by Oliver Burkeman in The Guardian
Should you choose time over money, or money over time? This is one of those so-called dilemmas of happiness that isn’t really a dilemma at all, because the answer’s so painfully obvious. Circumstances might oblige you to choose money over time. But if you truly, ultimately value a large bank balance over meaningful experiences, you’re what’s known in the psychological literature as a doofus. Money, after all, is just an instrument for obtaining other things, including time – whereas time is all we’ve got. And to make matters worse, you can’t save it up: if money worked like time, every new deposit into your account would be immediately eliminated by a transaction fee of exactly the same size. However much you hate your bank, it’s surely not that bad.
And yet we do choose money over time, again and again, even when basic material wellbeing doesn’t demand it. Partly, no doubt, that’s because even well-off people fear future poverty. But it’s also because the time/money trade-off rarely presents itself in simple ways. Suppose you’re offered a better-paid job that requires a longer commute (more money in return for less time); but then again, that extra cash could lead to more or better time in future, in the form of nicer holidays, or a more secure retirement. Which choice prioritises time, and which money? It’s hard to say.
Thankfully, a new study sheds a little light on the matter. The researchers Hal Hershfield, Cassie Mogilner and Uri Barnea surveyed more than 4,000 Americans to determine whether they valued time or money more, and how happy they were. A clear majority, 64%, preferred money – but those who valued time were happier. Nor was it only those rich enough to not stress about money who preferred time: after they controlled for income, the effect remained. Older people, married people and parents were more likely to value time, which makes sense: older people have less time left, while those with spouses and kids presumably either cherish time with them, or feel they steal all their time. Or both.
The crucial finding here is that it’s not having more time that makes you happier, but valuing it more. Economists continue to argue about whether money buys happiness – but few doubt that being comfortably off is more pleasant than struggling to make ends meet. This study makes a different point: it implies that even if you’re scraping by, and thus forced to focus on money, you’ll be happier if deep down you know it’s time that’s most important.
It also contains ironic good news for those of us who feel basically secure, moneywise, but horribly pushed for time. If you strongly wish you had more time, as I do, who could accuse you of not valuing it? At least my craving for more time shows that my priorities are in order, and maybe that means I’ll savour any spare time I do get. We talk about scarce time like it’s a bad thing. But scarcity’s what makes us treat things as precious, too.
Youssef El Gingihy in The Independent
Jeremy Corbyn's conference speech yesterday underlined exactly why he has been subjected to a ferocious smear campaign. We have heard an endless catalogue of critiques: That Corbyn lacks leadership; that he is not electable; that Labour has become a protest party infiltrated by the far left. Yet the real reason behind these attacks is that Corbyn is a clear and present danger to powerful, vested interests.
For the first time in a generation, a Labour leader is truly challenging the cosy political consensus extending through the Thatcher-Blair-Cameron axis. The policies taking shape represent a clean break from several decades of deregulated free market economics.
Corbyn has positioned Labour as an anti-austerity party. He emphasised that the financial sector caused the 2008 crisis not public spending. This is important as Miliband and Balls mystifyingly failed to make this argument. One can only surmise that they were eager not to offend the City of London.
Corbyn promised to reverse privatisation of public services. This would mean renationalisation of the railways. It would mean restoring a public NHS reversing its privatisation and conversion into a private health insurance system.
It would mean an end to the outsourcing of council services. It would mean returning public services into public hands. And none of this is radical. Polling shows the majority of the public, including Conservative voters, is in favour.
It is no surprise that Richard Branson and Virgin seemingly used Traingate in an attempt to discredit Corbyn. Virgin would stand to lose billions in contracts if such policies went ahead. As would many other corporate interests - the likes of Serco, G4S, Capita and Unitedhealth to name a few.
Corbyn promised Labour will build enough social housing and regulate the housing market. Again, property developers, investors and construction firms would stand to lose from the restoration of housing as a social good rather than a financial instrument.
Corbyn vowed that bankers and financial speculators cannot be allowed to wreak havoc again. Regulation of the financial sector will have the City running scared - the party may well be truly over for them. Deregulated finance has resulted in industrial scale corruption profiting a tiny elite at the expense of ordinary people. This was evident not only during the crash but in the raft of scandals since, including LIBOR and PPI.
Corbyn added that the wealthy must pay their fair share of taxes. Labour would take effective steps to end tax avoidance and evasion. This would need to start with winding down the offshore empire much of which comes under the influence of the UK and the City of London.
Corbyn highlighted the grotesque inequalities driven by neoliberalism. The result has seen millions of ordinary people abandoned by a system that does not work for them. Here, Corbyn again broke with the consensus pointing out that immigration is not to blame. Scapegoating of migrants is convenient for elites keen to distract from the damage that they are causing. Corbyn emphasised that it is exploitative corporations, which are to blame for low wages not migrants. Over-stretched public services are down to Conservative cuts not immigration. However, after years of xenophobic anti-migrant rhetoric, winning this argument will require plenty of hard work.
