* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Sunday, September 28, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Jussie Smollett Claims He Was ‘Disrespected’ on the ‘Special Forces’ Season Premiere – Yahoo

    Jussie Smollett Opens Up About Feeling ‘Disrespected’ During the ‘Special Forces’ Season Premiere

    TicketSmarter Fall Entertainment Guide – Eastern Illinois University Athletics

    TicketSmarter Fall Entertainment Guide – Eastern Illinois University Athletics

    Cardi B Adds More Dates to Little Miss Drama Tour: ‘Y’all Making Me Work’ – Yahoo

    Cardi B Extends Little Miss Drama Tour: “Y’all Making Me Work

    ‘Today’: Sheinelle Jones Thanks Katie Couric for Support After Husband’s Death – CBS 19 News

    Sheinelle Jones Expresses Heartfelt Thanks to Katie Couric for Support After Husband’s Passing

    Sate your hunger at DBA’s Taste of Downtown – Bakersfield.com

    Indulge Your Cravings at DBA’s Taste of Downtown!

    Caesars Entertainment (CZR): Assessing Valuation After Times Square Casino Setback and Mounting Investor Concerns – simplywall.st

    Caesars Entertainment Faces Times Square Casino Hurdles as Investor Concerns Mount

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    From shale to steam: Fossil fuel technology boosts clean geothermal energy – Washington Examiner

    From Shale to Steam: How Fossil Fuel Technology is Powering a Clean Geothermal Energy Revolution

    How Sustainable Technology is Shaping a Greener Future – Technology Magazine

    How Sustainable Technology is Driving the Revolution Toward a Greener Future

    Aurora police hope to add facial recognition technology to crime-fighting tools – CBS News

    Aurora Police Aim to Boost Crime-Fighting with New Facial Recognition Technology

    Autonomous Solutions shows off cutting-edge technology for the public – Cache Valley Daily

    Autonomous Solutions Unveils Cutting-Edge Technology for the Public

    Amazon to Pay $2.5 Billion in Prime Membership Settlement – The New York Times

    Amazon to Pay $2.5 Billion in Prime Membership Settlement – The New York Times

    What are we really gaining from technology? – Fast Company

    What Are We Really Gaining from Technology?

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Jussie Smollett Claims He Was ‘Disrespected’ on the ‘Special Forces’ Season Premiere – Yahoo

    Jussie Smollett Opens Up About Feeling ‘Disrespected’ During the ‘Special Forces’ Season Premiere

    TicketSmarter Fall Entertainment Guide – Eastern Illinois University Athletics

    TicketSmarter Fall Entertainment Guide – Eastern Illinois University Athletics

    Cardi B Adds More Dates to Little Miss Drama Tour: ‘Y’all Making Me Work’ – Yahoo

    Cardi B Extends Little Miss Drama Tour: “Y’all Making Me Work

    ‘Today’: Sheinelle Jones Thanks Katie Couric for Support After Husband’s Death – CBS 19 News

    Sheinelle Jones Expresses Heartfelt Thanks to Katie Couric for Support After Husband’s Passing

    Sate your hunger at DBA’s Taste of Downtown – Bakersfield.com

    Indulge Your Cravings at DBA’s Taste of Downtown!

    Caesars Entertainment (CZR): Assessing Valuation After Times Square Casino Setback and Mounting Investor Concerns – simplywall.st

    Caesars Entertainment Faces Times Square Casino Hurdles as Investor Concerns Mount

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    From shale to steam: Fossil fuel technology boosts clean geothermal energy – Washington Examiner

    From Shale to Steam: How Fossil Fuel Technology is Powering a Clean Geothermal Energy Revolution

    How Sustainable Technology is Shaping a Greener Future – Technology Magazine

    How Sustainable Technology is Driving the Revolution Toward a Greener Future

    Aurora police hope to add facial recognition technology to crime-fighting tools – CBS News

    Aurora Police Aim to Boost Crime-Fighting with New Facial Recognition Technology

    Autonomous Solutions shows off cutting-edge technology for the public – Cache Valley Daily

    Autonomous Solutions Unveils Cutting-Edge Technology for the Public

    Amazon to Pay $2.5 Billion in Prime Membership Settlement – The New York Times

    Amazon to Pay $2.5 Billion in Prime Membership Settlement – The New York Times

    What are we really gaining from technology? – Fast Company

    What Are We Really Gaining from Technology?

