Always interesting what the BBC employees find of interest….not necessarily in the course of their work but in a personal capacity…which is perhaps all the more telling…as on Twitter which they usually claim the views expressed are their own and not the BBC’s…and in the case of Huw Edwards he disclaims the retweets…which is just as well really:
Here he retweets the BBC’s favourite economist who tells us:
Inequality Is a Choice
By JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ 
Joseph Stiglitz @stiglitzian 14 Oct “Inequality Is a Choice” by Joseph Stiglitz http://nyti.ms/GWGrnq
Here’s a taste of Stiglitz’s thinking and expertise:
Europe seems all too eager to follow America’s bad example. The embrace of austerity, from Britain to Germany, is leading to high unemployment, falling wages and increasing inequality.
Really?
We know the BBC doesn’t like to admit the British employment figures are on the up….but what about Germany….is unemployment rising because of austerity?
In August, Germany’s adjusted unemployment rate fell to 5.2 percent, its lowest level in more than two decades. A total of 2.17 million people were unemployed, a decrease of 108,000 or 4.8 percent on a year earlier.
I’m no economist…but er…..obviously there’s something I don’t understand about that graph.
However the heroic up and coming countries are booming and making tremendous efforts to reduce inequality…aren’t they?
On the one hand, widening income and wealth inequality in America is part of a trend seen across the Western world.
Chile, Mexico, Greece, Turkey and Hungary managed to reduce (in some cases very high) income inequality significantly, suggesting that inequality is a product of political and not merely macroeconomic forces. It is not true that inequality is an inevitable byproduct of globalization, the free movement of labor, capital, goods and services, and technological change that favors better-skilled and better-educated employees.
Of course you could argue there is nothing new about inequality…..perhaps it has lessened….as more people become super rich rather than the super rich becoming poorer.
But how about those countries he claims have reduced inequality…Greece? Well..it’s a basket case and can’t by any measure be included in the statistics.
Julio Don Juan makes $400 a month at a noisy, cramped Mexico City call center. Without a raise in three years, he says he had to pull his 7-year-old son out of a special-needs school he can no longer afford.
In some places he might seek another job. Not in Mexico, where wages after inflation have risen at an annual pace of 0.4 percent since 2005 — worse than other nations in the region including Brazil, Colombia and Uruguay, according to the International Labour Organization. Close to a third of Mexicans toil in the informal economy without steady income. Julio Don Juan says many would envy him.
The cheap labor that is helping Mexico surpass China as a low-cost supplier of manufacturing goods to the U.S. — and lured companies including Nissan Motor Co. (7201) — has restrained progress for many of the country’s 112 million citizens.
How about Chile…oh, there’s Mexico again:
A recent report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) showed income inequality in Mexico and Chile were among the widest of the 33 nations surveyed.
Oh..and what about Turkey..and Chile, and Mexico again?
Global Income Inequality: GlobalPost Puts America’s Gap Between Rich And Poor In Perspective
Among developed nations, only Chile, Mexico, and Turkey have higher income inequality than the U.S.
On the Gini Index, zero equals perfect equality and one represents absolute inequality in which one person owns everything.
Well…he got Hungary right, I’ll give him that one.
Good of course to see a BBC employee taking an interest in what is essentially the Labour Party narrative….the apparent ‘cost of living crisis‘ and inequality….but also perhaps learning their lines from one who has quite clearly mastered economics to such a high level that he doesn’t feel the need to base his thoughts on what is actually happening on the ground.
Is inequality the result of political decisions rather than Globalization as Stiglitz claims? Just what are the major causes of a ‘cost of living crisis’?.…food prices and fuel…neither of which the government control to a great extent…and of course ‘Quantitative Easing‘ which raises inflation by devaluing the currency….introduced by Labour’s Gordon Brown…..it may have been necessary but the effects on spending power are being ignored, conveniently. Globalization moved jobs to countries like China and India with very low labour costs…..reducing employment and incomes in developed countries.
In one respect Stiglitz is right…Labour’s immigration policy destroyed job opportunites and incomes in the UK….thus producing a generation without jobs or hope and even those in work found they were competing with low wage immigrants for their jobs…no wonder wages don’t rise.
So that is one political decision that increased inequality….but you won’t hear it from the BBC.
Stiglitz is wrong about austerity and unemployment, he is wrong about inequality and the countries which he claims are cleaning up their act….let’s hope no one at the BBC are formulating their news bulletins and current affairs programmes based on Stiglitz’s witterings.
Stiglitz, Chomsky, Hasan, Blanchflower, Toynbee?…
Tell us YOUR top Twenty liberal nonces and numpties that regularly get a free pass to wave their consciences around with Kennedy flair from Tuscany or Cape Cod!
(Islamists have a separate list-so scratch Hasan for now will you?)
‘I am not going to apologise. I didn’t write it but I did say it so I am culpable in some way.’
Jo Brand hopefully will become that beached whale she once boasted of being-but that quote of hers is classic Beeboid crap.
Why didn`t Carol Thatcher think of that one?
There might be trouble ahead!
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Off with her head I say…
(The axeman will have his work cut out of that blubbery neck though)
What is it I wonder that left wing economists have in common that make them such revered sources of wisdom at the BBC? The BBC is not politically biased so it cannot be because they are all left wing, so I wonder what it is?
‘I didn’t write it but I did say it so I am culpable in some way’
Just a smidge, love. You do have a brain?
Seems she’s managed to get from the Beeboid Circle of Strife-avoiding twitter ‘views my own and not the BBC, who are writ large all over my page’ of most Beeboids, to ‘Views not my own, but the BBC’s, who pay me lots to read a teleprompter’.
