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The meaning of money

including Budgets
johnhemming
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Re: The meaning of money

#380958

Postby johnhemming » January 26th, 2021, 3:49 pm

ursaminortaur wrote:Of course politicians can try to bribe the electorate that is why most democracies have explicit rules against candidates in elections buying votes which is obviously the most blatant way of bribing the electorate.


There was an interesting technique for bribery in an exhibition at the British Library on the history of elections which was that the voter has a wager with the candidate that the candidate will win so if the candidate wins they have to pay a sum of money to the voter.

A reason why votes are invalid if signed by the voter is to avoid bribery. If the vote can be identified it is invalid.

NeilW
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Re: The meaning of money

#380964

Postby NeilW » January 26th, 2021, 4:07 pm

ursaminortaur wrote:Of course politicians can try to bribe the electorate that is why most democracies have explicit rules against candidates in elections buying votes which is obviously the most blatant way of bribing the electorate.


That's a different thing. You can only buy votes after you've been re-elected, not before.

That means you can't bribe the entire electorate in a democracy, because that's how democracy works at a philosophical level - the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Believing otherwise is not to believe in democracy.

The classic analogy is that you can buy votes wholesale but not retail.

When wholesale vote buyers make promises to benefit an entire class of voters, they each offer to pay each member of the class no matter whether that voter actually voted for the proposal. The benefit (if any) to each voter does not come from a side payment contingent on his or her vote, but from the victory of the proposal


https://www.jstor.org/stable/30024452

johnhemming
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Re: The meaning of money

#380976

Postby johnhemming » January 26th, 2021, 4:22 pm

NeilW wrote:That's a different thing. You can only buy votes after you've been re-elected, not before.

What happened in Birmingham in 2004 is a mixture of things.

One was telling the postman either to hand over a sack of votes for £500 or to be attacked. Another was paying drug dealers £5 per vote.

The main reason election fraud was proven, however, was Labour candidates for Aston going to an industrial estate in the early morning to check that the forged postal ballots had 3 labour votes on them.

This buying of votes all happened before they were elected. The court hearing caused by-elections, but you clearly can buy votes before being elected.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/p ... 50422.html

A postman was allegedly offered £500 for a sack of ballot papers and threatened with death if he refused. A postbox containing voting slips was set alight.

ursaminortaur
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Re: The meaning of money

#380997

Postby ursaminortaur » January 26th, 2021, 5:28 pm

NeilW wrote:
ursaminortaur wrote:Of course politicians can try to bribe the electorate that is why most democracies have explicit rules against candidates in elections buying votes which is obviously the most blatant way of bribing the electorate.


That's a different thing. You can only buy votes after you've been re-elected, not before.


Candidates buying votes always happens either during the campaign or shortly before the start of the campaign. There is no point in buying votes to get elected after you are elected.

After an election you are more likely to see corruption of an elected MP to get them to vote in a specific way on one or more bills which may well involve monetary or other rewards being passed to the MP as a bribe.


Getting back on topic - The problem was that UK governments were often making interest rate changes shortly before General elections with the sole purpose of increasing their chances of being re-elected. Hence changes were being made co-inciding with the electoral cycle rather than in response to the economic needs of the country. To solve this Labour made the BoE Independent following Labour's election victory in 1997 - Such Central bank independence had long been a feature of other developed Western countries such as the US and Germany and was being adopted by others eg France in 1993.

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Re: The meaning of money

#381003

Postby NeilW » January 26th, 2021, 6:00 pm

ursaminortaur wrote:Getting back on topic - The problem was that UK governments were often making interest rate changes shortly before General elections with the sole purpose of increasing their chances of being re-elected. Hence changes were being made co-inciding with the electoral cycle rather than in response to the economic needs of the country. To solve this Labour made the BoE Independent following Labour's election victory in 1997 - Such Central bank independence had long been a feature of other developed Western countries such as the US and Germany and was being adopted by others eg France in 1993.


