Worstall a Brit living abroad, sees a big difference between the two 'Socialists.' In his view, Bernie;s ideas are not to his taste and would say they're bad ideas but Cornyn's ideas are simply mad ones.
"However, the actual economic ideas being put forward by the two men are very different indeed. Bernie tells us that companies should be paying more tax: ignorant perhaps of the fact that companies never pay tax at all, it’s always real live human beings who bear the burden of any tax. But that’s a trivial mistake when compared to Corbyn’s insistence that there’s £93 billion in corporate tax breaks that could be done away with. I investigated this claim here and it’s based on a complete ignorance of what is actually happening in the tax system. The claim is actually that as we don’t tax corporations on the money they use to buy machines then this is a tax break. When capital allowances are obviously an essential part of any tax system at all: we tax corporations on their profits, not their turnover, after all."
"Bernie thinks there should be a bit more tax and spend: not to my taste again, but not actually a policy which is barking mad. Unlike Jezza, who has got caught up with another near insane idea (this one from Richard Murphy) which is simply that government can print as much money as it likes to spend on lovely things for us all. Further, it might even be true (although I have my own doubts) that America has a backlog of work that could be done fixing the infrastructure. In the UK we simply don’t have any spare capacity in the construction sector: but that’s where Corbyn would spend all of this newly printed money. Shoving new base money into a sector already hitting the capacity constraints (essentially, most of Britain’s builders have gone home to Poland) is as good a recipe for inflation as anyone’s yet devised."
"Another way to put this is that I’m not in favour of most of the things that Sanders is but will happily accept that while I may think they’re bad ideas they’re not actually mad ones. This isn’t something I could say about Corbyn’s economics. The one saving grace of all of this is that Corbyn winning next weekend is likely to kill off that Hard Left’s electoral power for another generation. But what happens if he actually wins a general election? At that point I’ll be giving thanks for the fact that I’ve already left the country."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/09/06/please-dont-compare-bernie-sanders-to-jeremy-corbyn/
Regarding that last paragraph that's kind of how I see the candidacy of Trump on the Right-I hope he wins the nomination as it will implode the GOP; however, if he really does win the general then I'd consider leaving the country myself. Although I still maintain if I had a choice between him and Jeb on the ballot I'd pick him assuming I didn't just leave the country.
However, I don't know that Worstall is right. There are two schools of thought about Labour's losses in the last election.
1. They were too far to the Left.
2. They weren't far enough on the Left.
I think there's a decent case for 2 when you consider that the reason Labour did so poorly is all those natural Labour voters going to SNP. Remember the whole reason the Scots want to leave Britain is not any deep nationalistic feelings but because they're tired of Right wing policies.
So maybe Labour moving sharply to the Left will bring some of them back in.
Simon Wren-Lewis-another Brit economist-on Corbyn:
"I’ve also seen it reported that he said he would have attended the recent anti-austerity march. If he campaigns against what he could call Osborne’s ‘excessive and obsessive austerity’, his eclipse of Labour on the left is assured. For those who think that poverty should be reduced and the rise in food banks is an indication of social failure, it will be pretty obvious who to vote for in 2020."
http://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2015/07/when-labour-lost-its-soul-and-next.html
In some ways this sounds like the kind of arguments the Democratic party was having in the early 90s after three straight landslide losses-and 4 in 16 years.
In some ways you could say this is the 2008 syndrome. Labour's trouble is that it was in power during the financial crisis so it still gets the blame just as in the US the GOP still gets the blame here.
But time will tell but I think that moving to the Left with Corbyn is the right way to go when you consider the SNP threat. The only possible way to get these voters back is moving to the Left.
Moving to the Right is trying to pick off some Tory voters which seems unlikely.
For more of SWL on Corbyn see here:
http://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-corbyn-phenomenon.html
http://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/
"However, the actual economic ideas being put forward by the two men are very different indeed. Bernie tells us that companies should be paying more tax: ignorant perhaps of the fact that companies never pay tax at all, it’s always real live human beings who bear the burden of any tax. But that’s a trivial mistake when compared to Corbyn’s insistence that there’s £93 billion in corporate tax breaks that could be done away with. I investigated this claim here and it’s based on a complete ignorance of what is actually happening in the tax system. The claim is actually that as we don’t tax corporations on the money they use to buy machines then this is a tax break. When capital allowances are obviously an essential part of any tax system at all: we tax corporations on their profits, not their turnover, after all."
"Bernie thinks there should be a bit more tax and spend: not to my taste again, but not actually a policy which is barking mad. Unlike Jezza, who has got caught up with another near insane idea (this one from Richard Murphy) which is simply that government can print as much money as it likes to spend on lovely things for us all. Further, it might even be true (although I have my own doubts) that America has a backlog of work that could be done fixing the infrastructure. In the UK we simply don’t have any spare capacity in the construction sector: but that’s where Corbyn would spend all of this newly printed money. Shoving new base money into a sector already hitting the capacity constraints (essentially, most of Britain’s builders have gone home to Poland) is as good a recipe for inflation as anyone’s yet devised."