Oddly, despite being polar opposites, the net result seems, again, to be no one is actually responsible. Uniquely.
”Have we lost the lawyers?”
Maybe the BBC took Shakespeare at his word, or they’re all drafting Helen’s next court outing, or they are really, really busy on the FoI exemptions. Is A. Lawyer in the house to offer input?
‘The BBC could not provide a comment when approached’
Happening more and more.
Interesting how the comments and ratings are shaping up on the Mail. Seems DM readers are chillaxing on offence.
Now, imagine some medium made a reference to a relative of a political leader’s actual views, let alone accusing them, in jest, of drug abuse.
The very idea.
We’d never hear the end of it.
I have said it before, but every should check out Thomas Sowell the US academic. He rips left wing liberals apart on economics. They are always wrong and always act fraudulently. Inequality is a stupid measure and hids the truth.
E.g 40 year old women earn less then 40 year old men on average – shock horror. However, 40 year old women are likely to have not worked for long stetches due to raising children. Compare 40 year old men and women with similar experiance levels and the truth may be a bit more suprising…
I have recently discovered Thomas Sowell. He’s up there with Mark Steyn among the great conservative writers. You don’t mention that Sowell is black – which of course is irrelevant – but it is worth noting as it confuses lefties even more than his economics.
That’s because the left wing are attuned to race to the point of perversion, as for them it is a weapon with which they can attack anyone with right wing view points (because apparently the right wing is where racism resides as right wing viewpoints believe in inequality and racism is inequality? which is rubbish). They enlist some ethnic minorities as token spokesmen and as meat shields behind which they can claim to be acting in the interests of the minorities, but anyone black can see through this in 5 seconds flat. That’s why the voting rate for black people in the UK is only 16%. They can see these labour prats run their areas to the ground whilst sending their own children to private school (see Dianne Abbott). These appointments and meatshields are really there for the white “right on” BBC/ Guardian/ Independent vote who then cause untold damage.
And by constantly invoking race in this way they EXACERBATE racial differences when it should just be left alone. People tend to get along fine when politicians are not involved.
The inequality theme will recur with mind-numbing monotony because it underpins one of the great themes of modern day socialism: ‘Social justice’ a.k.a. good old-fashioned redistribution of wealth. Gordon Brown is still banging on about it years after nearly sinking the country in a sea of debt due to that very objective being at the top of his political agenda.
We almost had Marshall law declared by Gordon Brown following the banking crisis.
Marshall law in the UK.
Marshall (as in plan) or Martial (as in military)?
I suspect the latter – and, if instigated by McBruin, well supported by the beeboids.
Ah the Marshall Plan!
Contrary to popular belief, Britain was the biggest recipient of this post war aid and unlike Germany, which used it to repair its damaged infrastructure and industries, the Labour Government spent ours on nationalisation, creating the NHS and benefits.
While I’m not saying that we oughtn’t to have put in place steps to build a land fit for heroes, Labour’s socialist dogma at that moment in time took us down a road that Britain (unlike Germany) has never recovered from. 1945 Labour was a disaster for Britain. Look at our respective countries now.
Labour still doesn’t understand the difference between spending and investment, neither do their friends in the BBC who prop up that dogma to this day.
All that expensive education gone to waste. Inequality is FAIR because people make unequal contributions to the common good, and some subtract from it. The very idea that a gini coefficient of zero is perfect equality is bizarre. Who are these idiots? Do they get paid more than average income, or minimum wage? Bono is a multi-millionaire because he produces something people want (apparently) If you want a society in which the tuneless must must be equally rewarded – well, then you haven’t been watching the X Factor., obviously. We are all enriched by a system that rewards success, and held back by the equalitarians. The BBC are of course rewarded by talent rate salaries extracted by force. No wonder they don’t like the free market. They would be toast.
A US conservative I admire is Allen West. Very popular among folk in the Tea Party, which our left MSM depict as racist. He once said that we want three types of people in the US: Americans, people who want to be Americans, and our friends. The rest we don’t want. Problem for the MSM narrative and those for whom the colour of skin is poilitically relevant, it that in his photographs he looks a little darker than St Obama.
Seems like Allen West’s thinking can also be applied more locally, e.g. “The BBC wants three types of people, those who already work for the BBC, those who want to work for the BBC, and their friends. The rest of us can go hang!”
Allen West would have made an outstanding Presidential against Obama – but was quickly smeared by Obama’s friends in the media, who couldn’t have a conservative real Afro-American against the anointed one. They quickly dug up and paraded former girlfriends to whom (according to them) said West had apparently made “inappropriate suggestions” when dating them. Well at least he’s normal. Ever seen any of Obama’s former girlfriends? Did he not have any? Where are they? Chilling somewhere. The anointed one must be protected until Hilary is ready to rise again.
Where are they? Still in the bathouse perhaps?
A demographic breakdown of poverty in the UK would be revealing.
The left constantly moan about inequality and how immigrant/ethnic communities in the UK are amongst the most deprived.
Who could have guessed that importing millions of Third World immigrants from some of the poorest and least educated countries in the world would increase inequality. How can anyone be surprised and the result. Worse still, some groups, e.g. black and Pakistani seem to be going backwards.
The huge irony of course is that this mass immigration was against the wishes of the vast majority of the British people, and yet the left now complain about the inevitable consequence of policies they so persistently supported, and still do.
The wonderful diversity they so enthusiastically champion inevitably leads to greater inequality. Arguably they are one and the same.
austerity? what austerity? there isn’t any, and hasn’t been since WWII.