SHARMINI PERIES: Welcome to the Real News
Network, and happy new year to all of our
great viewers.
Thanks for joining us.
Economists for Rational Economic Policies
in the UK has just released a report titled
The Cracks Begin To Show: A Review of the
UK Economy in 2015.
The report argues that the high expectations
that were predicted for the UK economy, essentially
that it is getting back to normal times and
destined to continue economic growth, has
not quite transpired.
In reality, and despite some positive results,
the number of those in some form of employment,
for example, has gently deflated as 2015 progressed.
Well, three of the contributors to the report
are now joining us from London, and first
we have John Weeks.
John is a regular contributor to the Real
News Network, so you've seen him before.
John Weeks is a Professor Emeritus at SOAS,
University of London, and his most recent
book is Economics of the 1%: How Mainstream
Economics Serves the Rich, Obscures Reality,
and Distorts Policy.
Then we have Ozlem Onaran.
She is a professor of economics at the University
of Greenwich, and director of Greenwich Political
Economy Research Center.
And finally, we have Jeremy Smith.
He is currently co-director of Prime Economics,
a policy research house in macroeconomics,
and formerly he served as the secretary general
for the Council of European Municipalities
and Regions.
Thank you all for joining us today.
OZLEM ONARAN: Thanks for having us.
PERIES: So Jeremy, let me begin with you.
Give us a synopsis of the findings of the
report to begin with.
JEREMY SMITH: Yes.
Well, it's written by different authors, so
there's no one absolute overarching story.
But generally we share a perspective that
the government in Britain has adopted relative
austerity policies which have been, we would
argue, unsuccessful in their own terms in
reducing deficits and debt anything like the
pace the government originally planned.
But at the same time, leading to major reductions
in public services and to services for the
poorest in our community.
Yet at the same time, the government seems
to have got away very much with a sort of
discourse that everything's going splendidly.
And looked at from one or two points of view
there seemed at one point to be something
behind their story.
Namely that actually, the unemployment--the
employment figures were improving considerably,
and unemployment in numerical terms was coming
down.
And for a couple of years GDP started, after
the slowest recovery ever from a recession,
to go at a reasonable nick, although that
was largely, we would say, on the back of
sort of promoting asset bubbles in property,
et cetera, in housing and other bubbles.
But during the course of this year we've seen
that, as you said in the opening, the sort
of steady, disappointing decline, a step down,
so that in each quarter the rate of annual
increase of economic activity has declined.
At one time it looked as though pay, for the
first time--real pay, that is after you allow
for inflation--has been falling for six full
years.
But in the last year or 18 months it's been
starting to do a bit better, but even that
has declined again.
At the same time, monetary policy has been
as easy as it's almost possible to be.
There are no signs at the moment that the
Bank of England, unlike the Fed in the states,
will risk increasing interest rates, because
the economy is still too frail.
And therefore I think overall we've argued
that economy insofar as it's recovered has
been back on the old model of laying debt
on households again, starting to get that
[crosstalk].
PERIES: Yeah, let's dig into that with Ozlem.
Ozlem, in this report you argued what Jeremy
just said, that growth in Britain is still
based on shaky grounds, as it is driven by
a major increase in private household debt,
and will remain fragile, you say, in any--if
for example, an increase in interest rates
were to occur, essentially that working people
are [obliged] to rely on debt to maintain
their living standards in this so-called slow
growth period that we are going through.
So why, why is that happening?
ONARAN: Well, the rise in inequality and stagnation
of wages have been one of the fundamental
flaws of our economic model.
This was one of the root causes of the Great
Recession, and sadly we are far from correcting
this imbalance.
And this is primarily due to a massive loss
of bargaining power of working people, for
three decades by now in Britain.
If you look at real pay, it is still 9 percent
lower compared to its peak in 2008.
And of course, just as Jeremy have said, we
have had the longest fall in wages since the
Victorian times, and wage and [inaud.] still
are looking to a recovery in their incomes
not too much before 2017 or even 2018.
So we have had a lost decade in terms of incomes
of working people.
The share of wage income and national income
has decreased since the Great Recession.
