{"id":61465,"date":"2023-12-18T13:27:14","date_gmt":"2023-12-18T02:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/?p=61465"},"modified":"2023-12-19T11:05:15","modified_gmt":"2023-12-19T00:05:15","slug":"the-shift-to-the-right-among-the-weak-and-powerful-is-a-sign-that-mainstream-economic-thinking-has-failed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/?p=61465","title":{"rendered":"The shift to the Right among the weak and powerful is a sign that mainstream economic thinking has failed"},"content":{"rendered":"

The – Australian Election Study (AES)<\/a> – is the “leading study of political attitudes and behaviour in Australia” and has been running for 35 years. It provides a great time series for investigating electoral trends. The most recent analysis covers the period of the most recent federal election (May 2022). The data shows that Labor Party, which is currently in government has dramatically lost primary vote support over the period covered by the data and in particular among the younger voters. A similar trend is observed for the Coalition conservative parties. There is also strong evidence that ‘rusted on’ is no longer a thing among young voters. The proportions of ‘lifetime voting’ for either major party has fallen dramatically. While the Greens have benefitted from this shift in young voting patterns, there is evidence, which is also resonating globally, that young people are increasingly being attracted to what we term ‘far right’ political voices. That is, where the organised Left has failed. Young progressive minds are deserting the traditional progressive political institutions. Part of this reflects the failure of mainstream economics. The other part reflects the insecure being lured by influential characters who are increasingly embracing right agendas (for various reasons).
\n<\/p>\n

You can access all the AES data from – HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The source is: Cameron, Sarah; McAllister, Ian, 2023, “Australian Election Study, 1987-2022 Trends”, doi:10.26193\/HPA0BY.<\/p>\n

Caution is also required in using the term ‘far right’, given how far to the ‘Right’ the old ‘centre’ has shifted.<\/p>\n

I often say that the conservative governments in the post WW2 period in Australia up to the 1970s were more Left than the current Labor government – by a long way.<\/p>\n

But we can attribute certain characteristics that separate traditional conservative views (mainstream Tory, Republican, Liberal (Australia)) from the new ‘far right’ conservative views espoused by the new government in Argentina, for example.<\/p>\n

Or the views of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, or Trump MAG supporters, or the rabid right in the Australian Liberal Party.<\/p>\n

The stable vote for the Australian Labor Party among 18-24 year olds was 43.6 per cent in 1987.<\/p>\n

In the 2022 election it had fallen to 8.7 per cent.<\/p>\n

The proportion of 18-24 year olds who no longer see much difference between the major parties (Labor\/Liberal) has risen from 13.7 per cent in 1993 to 26.1 per cent in 2022.<\/p>\n

The 18-24 proportion who preferred the ALP on environmental issues has fallen from 63 per cent in 1990 to 46 per cent in 2022.<\/p>\n

The Labor party has also lost traction among this group in terms of its handling of the global warming issue.<\/p>\n

Clearly, we covered some of these issues in our 2017 book – Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World<\/a> (Pluto Books, September 2017).<\/p>\n

The follow-up to that book is coming at some point – with a single author (me).<\/p>\n

There have been two Op Ed commentaries on these issues in the last few days in the Australian press.<\/p>\n

The first (December 16, 2023) – Young and restless: Youth support for far right a threat to Albanese<\/a> (behind a paywall) – was reporting on a new paper (not publicly available as yet) from the ALPs own research institute (the John Curtin Research Centre) and said that the message was that:<\/p>\n

\nThe Labor Party risks being deserted by disillusioned young voters, a left-leaning Australian think tank has warned as it tracks a surge of support for far-right parties across the world by people under 30.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The John Curtin Research Centre report said that the ALP is in danger of losing further support from younger Australians who are being locked out of the housing market by shortages, high interest rates and underinvestment in social housing by governments.<\/p>\n

