This is a statement released yesterday and endorsed by a group of unions and individuals, including me. It calls for a progressive alternative economic policy. It’s a statement of principles rather than a program, and essentially a restatement of the social democratic position that represents the best of the Australian labor movement, free of both dogmatic leftism and the capitulation to market liberalism we’ve seen over the past thirty years or so.
A program developed on these principles would, I believe, be electorally popular if only we could get it before the public. But the policy elite, including journalists and the press, remain under the spell of market liberalism, despite its evident failures. So, our public debate will continue to be dominated by silly pointscoring about debt, deficits and the need for “reform”.
The full text is over the fold (the link goes to a properly formatted version)
Media Release
June 25, 2015
People’s movement needed to achieve
a progressive alternative economic agenda –
a secure prosperous and sustainable future for all Australians
A new grassroots movement is underway which should demonstrate to next month’s ALP National Conference that there is strong community support for a progressive change to Australia’s cosy consensus-at-the-top that ‘markets are best’.
Instead of a public debate about the real drivers of and dangers to our economic and social security and prosperity, the focus continues on ‘more of the same’ extreme fetish for a Budget surplus, smaller government, lower taxes and ever more privatisation and deregulation.
A People’s Economic Alternative is emerging to call on Australians to engage with each other to devise a new economic direction which can overcome the ever-widening inequality and ever-greater insecurity that mark the lives of more and more people, and meet the challenge of ecological sustainability at a time of accelerating and unmitigated climate change.
A People’s Economic Alternative is an initiative of trade unions, welfare, community and political organisations. These organisations have memberships totalling over 300,000 and this is the basis for a new grassroots initiative to change the debate over the next two to three years.
The global economic system, especially in Europe, continues to be marked by high unemployment, recession or very low growth, and harsh policies directed at the majority of working people rather than on the rich who refuse to sacrifice. Fundamental reforms to the way finance functions haven’t materialised, neither have changes in the dominant economic agenda of further de-regulation, privatisation, shrinking of the state and dilution of social contracts. Unlike the period following the Great Depression, it seems few countries have learned any lessons from the GFC. Eight years on, more financial shocks are to be expected, not fewer.
In response to the continued dominance of the neo-liberal agenda, the labour and broader social justice movements want to put forward a credible, well-defined, economic agenda as a progressive alternative.
A progressive agenda needs to take the latest thinking in economics and marry it to progressive Australian values and traditions. The labour movement, as the voice of workers, and the broader social justice community, has the capacity and social connections to lead such a great project.
A People’s Economic Alternative is trying to reverse a three decade’s long conventional wisdom about what constitutes good and credible economic policy.
We intend to build a nationwide campaign for a progressive political economic strategy. That involves a broader debate about how the economy and politics work to mainly benefit the rich and powerful, and what are the basic values that a progressive economy should serve – security, fairness and ecological sustainability. The economy should serve society, rather than the reverse.
To begin this process of challenge and change, the People’s Economic Alternative has proposed a set of values and principles that can underpin a new progressive economic agenda and a process for uniting the many dynamic parts of the labour and broader social justice movements.
For further comment, contact:
Andrew Dettmer AMWU 0419 899 345
Prof John Quiggin 0400747165
Fran Hayes f-collective 0419 416 061
Underpinning values
Equity; Fairness; Equality of opportunity; Recognition of the rights of future generations; Basic equality of outcomes, e.g. a living wage and dignified social support; Recognition of roles of both markets and government; Respect for science and education, e.g. economics is much more than a slogan like ‘markets rule’; People’s wellbeing is the ultimate objective, not profits.
10 Principles
Principle 1: Economic growth is not an end in itself, but is a means to better the lives of the Australian people, including future generations.
• The environment, mental and physical health, strong communities, security, art, freedom, and fairness matter as much if not more for wellbeing as growth in income and wealth.
Principle 2: Economic growth must lead to broad-based and inclusive economic development. No discrimination – all citizens have the right to participate fully in the society
• Growth must benefit all – women, the aged, youth, Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander peoples, immigrant communities. Strengthen human rights laws and agencies.
Principle 3: Government benefits must be targeted to those in need, adequate to achieve their goals and not used as punishment.
