The euro crisis and the fiscal compact treaty

Frank Barry and David McWilliams both had insightful pieces on the euro crisis and the fiscal compact treaty in today's Sunday Business Post (SBP content appears to be behind a paywall). Both make the point that the treaty won't solve the euro's problems. Fiscal deficits were not the cause of the eurozone crisis. Rather it was structural imbalances within the eurozone. The logic of monetary union requires a fiscal transfer union to help absorb the inevitable shocks that will occur in any large, diverse economy. Are Europeans prepared for the creation of a federal European (eurozone) state and the concomitant transfer of national sovereignty to a supra-national government?

Joe Stiglitz on the 1%

Joe Stiglitz, writing in May 2011, sets the scene for the emergence of the Occupy movement in this discussion of US income inequality.

A Year of Revolution

Update (2 January 2012): This article has been published in full on Irish Left Review and an edited (shorter) version has been published on Social Europe Journal. In a related piece in December's New York Review of Books, Michael Greenberg asks what future for the Occupy movement.

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In a year of revolution, causes have been easier to identify than consequences.

In 1989, following the end of the Cold War, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote in The End of History? of the “unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism”, marking “the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government”.¹ In the decades since Fukuyama's landmark essay, the very concept of revolution – at least in the context of the rich, Western world – had itself come to be seen as an almost anachronistic idea. While still idealized in some quarters – most notably in student houses where posters of El Che [Guevara] are proudly hoisted to the walls, in defiance of the no-blue-tack clauses of student lease agreements – revolution had attained a quaint, nostalgia-tinged hue. That is, until this year. In 2011, revolution has returned to the center of global geo-political discourse. People have taken to the streets en masse across the Arab world, as part of the Arab Spring popular revolutions. The revolutionary fervour has since spread to the capital cities of the rich world. From Spain's indignados, to the riots in London, Athens and Rome, to the Occupy Wall St protests that have spread from New York to other major cities around the world, the Arab Spring is turning into a global Autumn of Discontent.

Viewed through Fukuyama's lens, the Arab Spring could be interpreted as the natural progression of these once repressive regimes into modern, Western-style democracies. How then do we reconcile with such a theory, the emergence of the Occupy movement, which originated at the heart of the financial-corporate-political nexus on Wall St? Certainly those involved in these protests, while apparently reluctant to articulate a list of “demands”, do not appear content to be living at the apogee of the modern participative democratic society.

There are many parallels in the genesis of these two movements (if the various riots, protests, occupations and revolutions are indeed reducible to two distinct groups according to their Western and Arab origins), and they appear to have fed off the oxygen of each other's success. The Occupy movement explicitly models itself on the Arab Spring's largely peaceful occupations of central squares and plazas. But the Arab world has also been paying close attention to the Western Autumn of Discontent. The London riots in August, for example, provoked jibes from the less “Western-friendly” Arab leaders about popular revolt and the London regime's hardline crackdown in response. The Arab media, more generally, appear to have been paying close attention to the Occupy movement long before Western media began taking the protesters seriously. The Tunisian blogger Lina Ben Mhenni has said she is proud of the role the Arab Spring has played in inspiring young people in other parts of the world to come out and “say 'no' to their systems”.²

The apparent solidarity between these groups of protesters should come as no surprise. In both cases the protests have been led mostly (although by no means exclusively) by young people. In a direct parallel of the Arab Spring, the Occupiers represent a generation increasingly disillusioned with a system in which many have been marginalized, without work or the prospect of a job, a system they claim has left them without a voice – thus the emphasis among protestors on the use of an elaborate and disciplined form of participative decision making. While national unemployment rates are running at between eight and ten percent in the US, Britain and the Eurozone (with double digit rates in Spain, Ireland and Greece), youth unemployment is significantly higher. In the US, 17% of under-25s are without work. In Europe, that figure is over 20%, while in Spain almost half (46.2%) of all young people are jobless.³

The Arab Spring was clearly a “liberal” movement, in the sense that popular protests rose up to challenge repressive, authoritarian regimes. But do its participants aspire to the particular version of liberalism that has been predominant in the Western world – and most particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world – over the past three decades?

