Re: Quebec Protests

["John M. Legge" <jlegge@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The destruction of rural Australia represents, in part, a reflection of the
refusal of the econocracy to admit the existence of significant public
goods.  The public cost of each new household formation in Australia's major
cities, for sewerage, water, education and transport (especially freeways
and arterial roads, given the neoliberal prejudice against public transport)
is an order of magnitude higher than the public cost of adding a new
household to a provincial town or rural village.  Since, however, supporting
rural and regional infrastructure is classified as "subsidies" and building
metropolitan freeways is called "investment" the drift to the major cities
in Australia is allowed to continue, or even encouraged by the deliberate
reduction of publicly funded services outside the metropolitan area.

If, as James suggests, the benefits of maintaining a viable rural and
regional economy are set off against the costs of the CAP it is not clear to
me that Europeans are net losers.

In conversation, after I had pointed out that an $85 million upgrade of a
certain suburban railway line would do more to reduce traffic congestion
than a proposed $1 billion freeway extension, a senior "public" servant told
me that "solving road congestion problems by public transport investment was
bad economics".  I suspect that his real problem was that admitting the
existence of public goods is incompatible with advocating the absolute
primacy of the market.

To quote an Australian neoliberal journalist: " ...the ascendancy of global
capital is a very good thing. It might not be perfect, but global capitalism
is a far better taskmaster than national politics ever will be... "

It is this attitude that leads to simplistic arguments against the CAP.
Food may be more expensive in Paris than in Dallas, but in which city would
you prefer to be eating it?

JML

James Cumes wrote:
>
>
> Barkley,
>
> National protection within the EU for agricultural products, is not a
> question of internal tariffs or quotas. It's a question of guaranteed
> prices. Prices used to be guaranteed at a level, for example, that
> would ensure that a part-time pig-farmer with a couple of pigs
> in/outside, say, Dusseldorf, would make a nice living.
> He didn't have to sell his pigs.
> The CAP found some market for his pigs - or let them rot or gave them
> away or whatever.
> As to access for non-EU producers, what major product from, let's say,
> Australia, in which EU farmers have an interest, can the Australian
> farmers market on any scale in the EU? Such as wheat, other cereals,
> dairy products, fresh fruit, beef, lamb and mutton, sugar, etc
> etc.....
> We still sell some wool, because the Europeans can't produce enough
> especially of high quality - although most of the wool is now bought,
> not by the EU but by China, Japan and other Asian producers of fine
> woollen clothing and textiles.
> Originally, in the 'fifties/'sixties, the journos liked to talk of
> agriculture being the French payoff for German access for its industry
> to France. But look how the German farmers have benefitted from the
> CAP and how well French industry has done. Have you, in your visits to
> France, noticed how many French cars are on the road compared with
> German, Italian, Japanese or American? True, there are some, mostly
> with foreign number plates, driven by Germans, Italians, and so on.
> But it's not only the French who've enjoyed the CAP. The Danes regard
> it as their postwar version of the prewar Commonwealth Preference
> System. The Irish - God bless them - based their comeback from the
> potato blight - a hundred and more years ago!! - on the CAP. They've
> added industry on the back of that and it's good to see the Irish
> doing so well.
> You say that the CAP is "clearly one of the biggest single messes in
> the EU".
> But is it? And if so in what sense?
> Of course, everyone says it's one of the craziest policies in a crazy
> EU world.
> But please take a closer look.
> During several tough years, it was the CAP that held the EU together.
> Everyone in the EU - then called the European Economic Community - got
> something out of the CAP when they thought they were getting nothing
> much out of anything else in the EEC/EU system.
> But its value goes deeper than that.
> Please take a look at the countryside in the member countries of the
> EU and the way the little towns in the countryside have held together.
> Don't forget that it's more than the farmers who benefit from the CAP.
> The small-branch retail bankers, the road transporters, the railways,
> the retailers in the country towns, the doctors and the lawyers in
> farming areas, the buyers and sellers of farm produce, the insurers,
> the storers, the exporters, the farm-machinery suppliers, the
> suppliers of fertilisers and on and on and on.
> The farming areas in the EU look - and they mostly are - green and
> prosperous. Mostly they are, although they've got problems of which
> we're all aware.
> Have you looked at farming areas in countries which have "globalised"
> their agriculture - cut out protection, subsidies, encouraged
> cut-throat competition and the rest?
> Have a look some time at, for example, Australia. One of the most
> efficient farming countries in the world - once. Now too many farmers
> are bankrupt. Country towns are disapperaing. The bankers have fled to
> make money on mutual and pension funds, derivatives and foreign
> enterprises, and, generally, to have a shot at making money in the
> world casino economy. The doctors and lawyers have vanished to make
> money in Sydney and Melbourne. Protection of the bush environment has
> collapsed. Country roads have deteriorated. Railways have shut down
> many country lines.
> It's as though the gold mines have been worked out. The miners have
> gone. Their settlements are quietly going back to the bush.
> I used to think, like you, that the CAP was a mess. How I wish now
> we'd somehow been able to formulate and implement something the same
> kind of mess in Australia, even if it were to do no more than restore
> the Australian countrside to what it once was - its condition, let's
> say, some thirty years ago.
> I know there's a lot more to be said than this but it all leads to the
> conclusion that -
> The Quebec protesters have something real to protest about and, as
> soon as they get their thoughts and agenda togethers, we might begin
> to see some gradual - or revolutionary? - improvement for millions of
> people around the world, including those who abandoned so much to the
> siren call of the "free market," "globalisation" and other devices
> that appeal to a so-called élite but that are destroying many formerly
> stable, valuable societies, as well as individuals within them,
> whether in the cities or the countryside..
>