PowerSwitch

http://www.newstatesman.com/2017/08/you ... n-children

A healthy majority of Leave voters, it found, claimed that “significant damage to the British economy� would be a price worth paying for Brexit: 61 per cent, compared to just 20 per cent who disagreed. More bizarrely, when the question was made more personal, and respondents were asked would it be worth “you or members of your family" losing their jobs, 39 per cent still thought Brexit was totes worth it – slightly more than the 38 per cent who, like normal, sane people, replied “obviously not�.

Despite the heavily negative spin by the writer, this is actually good news. Why? Politicians and pundits constantly say that the public would never be prepared to accept voluntary sacrifice or poverty for a greater goal (whether that is climate change, resource depletion or in this case Brexit) yet the polling evidence shows that they are talking rubbish.

The population are prepared to make sacrifices for a greater project, even if that means less growth in the economy.

If we are to deal with the looming scarcity challenges facing us, whether it is a hopelessly indebted economy, accelerating man-made climate change or resource scarcity/shortages, the population will HAVE to make material and financial sacrifices for the greater good.

Whatever your view of Brexit, there is something noble that voters are prepared to take a hit to achieve a greater political goal.

Europe is pretty well doomed by the financial crises that it faces so if we get out now and face a little suffering we will probably be better off in the long term. And if the banks leave? Well when, not if, they face their next crisis someone else can pay for it, not us again!!

kenneal - lagger wrote:Europe is pretty well doomed by the financial crises that it faces so if we get out now and face a little suffering we will probably be better off in the long term. And if the banks leave? Well when, not if, they face their next crisis someone else can pay for it, not us again!!

Agreed. If Brexit leads to a contraction in the City, that will actually be a good thing for the country in the medium-long term!

A growing number of people sense in their guts that the world is going tits up and, more importantly, that's it's going to get a whole lot worse. Most of them would not be able to put that gut feeling into coherent words.

But they can still sense it.

And they are not wrong

It is easy to dissociate from our situation here by zooming in to a small-picture perspective and taking comfort in the fact that nuclear war might not happen, or zooming out to a big-picture perspective and taking comfort in the fact that this is all temporary anyway.

Source

The JP article Johnstone refers to is here.

It was Obama - with his secretary of state Hillary Clinton at his side - who destroyed Libya as a modern state and launched the human stampede to Europe.

One of Obama's last acts as president was to sign a bill that handed a record $618billion to the Pentagon, reflecting the soaring ascendancy of fascist militarism in the governance of the United States. Trump has endorsed this.

Buried in the detail was the establishment of a "Center for Information Analysis and Response". This is a ministry of truth. It is tasked with providing an "official narrative of facts" that will prepare us for the real possibility of nuclear war - if we allow it.

Caitlin Johnstone is a first class polemicist as well as being a first rate journalist.

Despite the above, the local councils are battling on with their ill thought through plans for massive house building. New towns, "garden" villages, and all manner of variations to attempt to meet the government's demands that they should build hundreds of thousands of houses a year. Within 8 miles of us, 250,000 (that's right, two hundred and fifty thousand) are proposed for the not too distant forseeable future.

A collapse in the system is a welcome possibility if it would stop this reckless thinking. What views do others have?

I don't think we will have a "collapse of the system". Just a looming economic/financial crisis which will catapult another layer of middle class folk into poverty (whether through unemployment, personal bankruptcy or interest rate hikes leading to negative equity and being unable to pay the mortgage).

Poverty means being unable to borrow money leading to a depression in demand for homes in the private market.

woodburner wrote:A collapse in the system is a welcome possibility if it would stop this reckless thinking.

Bring it on. Work goes on where I live as if fossil energy is unlimited.

woodburner wrote:What views do others have?

It looks like a financial crash is next (yawn ) but we'll hit material and energy limits relatively soon too. The money crash may be within 18 months; it's due.

Till physical limits are reached, more monetary boom/bust cycles, occurring quicker and quicker, more droughts and floods, more often, with no-one getting it.

woodburner wrote:Despite the above, the local councils are battling on with their ill thought through plans for massive house building. New towns, "garden" villages, and all manner of variations to attempt to meet the government's demands that they should build hundreds of thousands of houses a year. Within 8 miles of us, 250,000 (that's right, two hundred and fifty thousand) are proposed for the not too distant forseeable future.

A collapse in the system is a welcome possibility if it would stop this reckless thinking. What views do others have?

I've worked in some of these new build estates and they are highly depressing areas to be brutally honest. They are badly built (I have seen scaffolding around houses that were only built in the past couple of years) and they are closely packed together with postage stamp gardens. All marketed as "luxurious" or "stunning". Should be had up under the Trades Description for that..

What is also very noticeable is the number of cars that are "14/64" or newer in the driveways. Not only are the gullible fools willing to pay 6 times the combined salaries to live in a building site - (sometimes even more than that) but also load up with a PCP that will, inevitably, result in many being returned to sender. It is all Hyacinth Bucket-land giving the illusion of grandeur when it is, in fact, squalor.

The housing bubble is already bursting in London and will filter through to the South East soon enough. This, on its own, may not be the trigger that brings the house of cards down, but it will certainly play its part.

Given the low rate interventionist policies of the Central Banks, I strongly suspect that the next financial crisis will morph into a full blown currency existential one.

My daughter knows a couple that sold a four bed bungalow with a good sized garden to move to a four bedroom but smaller floor area, virtually no garden more expensive house on a new estate because it was in a more favoured area! Some movvers do 'ave 'em!!!

It looks like a financial crash is next (yawn Laughing ) but we'll hit material and energy limits relatively soon too. The money crash may be within 18 months; it's due.

Till physical limits are reached, more monetary boom/bust cycles, occurring quicker and quicker, more droughts and floods, more often, with no-one getting it.

Agree with that.

My working timetable is that by the end of this decade we will hit another economic recession/depression and a broader physical/energy crisis will emerge around 2030.

I think that we have 10/15 years of further boom and bust/QE ahead of us until the more serious limits to growth limits choke and kill off that possibility.

I'm reading "Why Are We Waiting - The Logic, Urgency and Promise of Tackling Climate Change" by Nicholas Stern at the moment and he criticises the way that economists are using economic modelling to forecast the future. They are assuming an incremental change from the past into the future as has happened in the past. According to him they are ignoring the catastrophic changes that will be bought about by climate change and the falls in living standards and GDP which will accompany them.

They are thus giving more value to current economic activity and consumption than they should so that Business As Usual looks to be the best way forward. Governments are following these guidelines because it avoids them having to tell their voters that they will, in future, have less than they have had in the past.

With economic policy supposedly based on logic, Stern is the most logical - and most ignored - voice around today.

Perhaps he defines the "10" on a 1 to 10 scale of logic and no-one wants to be an extremist.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/201 ... economist/

In a new paper published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives the professor of economics at Harvard ­University argues that central banks should start preparing now to find ways to cut rates to below zero so they are not caught out when the next ­recession strikes.

Wouldn't be surprised if negative interest rates become the norm next decade as a response to the looming economic crisis.

I suppose it will prop up the flailing house of cards that is our growth orientated market economy system for a bit but the blow-back will be huge. For a start it will be no point saving because you will be penalized for it and the pension funds will go bust.