Saez deserve to be read in full, elegantly explained and well formulated. They would de-globalize tax policy and re-democratize it, cutting through the fiction that multinational companies such as Apple owns its most valuable assets in small islands with low tax rates, rather than in the western countries where it has its headquarters. If implemented, these companies and their owners would be forced to pay a fair price for their access to our markets. Taxes are the price we pay for civilisation and civilisation cannot afford free-riders. The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay by Saez and Zucman.

The escalating climate crisis. The Guardian's pledge is we will continue to give global heating, wildlife extinction and pollution the urgent attention and prominence they demand. We recognize the climate emergency as the defining issue of our times. We are free to investigate and challenge inaction by those in power, we will inform our readers about threats to the environment based on scientific facts, not driven by commercial or political interests and we have made several important changes to our style guide to ensure the language we use accurately reflects the environmental catastrophe. The problems we face on the climate crisis are systemic and that fundamental societal change is needed, we will keep reporting on the efforts of individuals and communities around the world who are fearlessly taking a stand for future generations and the preservation of human life on earth, we want their stories to inspire hope.

Sport and business. Sport became professional and the spirit has been altered by the phenomena: a sport event reaches success if broadcasted particularly on TV: Channels are selling advertising space, ever more time and at ever higher price, money came in for the best players, and drugs to help them to be strong and foreigners to replace nationals. Finance reached sport, the teams are owned by wealthy people who run them as business companies, possibly listed on a Stock Exchange, with players being assets – to be purchased or sold at the end of the season. The TV rights paid by the Channels are the highest income of the Teams. Sport men and women are similar to commodities with agents to trade them and this business may make the profit or loss at the end of the year. The total income of the Professional French Football in 2017/18 (Ligue 1 and Ligue 2) is € 1,907 billion and the operational result € - 176,3 million. The income has been generated by € 209,3 million from game tickets, plus € 400,2 from sales of merchandising products plus € 386,9 million from sponsors plus € 911 million from TV rights. The total costs have been 2,675 billion: personal € 1,115 billion plus social charges 331,5 million plus depreciation on transfer indemnities € 377,9 million plus agent indemnities € 91,3 million plus € 759,4 million other charges. A record of plus values has been recorded on player transfers, € 929 million, the cost of debt is € 122 million; the players account for an asset of € 1,053 billion and an economic value of € 3,6 billion. For 4 teams the total of salaries was above € 70 million (average of € 176 million), for 8 teams the total was between € 30 and 70 million, for 8 teams the total was below € 30 million. The capital of the teams was € 1,478 billion on Junne 30, 2018. The operational result was - € 767,6 million reduced to a net result of € 161 million with a positive transfer amount of € 938,7 million. The French clubs have been successful in signing young players, train them and sell them to foreign clubs with a profit.

Gustave Le Bon (1895) wrote the Psychology of the crowds in 1895. We will comment it next time after crowds moved Bastille on July 1789 and France from May 68 to the 2019 Yellow vests, the 1917 St Petersburg, the 1963 Civil Rights, the 1930 Gandhi salt march, the 1969 Woodstock, the 1978 Mouharram in Iran, Beijing in 1989, the Purple Rain in South Africa, the London poll tax, the Women march, 2019 in Chile, Hong Kong, Lebanon, northern Africa, Catalunya, …