Saturday, April 4, 2020

FT editorial: “Radical reforms are required to forge a society that will work for all” Prakash Loungani

An editorial in the Financial Times headlined “Virus lays bare the frailty of the social contract” says that recent developments “shine a glaring light on existing inequalities” and that “to demand collective sacrifice you must offer a social contract that benefits everyone.” The FT states: “Radical reforms — reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades — will need to be put on the table. Governments will have to accept a more active role in the economy. They must see public services as investments rather than liabilities, and look for ways to make labour markets less insecure. Redistribution will again be on the agenda; the privileges of the elderly and wealthy in question. Policies until recently considered eccentric, such as basic income and wealth taxes, will have to be in the mix.”...
Link to editorial: https://www.ft.com/content/7eff769a-74dd-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca
FT throws in  the towel on neoliberal globalization. Elites running scared?

On the same day the British Labour party announced the election of a center-rightt new party leader to replace the much denigrated socialist Jeremy Corbyn, the Financial Times(!) calls for the socialist policies Corbyn had planned to implement....
Labour blows it again. US Democratic Party not far behind.

Moon of Alabama
The Financial Times Asks For Socialist Policies

4 comments:

Matt Franko said...

“ Elites running scared?”

You guys are the elites...

Elites running scared?

The practical people trained under science (ie not you) are going to observe this failure mode due to the REAL virus and make corrective adjustments as they have been trained to do...

Matt Franko said...

The Art Degree people will try to thwart or impair the necessary adjustments...

Peter Pan said...

Tom gets easily excited. Elites, not so much.

Ralph Musgrave said...

So governments “must see public services as investments rather than liabilities?” Actually Gordon Brown, who was UK finance minister for ten years was famous for his OVER-USE not under-use of the word “investment”: he routinely described CURRENT spending he had implemented (as opposed to capital spending) as being a so called “investment”.

The moral is that anyone with an IQ above zero can write articles for the Financial Times, which is why I have ceased reading it, or reading any other supposedly intelligent broadsheet newspaper.