On the economy, Corbyn promised investment with £500bn of public spending and a national investment bank. He also promised investment in research and development, education and skilling up of the workforce.
Yet none of this is especially controversial. Much of it is increasingly accepted as common sense amongst economists.
It is Corbyn's reset on foreign policy, which is truly intolerable for the establishment.
Corbyn spoke of a peaceful and just foreign policy. There would be no more imperial wars destroying the lives of millions; generating terrorism and migration crises. Arms sales to countries committing war crimes would be banned starting with Saudi Arabia. This will have set alarm bells ringing amongst the nexus of intelligence agencies, defence contractors and corporates. Corbyn is directly challenging the Atlanticist relationship paramount to the US-UK establishment and its global hegemony, particularly in the Middle East.
It is no surprise that the Conservatives and their mainstream media cheerleaders have therefore attacked Corbyn. The most damaging attacks, though, have come from his parliamentary party. The process of disentangling from the New Labour machine captured by corporate interests may still generate more damage.
As Corbyn and McDonnell have both made abundantly clear, socialism is no longer a dirty word. Corbyn's Labour - the largest party in Western Europe - is powering forward with a vision of forward-looking 21st century socialism.
Mark Steel in The Independent
Well, that was a highly successful three-month campaign to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn. There’s nothing like spending all summer on a project that proves worthwhile and repays the effort.
If Angela Eagle and Owen Smith were generals in a medieval army, they would report back to their commander: “We fired incessantly for three months and have brought such damage to our opponent’s army they now have 100,000 more soldiers than when we started, sir. And I’m not sure how, but although we’re fighting in Belgium, we seem to have given them Wales.”
Corbyn should ask them to do it every year; by 2025 he’d be crowned King of Europe.
Even more impressive was the way the plotters all agreed, after the result, that “this shows the lessons Jeremy needs to learn, and he has to reach out”.
Next they’ll ask Owen Smith to fight Tyson Fury, and as Owen is dragged away by paramedics, Stephen Kinnock will announce: “This shows the lessons Tyson has to learn. From now on he needs to look more skinny and wear glasses and reach out if he knows what’s good for him”.
This is an exciting development in democracy, that the side who won the least number of votes decides what the lessons are that have to be learned. Maybe this is how the anti-Corbyn section of Labour hopes to govern after a general election. They’ll say to the Tories: “As you won a majority of 190, you have to learn to reach out and fill your cabinet with me and my mates”.
Even so, the plotters made an important point: that Corbyn must reach out to those who already tried to unite the party by calling him a moronic pitiful unelectable pile of steaming goat sick for the last year.
Instead of being divisive, as he was last time by offering them jobs in the shadow Cabinet from which they resigned, he should let them pick their own jobs, and if they don’t fancy doing them one day, let them bring in games.
All the plotters agreed on the need for unity, and many of them displayed that straight away by not turning up to Corbyn’s speech. But Corbyn himself ruined the unity by turning up to it himself, rather than uniting with his colleagues by saying he couldn’t be bothered to say anything so he was popping down the pub.
Some MPs will soon resume their commitment to unity by insisting Corbyn is hopeless, on every TV station, one by one through the news channels, the cartoon channels and the GOD channels. Then on a porn channel, John Mann will knock on a door to say: “Hope you’ll be voting Labour in the council by-election”. But a woman in rubber will reply: “I certainly won’t be voting for you”, so he’ll say: “I suppose that’s because we’ve been very, very bad and chosen an unelectable leader”, then lay down and scream: “We’ve been so irresponsible by saying we’ll renationalise the Royal Mail!” while getting thrashed on the arse with an egg whisk.
Others will prove their loyalty as they did before, by texting helpful snippets of information to journalists from meetings, such as: “OMG! Apparently Corbyn wants to abolish the army and replace it with a salad”.
The other demand from the side celebrating its achievement of getting fewer votes than someone they say is unelectable is there can be no threats of deselection. There should be no half measures with this; if Jess Phillips announces: “I’d rather vote for Donald Trump than Corbyn, that’s why I broke into his house and poisoned his fish”, that’s her right as a loyal party member and any talk of deselection would be divisive.
The next issue Corbyn must address now he’s been humbled by winning the election is the problem of all these new members. For example, an investigation into Liverpool Riverside complains there has been “an explosion in membership” which now “meets several times a month”.
That sounds sinister, because when has there ever been any need to do two things in a month?
And what are they all doing, joining like that? No wonder proper Labour members are suspicious. They should have to pass a test, clambering across an assault course, or swimming through piranhas.
As any business leader will confirm, there’s nothing more damaging to an enterprise than an explosion in people demanding your product. This is why Bill Gates always insists, when a new version of Microsoft Windows comes out, that anyone who asks for one is told they can’t have it as they’re almost certainly a member of the Workers Revolutionary Party.
One MP grumbled: “It’s all right these new people joining, but will they go knocking on doors at the election?” We can’t know the answer to that, which is why the best way to ensure they’re enthusiastic enough to knock on doors is to tell them they’re all infiltrating scum and they can sod off somewhere else with their several meetings a month.