It's very unusual for recessions, for the
wage share to decrease when there is a fundamental
fall in productivity.
This time around, both in Britain and the
U.S., share of labor income and national income
has been falling in the down cycle.
And this is coming on top of three decades
of falling labor income.
What our recent research at the Greenwich
Political Economy Research Center, together
with [inaud.], in Britain as well as in the
U.S. and many in the major developed countries,
if the share of labor income and national
income falls and its growth rates decline,
they become more unstable, more fragile, more
based on [inaud.] by the [inaud.].
And of course it doesn't help private investment
either.
So we are saying another very peculiar development,
which rising profitability, falling wages
or stagnant wages, private sector isn't [missing].
And this is why growth is based on shaky grounds.
Why should investors invest when they see
household consumption being based on very
fragile, shaky, debt-driven grounds?
There is not sufficient demand.
The prospects for markets, the prospects for
sales in the future is still uncertain and
unreliable.
And of course this wage [strain] is coming
on top of another major development in our
economies.
This is the financialization of the economy.
Firms are seeing their profitability increasing,
but they're using their profits to speculate.
They're buying their shares of other companies,
or they're buying their own shares back instead
of investing in physical machinery and equipment.
So obviously you're talking about another
puzzle in Britain, the productivity puzzle.
But indeed there is no puzzle.
If there is not enough demand and there is
ample room for speculation and financial activities,
firms will not invest.
Their financial income is also not helping
them to invest, so overall productivity obviously
doesn't increase in this environment.
This feeds back to another fragility of the
UK economy, the balance of payments deficit.
Exports, particularly export of manufacturing
is going very poor.
And again, this is no surprise.
If firms do not invest, if they don't increase
their productivity, they will not be able
to increase their exports just based on wage
moderation because everyone else in the global
economy is also doing the same.
In particular, this [constant] race to the
bottom in labor income is removing any competitive
advantage UK firms can get from wage moderation.
Their [inaud.]
low investment, low productivity, low exports,
and all the fragilities are building on top
of each other just in the same way as it was
before the crisis.
PERIES: John, let me get you in on this.
Now, you in the report argues that the UK
economy remains demand constrained, and that
government fiscal policy had made that straitjacket
even tighter.
What do you mean by that, and how does it
transpire in the economy?
JOHN WEEKS: Well, thank you.
First I should say that many of the things
that Jeremy and Ozlem have said, particularly
Ozlem's discussion of wages, also would apply
to the United States.
I say that because what I'm going to say now
also applies to the United States.
The question you asked shows what the one
big lesson to come out of this year's fiscal
policy [inaud.] the Tory government.
And that is a government cannot eliminate
a fiscal deficit by cutting expenditure.
And Americans, those of you don't realize
it by now should realize it.
You cannot--if you want to get rid of a deficit
you cannot do it by raising taxes and cutting.
You cannot do it that way.
Because what happens is that reduces the aggregate
demand in the economy.
The economy goes slower because people can't
sell, businesses can't sell as many things,
as Ozlem said.
And as a result of incomes growing slower,
taxes grow slower.
And unemployment continues to be a problem,
and you have to pay unemployment compensation,
so you have to continue to pay the level of
benefits associated with the recession without
getting donation of tax revenue.
And I think that also has been what has happened
in the United States over the last seven or
eight years.
So that is the message why it is happening.
But if we can go into that more later, but
I would say partly it is a failure of the
Chancellor, of George Osborne, to understand
economics.
But it is more the fact that he understands
politics very well.
He has a political agenda.
His political agenda is to destroy the welfare
state.
And as you've seen in the United States, particularly
with the loony Republicans in the House of
Representatives, you use a deficit as your
excuse for destroying the welfare state.
And the great thing about using the deficit
as an excuse to destroy the welfare state
is that as you cut expenditure the deficit
doesn't go away.
So you can keep saying, well, we have to cut
even more, even more and even more.
And that is exactly what George Osborne has
been doing.
It's a very clear message: we want to destroy
the welfare state.
PERIES: All right.
John, I'm going to end this segment now and
then we're going to pick it up in terms of
the political implications of the findings
from your report and how that will transpire
in the political arena in the UK coming up.