• People have a right to sufficient welfare support or a living wage.
Principle 4: Good budget management is essential, but this means ensuring solvency, not a blind insistence on budget surpluses.
• A budget surplus is not the measure of good policy, which should aim to fulfil the government’s role in a solvent way. If you don’t need our money, give it back to us.
Principle 5: Fair regulation means that we all get a go. Good regulation recognises Principle 1: it is people’s welfare, not just economic growth, which matters.
• Reject the idea that regulation is a ‘bad’. Non-income drivers of wellbeing need strong regulation to support them.
Principle 6: Workers have a fundamental human right to organise, collectively bargain and take democratically-determined industrial action.
• Workers are people, not just units of production – an economy should work for people, not the other way around.
Principle 7: Provision of government services by an independent and impartial public service is an important responsibility of our elected government.
• We want a government that understands and does its job as best as possible, not one that doesn’t think it has a job.
Principle 8: Companies and high income earners must pay their fair share.
• Our tax system is skewed for high income earners – it needs to be re-balanced and made fairer.
Principle 9: We need a broad-based economy, and not one simply based on agriculture, resource extraction and the services sector.
• The government has a strategic industrial role to play, to ensure a diversified economy.
Principle 10: Trade is crucial, but it must be fair and in the national interest.
• Trade shouldn’t be used to place corporate interests above people’s interests.
Australian Manufacturing Workers Union National; Construction, Forestry, Mining & Energy Union; Finance Sector Union National, Maritime Union of Australia Sydney Branch; Fire Brigade Employees Union NSW Branch; National Tertiary Education Union NSW Branch; ALP Socialist Left NSW; Greens NSW; SEARCH Foundation; Evatt Foundation; F-Collective; No Westconnex Community Action Groups; Migrante Australia; AFTINET; Australian Political Economy Movement; Immigrant Women’s Speakout; Asian Women at Work.
John Quiggin 
@TN
You probably have come across the ‘belief’ even if you have not come across the ‘view’ that you are characterising as not a not-a-thing. You would not recognise the belief in neo-liberalism that underpins the ‘pragmatism’ and ‘common-sense’ that you do see.
Why can’t you see these neo-liberal beliefs that so many other people do see? Why choose to conclude that there is something ‘wrong’ with ‘them’ and their views, and choose not to accept that there is something wrong with ‘you’ that you can’t see these things that are so obvious to others?
So what is the alternative belief that these neo-liberals have rather than it being true that they “believe that economic growth is an end on (sic) itself”?
The problem that I see is with the agenda is that it accepts that the ‘actor’ in the economy is an individual; it makes no provision for the case in which the economic unit or actor is a single mother with a dependent child.
But the mother and child dyad has to be the first economic and social unit from which all other relationships stem.
It’s possible to imagine and posit that women can be honorary men now that we are allowed to and even forced to compete with men for work and wealth, but this is not ‘fair’ or ‘just’ when or if a woman chooses to or is forced to raise a child and also compete with men for work and wealth.
Speaking delusionally as I often do, perhaps birth control for women can be seen as the ‘perturbation’ that began this period of instability and it will create a new set of values or an attractor state that the system can move onto. 🙂
JQ, some comments on page 1:
1.”widening inequality”. Replace with ‘increasing concentration of wealth and political influence’?
2. “especially Europe”. Do you mean the EU? The UK?, the Euro zone? The geographical Europe (ie including Russia, Scandinavia, …)? What about China? The USA? India? In short I don’t know what you have in mind with “especially Europe”, either in terms of location or in terms of what it is that is worse than say in the USA.
3. “unemployment”. Not the only problem. Low wages are also a severe problem.
4. “finance functions”. Do you mean the international monetary and financial system?
5. “conventional wisdom”. ‘retrograde ideas’? (I can’t find any wisdom in going forward to the past. Historically, going forward to the past in terms of economics is what has happened since the late 1970s.) Retrograde seems to me to be a more suitable opposite to progressive, given the actual history.
6. Minor point. “Great Depression” but “GFC”. Write Global Financial Crisis?
7. The term neo-liberalism may need a few explanatory words or reference points such as Reaganomics, economic rationalism, Thatcherism, naive market economics.
The end for p.1.
