More Thoughts On The Brexit Vote

David Cameron Opened The Door For The Far Right

It's been a couple of days since Brexit happened and I'm still trying to digest it's meaning. Some people are blaming ignorance and fear but I don't believe that covers the surge of votes that took it to the majority. Issues like the NHS have been raised but by the same token UKIP leader Nigel Farage was quick to backpedal from his £350m pledge towards shoring up the NHS.

The Tories really can't claim the vote a victory because it cost them their leader and Prime Minister. Indeed, in the tussle between rightists, the culturally inclined rightists seem to have beat out the economically minded rightists. David Cameron should go down as the worst Prime Minister in British history since Neville Chamberlain when he came home waving a piece of paper with Adolf Hitler's name on it.

And there it is, the rather uncomfortable reminder of the time the far right got centre stage in politics. Adolf Hitler of course snuck into the Weimar Republic government by dressing up his politics as a kind of conservatism - just enough to get Hindemburg to make him a partner in government. I know some of you will jump up and down and say "Ah! Godwin's Law. You brought up Nazis so this blog entry is without merit!" - but that is the very problem: The Far Right have clenched a legitimacy they need out to have been given, and they got it through David Cameron essentially kicking an own goal.

Is Farage Hitler? No. Maybe I should say No, not yet. Yet the stench of fascism and intolerance reeks in the outcome of the referendum, so much so you have to pinch your nose and pretend it is not there just to talk about the outcome in economic terms. My own view is, if it smells like shit, it probably is shit - no need to go tasting it. David Cameron is going to go down as the Prime Minister who let the Far Right into the middle of government, out of his own sheer desperation to stay in power. It's not a good thing.

Everybody Struggles For Relevance, Some More Than Others

The British Labour Party are obviously feeling like the referendum was a loss.   The worse aspect of this might be just how irrelevant they've become in Thatcherite England. Consider for a moment just how much of a sell-out Tony Blair's government was for a leftist concern. Add in the years of Thatcher herself and John Major, as well as David Cameron's stint, and you get the picture of the UK essentially living out the Neo-liberal economic programme for over a generation - 37 years if you count back to Thatcher's first win.

It's been a long time since the Labour Party sounded like the Labour Party.  Of course it doesn't hide the fact that they are very short on experience. The left utterly failed to shore up its base because the truth is that Blair-ite Labour sold those people down the river in order to win a government resembling the Tories. There's a credibility gap in going back to the very same demographic and asking them to support even more of the globalisation and free trade that has decimated those communities.

Arguably, there's a lesson right there for the left in Australia. The Rudd-Ian move to the social right carried within it the seeds of future disconnect with the ALP base.  There's a limit to what kind of political solutions can be achieved if you meet the Tories half way. Especially if the Tories insist on going far out to the right. This problem is also present in the current US elections where the Clinotnian compromises of the 1990s are not sufficient for the Democrat base because they amounted to selling out the base. The base is angry enough it would like to vote Sanders, but is willing to withdraw its support for Clinton, even in the face of Donald Trump. It is a pattern repeating around the world, whether it be the rise of both Syriza and Golden Dawn in Greece, or Podemos in Spain.

It's unclear whether the ALP under Bill Shorten can reconnect with its base. Certainly the Rudd-Gillard ALP government made a hash of it, and justifiably earned the scorned it received. The lesson in all of this is that the left struggles for relevance the more it has sold out its base in the last 40years. The credibility gap is simply too big.

What's Wrong With The Euro Zone?

In all of this I decided I'd have a quick think for myself what bothers me about the Euro Zone as it is constructed. The obvious problem is how the GFC revealed the structural problem of how the Euro currency itself is set up, and particularly how it pertains to Greece. Greece is in dire straits because it has large debts, but also because it cannot devalue its currency to balance out its relative weakness of its economy in comparison to the economy of Germany and France.

While this problem was not a problem for the UK who insisted on keeping the pound in the 90s, the fact that the Euro Zone as a whole is pushing globalisation in a way that would beggar the poorer economies is a problem. It's interesting to see if Scotland really think their welfare state would fare any better under Germany's auspices than George Osbourne. Judging from the way Greece has been handled, the last thing you might want to have is Germans in charge of your welfare state.

In general, the Euro Zone has demonstrated that some states are more equal than others. Young Greeks would do well to abandon Greece and head for Paris, Berlin and London for opportunities. Yet this reveals a structure whereby the UK contributes to the Euro but cannot directly assist Greece, all the while having to take on board economic migrants that are created largely out of the austerity that Germany insists upon. And while Germany's insistence on Greek austerity has varying degrees of legitimacy attached to it, one would think such claims would not be accepted in many parts of England suffering under the Cameron-Osbourne austerity policies of its own.