The journalist quoted the Report as saying:<\/p>\n

\nOver the past few generations, the children and grandchildren of working-class Australians smashed by Paul Keating\u2019s \u2018recession we had to have\u2019 of the early 1990s and who were buffeted by the … [global financial crisis] … and then COVID have given the finger to the ALP.<\/p>\n

They too are angry at and alienated from the economic system which they feel is gamed against them, and progressive cultural obsessions which they feel ignore their primary needs, stuck in a loop of poorer educational outcomes, fewer training and job opportunities, unemployment or precarious employment and with no hope of becoming homeowners or renting on fair terms …<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the economy, stupid! And if we in Labor continue to think these young voters are the problem \u2013 implicitly stupid \u2013 they will deservedly punish us\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Apparently, the shift to the right among these voters is not because the ALP is a voice for “so-called woke issues”.<\/p>\n

The trend is global:<\/p>\n

1. “Geert Wilders won a larger share of the vote among 18-34-year-olds than any other party in the Dutch election last month.”<\/p>\n

2. “The Trump-like Argentinian President Javier Milei won by a large margin among young voters.”<\/p>\n

3. “In Sweden … 22 per cent of voters aged under 21 voted for the major far-right party in 2022 \u2013 up from 12 per cent in 2018.”<\/p>\n

4. In last year\u2019s run-off election, French right-winger Marine Le Pen won half the votes of those aged 25-34 and in a recent German state election, the anti-Islam Alternative for Germany came top among voters under 30.”<\/p>\n

5. “Far-right parties in Austria and Spain also enjoy strong support from young people.”<\/p>\n

It is also true that a higher proportion of young voters are shifting towards green politics, but not enough to defray the bifurcation to the right.<\/p>\n

I recall being in Spain some years ago and there was a huge street march in Seville calling on the government to produce more jobs for the youth amidst very high jobless rates following the GFC.<\/p>\n

Most people I spoke to about it initially thought it had been organised by the Socialist Party, which is a reasonable assumption given the traditional raison d’\u00eatre of the party.<\/p>\n

The reality though was that the movement was a far right initiative, who were the only ones giving voice to the jobless and the traditional parties were moving in lock-step with the European Commission on austerity and fiscal servitude.<\/p>\n

In Australia, the Labor Party is virtually indistinguishable on macroeconomic issues from the conservative parties, who themselves have moved further to the Right over time.<\/p>\n

At present, with 10.4 per cent of available workers either unemployed or underemployed, the Labor government celebrates achieving a near fiscal surplus.<\/p>\n

This is in the context of a dual squeeze from cost-of-living pressures and 11 interest rate rises (which have pushed average monthly mortgage payments up by 52 per cent since May 2022 and further increased rents).<\/p>\n

The public can see the profit-gouging from energy companies, supermarket chains and banks but the government, which has the power to discipline these organisations does little.<\/p>\n

Large multinational companies that hold leases to Australia’s gas reserves and produce more than the domestic market created a domestic shortage in recent years (pushing up prices) as they diverted production to the export market to exploit the Ukraine situation.<\/p>\n

The Federal government did little.<\/p>\n

The public observe that the Treasurer in recent weeks agreed to cede the power to modify central bank decisions in the national interest, which eliminates any weak link voters had to ensure macroeconomic policy was accountable.<\/p>\n

Why support a political party that tells us they are not responsible for major decisions that impact on us adversely because they have actively depoliticised the decision-making machinery by transferring responsibility to unelected, unaccountable and unrepresentative elite bodies.<\/p>\n

The Treasurer proposes to entrench that depoliticisation further by created a specialist monetary policy committee full of mainstream economists.<\/p>\n

While people may not understand the complexities of how the adherence to the mainstream New Keynesian economics among policy makers had been a major factor in creating the multi-pronged mess that the world is now in, they know from their experience. that the promise of economists to enrich society as they were pressuring governments to deregulate, privatise, outsource, user pays, run surpluses, shift responsibility to monetary policy and away from fiscal policy, deinvest in public housing, under fund public education and public health, shift utilities from service to private profit creation, and all the rest of it, has failed to deliver.<\/p>\n

