Miliband's economic immaturity

Nick

As the Newsnight programme made by the "welfare to work" American professor showed last week, even in the most depressed parts of Liverpool there are still plenty of jobs available.

Just no one who wants to take them.

Fatbloke on tour

MH

You are economically illiterate muppet.

Paragraph 4 is unadulterated Keynsianism but you don't recognise it.

Compare and contrast the upcoming dog boiling avalanche as you try and force people into work through a criminally insensitive attack on welfare benefits.

Squeeze = Fair enough.
Chop and slash = Just wait for the law of unintended consequences to kick in just as police numbers are cut.

Love the bit about vacancies, unfortunately you offer no context regarding previous levels and the impact of special events like the 2011 Census.

I know Sniffy is a complete economic ignoramus but even he must shake his head at some of your pronouncements.

Away and throw shite at yersel ya rocket.

ollie

Wee Dougie Alexander does, at times, speak some sense - unlike his absurd boss.

I genuinely believe it is Labour's core policy to keep poorer people poor - the last thing they want is everyone affluent - they wouldn't vote Labour then, would they?

Miliband comes from the same school of thought as Brown - a roadblock to reform.

He must be exposed for what he is - a dangerous socialist who would bankrupt this country all over again - and he'd do it with a smile on his face.

Simon Stephenson

A gross over-simplification, Mr Hancock, designed to score a point rather than to help the public to understand a very diffciult social issue.

The moral is never to expect anything said by any politician to be in any way informative about the subject supposedly being addressed.

Nick

"MH. You are economically illiterate muppet."

He has a post graduate degree in economics and used to work in the economics department at the Bank of England.

It's annoying enough that your posts are always particularly nastily written without also having to endure total nonsense such as MH knows nothing about economics.

Bickers

FatBloke: why was it possible under NuLieBore for hundreds of thousands of immigrants to come into the UK and find work, when hundreds of thousands of UK citizens were on the dole or on disability allowances (which rose at a rate that was stastically feasible under NuLieBore).

What you and NuLieBore need to own up to is that you deliberately inflated the economy by opening up the credit taps, letting many of your core vote get easy/non jobs in the public sector or stay at home on the dole while letting in thousands of immigrants who would tend to vote NuLieBore.

The country's bust and the Government is still spending more that it did under NuLieBore - it has to stop one way or another or we're headed down the same road as Ireland & Greece.

Acacia Avenue

"Miliband's position smacks of political opportunism."

GOSH!

Owen Morgan

"Fatbloke on tour", do you also speak English? I suspect you have nothing worthwhile to say, in any language, but I feel obliged to give you a chance.

Victor Southern

Fatbloke

Hancock has a Masters in Economics whereas you have majored only in Massive Discourtesy with a 2.2. in Bluster.

Simon Stephenson

Fatbloke on Tour : 5.00pm

Oh dear! And here was me thinking that Cameo Parkway Kid had taken your place and that you'ld been reallocated elsewhere to torment another group of people undeserving of your irrational and tunnel-visioned drivel. At least CPK writes as though he has a functioning brain.

Never mind. Your contribution to this discussion, by the way, is as worthless as Mr Hancock's initial submission. But then you write as though you are a politician, so there's little surprise that this is the case.

Fatbloke on tour

MH

Your cure for unemployment is the world's most exciting game of musical chairs.

Times are tough at the moment, many more people than chairs.

You want to double the amount of people but keep the same number of chairs and claim that this will make things better.

Then come April you want to remove lots of chairs when the public sector cuts come into effect.

Hopefully someone will be able to benefit from the spectacle, they can do the Dave the Rave version of "They shoot horses don't they".

Consequently coming to a cinema near you:

"Poach your pooch the Bullingdon Club way".

Chris lancashire

Milliband's posturing is opposition for opposition's sake.
Having completed ducked the issue for 13 years he now appears to have a position. %m jobs created during the boom years, 3.5m taken by foreign workers, unemployment largely unaffected. Says it all really.

Fergus Pickering

I'm no economist. Please tell me what is obviously wrong about what Mr Hancock says. Is Miliband right in any degree at all? Fatbloke, I'm not asking you so shog off and die. Shakespeare, since you ask.)

TrevorsDen

Oh dear Gutman -
'Only a few months ago, the Department for Work and Pensions was including the 10,000 vacancies figure in a response to the latest employment statistics.
However the Secretary of the State at the time was Labour's Yvette Cooper.'
(from 'Fectcheck')
No allowance from you for sauce for goose and gander.

