This sounds radical. I hope the British Labour Party manage to turn things around and be a model to the rest of the world as the rise of the right in Europe, the US, and Latin America, bothers me. I always thought that mankind was moving forward towards modernity, enlightenment, and progressiveness and wars would be a thing of the past, but it seems that ugly, primitive tribalism is on the rise. Mark Blyth says we are hard wired for this, that we tend to stick together with our own group/ tribe when things get tough, and neoliberalism makes things very tough.
The CBI’s managing director for people and infrastructure, Neil Carberry, said Labour’s calls for nationalisation would wind the clock back on the UK’s economy.Please, let's wind it back. KV
The Guardian
Labour’s plans to bring services into public ownership would cost “absolutely nothing”, John McDonnell has said.
The shadow chancellor outlined an agenda to put public services “irreversibly in the hands of workers” so they could “never again be taken away”.
He told a Labour gathering in London that public ownership was not just a political decision but an “economic necessity”.
“It would be cost-neutral because you would be bringing into public ownership an asset,” McDonnell told Sky News.
“In addition to that, you would not just have an asset, that asset would give you income. Instead of that income going to shareholders, it would come to the taxpayer.”
Asked whether public ownership would cost “absolutely nothing”, he replied: “Exactly that”.
The shadow chancellor told Labour’s alternative models of ownership conference: “The next Labour government will put democratically owned and managed public services irreversibly in the hands of workers, and of those who rely on their work.
“We will do this not only because it’s right, not only because it’s the most efficient way of running them, but also because the most important protection of our public services for the long term is for everyone to have and feel ownership of them.
“We aren’t going to take back control of these industries in order to put them into the hands of a remote bureaucracy, but to put them into the hands of all of you – so that they can never again be taken away.”
The Guardian - John McDonnell says nationalising services would cost nothing
2 comments:
McDonnell has still got to address the thorny issue of pensions though. The ultilities are the main mechanism by which pension funds earn income to pay to pensioners in an era of low bond yields.
A reduction in income yields for pension funds means greater pension contributions from current workers, because current pensioner benefits are already vested.
I'm no fan of pension funds - they are a way of guaranteeing an unfair distribution of production reserved for pensioners - but McDonnell is ducking this question.
There's always some complication, but if Labour ever catch onto MMT, could they sort it out with that?
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