Social and Economic Policy

The Tory government has ruled on behalf of the capitalist class and the rich. Under the Tories, Britain has become more unequal. In 2022, incomes for the poorest 14mn people fell by 7.5%, while incomes for the richest fifth saw a 7.8% increase. The richest fifth of earners had an income more than 12 times the amount earned by the poorest fifth. The top 1% have incomes much higher than the rest of those in the top 10%. The differences in wealth are even starker. In 2020, the Office for National Statistics calculated that the richest 10% of households hold 43% of all wealth. The poorest 50% own...

On Thursday 1 June the US Senate approved a budget deal negotiated between President Biden and Republican leaders in order to approve an increase in the USA’s federal debt ceiling. Bernie Sanders voted against, saying: At a time when climate change is, by far, the most existential threat facing our country and the entire world I cannot, in good conscience, vote for a bill that makes it easier for fossil fuel companies to pollute and destroy the planet by fast-tracking the disastrous Mountain Valley Pipeline. When the future of the world is literally at stake we must have the courage to stand...

The Tories have felt obliged to remove Trans-Pennine Express rail from its private operators and reassign the franchise as from 28 May to the public-sector “operator of last resort”. They cite “months of continual cancellations” of services. Private water companies have been indicted for large discharges of untreated sewage into waterways and failure to fix leaks, despite paying out over £50 billion in dividends to shareholders since privatisation in 1989. Energy companies are making vast profits while poorer households have faced enforced chill and high bills. The Tories’ Energy Bill Relief...

Expanded from the version in the printed paper. Workers’ Liberty organises a monthly Marxist ecology reading group. This month we discussed a chapter on “Entropy and ecological economics” from Marxism and Ecological Economics by Paul Burkett. Over the last three decades, Burkett and his co-thinkers have developed metabolic rift theory and played a significant role in restoring Marx as an important ecological thinker. As part of that project Burkett has engaged in critical dialogue with the ecological economists. The ecological economists emerged in the 1970s but trace their roots back to...

How much have prices risen? 10.1% (CPI), 13.5% (RPI), 19.2% (food), between March 2022 and March 2023. The high CPI and RPI rates are due to food prices? Not entirely; Germany has 22% food inflation, 7.4% CPI; France 16% food, 5.7% CPI. Food is only 10% of the CPIH “basket”. The UK’s higher rate is mostly due to household energy prices having jumped sharply here between March and April 2022. So the official May inflation figures (for rise between April 2022 and April 2023) will be lower? Almost certainly. Also, world wholesale food price rises have been slowing for a while, and that will...

“Neither god nor master”, ni dieu ni maître, was the name of a newspaper launched by the revolutionary socialist Auguste Blanqui in his old age, in 1880. The slogan was later used mostly by anarchists, though Blanqui was not an anarchist and the “Blanquists” would in 1901-05 merge into a more-or-less Marxist Socialist Party in France. According to the 2021 UK census, “managers, directors, and officials” are 12.9% of the entire workforce, a bigger number than factory operatives or “elementary occupations” or indeed any category except “professional”. Does that mean that “no bosses” is now...

What are the lessons from the Budget; the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and Credit Suisse; and the figures showing Feb-2022-to-Feb-2023 UK inflation a tad up on Jan-2022-to-Jan-2023, after three months of slight decline in those year-on-year figures?

Official statisticians have reported that the government has borrowed £30 billion less than projected in the 12 months to January 2023. That’s down to world-market gas prices abating, the recession being shallower (so far) than many (including us) feared, and receipts from taxes from the well-off holding up well. To increase public service pay rises for 2022-3 to 10% would cost the government only £8.5 billion , if we factor in recouping from taxes on the raised wages. Compare: £30 billion. £8.5 billion. The government insists that such rises would raise the base for pay for future years, and...

On 23 February, Keir Starmer set out his dream of leading a migrant-bashing, law-and-order government whose first aim is to have “the fastest growing economy in the G7”. In place of detail there is wonkish drivel. “Cross cutting-mission boards” “working across silos” with “flexible budget horizons” will “end sticking plaster politics”. But mission number 1, as with Truss, Sunak and every other bourgeois politician, is to deliver growth. Yet undifferentiated GDP growth can only deepen the ecological crisis. GDP growth involves increased production, which in turn means increased material...

The FTSE 100 index of the share prices of top companies has just reached an all-time high, 16% up on October 2022. Those top companies paid out about £83 billion in dividends in 2022, and £50.3 bn in share buybacks. MoneyWeek expects "FTSE 100 ordinary dividend payments to keep setting new records in 2023". To get an idea of scale here, the journalist Philip Inman calculates that a 10.1% pay rise across the public sector would cost the government £8.5 billion (if we factor in the government recouping some of the rise through income tax and VAT on workers' spending). Supporters of capitalism...