Even during the boom times, when unemployment rates were relatively low, income inequality was rising in many rich countries – most notably those that pursued most vigorously the Anglo-Saxon model of deregulation (i.e. the US, Britain and Ireland). One of the most appealing slogans of the Occupy movement – “we are the 99%” – is a pointed reference to the top 1% of income earners, who in 2007 received 23.5% of total US national income, with an average wage income of around $713,000.⁴ Not since the late 1920s – in the years immediately preceding the Wall St crash and the Great Depression – the era of the “robber-barons”, have the few at the apex of the income pyramid, captured such a disproportionate share of national income.

The period since the beginning of the 1980s, which has seen the financial and economic elite steadily increase their share of national income, has been characterized by the political economist and former US secretary of labour Robert Reich, as the Great Regression. The systematic deconstruction of social and labour protections during this period has created a sense of financial and economic instability in young people's lives, the social costs of which have yet to be fully counted – but symptoms of which are evident in the recent violence on the streets of London and Rome.

Writing in 2007, in response to a UNICEF report at the time, which found British children had the most miserable upbringing in the developed world (with Americans second from bottom), Maria Hampton provided a remarkably prescient discussion of the causes and potential consequences of declining living standards for young people in the UK. Her article quotes LSE economist Nick Bosanquet and Blair Gibbs of the independent think tank Reform, who in their Class of 2005 survey characterised Britain’s under-35s – the “iPod Generation” – as insecure, pressured, over-taxed and debt-ridden.⁵ From among this generation have come the majority of the protestors.

So to consequences. In the Arab Spring, a mass popular movement coalesced around the clear and unambiguous goal of overthrowing brutal dictators. Now that aim has been achieved – in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya – the way forward is less clear. Similarly, the aims – and ultimate political consequences – of the Occupy movement remain unclear. From the outset, the Occupiers have been reluctant to specify their “demands”. While some in the media have seen this lack of focus as a reason to dismiss the protestors, for some within the movement, the process – with its egalitarian, democratic ideals and methods – is the cause. Avoiding setting out specific “demands” may also represent a clever strategy for the protestors, at least for the time being. As The Onion recently quipped, the public are waiting for the Occupiers to state their demands so that we can all rationalize our reasons for choosing to ignore them, and “go back to waiting for the sluggish economy to recover while blindly accepting things the way they are”.⁶

As the repeated failed attempts to solve the European debt crisis attest, simply muddling through and hoping for a return to the halcyon days of the mid-2000s, may no longer be a serious option. Lest we forget, there were mass protests in poor countries around the world, in response to high food and energy prices in 2008. Similar protests were seen recently on the streets of Israel. While the poorest may have felt the effects of the squeeze on resources before most, ultimately, these protests are symptoms of the same underlying problems. Indeed it was the rise in commodity prices – food and energy in particular – that pricked the bubble economy of the last decade. The unbalanced and unsustainable growth of recent years has left too many people, in both rich and poor countries, feeling disillusioned, marginalized and concerned about their economic futures.

There is now an urgent need to articulate an alternative to the failed neo-liberal agenda of recent decades. The financial crisis generally, and more specifically the recent protest movements around the globe, challenge us to consider what kind of society we wish to live in. If in every crisis lies opportunity, then we must embrace this opportunity to start a discussion about the ideals of liberty, equality and justice – upon which most modern democratic states were founded – and what these values mean in a modern, globalized society.

This crisis also presents a threat – one which will only grow in its potential to be destructive, if the underlying causes of the crisis are not addressed. The last time a financial crisis of this magnitude occurred, the world was plunged into a period of darkness. In the wake of the economic collapse, self-interested, nationalistic policies were enacted through the exploitation of people's fears and insecurities, culminating in the rise of fascism. The result was a global conflict that claimed millions of lives. We have already witnessed the rise of an “extremist” right-wing party in the US, with sufficient power to force the US government to the brink of default.⁷ Even the remotest sense of modern history should suffice to give us all pause for concern at such developments.

Writing in his last major publication before his death, the historian and social commentator Tony Judt warned that if the history of the 20^th Century has taught us anything, it should be a healthy suspicion of totalitarianism in all its forms.⁸ One such form has been the disturbing – and ultimately misplaced – certainty of the free market ideologues. Judt also argued that the great failure of the Left, in all its various shades, has been the apparent inability to articulate any coherent alternative to the predominant neo-liberal agenda of the past 30 years. Indeed, the ideological hubris implicit in Fukuyama's End of History could only have arisen in the context of an ideological vacuum to the Left of the predominant neo-liberal political-economic paradigm.