Well Julie Thomas, it could be that I somehow can’t see these beliefs that apparently surround me, and that you and John claim to be able to see. Or it could be that I actually understand the views of those around me much better than you, and that you’re just making stuff up and/or mischaracterising the views of others to make your own seem more innovative and reasonable, and yourself more virtuous, than they/you really are.
One way to test this would be for me to issue you a challenge, and that is to point to these people who you and john say think economic growth is an end in itself and that all regulation is bad. I can guarantee that you’ll be hard pressed to find a single economist who believes that and if wager that even the heartless Abbott government, the evil IPA or those crazy ideological Libertarianscontain a single member who holds those views.government
@Ernestine Gross
I do not thihnk John Quiggin wrote this statement. Amendments are pointless.
I do not know all the groups that have attached themselves to this statement but he may have simply joined this crusade as part of me-too-ism.
It is not an alternative economic policy and most principles would be supported by many in the Liberal party – (maybe not the tax point).
Race Mathews and the Christians have produced musc better stuff – [ here ]
@TN
I think the problem is that some folks believe they can mind read. Right wingers do this all the time to the left. Witness “Rational Liberal’s” (may I call him ratlips?) clairvoyance that egalitarian views are based on “envy”. Projection much? But that doesn’t make the reciprocal mind reading any more persuasive. As I said early, NOBODY believes that growth is an end in itself. Some people may behave as if they thought growth was an end in itself but even that doesn’t mean they believe it is an end in itself. People’s actions are not also consonant with their beliefs, etc.
Not quite true, though likely the case for many regular (unthinking/automatic) “believers” in growth. I got bumped from standby to Business class the last time I flew here from the UK. I spent a fair portion of the flight arguing politics over free-flowing wine with a well-known Gold Coast businessman. He thought Australia was “getting better all the time”, and the “environment” (by which I think he meant anything he or his ilk had not built) would “naturally” fall by the wayside. This was Human Destiny, and it was Good. He foresaw natural systems decaying, to be replaced by human engineering. The Gold Coast to Brisbane would be entirely built-in and enclosed, as the air outside would become poisoned and unbreathable. He was quite open about that fact that for many (outside, and shoe-shining inside) life would get worse, but that was Destiny’s natural price (and, coincidentally, he and his mates would live in a state of ongoing material plenty, for the duration a medically-enhanced extended life span).
This image of growth is barmy enough only to be publicly flaunted under the influence of alcohol. But I wonder if something like it is fairly widespread amongst the 1% (indeed, in parts of the oddly similar US and China, it’s perhaps not so far away)
Possibly out of scope for an “economic” agenda, but it might be good to have some principle regarding security and privacy. Perhaps in the current context it could be considered economic, as actions taken in the name of security are often quite costly and often only benefit corporations.
This whole thread could be a con.
These Principles existed in 2013, and are propagated by right wing Labor at:
http://www.chifley.org.au/developing-alternative-progressive-economic-agenda/
We need an Alternative Economic Strategy but not as this blog knows it.
@Sandwichman
Its true that folks on both sides engage in misrepresenting the views and beliefs of the other (and I occasionally point out the equivalent behaviour on right wing blogs such as Catallaxy as I do on soft left blogs such as this).
However, my sense (and I claim no particular science to it, although I have been engaged in this particular issue for more than 25 years) is that, at least on economic matters, the left get it wrong more frequently, and appear less concerned about ensuring that they characterise the views of their opponents correctly, than those on the right.
John alas has been guilty of similar behaviour before, in his discussions of economic rationalists (although I take EG’s point that, in this case, John was probably not the author of this ‘alternative’ economic agenda, although he has added his endorsement and thus credibility to it).
Julie’s suggestion that I probably can’t distinguish my or others neo-liberal beliefs because to me they just seem like commonsense is another common tactic used by people to avoid needing to do the hard work of finding out exactly what it is that their opponents think and believe. Its always much better to doubt the cognitive abilities of your opponents than to do the research and risk coming across some inconvenient truths. To be fair to Julie, by the end of her post she does at least ask the question:
Leaving aside for the moment whether it is meaningful to use the label neo-liberal, my response would be that the first principle in this ‘Alternative (sic) economic agenda’ – that economic growth is a means to better the lives of current and future Australians – would be held true by virtually all those people (although they would probably take a more nuanced view on the sub-point that follows it).