Young people know they face poorly paid and insecure work when they can get it.<\/p>\n

They know they face major problems securing accommodation.<\/p>\n

They know there are diminished training and education support and if they get to university they will end up being lumbered with massive debts.<\/p>\n

They know that the Labor government continues to approve coal and gas projects.<\/p>\n

They see the weaseling of government politicians supporting Israel’s ‘right’ to slaughter innocent Palestinians.<\/p>\n

And more.<\/p>\n

It is no wonder they are abandoning the Party, which on many important issues just plays it safe by staying close to the conservative message, which itself, has shifted towards the far right.<\/p>\n

The second interesting OP Ed article on this theme came out last week (December 12, 2023) in the the InTheseTimes portal – Losing the Plot: The \u201cLeftists\u201d Who Turn Right<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is a US-based media group that publishes material that seeks “to inform and critically analyze the emerging new movements on the American Left.”<\/p>\n

It documents a large group of previously progressive voices in the US that have embraced a more extreme Right or ‘neoconservative’ position.<\/p>\n

These characters increasingly advocated hard positions on keeping migrants out, increasing capital punishment, and those sort of things.<\/p>\n

The journalists do not dismiss them as “crackpots or spotlight-seekers” and are more concerned with “who they bring along”.<\/p>\n

They document all the weird ‘coalitions’ that are forming out there in the Right – “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” – such as the “trans-exclusionary radical feminists .. who begin with a defense of women\u2019s-only spaces and then fall, like J.K. Rowling, into alliances with the Christian Right.”<\/p>\n

A number of these shifts relate to the so-called ‘culture wars’ or the “identity is just a distraction” mob.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the issues that are driving these shifts to the right among high-profile commentators and the like are not the same issues that seem to be influential in pushing the young Australians away from the Labor party.<\/p>\n

The first report I mentioned makes it clear that woke issues are not the reason.<\/p>\n

The InTheseTimes article focuses a lot on the retaliation against these issues as a reason for these high profile shifts.<\/p>\n

The link between the two groups is that the high profile shifters have a media platform to sprout their often crazy views, which fill a void among the younger generations who are being played out of the wealth system and don’t know why their lives are so precarious.<\/p>\n

The right in Seville provided the ‘voice’ of anger and despair that the Left refused to provide, while they were being duchessed by the austerity voices of the European Commission and others.<\/p>\n

The Australian Labor Party has abandoned that voice and instead promotes policies that we can all see perpetuate the insecurities that people are trying to deal with.<\/p>\n

Instead of actually articulating a carbon-free future, where people can be assured of good housing, stable employment, good access to health care and education etc, the Government talks about abstract things such as ‘budget repair’, and the ‘debt mountain’.<\/p>\n

Even the John Curtin Research Centre, which can see the support of the youth crumbling, and which is a voice of the ALP, pumps out material urging the government to do the “fiscally prudent thing to do” (Source<\/a>) and talks about “massive spending pressures on the budget” and that “we can’t afford them”.<\/p>\n

It talks about “Saving the budget an estimated $70bn to $130bn is crucial to its long-term health.”<\/p>\n

This is conservative talk – not the voice of a progressive political movement.<\/p>\n

The emphasis on the government not having enough money is sound finance talk – the very talk that has led to the mass crisis we are facing around the world due to a lack of public investment and a shift in resource allocation to profit-seeking.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n

I am still researching all these issues as part of a project to mount a follow-up to Reclaiming the State.<\/p>\n

More in due course.<\/p>\n

That is enough for today!<\/p>\n

(c) Copyright 2023 William Mitchell. All Rights Reserved. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The – Australian Election Study (AES) – is the “leading study of political attitudes and behaviour in Australia” and has been running for 35 years. It provides a great time series for investigating electoral trends. The most recent analysis covers the period of the most recent federal election (May 2022). The data shows that Labor…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-reclaim-the-state","entry","no-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}