Vacancies are up. Full stop. To keep to the point of the thread - getting people off benefits and into those jobs is the issue. I for one would rather have Brits conducting our census rather than Polls.

Your friend Brown, Mr Gutman, rather disingenuously put it this way - 'British jobs for British Workers'.

Stuart Seacole Smith

FatBOT: quick off the mark as usual when it comes to defending Labour's pathetic and morally bankrupt economic and welfare legacy.

Turd polishing is and always has been a thankless task. Obsessive and repeated turd polishing is a sign that professional help should be sought PDQ. Unless of course there's some underlying incentive other than revelling in the the sheer joy of a job well done in the form of that elusive well-polished poo...

Charles

TrevorsDen

The way the Polls for the Tories are looking right now, I think I would rather have the Brits filling in census forms rather than voting too!

Sandwichman

"First, Miliband falls for the classic lump of Labour fallacy..."

This just in from the early 19th century (1834 to be exact). The "lump-of-labour fallacy" taunt originated in a Whig commissioned and financed propaganda pamphlet, "Character, object and effects of trades' unions" by E. Carleton Tufnell. The status of the claim is hovers somewhere between Piltdown Man's status in evolutionary science and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in history.

In short, the fallacy claim is a fraud and a hoax. Moreover, it is an incoherent relic of an archaic fraud and hoax. Mr. Tufnell at least had the integrity to clearly state his core principles: "Were we asked to give a definition of a Trades' Union, we should say that it was a Society whose constitution is the worst of democracies — whose power is based on outrage — whose practice is tyranny — and whose end is self destruction."

Perhaps Mr. Hancock agrees with this definition. Fine. But let's stop the pretense that the fallacy claim represents some sort of "economic truth".

Scotty

Of course Milli will say the government should create more government jobs and the public service jobs will contribute towards taxes - forgetting that they are all paid for by tax payers in the productive private sector.
Heaven help us if labour get back in power.

Moriarty

I think it's time for Fatbloke's tour to move to the Falklands leg.

Chris

Sandwichbrain: Do you believe that there is a fixed amount of work in the world? That is what the assertion that there is a 'lump of labour' is. If you think it is not a fallacy, please show why.

Fatbot: That there is an economic multiplier (people in work spend money and create jobs) is not Keynesianism. Keynesianism is the theory that it's the government's job to spend during recessions and save during booms, in order to smooth out the economic cycle and keep the multiplier at a steady positive level. I happen to think that's crap, and I know for a fact that every word that trickles out of your anus is.

FF

The "lump of labour fallacy" is also a fallacy. If you take a job then you are removing that job from the market place and denying someone else the chance of taking it. It is true that a proportion of the latter will find opportunities elsewhere but it's no point pretending the opposite of the lump of labour. ie that filling a vacancy has no net effect on the number of vacancies available or the employment prospects of the remaining unemployed.

Labour is lumpy even if it's not a solid lump. I'm not talking about the political party, of course.

I haven't read Miliband's statement. Where can I see it?

Sandwichman

Chris,

No, the lump of labour fallacy is NOT about whether or not there IS "a fixed amount of work in the world". It is about the false attribution of a belief in a fixed amount of work. Get your propositional logic right. When an assertion is disguised as presupposition it is itself a fallacy of begging the question.

Fergus Pickering

Oh God. Economists arguing amongst themselves. I think I'll go and read Moses Maimonides. Or alternatively get onto cricinfo and check the stats for the New Zealand tour of England in 1958.

Ed P

To slightly paraphrase Einstein, "The definition of the Labour Party is spouting the same failed policies over & over again and expecting different results"

Helen C Harding

"Miliband's economic immaturity" - well, who'd have thunk it. His all-round immaturity is demonstrated by the fact that he is where he is today: too immature to recognise the depth of his own immaturity and give himself a few more years to learn the ropes.

Deep Snoozer

The current Gov has admitted today they can't even manage trees correctly.. Never mind folks welfare!

normanc

For goodness sake, don't put the poor man down, encourage him to make these ridiculous comments. Everyone in Britain knows the welfare system is broken, the more he stands up for the status quo the better as far as rational people are concerned.

Liz Elliot-Pyle

Fatbloke on Tour is the nom de plume of Gordon Brown, and I claim the 5 pounds.

Andy Leeds

So can someone tell me why all the cleaners at my Gym are from Poland, and why there are plenty of local people unemployed ? One would assume they can flick a duster and push a Hoover or does this require extensive training ?