@TN
“…my sense (and I claim no particular science to it, although I have been engaged in this particular issue for more than 25 years) is that…”
Fair enough. I guess the difference between our views comes down to the question of “engagement in this particular issue.” I have been engaged in an almost 20-year research project that looks at a particularly persistent right-wing mind-reading exercise, the claim that people concerned about unemployment commit a “lump-of-labor fallacy”. The fallacy claim is entirely based on conjecture about what other people think without ANY substantive evidence based on written texts, interviews, surveys or what have you.
My being immersed in such a research project gives me the impression that right wingers do it all the time because I am constantly looking at evidence of right wingers doing it. Of course that impression could very well change if I was to look at the more general issue of ideologically motivated mind reading rather than the specific one that I have been researching.
I think, therefore, that it would be fair to say that I am basing my observation on a biased sample.
@Sandwichman
A very interesting post, Sandy. Indeed, I will admit that I sometimes presume that some of those arguing against, say, wage flexibility or for restrictions on working hours or immigration are guilty of arguing based on the fallacy. (I am also aware of more sophisticated arguments on these matters.)
Of course, we all have our priors and beliefs and need to make assumptions, including about the basis of others arguments, and we do not have infinite time or intellectual resources/capacity to devote to verifying them. The relevant questions to my mind are (a) to what extent do we proactively and openly reassess our priors and assumptions (recognising that we must triage the most critical); (b) when confronted with counter-evidence to our priors and assumptions, do we openly and faithfully evaluate that evidence and change our assumptions and/or conclusions accordingly; and (c) when we have done neither of the above but are basing arguments on our (assumed but unproven) priors, do we qualify our arguments accordingly.
As I indicated, w.r.t. the issues I have been most engaged in (or feel I am reasonably placed to judge), my sense is that those on the left score less well against those questions than those on the right. My observations w.r.t. the lefts misrepresentation of mainstream economics go back to Michael Pusey and indeed earlier. However, that is of course just one particular set of issues and, as your post implies, a different sample of issues might give a different outcome as between left and right.
@Ivor
The 2-page document is marked ‘Draft’. The publication date is unknown. I respond to what is in front of me, using my professional background in economics and finance, without trying to second guess the motivation of any of associated members of the draft document.
Party politics is not of interest to me.
@TN
“although I take EG’s point that, in this case, John was probably not the author of this ‘alternative’ economic agenda, although he has added his endorsement and thus credibility to it.”
I didn’t make this point but then EG may be a code name for whoever.
@Ernestine Gross
Ernestine, my mistake. It was actually Ivor responding to you in post #55.
@TN
I suspect — and have some limited survey evidence — that people both on the left and on the right tend to assume that their opponents have views “opposite” to theirs when the reality is the the pair of views would be closer to orthogonal, if plotted on an X,Y graph. The left-right spectrum idea is flawed analogy to begin with.
@TN
I have no idea what you are on about. Can’t read your stuff – too convoluted and confusing.
But have some advice anyway just for today. The reason you are missing all these ‘things’ that I can see – JQ can speak for himself – is that you have not been keeping up with the ‘literature’.
The place to go to catch up on the term “motived cogntion” is Dan Kahan at the Cultural Cognition blog. Google is your friend and there you will find all the research and work that has been going on for years about how and why some people can see ‘things’ and people like you can’t see them.
Why would I want to present myself as more virtuous than I am? What do I gain from doing that?
Why would I want to appear to be more innovative and the other thing you said?
And you know what, you blokes never answer questions. That is my way of deciding who is worth listening to and replying to and who is not.
I asked you “what is the alternative belief that these neo-liberals have rather than it being true that they “believe that economic growth is an end on (sic) itself”?
Answer that in a paragraph or less after you read the stuff about motivated cognition and then we can talk but this is an economic blog you know and JQ is so very generous and tolerant with all this psycho analysis stuff that I go on with, so I’m thinking?
Have you heard of Noah Smith? He is a very clever young economist who can see things also and he has a blog and he explained motivated cognition pretty well using an economic example in one of his recent blogs.
