Bail Out The PRODUCTIVE Economy

Charlie Marks writes:

"It’s a funny old world. At the moment, I mean.

The Chinese saying goes: may you live in interesting times. I’m not sure if this is a friendly or unfriendly wish. Certainly the times are interesting, but also worrying.

Job “losses” are coming thick and fast. The old economic orthodoxies are being abandoned as the free market goes into free fall.

We’ve had a bailout of the financial sector - the government acting for the banksters, rather than for workers and customers.

But will there be a similar bailout of the productive economy?

After years of deindustrialisation we need to rebuild the manufacturing base of our economy with the aim of full employment, environmental sustainability, and workplace democracy.

A weak pound alone won’t save manufacturing…"

No, but it's a good start.

Manufacturing still accounts for more than twice the GDP of the entire financial services sector, never mind the (lame duck, heavily subsidised) City alone.

Now all we need to do is sort out the threat (only initially economic) from un-unionised, child-exploiting sweatshops, not least by persuading other comparable sovereign states, as such, to do likewise, all in the interests of our workers' proper wages, proper working conditions, proper skills and proper status.

An economic populist and economic patriot, elected by and thanks to trade unionists and paleoconservatives, is about to enter the White House.