Boudicca

I'm beginning to suspect Fatbloke on Tour is actually Prescott. Both speak unadulterated rubbish; both are economically illiterate and both are dyed in the wool socialists who would rather see the country completely bankrupt than admit Labour has wrecked the economy again.

Cynic

Even the BBC economics editor admitted that of the jobs created by Labour since 1997, approximately 81% went to non-natives! And that happened on Miliband's (and Balls') watch.

annassasin

The statement by ed.mili has to be considered the worst in a long list of stupid statements. Still insistes he left economy in rude health. Did he follow his own new rule and pass the statement to ed.balls for approval, probably passed it to the Unite union instead, alongside a begging note as labour edges ever closer to extinction. "Too big to fail"? I think not.

Matthew

"Second, the number of vacancies in the economy is rising – by 9 percent over the past three months. Not enough vacancies are being taken up because the welfare system holds people back"

So what you're saying is, there's plenty of very poorly paid jobs so we need to allow employers to offer minimum wage and force people to take these roles regardless of how poor their standard of living becomes? Because if they don't, they starve? What an enlightened view.

Are you on minimum wage Mr Hancock? Thought not. Neither am I, nor am I on benefits so I have no vested interest here. But your brand of blinkered 'expertise' makes me despair.

R HENRY

Mr Hancock was Osborne's aide up to the election so of course he is partisan. Readers will remember that Osborne agreed with ALL Labour's spending plans up to the election and wanted to wind up N. Rock - now they rubbish Brown's policies. I am a Tory and agree
the welfare system needs to be changed -
however, having listened to Miliband today,
and been involved over many years helping my employees get benefits,etc, I can only agree with his view. Noone will just accept any job - or do community service -
and when mothers cry 'starving', the govt
will do another u turn. What needs to change is the Housing Beneit. In France I
understand it is only given for 6 months.
As most rents are over £ 100, this deters claimants giving up their benefit. DLA is a disgrace - my son's best friend's mother was given a brand new car last year on DLA despite leading a very normal life and driving her own car every day - she has mild arthritis in the spine-at least £ 8,000 for no reason.
She could of course work but chooses not to. If the govt do nothing else and change
the HB, people will have to go out to work
to earn the rent ! and the benefits bill will reduce immediately. Please write to IDS
and has her own car !

Fatbloke on tour

MH

Your grasp of economics is shaky enough and they you try and do statistics ...

Vacancies:

9% up after 6% down - What is the difference?

10K of jobs.
How many vacancies does the Census have at the moment?

You want the unemployed shirkers decimated so that they will be energised to seek out the vacancies in the jobs market?

500K is a good number in these post Credit Crunch days.

TB / GB:

Figures show that 2001 - 2008:
650K+ was a good figure.
Highest = 697K.
Lowest = 570K approx.

Now we have 1mill more people looking for work and you want the to force people of benefits to grab all these jobs going spare?

You are what an optimist's optimist would call a complete and utter nutter from the HappyLand Happy Farm.

Patrick Osgood

Oh dear. So first, we have “Miliband’s argument is Lord make me virtuous, but only tomorrow”. This Augustinian pledge is not Miliband’s but that of proper, mainstream, academic macroeconomics. You simply won’t find a current economist worth his salt arguing for pro-cyclical fiscal adjustment right now (not that this stops Conservatives dusting off Schumpeter).

Why won't Hancock apply an aggregate demand (fewer jobs, less spending, fewer jobs) argument to the coalition's plans to deliberately through people out of work, while knowing from ONS data that the private sector is not hiring, and where it is, it is doing so at reduced rates for reduced hours? Because it will confirm what the IMF has already told him: that austerity now depresses GDP, especially when monetary policy is out of steam and currency revaluation not in prospect.

As for “not enough vacancies are being taken up because the welfare system holds people back”, this is, the context of an article aggrandising his own expertise while slated EdM for being immature, worse than patent nonsense. It is an unsupportable, unfalisfiable shibboleth churned out for the benefit of the cheap seats. Economics is positivist – if Hancock had a point here, he should and would provide data. He doesn’t.

This is all irritating because unlike Fraser Nelson, who does not know the first thing about economics (his last piece conflating stocks and flows all over the shop being a case in point), Hancock has an economics background. He is deliberately playing dumb here. It’s so depressing to see epistemic shutdown just to keep up the cant for the faithful.