You may find easier for you to work through.
@Julie Thomas
Actually Julie, I’ve already answered the question you posed (see post 59)..
Sorry to be a bit pointed, but I’d suggest you spend more time reading what the people you want to disagree with actually say and think, instead of simply presuming to know and then dismissing them when they tell you otherwise.
Of course, as I said in my first response to toy, its possible that I simply can’t see the beliefs I’m surrounded by. But its also possible, and I would suggest far more likely, that I do understand the views and beliefs of those I work with far better than you.
The fact that you continue to support the clearly false statement about the mainstream agenda seeing economic growth as an end in itself adds to my confidence on this.
Maybe an evolving agenda is a less scary and realistic way forward rather than alternative. So “Evolving our economic agenda”.
Further , societies evolve best by empowering groups and individuals with no voice. So that means to many ends needs to be very explicit in the principles.
@Sandwichman
‘The left-right spectrum idea is flawed analogy to begin with’ is a false statement because the left-right spectrum idea was not, to begin with, an analogy of any kind.
@TN
Whatever.
Kahan uses an interesting way to put people into categories that are more informative about their ‘preferences’ than the right left dichotomy.
In one of his early blogs he explains.
“Drawing on a framework associated with the work of Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, we characterize ordinary people’s culturalworldviews—their preferences, really, about how society should be organized—along two cross-cutting dimensions: “hierarchy-egalitarianism” and “individualism-communitarianism.” We then examine having one or another of the sets of values these two dimensions comprise shape people’s perceptions of risk or other policy-consequential facts.”
Taking a chance on a link to one of these blogs with more on this.
http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2012/6/21/politically-nonpartisan-folks-are-culturally-polarized-on-cl.html
@Julie Thomas
That’s a disappointing but not totally surprising response, Julie. As I said earlier (post 61), everyone of necessity has priors and needs to make assumptions, including about the beliefs of others. A key question is what we do about them when the factual basis for them is challenged. Your approach is similar to many I’ve encountered from leftists when called out on this matter over the years: block-out and/or divert and withdraw, but in a way that avoids any clear concession and allows you to feel justified in peddling the same line another day. Presumably, you’ll at least be able to cite a good psychologist on this phenomenon.
Is economic growth the only way we can improve things? An economic descent plan anyone? How would it work if our money was worth less in the future instead of more, that would be creative.
This is a bit tangential, but I have just read Michael Young’s “The Rise of the Meritocracy”, which is unnervingly prescient, and highlights the importance of being very open about the values used to guide decision-making – which in a direct sense this piece of yours is about. Having an economic policy implies that “the economy” is for something ie there are outcomes or purposes which the society may wish to achieve; rather than simply assuming that the economy, in some laissez-faire way is in itself the goal. Same as making the distinction between “the market” as an end in itself, or the means to some end(s). Each of these distinctions being of course dismissed by neo-liberals of all sorts, primarily because leaving things to “the market” or “the economy” simply maintains the inequitable and inefficient status quo.
it looks like the so-called “Alternative Economic Strategy” was written by ANDREW DETTMER & DON SUTHERLAND, AMWU.
or this is what I found at:
http://workersbushtelegraph.com.au/2014/11/11/austerity-g20-and-growth-an-alternative-economic-agenda/
In no stretch of the imagination can it be called an Alternative economic agenda.
As John Quiggin noted:
it looks like the so-called “Alternative Economic Strategy” was written by ANDREW DETTMER & DON SUTHERLAND, AMWU.
or this is what I found at:
http://workersbushtelegraph.com.au/2014/11/11/austerity-g20-and-growth-an-alternative-economic-agenda/
In no stretch of the imagination can it be called an Alternative economic agenda.
As John Quiggin noted:
We need much much more than this.
This is gibberish.
[“opposite” and “orthogonal” only exist in a specified geometry, but geometries exist only within a given person’s frame of reference: comparisons between people’s perspectives can only be done topologically — in which case there is no “opposite” or “orthogonal” you can use — or in the terms of one of the frames of reference, in which case you use the “opposite” and “orthogonal” of that frame of reference. The very fact that people have different perspectives means you can’t say that their perspectives are “wrong”.]
