Reply to post: Re: What the...?

Why is that idiot Osbo continuing with austerity when we know it doesn't work?

issue-taker
Coffee/keyboard

Re: What the...?

Odd that this article agitates the more emotionally motivated commenters. ~Tech~ as a cultural sphere is generally socially left ("reality has a well-known <s>liberal</s> <i>leftie</i> bias"). Sometimes economically centrist or right. That's two axes I'm discussing "wings" of political opinion on (politicalcompass.org)

Worstall can be self-servingly rightwing, economically at least. He can be as flimsily factless as Niall Ferguson if you pay close attention or if he hasn't given himself enough time for this weeks columns. He once tried to completely dismiss Piketty's "Capital" in a single update for this column. Cunningly, by alleviating anglo countries of the charge of inequality by redefining "poor people" as people with only 5K in shares and dividends etc. Suddenly the rich of the wealthiest 75-95 percentiles looked less stupendously encumbered.

And to fill space over at the FT, if I recall correctly, he sought to demonstrate that economic inequality, job instability and more rights for employer and corporation at the cost of the rights of the individual were good for an economy as a whole. Supposedly, Scandinavian countries, with their absence of a legally defined nationwide minimum wage and state-enforced employment contracts must be libertarian. He contrasted their economic performance with the supposedly "left-wing" romance, Mediterranean countries which aren't weathering the numismacide as well. Thus a victory for broadly right-wing, liberal (in the classical or non-usonian sense) policy, given scandis have healthier, longer-lived people, more productive economies, lower crime and unemployment yadda yadda.

Never mind that with a little more digging or a little less malignant misinformation he could have found these Mediterranean countries -- he focused on Italy -- are pretty much policy-wise on a par with us brits. And crucially, that scandis are ethereal elf-people super-socialists with their minimum wage set by yearly collective bargaining, so as not to be thwarted embarassingly by inflation on a regular basis, like below average earners are here. And that in fact they are the hardest employees to terminate in the world, because of more collective bargaining and a history or well-regulated unionism.

Job security and steady compensation make a happier, more productive workforce, but that was an inconvenient conclusion for Worstall and his FT readers to reach. After all, they regard themselves as the deserving, wryly fondleslab-perusing upper echelon of a splendidly isolationist technocracy. Fact me in my poverty spout oh yes.

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