Curmudgeonous thoughts: No, really, it is crap

[erudito]

A few years ago, I went to a fairly poor Academy of Social Sciences conference in Canberra on indigenous issues (there was much denunciation of "conservatives": naturally, none such were invited to speak for themselves). As a result, I am on the mailing list for its publication, DialogueAs a publication written by social science academics for

Comments

[sacred_chao]

Ooh, check dem figures. The bottom fifth have gained $27,700 per annum since 1975? They wouldn't earn a total of $27,700 even now! And looking at government share of GDP hardly measures the weight of importance the market carries in people's lives. I'm not saying the article is good, but if you're going to call iffyness on someone's argument, be scrupulous about how you do it :P

Income mobility

[erudito]

The increase was the average increase for people who were in the bottom fifth in 1975. The point is that very few people stay in the bottom fifth of incomes.

Global trends from data-subsets

[catsidhe]

Income distribution data is harder to come by,
(data showing income share of lowest 40% of households rose from 13% to 19% between the 1930s and the 1980s)
So the poor got a better deal between the Great Depression and the booms of the nineties, after the avowedly socialistic policies of the intervening seni-century.
... and then? The 1980s... Thatcher, Reagan, Hawke/Keating. Surely this is precisely the period when the substantial gains of the previous fifty years started being systematically reversed?

To use those statistics and infer a continuing trend seems somewhat like looking at Stock Market prices for the period 1900-1927, and doing the same.

Re: Global trends from data-subsets

[catsidhe]

Oops, make that '... rose from 15% to 19% between...'

My point remains, however.

(damn lack of editing on comments...)

Re: Global trends from data-subsets

[erudito]

There has been some shift in the opposite direction more recently.
Which is what I said. Though systematically is putting it far too high.

On the difference between "liberal" and "neo-liberal"

[taavi]

I have always understood "liberal" to refer to the tradition of John Stuart Mill, as you point out, in advocating political, economic, social etc freedom. "Neo-liberal", if I understand its usage correctly, has been coined to refer to the strain of politics that is economically liberal (or at least, "pro-market") but conservative and authoritarian in most social and political areas: for example, abortion, women's rights, gay rights, the environment; but which still lays claim to the term "liberal" as its own.

Definition of terms

[catsidhe]

On the coining of terms, this blog is now advocating 'Neosoc' for 'neo-socialist', as a term of abuse for Petro Georgiou and Malcolm Fraser, as opposed to 'neocon' for 'neo-conservative'.

Somehow the coining of a new term (to be pronounced as 'traitor', or even 'terrorist') is meant to somehow prove something.

For 'liberal' and 'neo-liberal', however, I think there is a valid, meaningful definition for each, and a necessary distinction. The Liberal Party, I think, are largely neo-libs in the sense you give.

Some other definitions of Neo-Liberal, on the other hand, concentrate on the economic over the social aspects. I note, however, that Erudito doesn't reference this definition - possibly because of the phrase "The term neoliberalism was coined by Conservative Republicans, ..."

Re: Definition of terms

[erudito]

I was trying to say well clear of the screwy American use of liberal.

(Also, that is the first time I have read it suggested that conservative Republicans coined the term. I use Wikipedia a lot but I am aware of its limitations. There were a group of Democrats calling themselves neoliberals for a while, but that was following the American use of 'liberal' to mean, as I would put it, 'ideologically cross-dressing social democrat'.)

As for the alleged marriage of economic liberalism to social conservatism, see my direct response.

Re: On the difference between "liberal" and "neo-liberal"

[erudito]

Which still doesn't cover, for example, Milton Friedman, Hayek, etc.

There certainly has been a matching of liberal economics with social conservatism, but as practical politics not as developed intellectual tradition.

Moreover, such labelling completely fails to deal with all the left-of-centre governments who engaged in allegedly "neo-liberal" policies.

Which is the point: economic liberalism has been matched with both conservative and with social democratic policy approaches. So, one can't attack Hawke, Lange, etc for being "neoliberal' AND say "neoliberal" is about conservative social policy.

