Winding up my visit to America, I have three main impressions. That Britain is seen more as part of the E.U. That the USA is more divided and how we both face similar economic and social problems.
The “Special Relationship” may exist in terms of language and culture but in terms of economics and politics it is our place in Europe which now dominates US thinking. A Europe that many regard as a place collapsing under the dead weight of generous social and liberal government with a stagnant economy and poor health care. The Euro crisis is seen as confirmation of this view. Others see us and the E.U. as reflecting U.S. democratic and human values with an economy better balanced between regulation and enterprise but at the cost of innovation. Most see Germany as being in the driving seat and they had this view confirmed when it was announced that the Deutche Borse is bidding for the New York Stock Exchange.
This conflicting view of us and Europe is reflected in Divided America. I have been visiting America for 50 years in various capacities – business, government, parliament and family and I cannot remember such deep division. The division is social and economic due to many people seeing their standard of living drop through pay cuts and jobs disappearing with very little safety net for support. Meanwhile business and the stock market are doing well thanks to government stimulation, but without enabling people to find new work. I have long admired the vitality and enthusiasm of American life, but the profligacy of some compared with the poverty of others emphasises this divide, especially during this period of restraint. I find it embarrassing as it goes beyond the usual ironies of American life. It is wrong and destructive.
We face the same problems and are seeking similar solutions. Stimulating the economy, regulating the banks, encouraging innovation and exports, but let us remember the need for a generous and effective safety net. Let us discourage profligacy and take care not to increase our social divisions during our time of restraint.
Pure waffle. Not one concrete idea of fact to back up the entire post
let us remember the need for a generous and effective safety net.
And how’s it going to be paid for?
165 bn as a deficit.
Solution 1.
Raise taxes. Lets take VAT as an example. 2.5% rise will give 13 bn in income, assuming no drop in demand. So 165/13 * 2.5% = 32% on top of the current 20%. Lets round it, and say 50%
In all likelyhood much more because people will cut their spending. It’s also inflationary, and since lots of spending is linked to inflation, it just pushes up costs as well.
If its not VAT, and its income tax, its the same result. It’s less money in people’s pockets. Would the average man in the street tolerate 80% tax for the basic rate? I doubt it.
So taxes do not cut it.
Borrowing doesn’t either. Borrow and you have more to pay later. Borrowing at 5% to get growth of 2% is also plainly stupid.
So that leaves cuts. 165 bn to stand still.
However, even this isn’t enough. There are 6,800 bn of debts to pay off. That doesn’t take into account the 50% of the population with less than 5,000 in savings. You need to bail them out with a safety net. Minimum income guarantee, housing benefit, free health care, other extras. Ignoring the free health care at the time its most expensive because they are old, 13K a year is the same as a debt of 350,000 in today’s terms. Where are you going to find that for 50% of the UK population? Where are you going to find the money for the health care for the elderly? Where are you going to fund the care home costs?
The answer is simple, you’ve blown the cash.
You’ve taken it off people and spent it running the biggest ponzi scheme ever.
The consequences of this blatent fraud are starting to become clear. Massive cuts in services and huge increases in taxation.
Meanwhile you vote yourself ‘Attendence allowance’ to avoid the need to present receipts that will be checked, and carry on eating in the trough.
At the cost of over two grand a day, it’s not surprising why so many people can’t save. It’s because you’ve taken their money.
Certainly we have been living beyond our means and will have to manage on less. The better off – people and business – will have to pay more.
Incidentally Peers only get paid when they attend.
profligacy of some compared with the poverty of others emphasises this divide, Those who are prepared and enthusiastic about riding with capitalism, by chance succeeding with it, compared with those who are not. There are many variations. As they say chance favours those prepared and fools wait for it, but commission men on an exchange will earn their crust, without much risk.
Globalism over the generations will produce Mono-culture whilst we all pronounce the importance of conserving and encouraging multi-cultures.
Europe is thus a clone of the USA, not a federation (perish the word) but a Union nonetheless.
Even so other International groups of nations states will do well to emulate the provisional success, dominated by Germany,
of the EU, with its 27 states.
There are many such young organizations worldwide, impoverished, hopeful, such as the
various South American International groupings, or those of Central Asia and the old Soviet union descendants.
Political pluralism is one of their biggest problems in Central Asia only to be reconciled by formation of an international democratic platform such as the EU, but in microcosm, and including Iran and Turkey.
The European High representative for foreign Affairs is surely doing her best to promote
International understanding with the Various central Asian groupings?