If you add in the fact that Eastern European nations have entered the Euro  exporting massive deflationary forces with their cheap labour, and with Turkey under Erdogan wanting to join, it's very much a good question as to whether it is a club within which the UK would want to stay. If that seems 'xenophobic' to some, it ought to be asked who benefits more from 'xenophilia' and blind acceptance of this cheap labour that is destroying labour value in the UK. Why should the working class continue to cop to the waves of globalisation that seemingly does not care about regional UK? It's simply not as clear cut as saying the rejection of the European Union is ergo xenophobia.

Imagine if you will, that there was a Pacific equivalent of the EU, but without the US. It might look like Australia, NZ, Canada, with the North Eastern Asian countries Japan, Taiwan South Korea. Add in the ASEAN nations, and you would have a pretty big trade bloc. The problem is labour prices across this region would be depressed because labour is very inexpensive in ASEAN. If there is free movement of people in this bloc, it's hard not to imagine there would be a flood of people heading for Sydney, Tokyo, Taipei, Vancouver, Auckland.  And if that cheap labour was depressing the wages of people in Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Canada and New Zealand, it wouldn't be very difficult to imagine a movement built upon getting out of such an arrangement.

The fact that there isn't such a bloc tells you a lot already, but it would have to be extremely obtuse to pretend the European Union which mainly featured France, Germany, Holland Denmark Spain and Italy at its start, is a very different proposition today when it also includes much of the old Eastern bloc, Greece and soon Turkey.

The Future The Young Did Not Want

Something like 70% and more of the younger voters voted to remain. It is the kind of number that reminds us of the support for Bernie Sanders among the younger voters. And just as Sanders didn't get their candidate, the younger voters of the U.K. Got the outcome they didn't want but have to live with, for much longer than older voters.

It is a stark demographic picture where Gen-X and Gen-Y combined could not beat the Baby Boomers and older generations. It's hard to tell what the fallout from this aspect of the referendum will be. One thing I can say is that we're not shooting each other in the streets in some civil war, because that's where the Spanish ended up in the years during the Great Depression. With any luck we won't be glomming into a World War.

Whatever else that can be said about it, on a demographic level, the Brexit vote is not a step towards the future, it's a blind shuffle back towards an imagined past that is not there. It's doubtful it existed and it's doubtful it will come to be as Nigel Farage seems to think. Now that David Cameron has had to resign, there will likely be an election in the UK by the end of the year. One wonders how the next vote will work out for the Tories. I can't imagine this is going to be good.

The World Of The Elite Consensus Is Ending

It's been pointed out elsewhere that the 1% who have all the money and power see borders very differently to ordinary people. The 1% move freely across borders with their capital. Compared to that, people who hang their hats on the sad identity politic of nationalism seem very quaint. This might be because in the past the 1% had their wars where they sent the people to fight and bleed for them on the basis that borders were important. It strikes me that it is somewhat silly of the elites to then be confronted by a popular vote - a revolt even - where they vote is ostensibly in favour of borders.

The promises of Free Trade are quite enticing. The problem however is that in many parts of the developed world, it means that in exchange for cheaper products, you lose your jobs to people in poorer countries. And the Elites, the 1%, the Tories and the big end of town dress up this exchange as a matter of productivity and competitiveness, but in reality it is an exchange the Elites have made, to sell down the future of their own people back home.

If the problem of the idiotic, uneducated, atavistic identity politics of such movements headlined by Farage and Boris Johnson and Donald Trump (and we should add Pauline Hanson to this pile) seems pernicious, it may very well be because the 1% have overly downplayed the importance of borders and identity, having sold it to the very same people as something of inherent value. What the Brexit vote shows is that the people won't be railroaded forever. If the benefits of "hands-across-the-waters" friendship is that everybody's living standards go down to a lower level, a lower common denominator, then you can't fault the people who say "bugger that, I'm keeping what's mine."
It's not quite as idiotic as it looks.

More tellingly, the Brexit vote reveals the middle is broken in British politics. If enough of the people in the middle are willing to throw their lot in with the likes of Farage, if enough of the working people who would have traditionally been Labour Party supporters vote with Boris Johnson, then whatever consensus that might have been in place may as well be pronounced dead. Of course in Australia, we've seen the broken middle consensus with the election of Tony Abbott in 2013, so it's not as if we don't know what this looks like. It's going to be a Carnivale of bad political judgment until such time the public gets another vote. Fortunately for us, Australia goes to the polls next weekend. Let us hope we can restore a sense of consensus by voting out this truly moronic Coalition Government.

