Comments for Corporate Engagement

Comment on Crawford report a dull dud spiced by a big no to John Coates by westral

westral — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:16:29 +0000

Sports funding should be regarded as a health issue both on inputs (fast food & alcohol advertising) and outputs (does it result in a healthier community). If funding Olympic athletes does that fine. If it doesn’t we need to find out what will encourage more people to particiapate in sports activities. We rank around number 5 in Olympic ratings but rank 1 or 2 in the most obese nations so something’s not working and we need to find out what is wrong.

Comment on More, not less, equality needed for economic growth by Croakey

Croakey — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:56:10 +0000

Some new research, estimating more than a million premature deaths are due to income inequality, reported at Croakey: http://blogs.crikey.com.au/croakey/2009/11/13/reads-of-the-week/

Comment on More, not less, equality needed for economic growth by Friar Hilarius

Friar Hilarius — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:33:10 +0000

I recently found that in 2008 the top 83 nations in terms of per capita GDP increased this measure at a slower rate than the bottom 83

Perhaps at glacial lack of speed we are moving to a more equal world

Some evidence that we could be moving to a global average wage for equal levels of skill is seen in the way bids are made for work projects on the internet

I saw where out of work American financiers would bid US$ 100 an hour for work but were undercut by Asians willing to do the work for far less … more strength to the hard working Asians, I say!

My heart does not exactly bleed for out of work American bankers

The book “Globality” sub-titled “Competing with Everyone, from Everywhere, for Everything” by Sirkin, Hemerling and Bhattacharya deals with the increasing mobility of capital in the global economy and trends towards a global average standard of living

My personal view is that Credit has been dis-credited and that the next major move in economics needs to be to a Savings Based funding of affordable growth

This needs to be coupled with the destruction of manipulated consumerism. The new religion of Mass Marketing, a cult practised so viciously in its Shopping Mall Temples, needs to be exposed as the most dangerous cult in the planet.

Buying what we can not afford simply brings forward spending and builds a bubble of demand which can not be sustained as the appetite for credit is stretched beyond reasonable limits

If tax and every other law encouraged savings and we spent only our savings, or better still our interest on savings we might take much more care in starting projects which have social value as distinct from value to the Cult of Consumerism and Marketing and its bogus claim to promote higher living standards

The highest standards of living may well be enjoyed by those who want less rather than more. Certainly they have a greater chance of attaining peace and satisifaction as well as freedom from debt if their needs are less.

There is Life after Debt

Friar Hilarius
http://yourlifeafterdebt.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-lives-for-old.html

Comment on More, not less, equality needed for economic growth by JamesH

JamesH — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:42:50 +0000

Good to see this issue getting a little more coverage.
There has been some interesting work (paper by Andrew Leigh and Christopher Jencks here: http://econrsss.anu.edu.au/~aleigh/pdf/InequalityMortality.pdf) saying that this effect largely disappears if it is done on within-country historical trends; that is, when a country’s inequality goes up or down, its population does not necessarily respond. How to interpret this disjuncture is anyone’s guess; mine is that a change in inequality has to be sustained for a significant period of time and given time to affect the stress and hormone levels of the very young and their parents, which then sets their attitudes etc for the rest of their life. If true, this calls for caution on asserting that changing inequality would have good short-term effects, as opposed to long-term effects.

Comment on More, not less, equality needed for economic growth by Trevor Cook

Trevor Cook — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:05:47 +0000

Thanks Melissa, glad you liked it. Interestingly the authors of the spirit level are from the health side of things and the book is housed in the medicine library at Sydney Uni!

Comment on More, not less, equality needed for economic growth by Croakey

Croakey — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:01:20 +0000

Great piece! Inequity is one of the big issues for health. It’s not simply that poorer people tend to have worse health; but they also are less likely to have access to health care or related services. There is a lot of rhetoric within the health sector about tackling these inequities but so much of the action of governments and powerful professional groups only exacerbates them. Perhaps meaningful change will only come when the discussions about health inequities starts to engage powerbrokers beyond health. Another reason why your piece is welcome (and I will put a link up at Croakey right now!)