The madness politically, is that if the Tories had a pro-growth, pro-jobs economic policy (you know, one that doesn’t look stupid after 1937), their other policies – welfare reform, Big Society, efficiency drives – might make sense and gain mass support. But because they don’t, they don’t. IT seems Hancock is too crass an opportunist and too short-sighted a parliamentarian to see that.

And by the way, I think EdM is a disaster.

Patrick Osgood

Also, given Hancock's rejection of lump of labour - good to see he is such a fan of New Keynsian economics - I assume he is a fan of mass immigration? All those "job-stealing" immigrants that his party rails against are, by his thinking, merely creating more jobs by adding to GDP.

Steve Tierney

No matter how many times I visit Spectator blogs "Fatbloke" continues to amaze me.

It's like somebody opens a door and random words come spilling out, with the occasional insult to give it all punch.

Is it a software-based random responder, maybe?

J H Holloway

' if the Tories had a pro-growth, pro-jobs economic policy '

You mean, if the Tories would be so good as to keep borrowing until interest rates are forced up. Or keep borrowing until the annual interest payments on our borrowing start to get close to 70 percent of the entire NHS budget...

Or perhaps you mean both?

Chris

Thank you, Sandwichbrain, for confirming my suspicion that you are educated beynd the intelligence of an amoeba. Your response is the most remarkable stringing together of words with no meaning whatsoever that I have ever read. Again: the lump of labour fallacy is (yes, dear heart, it really is) the fallacy that there is a fixed amount of work in the world, and that if person A gets a job, person B loses one. DO YOU BELIEVE THAT THIS IS TRUE OR NOT? And don't tell me again that this is not what the lump of labour fallacy is. You are entitled to your own opinions; you are not entitled to your own facts.

Sir Everard Digby

Fellow readers,am I alone in wondering to which planet the Rotund Tourist has emigrated? Clearly one where the English language has been replaced by a mixture of abuse and stream of consciousness ramblings,laced with an air of desperation. A toxic mix I feel.

I am aspecially amused by the '9% up after 6% down -what's the difference' comment.

Subtraction not part of the curriculum at school perhaps,or lack of attention in class whilst musing over dog boiling fantasies?

Or is this a quiz question for the Leader of the Opposition to help him figure out his own spending plans?

Mark M

How can people say there are a fixed number of jobs in the economy? In 2001 (according to the ONS), there were 27.7m people and 0.6m vacancies, giving an economy with 28.3m jobs. The latest figures show, there are 29.1m people in jobs with 0.5m vacancies, for a total of 29.5m jobs.

If the number of jobs is fixed, how do you explain that increase? I'm reminded of that scene in 'Liar Liar' - "YOUR HONOUR I OBJECT - and why's that Mr Reede? - BECAUSE IT'S DEVASTATING TO MY CASE"

Adam Smith

Fatbloke is riled – the prospect of having to go out and find work clearly upsets him...

Glyn H

Re: R HENRY; labour saved Northern Rock for purely partisan Labour interests. It was a disgraceful act and those responsible should have not place in public life. Once the retail depositors were safe the test should have gone into administration. It would have stopped the Roy and the bastard Halifax would not have wrecked LTSB.
Same goes to DfiD Ministers who acepted £33bn was acceptable loss to fraud.
That's how the malevolent incompetence of Mr Brown got us into this mess!

Holly ......

You can always tell when the left are losing
by the comments from fat blokes or bods called davidk.
Their screams WILL get louder.
So I am happy when fat blokes & bods called davidk come on here.It shows they 'get it'.
They understand what is happening and can do nothing but comment in the usual fear inducing way.It is ALL they have,and ALL they know.
Trouble is,we are not listening to you any more.
We hear you screaming,but what are you screaming about?
That people can now work,instead of being forgotten?Able bodied people left to exist,
but not included in society,forgotten by Labour and left on handouts?
That they will now have a choice to work and be rewarded,instead of being 'grateful'
for Labour's welfare system which tied them down?
At least scream for something a bit more inspiring.
Labour are the party of the miserably insane
who we have all broken free from.
Please feel free to scream back at how
'unfair' all this is.How Labour are the party of the worker.Ha!
What complete nonsense.Just ask the people getting more for not working,while Labour sat back and filled OUR jobs with migrant workers.
Uneducated sausages,who do not realise until they leave the education system,how cr@p it was,for a life of social exclution on welfare.
The list of Labour betrayals are too many to list here.
Support Labour,by all means,but at least have the guts to admit when they are wrong.