@TN
Try and imagine that I might not be motivated by the things that motivate anyone you have ever previously known. Do you know many poor people who foolishly imagine they are rich?
I am nonplussed that you can write this and expect people not to laugh? Pretentious or what?
“Your approach is similar to many I’ve encountered from leftists when called out on this matter over the years: block-out and/or divert and withdraw, but in a way that avoids any clear concession and allows you to feel justified in peddling the same line another day.”
If my approach is not of interest then why are you bothering me by replying?
But if we look at what actually happened, I didn’t block you out “and/or divert and withdraw” did I?
I provided you with a way to find the expert on this area of investigation so you could read for yourself what knowledge you are missing out on knowing and you denied yourself the possibility that if you did understand this new knowledge, it could provide you with the ability to see what you cannot now see.
The term to google is motivated cognition. Don’t tell me you are too stupid or lazy to read this easy peasy psyc stuff and rip it to shreds with your superior knowledge system? Surely not?
@Julie Thomas
ZOMBIE ANTI-ECONOMICS
Were I lacking a half decent comeback, and unwilling to concede that point, I might reply to you in the way you earlier did to me and say ‘whatever’. I am half inclined to do so anyway, but let me recount where we’re up to.
You asked the question Julie about economic growth. I answered it. You had no direct comeback. But had you tried to challenge me on it, I could also point you to plenty of places where people and organisations associated with the ‘mainstream economic agenda’, that you would probably label neo-liberal or economic rationalists, have said words to the effect that we pursue economic growth to help improve living standards and wellbeing; not as an end in itself. I could also point to numerous instances where such bodies have advocated policies – including regulation – that would REDUCE economic growth (at least as imperfectly measured by GDP) because of the need to correct market failures or address inequities. You have no facts to rebut any of this, so instead you are left with your theory of motivated cognition (not the newsflash you seem to think, incidentally) which you somehow think trumps direct knowledge of the issue and and engagement with people and institutions associated with the mainstream economic agenda.
I challenged you to point to the actual people – as distinct from the neo-liberal zombies that seem to infest your imagine – who apparently think that economic growth is an end in itself and that all regulation is bad. You haven’t. Because you can’t. Because they do not exist.
I see that Rob Banks (comment 74) has now joined you in slaying more straw economic men. It is ironic that the host of this site is also the author of Zombie Economics, because the site itself is a prime example of zombie anti-economics – forever creating and then slaying the same straw economic men.
Good night.
Think it is fairly predictable stuff. Eat the rich!
When you mention the “workers” and the CFMEU in the same breath what CFMEU? The NSW’s branch? If your talking about the employed as the mandate , what about the 25% of youth unemployed and where I live, the 50% underemployed. Not to mention the underemployed. I haven’t seen unions looking after those for many a year. I used to work for the TLC WA and didn’t hear them ever mentioning these groups in their campaigns for better wages and conditions. More in advancing their own interested, privacy and collectively. Even the leader of the once radical Left, the MUA, is more concerned about their own workers’ privileged conditions than those of the ordinary worker surviving on a basic salary of $40k – $50 a year, less if you are female. I know from close contact with them that they have dropped their concern for other workers’ needs and commitment to radical change and more interested in protectionism for their own. Sucks!
@TN
Ahh yes, guilty as charged:
As you say, its never black or white. Those characterised as neo-liberals don’t actually believe in no welfare at all – just less. They don’t believe in no regulation at all, just less. Less of those annoying rules that protect the environment and stop the strong exploiting the weak too egregiously. They don’t believe in economic growth at any cost – clearly the loss of any of their own money would be too great a cost.
Of course, anyone with half a brain would understand the nature of argument, and address the actual points rather than picking trivial technical points.
@Julie Thomas
You can map more information about people’s preferences by using any two arbitrarily chosen dimensions than by choosing just one. And you can map more information about people’s preferences by using three arbitrarily chosen dimensions than by choosing just two.
Every increase in the number of dimensions allows you to map more information; this indisputable fact provides no guidance in deciding how many dimensions to use, or what those dimensions should be.
And all of this is irrelevant to the validity of the left-right spectrum model for its original purpose, since that original purpose was not the mapping of individual preferences.