Back in 2007, Hampton concluded her article on the plight of British youth as follows: “If the crisscrossing fault-lines of greed, geopolitics and social inequality do reach a tipping point, we may well see a conflict between youthful brutality and the power of old age”. If we are to avoid such conflicts, we must start a conversation about the kind of society we want to live in and the state of the world we will pass on to our children. These are challenges for which there are no simple answers or quick-fix solutions. There will be dilemmas about how to balance competing aims that we wish to embrace. That does not mean we should not try.

- Dublin, October 2011.

1Fukuyama, Francis (1989). The End of History? The National Interest, Summer 1989.

2As quoted in the Irish Times Weekend Review, 22 October 2011.

3Rates quoted are from the Economist, 22 October 2011 (http://www.economist.com/node/21533447)

4Figures taken from Robert Reich's article “The Limping Middle Class”, NY Times, 4 September 2011.

5The article “Generation F*cked: How Britain is Eating its Young” first appeared in the magazine Adbusters (#71, May/June 2007) and was republished recently on the magazine's website, Adbusters.com (11 August 2011).

6“Nation waiting for protestors to clearly articulate demands before ignoring them”, The Onion, 12 October 2011.

7As characterized by Moses Naim in La Repubblica (11 September 2011).

8Judt, Tony (2010), Ill Fares the Land. Penguin.

Time to burst the austerity bubble

Meanwhile, Philip Lane is quoted in The Telegraph as saying "every [Irish] government for the next 20 years will have to keep cutting". As it is, we know the next two budgets will contain even more severe cuts than those being imposed right now. This is just what the government and "troika" have publicly admitted. What happens when the anticipated recovery (i.e. growth) doesn't materialize? More austerity?

It's time we all realized that the path we're on is unsustainable. Just as the boom was unsustainable - and on some level we all knew this, but allowed our instincts to be over-ridden by reassuring talk of "economic fundamentals" and "soft landings". The logic is simple and clear - this programme of austerity will not work. I think most people intuitively understand that. But we are allowing ourselves to be mollified by talk of restoring confidence, of "growing" exports and jobs. Just where are we going to export to, with the eurozone - and possibly the global economy - facing a sharp recession next year? Who is going to create jobs as domestic consumer demand continues to fall? The only thing we are growing right now is a generation of young people for export.

Stiglitz on the Euro Crisis

Joe Stiglitz discusses the sources of the present crisis and the (misguided) attempts to solve it, in this article. He includes several references to Ireland (direct and otherwise) ...

The prevailing view when the euro was established was that all that was required was fiscal discipline – no country’s fiscal deficit or public debt, relative to GDP, should be too large. But Ireland and Spain had budget surpluses and low debt before the crisis, which quickly turned into large deficits and high debt.

...

Without a common fiscal authority, the single market opened the way to tax competition – a race to the bottom to attract investment and boost output that could be freely sold throughout the EU.

Moreover, free labor mobility means that individuals can choose whether to pay their parents’ debts: young Irish can simply escape repaying the foolish bank-bailout obligations assumed by their government by leaving the country. Of course, migration is supposed to be good, as it reallocates labor to where its return is highest. But this kind of migration actually undermines productivity.

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Public-sector cutbacks today do not solve the problem of yesterday’s profligacy; they simply push economies into deeper recessions. Europe’s leaders know this. They know that growth is needed. But, rather than deal with today’s problems and find a formula for growth, they prefer to deliver homilies about what some previous government should have done. This may be satisfying for the sermonizer, but it won’t solve Europe’s problems – and it won’t save the euro.

"Talking about depression" ... the media and editorial decision based on "legal advice"

Update (4 December 2011) : The Irish Times has issued an apology - and in the process, essentially accused Kate Fitzgerald of lying in her last words:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2011/1203/1224308526623.html?via=mr

Some responses from the blogosphere:

http://ourmaninstockholm.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/a-right-of-reply/

http://backfromthepast.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/suppressionofsuicide/

Original blog post (2 December 2011):

I submitted the following letter to the Irish Times yesterday, 1 December 2011 (not published in today's paper), in response to various articles and letters relating to the death of Kate Fitzgerald (see broadsheet.ie coverage here).

