Cartoon of the day

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Cartoon of the day

Special mention

  

Voting on capitalism

Chris Dillow writes that an under-appreciated feature of last week’s election in the United Kingdom is that “social class has become less important as an influence upon voting behaviour.” His argument is that, based on Lord Ashcroft’s polls, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour got a higher share of the well-off’s vote than Tony Blair’s Labour got in 1997, and Blair did far better than Corbyn among the working-class.

But there’s another way of looking at the class dimensions of the most recent election—not in terms of who voted but how they voted.

One of the interesting questions in Ashcroft’s exit polls concerns capitalism:

Q.12 Do you think of each of the following as being a force for good, a force for ill, or a mixed-blessing? Please give each one a score between 0 and 10, where 0 means they a very much a force for ill, 10 means it is very much a force for good and 5 means it is a mixed blessing. Capitalism

As it turns out, 61 percent of those who voted Labour consider capitalism at best a mixed-blessing, in contrast to 36 percent of Tory voters. (Green and Scottish National Party voters are even more opposed to capitalism—with 68 and 67 percent, respectively.)

A similar but somewhat less dramatic difference exists between socioeconomic groups (the closest the UK Office for National Statistics gets to classes). Only 44 percent of AB voters (in higher and intermediate managerial, administrative, professional occupations) consider capitalism a mixed-blessing or worse, as against the 58 of DE voters (in semi-skilled and unskilled manual occupations, unemployed and lowest grade occupations) who hold a negative view of capitalism.*

One possible interpretation of the snap election called by the Theresa May and the governing Conservative Party, then, is it was less a referendum on Brexit and more on capitalism. And on that score, with rising inequality and the threatened cutback in social services for those at the bottom, class still does matter for voters in the United Kingdom.

 

*The one surprising result in Ashcroft’s poll is how little difference there is in terms of age: while 53 percent of voters age 18 to 24 hold a negative view of capitalism, that falls to only 45 percent among voters 65 and over.

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

 

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

 

“Party of business”

It is interesting that, on the surface (but, as I explain below, only on the surface), neither major political party on either side of the pond seems to be making the claim they’re the “party of business.” Not the Conservative and Labor Parties in the United Kingdom, or the Republican and Democratic Parties in the United States.

Here’s Chris Dillow on the situation across the pond:

What I mean is that back then, the Tories were emphatically on the side of business, exemplified by Thatcher’s union-bashing and talk of “management’s right to manage”. In the 90s Labour – first under John Smith and then under Blair – devoted immense effort to trying to get business onside via the prawn cocktail offensive.

Elections then were won and lost by chasing the business vote.

Things have changed. In taking the UK out of the EU against the wishes of most major companies, the Tories can no longer claim to be the party of business. And Theresa May’s talk of getting “tough on irresponsible behaviour in big business” and of “unscrupulous bosses” suggests little desire to become so.

You might think this presents Labour with an open goal. It would be easy to present policies such as a national investment bank, more infrastructure spending and anti-austerity as being pro-business.

But there seems little desire to do this.

Something similar is going on in the United States. Neither major party political candidates embraced business during the nominating campaigns or their conventions.

In fact, in his acceptance speech, Donald Trump lambasted big business for supporting his opponent:

Big business, elite media and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of my opponent because they know she will keep our rigged system in place. They are throwing money at her because they have total control over everything she does. She is their puppet, and they pull the strings.

While, last Thursday, Hillary Clinton vowed to overturn Citizens United and challenge key corporate decisions:

That’s why we need to appoint Supreme Court justices who will get money out of politics and expand voting rights, not restrict them. And if necessary we’ll pass a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United!

I believe American corporations that have gotten so much from our country should be just as patriotic in return. Many of them are. But too many aren’t. It’s wrong to take tax breaks with one hand and give out pink slips with the other.

Both parties, it seems, are trying to court voters who are fed up with business as usual.

But, as I see it, that’s only what’s happening on the surface. None of the four parties is making a claim to be the “party of business” because, below the surface, all four are the parties of business.

What I mean by that is that the common sense of all four parties is the promise to promote faster economic growth and create more jobs and, in the absence of alternatives (such as direct government employment or worker-owned enterprises), that means creating a business-friendly economic and social environment.

Now, the parties may differ about how to create such an environment (e.g., in the United States, lowering individual and corporate income taxes versus using nonprofit foundation contacts to arrange business investments). But they agree on the goal: it’s up to the government to create the conditions for private corporations to use their profits to foster economic growth and job creation.

The result is that, in the current climate—with flat or falling incomes and grotesque levels of inequality—none of the parties wants to openly declare itself the “party of business.” But, they don’t have to, because they are already—all four of them—the parties of business.