Comment on Can Rudd save his ETS, or will it destroy him? by AdamNeira

AdamNeira — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:44:13 +0000

Prime Minister Rudd is doing a good job. The vast majority of the population is only interested in material comfort and getting ahead. Materialism, pragmatism, hedonism and narcissism dominate. Australians are not particularly political or interested in matters of state. On a world scale they are actually quite spoilt. Witness the turnover on the recent Melbourne Cup. There are still many problems in the country but overall Australia is holding up very well, as it should with a population of 21 million and a vast resource base. If any country in the world has the potential to be the wealthiest around it is the Great Southern Land.

Comment on Can Rudd save his ETS, or will it destroy him? by Frank Campbell

Frank Campbell — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:36:38 +0000

Trevor: I asked if we “deserve these creeps” to raise that very question. Answering it would take longer (!). The transformation, and corruption, of the social democratic state over the past 25 years was based on “corporatism”. So that’s the first place to look. This is not to invoke some fictitious golden age, but the spluttering vehicle of social reform and idealism was hijacked. Hijacked by a specific class with a specific language. Not a capitalist class but a class integrated with big capital, a managerial class which credentialled every conceiveable avenue of social mobility. They created a carapace of language, the only currency accepted in this universe, a language which both obfuscates and controls thought. A massive opaque edifice of words and concepts. Gate-keeping has become ever-tighter. The managerial elite is now seamless between the public domain and large scale capitalist firms. Politicians and academics freely move from one to other other. The corporatists award themselves “compensation” which would have been regarded as obscene 20 years ago. Independence in the universities is fading to black. The humanities and pure sciences have been reduced or eliminated. Sociology, which corporatists instinctively fear, has been castrated, or co-opted to serve the new class.
The collapse of authoritarian socialism should have been the best thing ever to happen to the Left and social democracy. Instead, the old Trots, Stalinists and Labor put on suits and joined the rush. Whether they’re turncoats like Windschuttle or New Labor corporatists makes no difference. Who cares if some old Trot is a New Labor minister spouting spin in language that would make Don Watson retch or morphed instead into a balding right-wing Rottweiler?

None of this was inevitable. It’s not just “our” greed, sophistry etc. Power was taken, not given. You can only freely “give” power if you understand what you’re signing up to. Most people are disenfranchised by the new monopoly class. One might say the devil is in the retail, that capitalist prosperity has seduced us. Shopping corrupts. Absolute shopping corrupts absolutely, as Lady Acton said in Harrods. But gross consumption is more a symptom than a cause. The Greens are a confused and soggy response to capitalist excess and the new monopoly class, but their existence shows resistance. What is to be done? A lot, but there’s no need to capitulate. Sure, big capital’s latest orgiastic shambles has put the public in debt for the next decade, but the new class may yet pay a high political price for that. I could go on, but I already have.

Comment on Can Rudd save his ETS, or will it destroy him? by Trevor Cook

Trevor Cook — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:32:26 +0000

Frank, what intrigues me is the extent to which these (democratically-elected) leaders are just a reflection of who we are as a society and people: they reflect our own lack of principle, preference for style over substance, greed, ego etc. Is our unhappiness little more than the rage of caliban at seeing his own reflection?

Comment on Can Rudd save his ETS, or will it destroy him? by Frank Campbell

Frank Campbell — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:23:50 +0000

Rudd wasn’t called Dr.Death for nothing when he was Goss’s hatchetman in Qld. The exodus of Rudd staff is also telling. Unpleasant personal characteristics are magnified in office. The results may be pathological even if the clinical diagnosis isn’t. Thatcher’s lower middle class punitiveness and authoritarianism expanded only in high office. She mugged her own party. In the end they were desperate to be rid of her. Blair was a vile combination: sucking up to the American empire while corrupting social democracy at home. A weak, rootless personality seeking subservience to power, first Washington, now Rome. Gordon Brown is an aspergerish social cripple who seeks power through technocratic manipulation. Howard the Rodent was an ideologue pretending to be an Aussie Battler. His word was worth nothing. Do we deserve these creeps? Whatever, the social democratic state is in a state.

We’re stuck with Rudd. When things go wrong, as they must, we’ll see just how brittle and explosive he might be. Culturally backward, Rudd is not a subtle or sophisticated politician. Chuck him a piece of carpet and see if he chews it.