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October 3, 2007
Ross Gittins has had a good go in the Sydney Morning Herald at explaining why the electoral tide continues to flow towards the ALP despite a booming economy. Given the good times, why is electoral support for the Coalition soft?
Gittins op-ed--- When the economy gets personal--- picks up on The Relationships Forum's recent report, Stating the obvious? The case of integrated public policy. This Report opens up a good line of critique of neo-liberal economics from a social democratic perspective.
Gittins says that if Labor wins it will owe much of its success to a shift in the public's preferences, with more weight being given to environmental and social concerns. He argues thus:
If Labor does win this election, two issues will have contributed greatly to that victory. First, rising public concern about global warming - the evidence of which we believe we can see mounting weekly.... Second, worries about Work Choices...... it's easy to see how making it easier for employers to require people to work on weekends, public holidays and at other unsociable hours - not to mention making it easier for bosses to change rosters at the last minute - could leave parents worried about juggling family responsibilities and others wondering how much they'll get to see of their friends.
The Howard Government has relied too heavily on the advice of economists ands paid too little attention to the environmental and social implications of their decisions.
The economy, the environment and the social are kept in separate boxes.The environmental and social consequences are left out of the economists' basic model, and they're dealt with later and separately at best and, at worst, only after they reach crisis point.
The general response by the free market or neo-liberal economists to this critique is to basically argue that it costs big money to fix environmental and social problems, and that only by giving priority to economic efficiency and competition will we be able to afford the cost of the improvements to the quality of life.
Despite the importance of efficiency and competition to ensure a growing economy, this neo-liberal response wrongly assumes that the economy exists outside of, and separate from, the natural environment and from the social lives of the people who active in the economy on a daily basis. As Gittins points out:
In truth, the economy exists within the environment. It's human activity - most of it economic - that wrecks river systems and causes excessive greenhouse gas emissions. And while the economy can damage the environment, we're now seeing the feedback flowing the other way as shortages of water and adverse changes in the weather damage the economy.
Similarly with the social:
Similarly, the economic dimension of our lives - our need to earn income from production and spend it on consumption - can't sensibly be divorced from the social dimension of our lives.Few of us live and work just for the joy of owning stuff. The deeper meaning in our lives comes from our social relationships with parents and siblings, spouses and children, co-workers, neighbours and friends.
Gittins concludes thus: 'to say we should ignore this collateral damage so that, becoming richer, we can more easily afford to fix the problems we've made worse, is muddle-headed. It's saying we must destroy the village to save it.'
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Gary
you are right about this kind of argument opening up a good point of critique of neo-liberal economics from a social democratic perspective. It's how Paul Shepanski, the lead author of the report Stating the Obvious? The Case for Integrated Public Policy, see it . He says:
Neo-liberalism is an economic fundamentalism.
The Stating the Obvious report is a collaboration between the Relationships Forum Australia and Britain's Relationships Foundation, and it calls for government policies to be evaluated with three dimensions in mind: economic, environmental and social.