If she is, then her work will be well done,as Sec State Hilary Clinton’s invariably is.
Certainly Cathy Ashton is doing her best but EU member states will have to give her more authority.
She is a disaster and needs no further power or office in Europe. She still doesn’t speak French, let alone understand the European psyche.
What is needed is a brilliant spokesman for British interests. You cannot get respect from the Europeans by giving them a second rate mouthpiece who is constantly lost and in need of a prop.
An ugly women is not the way to ease the thinking of men who are set in their ways. We need someone who can fill them with respect for his/her excellent mind and prowess. A British front runner. Someone who is capable of showing we are leaders with aplomb.
I thank the noble and gallant lord-Lord Haskel, for his very, very valid points on the matters of America, However, as I am currently presiding within America I feel inclined to clarify the bare facts that America is simply not as orderly or prepared as it would seem looking in. Rather, America is in grave danger of itself. First off, the people are divided by the politics and therefore can not provide a 100% effort to one cause, as it would so seem. Second, the great ‘alliance’ of America is at an all time low. Most of our ally are based off of economic trade and not, as they once were militaristic ability. Our true allies are beginning to stray with time. Moreover, America is self divided in other ways. As we all may know: Evil is not one form, it is several minor problems that are ignored and permitted to fester into monsters. All of this to be noted, America can not maintain it’s once noble air, we are neck deep in issues that focus inward and so fail to note what goes on outside our walls.
A personal wish of mine has always been to move to England and earn a lordship, as England fallows many of the medieval ways, and it appears to be working, Before we can re-instate out-of-state order, we must repair our inner issues, lest our minor issues divide us. Britten is our greatest ally, that is to be without a doubt, but we can not help others until we help ourselves.
I think you have a very rosy view of England. We have our problems too.
That Britain is seen more as part of the E.U.
By whom ? Certainly not by Americans I know.
That the USA is more divided
By what ? Anymore than the north-south divide here ? I think not.
Europe that many regard as a place collapsing under the dead weight of generous social and liberal government with a stagnant economy and poor health care.
hahahaha that is laughable. Life expectancy see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
Where you’ll see most of Europe ahead of the USA.I believe life expectancy and finances go hand in hand ?
Others see us and the E.U. as reflecting U.S. democratic and human values with an economy better balanced between regulation and enterprise but at the cost of innovation.
hahahahaha who have you been staying with, talking to? US democratic and human values Oh my !! The same values that gave us ghettos, Guantanamo and health care for the rich and insured !
But that’s the point. American politicians interpret Europe according to their particular political dogma. The level of public discourse about this is pretty low.
Precisely my point, its all a very well maintained facade, order does not preside anywhere for long.
I suggest you take employment there and try to live as an ordinary American and watch yourselves feel the panic of such a life. Living in the US is akin to living in a third world country. You cannot fully describe it unless you experience it. And it is beyond European belief, as for so long, we have bought into the myth of the American Dream.
It is painful to see very young homeless children pulling their toys along behind them, in the same fashion bag ladies do here.
To see endless good people seriously ill having worked all their life and no longer able to get health cover or treatment, as there is no benefits, they were cut by the Clinton administration.
Women having to do three jobs and leave their tiny children in a locked car in the car park and tell them to not open the door or they will be taken from their mother.
These women start the day with a cleaning job, followed by waitressing and the evening sees them pole dancing or some other night club activity. And at the end of the week it barely covers their rent. The pay is so low.
The two dollars an hour the joints are allowed to pay, is taken by the State Taxes, as the state assumes their tips are so vast they will more than cover what they take from them. Which is, of course, a fallacy. People don’t tip in greasy spoons.
Many Americans are starving on the street. And if you want proof, watch this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlEf9XpxlyY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSE5CQpZdP8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxXwUtIaDjE
This is the result of the big society. Volunteers doing their best but getting nowhere. Whilst those who make billions do not pay their full quota of tax. And where they refuse to pay a man or woman a living wage.
This is the society of the American dream heading to the UK so we can dream along with them.
And they despise the UK as 48% of our immigrants are Americans who emigrate here looking for a better life with the support of the NHS. And the US government don’t like their people to know the truth about the European system. Only 10% of Americans have passports so they rely on the propaganda they receive through their networks, who tell them Europe and the UK stinks. That it is Communist and that they will be swamped in Communism if they harbour thoughts of our way of life and our social network.
Women bringing up children on their own in America certainly have a hard time. And sadly it is this kind of minimal support which Congress is looking to cut.
US democratic and human values
Yes! The Land of the free.