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home Business

John McDonnell offers an ambitious alternative economic policy

January 14, 2024
in Business
John McDonnell offers an ambitious alternative economic policy
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

By BAGEHOT

SO FAR the Labour Party’s annual conference has very much been John McDonnell’s. The shadow chancellor not only delivered today’s keynote address in the main hall. He’s been ubiquitous in the media and on the fringe. This is as it should be. Mr McDonnell has provided the Labour Party with the closest thing that it has to a radical new idea: forcing companies to give their workers shares worth perhaps 10% of the total.

Mr McDonnell’s big speech was hardly a rhetorical triumph. His voice was beginning to fail (he’d repeated Theresa May’s mistake of giving too many interviews on his big day, but without such disastrous consequences). He engaged in a spell of Trump-style press bashing by praising Jeremy Corbyn for standing up to press “attacks” over anti-Semitism. He raised the issue of Brexit only to say nothing of any interest other than that Labour wants a general election (“bring it on” provoked predictable applause). He ran out of energy towards the end. But it did give us an insight into the way that a man who could easily be Britain’s next chancellor of the exchequer views the world.

And it was undoubtedly bold. At last year’s conference Mr McDonnell was in his responsible-bank-manager role: trust us to run the economy better than the other lot. This year he didn’t try to conceal the scale of his ambition to shift the balance of power from capitalists to workers. He insisted that “the bigger the mess we inherit the more radical we have to be”, and he provided a fairly comprehensive list of what might be done to clean up the mess. The Labour Party clearly not only believes that it might win the next election but that it might get a mandate for a far-reaching agenda.

The pillars of McDonnellism are “public ownership” and “democratisation”. Mr McDonnell pointed out that this year marks the hundredth anniversary of Labour’s adoption of Clause Four (which commits the party to the “public ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange”). He declared to resounding public applause that the principle is more relevant than ever. He also asserted that “democracy” doesn’t stop at the factory gates or office door. He wants a full-scale adoption of industrial democracy (which in practice will mean activists boring everybody else into submission and then passing mysterious “composite motions”, just as happens in the Labour Party). He also wants workers to make up a third of company boards.

Mr McDonnell descended from these lofty heights to outline his policies for “reprogramming capitalism”. There were familiar blunt instruments: a £10 minimum wage; sectoral collective bargaining; the closing of the gender pay gap. But there were also some more subtle ideas. Mr McDonnell wants to rewire the Treasury to convert it from a block on “progressive reform” into an agent of regional regeneration and public investment. More dramatically still, he wants to “rewire” the public corporation to solve everything from Britain’s curse of short-termism to the perennial hostility between workers and managers. Mr McDonnell wants to force “big” companies to give 10% of their shares to their workers. These shares would be put into a collective fund that would do three things: pay a maximum £500 in dividends every year to workers; plough money back into the company; and plough any further money back to the taxman to pay for “social investment”.

It’s not clear whether this is a political winner. The generally rapturous audience treated Mr McDonnell’s ideas with boredom verging on indifference. A woman sitting in front of your correspondent who cheered wildly at every mention of a “composite motion” remained mercifully silent. The audience was much happier when Mr McDonnell talked about nationalising the utilities. The default mindset of Labour Party members is still very much what it was before Tony Blair: nationalise what you can and then champion “us” against “them” in the private sector. To this world view, worker share-ownership is a push-me-pull-you.

What about the practical merits of Mr McDonnell’s ideas? There is an interesting debate to be had about companies giving workers shares. The argument against is based on diversification: you don’t want to hold shares in the company that also pays your salary. Just ask Enron’s employees about their Enron stock. The argument in favour is about motivation: there is some academic evidence that people work harder and strike less if they have an ownership stake in their companies. The John Lewis Partnership has done well out of this model (though its recent performance has been disappointing).

