Miliband's ‘responsible capitalism’ requires deregulation

startledcod

De-regulation is like deep-fried Mars Bars - everyone has heard of it but very few people have actually tried it.

Run me by any significant de-regulation that has EVER actually happened; seriously, can anyone think of any time rules and regs have EVER been decommissioned because I can't.

It is a pipe dream and with the LibDems in the mix it is pure fantasy. The employment regs currently in force do nothing but protect the useless from being got rid of and others being fired. Employers don't want to lose the good workers, they don't need employment protection.

David Lindsay

What a surprise.

And I don't know why you people have suddenly decided that mass unemployment is a problem. You always used to think that it was a thoroughly good thing, allegedly anti-inflationary, and undeniably effective at frightening the middle and working classes into submission.

We need to ensure a permanently higher rate of corporation tax on the banks and the utilities, with the money spent on reimbursing employers' National Insurance contributions for workers aged 25 or under and 55 or over, and with strict regulation to ensure that no cost is passed on to workers, consumers, communities or the environment.

Trapped

"Scrapping or regionalising the minimum wage; exempting small businesses from various regulations; making it easier to dismiss people; and streamlining maternity provisions — all have been proposed as ways of reducing both costs and the risks to businesses of employing people."

... in other words. Socialise the cost of employment, because if you drop below a certain wage band the government has to pay benefits to that person anyways, and privatise the profits.

This approach -doesn't work-, it's stopped working ever since we became part of a hyper-competitive society that thrives on the so called "Race to the bottom"

Good grief. Can economists and politicians really not come up with anything more original than a slightly more subtle version of Brownies Bank Bailout Bakesale?

Haydon Mort

"Run me by any significant de-regulation that has EVER actually happened"

I'll give you 5:
1. A ban on the regulation of credit-default swaps
2. Increases in the amount of permitted leverage
3. An international agreement to allow bank to measure their OWN riskiness..bizarre!!
4. An international failure to update regulation so as to keep up with the tremendous pace of financial innovation (such as derivatives).
5. Margaret Thatcher was the mother of de-regulation.

I don't understand this story. We need de-regulation like we need a hole in the head. It was de-regulation over the past 3 decades that brought us various boom and bust cycles, where banks became too big to fail and had to be bailed out with tax payer money. What we need it the whole-scale revision of current legislation and some common sense law put in place, one which specifically eliminate complex financial instruments.

Panny

An odious article coupled with an odious comment. In terms of de-regulation, we can look to the 80s, particularly in the financial sector. Labour then continued the trend, leading to a situation where the richest most powerful institutions regulate themselves. The article both defends and apologises for the rights of business to exploit and drain the lower classes, resulting in lower standards of living for an overwhelming number of people. Responsible capitalism represents the empty, limpid, tokenistic face of representative democracy. Nonsense.

Mike

It is noteable thet both in the UK and USA regulations are found to be very, very important. Thus Mayor Bloomburg in New York and the Lord Mayor of London are keen to use health and safety regultions to remove the %99. Regulation is good when
it suits the wealthy and bad when it suits the poor - simple. Otherwise we would have anarchy - instead of plutocracy.

Guy Kingston

The scraping of the mandatory retirement age means elderly workers staying in employment, effectively 'bed blocking' jobs for young people seeking to enter the labour market.

This was inevitable and foreseeable. The recent rise in youth unemployment was completely predictable. That it wasn't predicted by our politicians and officials just demonstrates what a sorry bunch we have leading us.

Chris Lancashire

David Lindsy: "you people" . Oh dear, defining yourself by your prejudices. And no, "we people" don't think unemployment is a good thing. But it can' t be fixed by a munificent state employing ever more public employes. It is fixed by a thriving private sector which doesn't need your state sponsored nostrums involving meddling with NI taxes which shouldn't be there in the first place.

Dimoto

Perfectly reasonable discussion, but why the hat-tip to Red ?
What the hell has Miliband got to do with anything ?

Every time Balls or Miliband gives an (invariably vacuous) interview, there is a blog-post on here.

Don't we get enough of that from the BBC ?!

Dennis Churchill

The best we can hope for is to open the debate up.
The media is dominated by people who are expected or may even actually believe in certain left wing “Givens”. Labour and the LibDems have no choice, because of their membership, than to resist any deregulation.
The choice is a variation on Ed West’s recent “Diversity or Equality” Blog in the Telegraph. We can increase our total economy, but with wide variations in wealth with a deregulated economy or have a smaller total economy with less variations in wealth.
What we can’t have is a type of Goldie Locks situation where everyone has the pay and perks of a teacher or social worker in Islington council.

Sir Everard Digby

You do not get it. Times are hard and existing staff need the money - employing new staff attracts a tax on employing them,plus a raft of other statutory entitlements. It also requires existing staff to train and support the new ones,reducing overall productivity for a period of time. That is not an option for many of us.

It's cheaper to pay overtime than put new poeple on the books. It is not a fixed cost. The future is uncertain,so saddling yourself with extra fixed costs which it may not be possible to fund in a year's time is plain stupid.

I could argue this is 'responsible capitalism' in a way. Business failures cost the country.

Perhaps we could have a government which actually supports small/medium size businesses like mine? At the moment, once you have accounted for funding policies on reducing overspending, climate change and the EU,there is bugger all left to stimulate the economy.

I suggest one of those three needs its funding reducing,so we can create jobs. The only state intervention we need.