@John Brookes
Yes, it’s like Strawman WWF. Very showy, but completely bogus.
TN might have put it better (if I get his initial point), and more succinctly, as:
“Principle 1 says that ‘economic growth is not an end in itself’. I know my stuff and I can tell you that nobody believes it is an end in itself.
Under Principle 5 is the call to ‘reject the idea that regulation is a ‘bad’’. Again, nobody believes that all regulation is bad.”
@Mpower
“Evolving our economic agenda”.
Good one, IMHO.
@J-D
Huh? The analogy was between the seating arrangement in the revolutionary French National Assembly and a supposed political spectrum that corresponded to it. If you want to call it a metaphor rather than an analogy, fine. But it is a figure of speech nonetheless. There is nothing literally “left” about the left or “right” about the right.
@Collin Street
“This is gibberish”
May I presume the term “this” refers to your response? Are you claiming that right-wingers’ perceptions of left-wing views and left-wingers perceptions of right wing views are generally objective and accurate?
@TN
This is it?
“that economic growth is a means to better the lives of current and future Australians – would be held true by virtually all those people (although they would probably take a more nuanced view on the sub-point that follows it).”
This is all you got?
Sorry but not worth responding too; this is the delusion you have and it is one that all those people – and I don’t really know or care who you are referring to here.
But i do know that all the people I know are taking a very much more nuanced view of what has actually happened rather than continue to drink the kool aid that keeps you going so strong and virile, and they are seeing probably because they can’t afford the type of kool aid that you drink that economic growth does not lift all the boats in a fair and balanced way.
@J-D
Why are we needing to continue to use the original way of dividing people into right and left?
Do you think that there is any way one could map the left right dichotomy onto the concepts yin and yang?
Tn,
Below is an article from an old Courier Mail. I think it is dated sometime during 1951 but if you can google you can find it and the exact date – should you be that interested – on Trove. One can access a lot of old newspapers and magazines there and it is very interesting to check out what was happening on a random day in the past.
This article I came across had not been edited; the text are digitized and needs editing unless someone has already done that.
Read through, if you are so motivated, and still desire to interact with me, see if you can *see* the motivated cognition that happens on the part of the writer when he assesses the relative truth value of the two arguments in this ‘dispute’.
“BRISBANE waterside workers have decided to support their Federation’s proposal to ban Sunday work, midnight shifts, and work on public holidays. No man likes to work when almost everybody else is either playing or comfortably asleep.
The men probably feel that these restrictions would help to spread the available work among as many of their mates as possible. Work on the wharves has not been so plentiful this year; and many men are afraid that mechanization will decrease the demand for- their labour.
If these were the only reasons for the ban, and if they were valid, few’ would quarrel with the Brisbane watersiders’ decision.
But is it not more likely that some of their leaders have emphasized these dubious reasons to win support for a ban which would hold up shipping, raise costs and prices, and help inflation?
The BrisbaneviBit (I couldn’t edit this) of Mr. E. Roach. Communist assistant general secretary and organiser of the Federation, was contrived. Australian watersiders must remember their useless three-month ban on overtime this winter.
Moreover, their special privileges, like attendance money, do give them special responsibilities. It is, therefore, sincerely to be hoped that a majority of the Federation’s branches will not support the proposed ban. At the same time it is the duty of employers so to regulate the movement of their ships that extra wharf work does not always become necessary at times least convenient for the watersiders.
For example, penalty rates are higher for Sunday than for midnight shiftwork. It is an alleged grievance of the men that when employers deem it urgent to get a ship away they ask farely for Sunday work, often for night work through Monday and Tuesday.
Good waterside relations are the responsibility of both men and management.”
Did you notice the biased reasoning of the writer toward the management side. and then the hypocrisy of the final sentence?
@Julie Thomas
What TN is saying — and I agree — is that “Economic growth is not an end in itself…” refutes a straw man argument. One could differentiate between those who think growth IS a means to bettering lives or OUGHT TO BE a means for bettering lives but there is essentially a consensus that it is not an end in itself. This is shadow boxing.
The real question, that the straw man rhetoric ducks, is whether grow even COULD BE a means to a better life. This is NOT the same question as whether growth has been correlated with improved living standards in the past. Correlation is not causation.
