Archie Windsor, Travel, American Socialism

                                       The Royals

Harmony, Frank Bernard Dicksee (1853-1928)

Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]

Sir, I approve of the names of the first-born of the Duke and Duchess…Archie with its duosyllabic affability and informality, followed by the trisyllabic Harrison suggestive of reserve and the occasional Holywood gala, ending with the hyphenated quinquesyllabic Mountbatten-Windsor, exuding tradition, nobility and grandeur. This is surely one for the musicologists. 

(A.F. Kellner, The Times, in Private Eye, No 1497)

                                      

                                                           

   Travel

Adventure holidays specialist Exodus has revealed the top adventure travel trends for 2019 and we're completely on board with number one on the list: walking wellness.

Combining one of our favourite activities, walking, with the already huge trend of wellness and mindfulness, means you can get active on holiday and enjoy the mental and physical health benefits when you get home.

                          So, is that my wellness and mindfulness sorted?

                   
American Socialism

…The big story here is the growing enthusiasm for socialism among younger Americans. Whereas only 27% of over 65s have a positive view of socialism, according to an Axios poll conducted in January, 61% of those aged 18-24 do.

Of course it all depends what you mean by “capitalism” and “socialism”. Ask Americans about “small business”, “entrepreneurs” or “free enterprise” and you get 79%-92% approval, according to Gallup. By “capitalism” they seem to understand something closer to “big business”.

…They appear to associate socialism with government-provided healthcare and university education. (An ingenuous few think socialism means being sociable.)

As AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] put it in a recent interview: “What we have in mind and what my policies most closely resemble are what we see in the UK, in Norway, in Finland, in Sweden.”

…Not only do American socialists not know what socialism is; they don’t know where it is either. Socialism does exist around the world in various forms. If you want to see state ownership in action, along with the corruption, inefficiency and poverty that invariably go with it, I recommend Caracas, Pyongyang or – more picturesque – Havana. Don’t look for it in Europe, where even Social Democrat parties have been haemorrhaging votes since the 1990s.

If you want a debate about the degree of redistribution you want to effect through the tax and benefits systems, don’t confuse yourself by talking about socialism. The democratic world is all capitalist now. Voters just choose how much they want to mitigate the inequalities inevitably produced by the market. At one end of the spectrum are the Chileans and the Mexicans, who do very little redistribution; at the other are the Finns and the Irish who do quite a lot. Everyone else is somewhere in between.

(Niall Ferguson, The Sunday Times, 2019)

So perhaps we need another 'ism' to describe the idea of interfering with the "inequalities inevitably produced by the market." I thought it was democratic socialism?

*Capitalism is under threat…Over half of millennials – aged 23 to 38 – would prefer to live in a socialist (46%) or communist (6%) nation. Modern-day capitalists…are restricting themselves to virtue signalling: calls for modest increases in their own tax burdens, and stepped-up philanthropy – al the while ducking the issue of the more fundamental reforms that might preserve the best of capitalism by eliminating the worst.

The new, harder left of the Democratic Party and Donald Trump agree on one thing – the US economic system is rigged. The singer Billie Holiday pointed out long before the academics turned their attention to the problem of inequality. “Them that’s got shall have. Them that’s not shall lose, So the bible said and it still is news.”

Start with inheritance. The modest level of taxes on inheritance gives the winners of the sperm lottery a head-start in life not available to sons and daughters of the middle class.

…Nor can one doubt that monetary policy favours “them that’s got”. The Federal Reserve’s solution to the great recession was to keep interest rates low, driving up asset prices – homes, shares, horses, art – and depressing incomes of “them that’s not got” – small savers.

The tax structure also contributes to inequality. Consider property developers, who never pay income taxes – quite legal under the tax code – while accumulating fortunes, a situation compounded by the recent tax cuts engineered by the rigger-in-chief. Or corporations such as Amazon and Facebook that pay little or no taxes in the US. Or billionaire hedge fund operators whose ordinary income is taxed at the lower capital gains rate.

Unfortunately, unless the wealthy are willing to throw their political weight behind them, fundamental reforms of the tax system will be unattainable. Companies from Starbucks to Apple will continue to move profits from the country in which sales occur to the more tax-friendly venues of a sunny Caribbean island or rain-soaked Dublin, while ordinary taxpayers pay where they earn.

…Then there’s executive compensation. Corporate boards, often stocked with friends of the chief executive, do not seem to be able to reign it in.

…It is now up to capitalists to save capitalism by supporting reforms as fundamental as those introduced by Franklin Roosevelt. Otherwise the left, shouting “inequality”, will replace our system of regulated capitalism with government control of the commanding heights of the economy…

(Irwin Stelzer, The Sunday Times, 2019)

Does it have to be just "the left" that points out the inequalities in society? What about all those people who do not have a left or right ideology?