And it has failed to deliver for over 20 years, and is thus a debunked idea. The concept of handing control of the economy over to the technocrats has not delivered either investment or productivity growth. Neither has it delivered full employment. All it has done is create massive inequality as the top end of town doubles down on its looting.

Therefore it will be brought to an end - as a failed belief.

The era of monetary dominance is at an end. It's out of road. The country is to be run for its people as they determine.

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Re: The meaning of money

#381004

Postby NeilW » January 26th, 2021, 6:02 pm

johnhemming wrote:The court hearing caused by-elections, but you clearly can buy votes before being elected.


You can only legally buy votes after the election - as seen by the trial and conviction. That was the context of the discussion, and I would have thought that was clear.

johnhemming
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Re: The meaning of money

#381007

Postby johnhemming » January 26th, 2021, 6:05 pm

So we have this:
NeilW wrote:In democracy you can't bribe the electorate, since by definition they have a wiser aggregate view than any subgroup.


and this

NeilW wrote:You can only legally buy votes after the election - as seen by the trial and conviction. That was the context of the discussion, and I would have thought that was clear.


Could you please explain which is right and why?

ursaminortaur
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Re: The meaning of money

#381047

Postby ursaminortaur » January 26th, 2021, 9:36 pm

NeilW wrote:
ursaminortaur wrote:Getting back on topic - The problem was that UK governments were often making interest rate changes shortly before General elections with the sole purpose of increasing their chances of being re-elected. Hence changes were being made co-inciding with the electoral cycle rather than in response to the economic needs of the country. To solve this Labour made the BoE Independent following Labour's election victory in 1997 - Such Central bank independence had long been a feature of other developed Western countries such as the US and Germany and was being adopted by others eg France in 1993.


And it has failed to deliver for over 20 years, and is thus a debunked idea. The concept of handing control of the economy over to the technocrats has not delivered either investment or productivity growth. Neither has it delivered full employment. All it has done is create massive inequality as the top end of town doubles down on its looting.

Therefore it will be brought to an end - as a failed belief.

The era of monetary dominance is at an end. It's out of road. The country is to be run for its people as they determine.


The decision to give independence to the BoE only removed the chance for politicians to directly interfere over short time periods and thus removed the ability for a government to make short term alterations and boost its popularity immediately prior to an election. The targets which the BoE had to comply with were set by government. Over those 20 odd years the government consensus, whichever party was in power, has been to set the BoE an inflation target of two percent - which is also the target in other countries such as the US. UK governments could have set higher or lower inflation targets, targets which combined both inflation and employment levels or full employment but decided not to. Other policies such as tax policy, payments of benefits, regulations, laws etc still remain with the government. Thus it is difficult to see how you could blame the independence of the BoE for failing to deliver investment or productivity growth, full employment or diminish inequality as those were not part of the targets which the independent BoE were tasked with accomplishing.

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Re: The meaning of money

#381098

Postby GoSeigen » January 27th, 2021, 7:47 am

NeilW wrote:
ursaminortaur wrote:Getting back on topic - The problem was that UK governments were often making interest rate changes shortly before General elections with the sole purpose of increasing their chances of being re-elected. Hence changes were being made co-inciding with the electoral cycle rather than in response to the economic needs of the country. To solve this Labour made the BoE Independent following Labour's election victory in 1997 - Such Central bank independence had long been a feature of other developed Western countries such as the US and Germany and was being adopted by others eg France in 1993.


And it has failed to deliver for over 20 years, and is thus a debunked idea. The concept of handing control of the economy over to the technocrats has not delivered either investment or productivity growth. Neither has it delivered full employment. All it has done is create massive inequality as the top end of town doubles down on its looting.

Therefore it will be brought to an end - as a failed belief.

The era of monetary dominance is at an end. It's out of road. The country is to be run for its people as they determine.


The concept that setting the monetary interest rate constitutes "control over the economy" and that those rates setters are "The Technocrats" is amusing in itself.

ursaminortaur's comments bear close reading. How can someone be criticised for failing to deliver something they were not required to deliver in the first place?

GS


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