Many market liberals are quite unhappy with John Howard, for example, regarding him as rather timid in his tax and IR policy and far too fond of tax-and-spend.

And, more or less without exception, all the economic liberals I know and read regard "neoliberal" as a academic wank term. But, of course, as wicked "neoliberals" their views don't count, even about their own views.

Why neoliberal is real

[tcpip]

To claim that the term neoliberalism is some sort of leftist agitprop is pure fantasy and contrary to empirical and historical evidence.

The fact is that the term "liberal" has changed over the years.

In meant, in one instance a hundred and fifty to over two hundred years ago a radical individualism with a particular interest in a clear separation between church and state.

It developed in the twentieth century to mean a moderate approach, a middle-way between unbridled capitalism and hyper-regulated socialism.

The contemporary neo-liberal is a "return to the roots" of classical liberalism, even in a somewhat more radical and extreme point of view.

The term is both accurate and a matter of idenity politics having been coined by conservative republican. To deny it's existence is to exist in a parallel universe.

Re: Why neoliberal is real

[erudito]

I love this. Classical liberals are so disenfranchised they are not even allowed to know what they think and where their ideas come from

Re: Why neoliberal is real

[tcpip]

Take it up with Wikipedia then. If you have counter evidence that the term was no coined by conservative republicans use it. Or live in a parallel universe where the events never occurred.

Re: Why neoliberal is real

[erudito]

I would like to see a source quoted. And the American use of the word liberal is very particular. When the Institute of Humane Studies has its youth conferences, it spends the first session explaining to Americans what the word 'liberal' means in the rest of the universe -- why, for example, Hayek declared he was not a conservative.

Though I guess it makes a certain sort of sense, if the Wikipedia entry is correct. Both groups are trying to belittle the economic liberals, so they make a disparaging connection -- in conservative Republican circles liberal is not a hurrah word.

Distribution of wealth and income in Australia

[tcpip]

http://www.natsem.canberra.edu.au/pubs/dps/dp34/dp34.pdf
http://www.natsem.canberra.edu.au/pubs/cp01/2001_008/cp2001_008.html

The distribution of income is roughly the same as it was a decade prior and the distribution of wealth is worse.

Wealth-wise, the top 1% of the population own 12 percent of household assets. The top ten percent of the population hold 44%. The top twenty percent hold 63%. The bottom fifty percent holds a mere 5%.

Re: Distribution of wealth and income in Australia

[erudito]

On wealth, increasing inequality is what you would expect with rising life expectancies and increased economic importance for intellectual capital. (Aggravated, of course, by govt. land policies which drive house values up by restricting land supply.)

Indeed, the failure of incomes to get more unequal is quite striking. Perhaps we are getting something out of all that welfare spending. (Though, come to think of it, said welfare probably does adversely affect asset distribution.)

[tcpip]

On wealth, increasing inequality is what you would expect with rising life expectancies and increased economic importance for intellectual capital.

Which would suggest that the distribution of wealth would be similar to the distribution of life expetency and IQ. Which isn't the case.

Aggravated, of course, by govt. land policies which drive house values up by restricting land supply.

*blink*

Land supply is restricted by *nature*, not by governments who have shown themselves quite willing to sell land to developers.

Also, it's not house values that have increased in (indeed, the real cost has fallen in the last fifty years). It's the value of land and the lack of government taxation through resource rentals thereof.

Factors

[erudito]

It really doesn't matter what correlates with people's property acquisitions. If people live longer, you expect wealth to become more concentrated because inheritance happens later.

Land supply for housing is restricted by zoning. And yes, govts are happy to sell to developers -- after they have extracted their monopoly rents. And yes, the value of housing land is what is increased, that's what I said.

Consider these figures on housing affordability. Does it really make sense, given, as you say, Australia has lots of land, that housing is less affordable in Sydney than New York? Or that Melbourne is almost poorly affordable as New York?