Sir,

Thank you for continuing to publish articles and letters that discuss issues of suicide and depression (e.g. Tony Bates, Opinion, 1st December; Kevin Byrne, Letters, 1st December; Peter Murtagh, Weekend Review, 26th November; Kate Fitzgerald, Opinion, 9th September). These issues are badly understood in our society and stigmatized as a consequence.

However, I must join with others in expressing my disappointment at your decision, on "legal advice", to edit the words originally written anonymously by Kate Fitzgerald. Giving a voice to those who experience depression is crucial in fostering greater understanding of this illness. Her article was deemed fit to publish in your paper on September 9th. If something in that original article has been found to be untrue and/or libelous, you should issue a correction and apology immediately. This could be added as a footnote to the original article in your archives. If not, the original article should be restored in full, and you should have the courage and editorial conviction to stand over what you publish.

Yours etc.,

Tom McDermott,

No Alternative to Budget Cuts?

It is often argued that there is simply "no alternative" to the destruction of social safety nets implicit in proposals to cut government expenditure, e.g. the Irish government's consideration of cuts to child benefit, a reduction in unemployment benefit and the introduction of medical card fees etc., as ways to achieve the required €3.8bn "adjustment" in the forthcoming budget. This line was repeated by Stephen Collins in Saturday's Irish Times. However, the idea that there is "no alternative" to a government decision could never be accurate. The "no alternatives" myth is nothing more than a politically convenient way of saying we don't want to consider the alternatives.

Thankfully, various groups outside of government have put together detailed proposals on alternative ways of saving money in the budget. Michael Taft of TASC has outlined potential "alternative" savings of around €6bn.

It's worth noting that some of the proposals here - e.g. removal of property tax reliefs - present the relatively rare opportunity for government, in imposing taxes, of a win-win on both equity and efficiency grounds. Removal of these reliefs would also represent a reversal of the much criticized policies of the previous government. Rather than subsidizing asset accumulation, taxing wealth (in the form of a property tax or capital gains tax) makes sense as both a progressive tax measure and one which avoids the disincentivization of work entailed in higher income taxes.

On income tax, the proposal to increase the top rate to 48% is still some way below the "optimum" top rate of tax (to be applied only to the top 1% of income earners) of over 70%, as calculated in this new paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, and discussed here (Paul Krugman's NYTblog) and here (Kevin Drum of Mother Jones).

The calculation is based on US data. For Ireland we might consider that the "behavioural elasticity", as Krugman calls it - i.e. the reduced work effort in response to higher taxes - is likely to be higher than for the US, given the historically high international mobility of Irish workers and the infamous culture of tax exiles among Ireland's elite. I'm not sure if studies on this elasticity exist for Ireland. But there is another way of looking at this. If we assume that the current top rate of income tax in Ireland is the optimum rate, what degree of "behavioural elasticity" would this imply? Ireland's top marginal rate of income tax is officially 41%. However, if we include the top rate of the Universal Social Charge (USC) at 7% and PRSI at 4% we have a top marginal rate of 52%. This implies a "behavioural elasticity" of about 0.62.* This is still higher than even the most conservative upper bound estimates for the US - around 0.57. Also, as Diamond and Saez note, most of the behavioural response observed in studies to date consists of tax evasion or avoidance behaviour, and not the kind of changes in real economic behaviour that opponents of higher income taxes claim to be concerned about (e.g. labour supply, business creation and savings decisions).

So while increases to the top rate of tax will be dismissed by this government on pragmatic grounds - that such increases would be self-defeating - such claims may not stand up to close scrutiny. Imposing a higher rate of tax on the top 1% of earners in society - and ensuring they actually pay their tax by closing loopholes, removing tax reliefs, and clamping down on tax exiles and tax evasion - could offer a more socially equitable and sustainable means of closing the gap between public revenue and expenditure.

Certainly the notion that we have "no alternative" to the proposed cuts, appears to have no basis in the available facts and figures. Instead it is revealing of an ideologically driven budgetary process.

*The calculation is based on the formula used in the paper by Diamond and Saez cited above: T = 1/(1 + ae), where T is the optimal top rate of tax, a is the Pareto parameter that describes the distribution of incomes at the top, and e is the behavioral elasticity. I assume that the distribution of incomes at the top in Ireland is roughly equivalent to that in the US and so I use the same Pareto parameter as used in the Diamond and Saez paper, i.e. 1.5.