But so far Mr McDonnell’s ideas are badly worked out to the point of irresponsibility. The shadow chancellor’s blueprint fails three basic tests. It fails to respect property rights—what he’s advocating is essentially the expropriation of a significant quantity of shareholder wealth (what Mr McDonnell’s guru, Karl Marx, called “the expropriation of the expropriators”). This would cause a huge capital flight which would severely damage the British economy (which is one of the most globalised in the world) while ensuring that the shares that the workers were given would be of declining value. It would give control of shares to an ownership fund rather than to the employees. Mr McDonnell’s plan would do little to change employee incentives since employees would get such a small pay-off (£500) with the rest going to the taxman. Mr McDonnell seems to be more interested in raising taxes on corporations (which can easily move abroad) than he is on changing the wiring of capitalism. It also raises the possibility that Mr McDonnell’s scheme would turn into a British version of “black empowerment” by which the state appoints well-connected people to control investment funds and run companies.

Mr McDonnell has also failed to provide answers to crucial questions. How would his ideas apply to foreign-owned firms? Would UK-based staff get a tenth of all the capital of a multinational? And if so wouldn’t sensible multinationals immediately close down their British operations? How would the idea apply to firms which only have a small proportion of their employees in the UK (such as Rio Tinto, BP and HSBC)? Wouldn’t they be gone in a jiffy? And how would Mr McDonnell’s idea apply to foreign firms with British subsidiaries? What makes Mr McDonnell’s blueprint even more annoying is that there is a much easier way to increase share ownership: creating tax breaks for share awards.

Mr McDonnell deserves praise for presenting the closest thing to an actual idea to the Labour Party Conference. It’s a pity it’s such a dud.

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : The Economist – https://www.economist.com/bagehots-notebook/2018/09/24/john-mcdonnell-offers-an-ambitious-alternative-economic-policy

Tags: businessMcDonnelloffers
Previous Post

Americans are doing a good job of misunderstanding Britain

Next Post

What Birmingham means to today’s Conservatives

Poland bounce back with first ever World Championship bronze – Volleyball World

Poland Makes History with First Ever World Championship Bronze Medal in Volleyball

September 28, 2025

Russian Economy Struggles Under Growing Strain of Ukraine Conflict

September 28, 2025
Jussie Smollett Claims He Was ‘Disrespected’ on the ‘Special Forces’ Season Premiere – Yahoo

Jussie Smollett Opens Up About Feeling ‘Disrespected’ During the ‘Special Forces’ Season Premiere

September 28, 2025
Tom Holland shares health update after suffering concussion on ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ set – New York Post

Tom Holland Opens Up About His Recovery After Concussion on ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Set

September 28, 2025
Politics are destroying our public schools. It doesn’t have to be that way | Opinion – Pensacola News Journal

How Politics Are Undermining Our Public Schools-and What We Can Do About It

September 28, 2025
Featured in Functional Ecology – besjournals

Discover the Latest Breakthroughs in Functional Ecology

September 28, 2025
Scientists Identify Simple and Effective Way To Reduce Calorie Intake Without Trying – SciTechDaily

Scientists Identify Simple and Effective Way To Reduce Calorie Intake Without Trying – SciTechDaily

September 28, 2025
Million-year-old skull rewrites human evolution, say scientists – BBC

Ancient Skull Discovery Upends Our Understanding of Human Evolution

September 28, 2025
Corgi Can’t Stop Slipping & TikTok Can’t Stop Laughing – Yahoo

Corgi’s Hilarious Slips Have Everyone Laughing Out Loud

September 28, 2025
From shale to steam: Fossil fuel technology boosts clean geothermal energy – Washington Examiner

From Shale to Steam: How Fossil Fuel Technology is Powering a Clean Geothermal Energy Revolution

September 28, 2025

Categories

Archives

September 2025
M T W T F S S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930  
« Aug    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (841)
  • Economy (862)
  • Entertainment (21,736)
  • General (17,292)
  • Health (9,905)
  • Lifestyle (874)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (863)
  • Politics (872)
  • Science (16,071)
  • Sports (21,361)
  • Technology (15,844)
  • World (844)

Recent News

Poland bounce back with first ever World Championship bronze – Volleyball World

Poland Makes History with First Ever World Championship Bronze Medal in Volleyball

September 28, 2025

Russian Economy Struggles Under Growing Strain of Ukraine Conflict

September 28, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version