1/

🧵 THREAD about probably one of the BEST discussions about social value of work, economic wealth and fairness in a while.

40 mins with @amolrajan, @PJTheEconomist @elerianm @KGerlich777 Louise Casey

@davidgraeber šŸ—£ļø "The more your job helps others, the less you get paid"

2/

Reminded me of @euan_lawson for @BJGPjournal quoting Michael Sandel on meritocracy: https://t.co/tAl6sobtKW

šŸ—£ļø "In an unequal society, those who land on top want to believe their success is morally justified. In a meritocratic society, this means the winners must believe...
3/

šŸ—£ļø "...they have earned their success through their own talent and hard work.… at a time when racism and sexism are out of favor (discredited though not eliminated), credentialism is the last acceptable prejudice."
4/

@PJTheEconomist over the last 20 years:

ā¬‡ļø 30% per person spending on social care
ā¬†ļø 100% more hospital doctors.

No extra GPs - actually the number of full time equivalents is dropping: https://t.co/n20woUk0Wu

And they aren't equally distributed either (inverse-care law)
5/

When we look at care work @KGerlich777 talks about care sector:

āž”ļø How it is heavily gendered? 80% women
āž”ļø How poorly it is paid and misconceptions about what it involves.

Louise Casey explaining needed huge reform and re-structure
6/

Reminded me a lot about how childcare system needed reform from @NEF: https://t.co/ETtY5micyB
7/

Interesting insight @elerianm: wealth gives you resilience, opportunity and agility.

When he changed jobs for more family time, people told him

1⃣ you have to be lucky enough to change work
2⃣ they were worried about other's opinions - do we afford too much power to others?
8/

Life is not inherently fair but we do still have people who are working but are incredibly poor.

Universal credit does not cover living costs but was initially meant too.

Since 2008, income increased by 6% but wealth has increased by 18%.
9/

Solutions?

āž”ļø Basic income - generated from tax?
āž”ļø Taxation? land value tax, inheritance tax
āž”ļø Would a maximum wage cap be insanity?

Throw in political power it become hard to see who will back these policies as in the current climate seem unpopular.
@threadreaderapp unroll please

More from Economy

On Jan 6, 2021, the always stellar Mr @deepakshenoy tweeted, this:

https://t.co/fa3GX9VnW0

Innocuous 1 sentence, but its a full economic theory at play.
Let me break it down for you. (1/n)


On September 30, 2020, I wrote an article for @CFASocietyIndia where I explained that RBI is all set to lose its ability to set interest rates if it continues to fiddle with the exchange rate (2/n)

What do I mean, "fiddle with the exchange rate"?

In essence, if RBI opts and continues to manage exchange rate, then that is "fiddling with the exchange rate"

RBI has done that in the past and has restarted it in 2020 - very explicitly. (3/n)

First in March 2020, it opened a Dollar/INR swap of $2B with far leg to be unwound in September 2020.

Implying INR will be bought from the open markets in order to prevent INR from falling vis a vis USD (4/n)

The Second aspect is now, that dollar inflow is happening, and the forex reserves swelled -> implying the rupee is appreciating, RBI again intervened from September, by selling INR in spot markets. (5/n)
https://t.co/9kpWP7ovyM
Long rant: This @WSJ article bemoaning the decline of price theory is really worth highlighting. The economic theories and so called "laws of economics" that the WSJ consistently and religiously defends, are the source of their authority, power and privilege.


So called economic "theories" like "you get paid exactly what you are worth" and "markets are perfectly efficient" and "when wages rise, jobs fall" and "raising taxes on the rich kills jobs and growth" and "increasing justice decreases economic efficiency" and...

"Government intervention in markets always creates more harm than good" and "any regulation that constrains corporations kills growth and productivity", etc etc are effectively a protection racket for the rich. It is a set of internally consistent and mathematized conjectures...

That are all demonstrably nonsense. But getting people to accept these "theories" as laws of nature and immutable, timeless truths is the most effective way our current economic elites have found to maintain and enhance the status of the powerful and persuade the weak and poor...

to shut the fuck up and accept their lot in life. Now, FINALLY, some economists- are actually beginning to look at the real world evidence to determine whether these propositions actually describe anything real here on planet earth. Let me save you some time. The answer is NO.

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