Generation Politics

Baby Boomers Versus Millennials

A couple of articles wanted to talk about the generational demographics and their impact on the economy so I think we'll have a look at them today.

The first was in the SMH which characterised the future as a conflict between Baby Boomer interests and Millennials.

Millennials have eclipsed baby boomers in the US, in terms of raw population numbers, but not yet on spending power. At some point this imbalance between these two generations is going to correct itself. 

Yet some investors aren't sitting around waiting for that to happen. Like Denver-based Marsico Capital. On a recent visit to Australia, Marsico portfolio manager Brandon Geisler named the demographic shift that will see millennials rise and baby boomers reach the "backend of their spending curve" as a significant theme underpinning his investing.

"If you think back to the 1990s, what was growth? Growth was technology [stocks], but it was also retail and banking, because you basically followed this demographic and you rode them up. The baby boomers, they levered up, they bought a bigger house, they bought two cars. And now the reality is ... they are downsizing," he told Fairfax Media.

The boomers are still spending of course, but on things like healthcare and travel. That has prompted Marsico, which owns a significant position in ASX-listed Dominos Pizza, to buy into stocks like Norwegian Cruise Line, biotech company Amgen and robotic equipment maker Intuitive Surgical.

"Similarly, we ask ourselves all the time what is that [under-35] demographic really interested in? Because that's going to be the next wave," Geisler says.

It's well documented that millennials prefer to buy experiences rather than things: whether that is reflection of their comparatively paltry spending power or not, they are far less interested in brands and material possessions than their forebears. They spend a lot of time on Facebook (one of Geisler's biggest bets) and love travel (which helps explain a stake in UK budget airline Ryanair).

It's kind of curious that this refrain keeps coming up that Millennials prefer to buy more experiences than things. I know this is anecdotal but the Millennials I know don't seem to be all that more biased towards experiences over things, any more than Baby Boomers I know disavow experiences in favour of things. I've known plenty of Baby Boomers who have disavowed materialism so it's hard to imagine the difference is clear cut. 

I might posit that the apparent preference that comes up in surveys that says Millennials prefer to spend money on experiences than things is a protest at the fact that Millennials have much less money to spend on things, and given the options, they end up with the stated preference of buying experiences. Certainly, if you are making investment choices, you might look at service providers than goods manufacturers in the future, but there are plenty of problems even with that characterisation. 

The second was over at Zero Hedge where there's always a whiff of paranoia. Still, it's probably more pertinent to have the Millennials describe their situation to get a better grip on what motivates them, and what this means.

In sum, millennials’ inflationary basket isn’t as simple as weighting goods within large standard components like food, housing, transportation, and entertainment. Student loans, obviously not directly in the Consumer Price Index, account for one of our largest monthly payments. We therefore can’t afford a house, and a lot of us live with our parents as rental costs continue to climb. Many also can’t afford a car, in which Uber proves especially helpful. That’s why we depend on services that provide access to goods without requiring ownership. This keeps expenses low and convenience high. We care about what our friends think and have serious FOMO (fear of missing out), so we’re less reluctant to save and more inclined to travel or buy new clothes when we can. Fortunately, however, technology and startups continue to bring costs down as we benefit from each other’s contributions online and in the sharing economy. In this sense, we are more privy to the deflationary impact of technology and services, in contrast to our parents’ experience with inflation of physical goods, such as food and gasoline.

The gist of the article at Zero Hedge is that the Millennials are, through restricted choice, embracing deflation. So.... are the demographics really at stark conflict?

The most interesting way this is playing out is in the current democratic campaign. Hillary Clinton is the choice of the establishment and beats Bernie Sanders in the above-50 age category, which happens to be the lower limit of the Baby Boomers. Sanders is dominating the under-50 set, which means he's winning the Gen-X and Gen-Y/Millennial vote, and this trend becomes more pronounced as the age group nears 21. This Democratic preselection is the very generational conflict in close-up.

It's interesting that it is not a Gen-X or Gen-Y politician who is garnering these younger votes. Instead it's a man who is a veteran of the 1960s civil rights movement and other long-forgotten battlefields of political activism. Hillary Clinton is still the poster child of the Baby Boomer generation, just as her husband ushered in the generational change of Baby Boomer impact on politic back in 1992. Their constituents are necessarily who they are. Given that the Millennials outnumber Baby Boomers and if you add in Gen-X, it would seem Hillary Clinton's candidacy is in great trouble. This might be the last US Presidential election where the Baby Boomer voice carries the election, and it might not even work out that well given the numbers.