"Another way to put this is that I’m not in favour of most of the things that Sanders is but will happily accept that while I may think they’re bad ideas they’re not actually mad ones. This isn’t something I could say about Corbyn’s economics. The one saving grace of all of this is that Corbyn winning next weekend is likely to kill off that Hard Left’s electoral power for another generation. But what happens if he actually wins a general election? At that point I’ll be giving thanks for the fact that I’ve already left the country."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/09/06/please-dont-compare-bernie-sanders-to-jeremy-corbyn/
Regarding that last paragraph that's kind of how I see the candidacy of Trump on the Right-I hope he wins the nomination as it will implode the GOP; however, if he really does win the general then I'd consider leaving the country myself. Although I still maintain if I had a choice between him and Jeb on the ballot I'd pick him assuming I didn't just leave the country.
However, I don't know that Worstall is right. There are two schools of thought about Labour's losses in the last election.
1. They were too far to the Left.
2. They weren't far enough on the Left.
I think there's a decent case for 2 when you consider that the reason Labour did so poorly is all those natural Labour voters going to SNP. Remember the whole reason the Scots want to leave Britain is not any deep nationalistic feelings but because they're tired of Right wing policies.
So maybe Labour moving sharply to the Left will bring some of them back in.
Simon Wren-Lewis-another Brit economist-on Corbyn:
"Even the seasoned political commentators who are sympathetic to Labour cannot understand the reported popularity of Jeremy Corbyn, the left wing candidate for the Labour Party leadership. Perhaps those party members with more centrist views have left during Miliband’s leadership, they muse, leaving constituency parties dominated by the far left. These commentators may be right that if Corbyn was elected it would be electorally disastrous for Labour, but in failing to correctly understand his relative popularity they show how dangerous the Westminster bubble has become. It is not Labour party members who have changed, but the position of most of their potential leaders. "
"If you want to see the tragedy of what is currently happening to Labour, you just need to look at the Welfare Bill that was debated in parliament yesterday. This bill"
● repeals most of the Child Poverty Act, and in particular abandons poverty reduction targets
● tightens the ‘benefits cap’, the total amount a family can receive in benefits
● extends the freeze on working age benefits for the next four years
● limits child tax credits (subsidies for the low paid) to the first two children
"Although Labour tabled amendments to this bill, after those were inevitably defeated it abstained rather than voting against. Of the four leadership candidates, only Corbyn defied this party line."
"If you want to know the disaster that can befall those who follow this ‘a bit to the left of the Conservatives’ strategy, look at what happened in Scotland, and look at what happened to the Liberal Democrats. However it would be very foolish to think that the LibDems are no longer important in UK politics. Their new leader, Tim Farron, will undoubtedly try and fill the void that Labour leaves on the centre left, and I think he has every chance of succeeding. His party voted against the ‘Increasing Child Poverty’ bill. He said
“The truth is the Tories do not have to cut £12bn from welfare: they are choosing to. The Liberal Democrats will always stand up for families. We will not let the Conservatives, through choice, and the Labour party, through silence, unpick our welfare system."
"If you want to see the tragedy of what is currently happening to Labour, you just need to look at the Welfare Bill that was debated in parliament yesterday. This bill"
● repeals most of the Child Poverty Act, and in particular abandons poverty reduction targets
● tightens the ‘benefits cap’, the total amount a family can receive in benefits
● extends the freeze on working age benefits for the next four years
● limits child tax credits (subsidies for the low paid) to the first two children
"Although Labour tabled amendments to this bill, after those were inevitably defeated it abstained rather than voting against. Of the four leadership candidates, only Corbyn defied this party line."
"If you want to know the disaster that can befall those who follow this ‘a bit to the left of the Conservatives’ strategy, look at what happened in Scotland, and look at what happened to the Liberal Democrats. However it would be very foolish to think that the LibDems are no longer important in UK politics. Their new leader, Tim Farron, will undoubtedly try and fill the void that Labour leaves on the centre left, and I think he has every chance of succeeding. His party voted against the ‘Increasing Child Poverty’ bill. He said
“The truth is the Tories do not have to cut £12bn from welfare: they are choosing to. The Liberal Democrats will always stand up for families. We will not let the Conservatives, through choice, and the Labour party, through silence, unpick our welfare system."
"I’ve also seen it reported that he said he would have attended the recent anti-austerity march. If he campaigns against what he could call Osborne’s ‘excessive and obsessive austerity’, his eclipse of Labour on the left is assured. For those who think that poverty should be reduced and the rise in food banks is an indication of social failure, it will be pretty obvious who to vote for in 2020."
http://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2015/07/when-labour-lost-its-soul-and-next.html
In some ways this sounds like the kind of arguments the Democratic party was having in the early 90s after three straight landslide losses-and 4 in 16 years.
In some ways you could say this is the 2008 syndrome. Labour's trouble is that it was in power during the financial crisis so it still gets the blame just as in the US the GOP still gets the blame here.
But time will tell but I think that moving to the Left with Corbyn is the right way to go when you consider the SNP threat. The only possible way to get these voters back is moving to the Left.
Moving to the Right is trying to pick off some Tory voters which seems unlikely.
For more of SWL on Corbyn see here:
http://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-corbyn-phenomenon.html
http://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/
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