Sandwichman

Chris,

The fallacy claim has two premises, not one. The first premise is "A believes X." The second premise is "X is bollocks." If there is no evidence for the first premise, the second premise is moot.

The lump-of-labor fallacy claim is all about displacing the unmet burden of proof for the first premise onto the easily demonstrated -- and utterly irrelevant -- factoid that the amount of work is not fixed.

I realize this explanation of simple propositional logic will not satisfy you, Chris. As far as you're concerned, people who disagree with your hard-wired convictions have no humanity.

But please leave the propositional logic out of it and stick to the raw name-calling, which is obviously your stronger suit.

Sandwichman

Holly: "Labour sat back and filled OUR jobs with migrant workers."

Irony upon irony, this happens to be another of the arguments that economists would dismiss as a "lump-of-labor fallacy." Economists, like our Matthew Hancock here, will explain that immigrants create jobs, they don't compete for a fixed amount.

People, two wrong don't make a right!

A. Yes, the amount of work to be done is not fixed.

B. No, the supply of labour doesn't create its own demand.

In reality, the number of jobs available is affected by many factors, including government policy. Immigration can both increase the total number of job opportunities at the same time as it diverts a large proportion of the job opportunities to the new arrivals. This is not to blame the immigrants but a policy mentality that blithely adheres to a "labour supply creates its own demand" platitude.

Simon Stephenson

Sandwichman : 4.22pm

Do you actually want Chris to understand what you are saying? All you need to explain is that the word "fallacy" has drifted into general use to describe things that are not fallacies. The statement "there is a fixed amount of work in the world" may be true or it may be false, but it cannot be a fallacy, because it is a proposition, not an argument. On the other hand the statement "there is a fixed amount of work in the world and so one man moving into employment displaces one already there" is a fallacy, because it's conclusion is based on assuming as truth a proposition for which truth or falsehood hasn't been established.

Barry Bilge

People spending money creates jobs. That I get.

Government spending money creates jobs too. That I get and feel Labour took to extremes when they were the Government.

Reform of welfare is badly needed. It has incentivised fractured families and feckless parents.

Where I can't square the issue is expecting the private sector to create jobs while taxes are going up. We have less and less money in our pockets to spend.

I know some of it comes down to unrealistic expectations caused by an out of control welfare state - paying people to stay where they are and not find work rather than helping them move to where there is work, paying people large amounts of money to live in relatively expensive areas, unlimited child benefit and so on. A welfare state that just couldn't say no and seemed to operate along the lines of giving people what they could have if they had a good job would magically make them get one. Of course it has to come to an end eventually. We simply can't afford to subsidise so many unproductive people and the retail industry to such a great extent.

Sandwichman

Simon,

The catch is you don't need to have a one-for-one displacement in order for there to be some displacement. Colloquially, it may be the case that some people talk as if they are assuming a one-for-one displacement. But people make all kinds of simplifications in everyday conversation. The fallacy claim goes further than simply scolding prosaic simplifications, though. What it does is equate and reduce the whole question of displacement to the nonsense case of the fixed amount of work.

Moreover, the fallacy claim started out from the premise of an infallible wages fund doctrine, the futility of trying to counteract the inexorable processes of capital accumulation and population and the inevitable violence that would result from any attempt to raise wages above their "natural" level (which was, of course what employers were willing to pay).

The "fixed amount of work" notion was a later amendment to the original fallacy claim after the wages fund doctrine was recanted by John Stuart Mill and came under general disrepute -- more because of its misuse by propagandists than its unsuitability as an abstract simplification.

Here's a challenge for you, Simon. Track down 20 or 30 random instances of the fallacy claim and count how many of those the claimant names a group or individual who makes the specific one-for-one displacement claim.

Holly ......

Sandwichman.5.43.
You miss my point completely.
Why did Labour hand out so much in welfare benefits to their own workforce,while allowing a foreign workforce to get the work?
Why did they think it was okay to do that?
I find it disgusting not ironic!

Sandwichman

You're right, Holly, I did indeed miss your point. I think there is some merit to both the point you made and the point I thought you made. I don't think very highly of the previous Labour governments' policies with regard to social benefits and employment.

I suppose some people would assume that since I'm criticizing Hancock, I'm supporting Labour. That's not the case. I'm simply trying to point out that old lumpty-lump is a non sequitur and an alarm bell that the new boss doesn't know what he's doing, either.

James Murphy

Fat bloke - why ARE you fat? Gluttony is a sin, you oaf. - And why are you on tour? No-one wants to see or hear you.