I’m afraid that the “progressive alternative policy” wants to have its cake and eat it too. It wants to appear progressive by disdaining a view of growth as an end in itself that no one espouses. At the same time it wants to appeal to conventional growth idolatry by not questioning the presumed causal relationship.
In the end we get tweedle-dee, tweedle-dumb politics. “We are the true proponents of growth!” “No, WE are the true proponents of growth!” At least the right-wing proponents of growth have something to show for their efforts — accumulation of capital. The social democratic growth-as-a-means-to-a-better-life minstrels have nothing to show for it but their hollow manifestoes.
@Sandwichman
And one thin manifesto won’t even shine your shoes (on Broadway)
No you can’t, and that you’re even asking the questioon suggests terrible thiongs about your reading comprehension. [it’s plainly not my intended meaning that my own words are gibberish, so you must be using the phrasing you are for rhetorical purposes: this isn’t very funny, and it isn’t very compelling, and mostly makes you look like a smug tool. In general I think most of your life experience of people stopping arguing with you has been driven not by their becoming convinced of your correctness but of their becoming convinced of your impenetrability; this may have helped craft a false self-image about your analytical skills.]
: the reason, I think, that people stop arguing against you is
“Opposite” and “orthogonal” only make sense inside a particular system of analysis / frame of reference. Outside a system of analysis, considered absolutely, there’s only “different”, only one sort. You’re using “opposite” and “orthogonal”, which means you’re working within a framework… but you’re comparing frameworks and declaring some better!
Esentially it’s a species of question-begging. Your analysis is rooted in your own framework, so it means nothing that it supports your own framework: it’s certainly not absolute truth or insight into the thinking of others.
This is a very, very big problem, and also one that’s going to be invisible to you.
@Sandwichman
“At least the right-wing proponents of growth have something to show for their efforts — accumulation of capital.”
That is perhaps the problem that blinds many people. Surely the accumulation of capital comes at the expense of the accumulation of other things – we do have to make choices and weigh up the opportunity cost of our choices.
Perhaps the other things that could be accumulated rather than accumulating capital, must necessarily be neglected in the determination to accumulate capital of the crass and material version at the expense of the family life of the worker.
Values. It’s the values that shine our shoes; the values that underpin manifestos that determine if it is a thin or thick manifesto.
Never mind your patriarchal reasoning about the Courier Mail article. Ask yourself what values would lead one group of people with one set of concerns to negate the concerns of the other group of people with such callous disregard?
@Sandwichman
It wasn’t originally a metaphor. It was originally a factual observation. People who sat together on the left took one political position and people who sat together on the right took an opposing political position; or else people who took one political position sat together on the left and people who took an opposing political position sat together on the right. Describing the political position of the people who are sitting on the left as the left’s position is not a metaphor, and this was the original usage.
Wow! Projection much? Guy walks in off the Street and insults me. I brush it off with a cheap witticism and he goes ballistic. Well, excuuuuuse me (and yes you may read behind the lines on that remark).
@Julie Thomas
My “patriarchal” reasoning? Labels make thought so much easier. Why with the correct labels one doesn’t have to think at all! I’m tempted to slip into a drawl so you can call me a racist, too.
@J-D
@Julie Thomas
@Collin Street
So I take it you folks don’t want to talk about the “progressive alternative economic agenda” but would rather engage in peripheral bickering about the Sandwichman’s defects as a human being?
@Sandwichman
Of course labels make it easier. Why else have them on jam and bread? What is diagnosis all about? Do you believe that once a word is defined that is *it* for all eternity?
I’d say that the desire to categorise and the capacity to do so, are the aspects of human nature that lead to ‘progress’ of all kinds but this desire is one that periodically needs to be examined.
And I do have to say with respect to the conversation you are having with Collin Street that the only projection I *see* going on is you making assumptions about what Collin Street said based on your own – flawed – understanding of the capacity of humans to confuse emotion with reason.
I saw nothing insulting in the above but I suppose because I see nothing insulting in being asked to look inside myself and seriously consider what motivates my own version of ‘rational’.
Your understanding is limited because you lack the knowledge required, not because you are evil or anything so dramatic.
Check your drama queen privileges?