Land of the Free ??
Where getting caught stealing a few cookies can result in a life sentence if it’s your third offence.
Where a large majority of goods, and GDP I might add, is made by private prisons mostly by young black men incarcerated it seems to become the 21st Century slave labour.
Where you can go from luxury to nothing at the toss of an employers coin.
There is a definition of freedom meaning you have nothing and are bound to nothing, I don’t care too much for it.
Don’t forget, the USA was founded on exploitation. And, history tells us, a country always reverts to past practice.
Carl, as one who lives in America I have to agree. Really not much has changed here in East Tennessee since Obama took office. Life expectancy in Europe is better than in America because of the typical Americans diet and excersise habbits (Junk food, high in fats, and no real excersise)
The political Divide is about the smae too, its relaly Dmeocrat VS Republicans. Obama is in office, and Republicans compar ehim to Hitler. Before htis, Bush was in office and Democrats compared him to Hitler.
Oh and did i mention that America is teeterign on the prink of oblivion thnaks ot this Administration? This has been true sicne about 1795!
I think its just repetition fo Media Hype.
I feel it important to clarify myself. I do live in America and I can assure you the problem lies not with the Clintons, though perhaps slightly, rather it lies on Obama’s shoulders, and that of his advisers. The man brought in his own general, and the general himself disagreed with one of his bizarr intentions, and for it, he was demoted and dismissed. The concept of ‘Freedom’ is irrelevant in America. Thus, I am here now, observing a government with much more realistic goals, and fairer ways of attaining them. I have watched every debate, and read every Hansard over the past few years and compaired them to congress and clearly Englan is making much more headway.
The truth hurts. So, lets shoot the messenger.
Typical.
social and economic due to many people seeing their standard of living drop through pay cuts and jobs disappearing with very little safety net for support. Meanwhile business and the stock market are doing well
I wonder what impression the noble lord haskell obtained of the Chinese effect on the vitlaity of Us industry, particularly iron and steel?
Here again we see the effect of a super nation, and the huge importance of Supporting the EU, and its endeavours to promote international relationships with ohter international governments throughout the world, especially China, USA, south Aemrica including Brazil.
It is easy for Carl h to scoff and jeer at
EU or USA (like beating your head against a brick wall) but the future lies with international trade agreements not between myriad little states, but with truly international ones that I have thus far described.
That is what and for whom the Presidencies of the USA, and of China(!) and of the EU are all about. Their decisions, or lack of them, have far reaching consequences, not just for a few people at a time, but for tens of thousands of wage earners and family bread winners.
International trade agreements have to be made and stuck to and amended.
It may seem surprising that I campaign for self sufficiency here, but for International trade THERE. To Anti-WTO campaigners it is a ridiculous contradiction.
But then if you are anti everything what are you? And where are you?
One of the most salient remarks of a Youngstown woman, Ohio, where all the steel business has been lost to China,
“If they had been concerned with people and not profits then the trade would not have been lost to China in the way that it has.”
A loud C0operative and anti-capitalist AMEN to that!
What say the Noble Lord Haskin, Captain of industry to that!?
I am more than a little concerned Gareth may feel I am anti-American-I am not. I have my fair share of US friends, I just do not feel that the dream that was still exists there, though they do hold it dear to their hearts. I worry more sometimes of my American friends than I seem to do for my European, they appear to live a knife edge existence and they know their freedom is not what it once was.
Scoff – No, not at Americans but at a World that thinks their lives are the dream.
I will disagree with Gareth on the future laying with International Trade Agreements, perhaps I peer too far into it for I feel the future lays with the kyklos. Turn and turn about but I am a cynical man.
What I have always said is, ‘Free Trade’ is not free at all. It’s one sided as it is only free for the big players and not for the producer or consumer.
The woman in Ohio hit it on the nail.
We need some form of protectionism, otherwise we are giong to end up with it being worse than it is now. Only when wages around the globe are the same will there be anything like ‘Free Trade’ with anything like that meaning.
Well we could always go back to Mercantilism, but I somehow doubt most know what that is, and many more will find it a bit dated…
Mercantilism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism
The nice thing about the internet is that if you cannot log onto your pc in one office you can log onto your machine in another office somewhere else and still access the same internal network and intranet. It makes things international but the goods manufactured to support this must have technical qualities that transcend borders.
So I was wondering Lord Haskel whether there are peers in the house that have dealings with the WTO and specifically ‘Technical Barriers to Trade’ or TBT and that you might persuade one to come to the blog and talk about TBT difficulties and international trade generally?