In that light, Michigan going to Sanders today might be a sign of things to come. Yes, Hillary Clinton is about 200 delegates ahead, but because all the Southern states are done, it also means her big guns have fired. From here on in, the advantage goes further towards Bernie Sanders' support territory as well as demographics. We'll see if that 200 delegate lead really holds up. The coming months may well show it's just not enough. And should Sanders go all the way on the back of his support, it's probably curtains for the Baby Boomer block vote holding massive sway over American politics. 

The Education-Jobs Disconnect

The Worst In A Generation

Here's an article that paints a familiar picture. It shows that the relationship between education and employment is a lot more tenuous than assumed by large parts of our society, up to and including the government.

Among tertiary students, one in two said they felt so pessimistic about their prospects that they were considering further study so they could avoid making career decisions.
Their doubts may be justified. Today's graduates are facing the worst job prospects in a quarter of a century - and perhaps even longer, the latest research shows. 

"I wouldn't use the word 'bleak' … but these are the toughest labour market conditions since the early 1990s, that's for sure," says Graduate Careers Australia strategy and policy advisor Bruce Guthrie. 

"The demand for graduates has dropped away."

Ooh, I remember that '92-'93 peak. That was something else. I had experienced the '87-'88 unemployment as a dropout without any qualifications and found that challenging - it took about 8weeks to find any kind of job - and they were relatively benign years for youth unemployment. I spent most of 1993 working at AFTRS, trying to finish my graduation film, and remember being burnt out by September when I finally finished it. As a graduate, it took me until February the following year to find a full time job.

Back in 1993 before the "internets" as GHW Bush derisively called it, you were scouring the newspaper for job ads and applying for things that were remotely related. What was amazing was the utter dearth of jobs. You could go three weeks without seeing a single job in the arts sector. I couldn't get back into the ABC, and there was really nowhere I knew to tug at getting a job. I eventually lucked out and got picked up by a Japanese ad agency in East Sydney, but that was simply blind luck of the sort where a blind squirrel runs into a nut by accident.

When I reflect on the numbers being reported at the time, youth unemployment was hitting 20-something percent as an average across the nation, so having any kind of degree was no guarantee one would find a job. If it's sitting under 1-in-4 since 2010, then kicks up to the same kind of peak (worse, actually), what it's saying is that there is a backlog of graduates who are simply not getting in to the workplace.

It's a little disingenuous talking about this sort of thing as if somehow Gen-Y job seekers are a different category of job seekers to those in the past, and they are to blame for part of this for having silly expectations about their careers. They're most certainly not to blame - it's the entire market place for jobs that's changed significantly as a result of demographics and economic change: Mature economies with slow growth simply don't have the need to take on new graduates; The older workers are still working on; many Baby Boomers are delaying retirement; economic growth is in low single digits, and there simply aren't enough places for new graduates opening up.

"It's a global phenomenon. We're going into a phase where work is precarious," she says. 

"For the first time in history, people who are qualified are struggling to get a foothold ... professionals are now on contracts or doing casual work, whereas becoming a professional of some sort used to mean you'd get a proper job." 

In 2011, 26 per cent of 18- to 34-year-olds had a bachelor's degree or higher, compared with only 5 per cent in 1976, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

In a day and age where universities are asking people to pay huge fees, the same universities are going to come under scrutiny for their graduates who don't get placed, especially if the students are carrying astronomical debt. I don't know how I would advise a young person today about how to go about with their tertiary education or gaining employment. The ease with which you can get an education in, say, media, is in no relationship to just how rare and difficult it is to get a job in the media. Or Graphic Design (the 1980s dream job). Or Marine Biology (the 1970s dream job) before that. It's not surprising that 90% of people who study any given area do not end up working in that area.

The lousy thing about stories like this is that there isn't a political solution for something like this. It's not like some government(s) can put in some policy to make the field more accessible for young graduates. It's something fundamentally structural about our society whereby we have to monetise everything in order to pretend there is real economic growth. In doing so we've monetised education without thinking of the consequences, and one of the unintended consequences is that it is being manifestly demonstrated how there is no real connection between getting a qualification in an area and getting a career in that same area.

A Poem For A Lost Soul

It's An Ode, So To Speak...

I don't write poetry normally. As writing/scribbling/doodling goes, it's not my strong suit.  I've written all of 2 poems in my life, ...and this is my second.

 

Farewell to thee, the blossom of youth,
Errant of soul, fragrant of flowers,
Sheveled, feckful, innocuous, couth,
gainly and gaumy; righteous upon the hour.
Thy kingdom cleansed of signs of hell
thine yacht has sailed to the Isle of Id
Look not back to thy towering success
'tis but a dream of deeds gone unbid
When ultimately thine remembrance comes,
Recall then thou were'st once young, dumb,
and full of cum.