If they still join, they should have to prove their loyalty by not only knocking on doors, but when someone answers, say: “Our leader’s unelectable so I don’t know why I’m bothering”.
But most importantly, not one of the plotters has fallen into the trap of accepting they may have made the odd mistake, and perhaps shouldn’t have all resigned to get rid of their elected leader, or whined too many people have joined their party, or gone to court to ban their own voters, or insisted people supported Corbyn because they’d had their arm twisted by Trotskyists, because it’s obviously Corbyn that needs to learn the lessons from the result.
If the City of London were to take a hit and the economy were to suffer as a result – which, as a Remainer and a Europhile, I tend to think it will – there is an argument to be made that the UK would actually be all the healthier for it.
Mary Dejevsky in The Independent
One of the messages declaimed most loudly by the Remain campaign before the UK referendum was a warning that Brexit would spell disaster for the City of London and the financial services that were now this country’s economic lifeblood. That message was also one of the most ill-judged of any during the whole campaign. Yet it seems that neither side has still quite got the point.
After denouncing what they branded “Project Fear”, victorious Brexiteers are now exulting in figures that supposedly show everything in the economic garden to be lovely. There you are, they say, the Remainers were just scaremongering, as we said all along. There is nothing to worry about in going it alone; indeed, if anything, the UK will benefit. They cite an upturn in consumer spending, no serious fall in house prices, no flight of the brightest and best, and no real uptick in inflation.
The Remainers for their part insist that the shocks are already creeping up on us and the worst is yet to come. The de facto devaluation in sterling may be helping exports and bolstering share prices, but it has already increased the cost of most foreign holidays, and higher prices of most imports will start to come through just as winter sets in. Any impression of economic strength, they go on, is mainly illusory, reflecting the effect of devaluation on the stock market and the Bank of England’s pre-emptive cut in interest rates. Only when the Government finally gets around to invoking Article 50, they maintain, so triggering the withdrawal process irrevocably, will the economic fallout really start to be felt.
This bickering over the economy, however – its talking up by one side and talking down by the other – is not only premature in the extreme, but misses one simple point. When the former Chancellor, George Osborne, and his friends in the City spread doom and gloom about the future of the city should Leave prevail, the response in many quarters was not entirely as they had scripted. Yes, there were some howls of empathetic anguish, but there were also shouts of hooray – some articulated, many not.
To forecast, as Osborne and others did, that the sky would fall in on London and the City’s hugely profitable financial services was also to hold out the promise of a time when there could be a return to a real economy made up of real things, rather than a virtual economy derived from onscreen speculation in funny money. To add, as some Remain frontpeople did, that there would also be a flight of foreign banks from the City and that house prices in London could fall only compounded the rebel calls to “bring it on”.
In trying to defend the city from what they saw as the Brexit threat, its advocates were – unwittingly, it must be assumed – making a compelling case for the opposition. One person’s high-paying City job is another person’s precarious gig existence. One person’s security from high and ever-higher house prices is another person’s exclusion from home ownership. You could hardly find a better illustration of the clash of interests and cultures exposed by the referendum.
And here I must admit that I have a lot more sympathy for the rebels than a London-based home-owning Remainer should. It also strikes me that, in insisting that the economy will continue to flourish, the Brexiteers risk giving a hostage to fortune and perhaps missing a trick. Because if the City of London were to take a hit and the economy were to suffer as a result – which, as a Remainer and a Europhile, I tend to think it will – there is an argument to be made that the UK would actually be all the healthier for it.
Now it may be that the city will not shrink. It may be that all the foreign banks and finance houses with a presence there will continue to regard London as a necessary base for their global operations, whether or not it remains a gateway to the European Union. We know all the arguments about the time zone, the language, the quality of life, the schools and the shopping, and perhaps they will prevail.
But if – as appears likely – London banks post-Brexit lose the “passporting” system that gives them direct access to the EU single market – a threat much bandied about during the campaign – and if foreign companies start to transfer their operations across the Channel; if the number of people able and willing to pay high-end London property prices falls (and the pool of such people seems to have been vastly overestimated by construction companies anyway); and if – just if – as a result the high tide of cash flooding the capital starts to recede, what then?
The Remain campaign predicted that the UK as a whole could be drastically poorer. Another possibility, though, is that London starts to dominate the national picture less than it does now. The “great sucking sound”, complained of by pro-independence Scots during their referendum, would quieten down, and the enormous disparity in wealth both within the south-east and between London and most of the rest of the country would be reduced.
Of course, nothing will change the fact that political and financial power are centred in one city in the UK, unlike, say, in the US or in Germany. But the outsized contribution that London currently makes to national GDP - 22 per cent for 12 per cent of the population - is disproportionate, and leaves most other parts of the country far behind. Even George Osborne conceded that the economic dominance of London had its downside and is one reason why he championed the “northern powerhouse” - that, and perhaps his Cheshire constituency.
At a time (2014) when he was riding high as leader of Ukip and the referendum was barely a glint in David Cameron’s eye, Nigel Farage told an interviewer that if a decline in GDP were the price to be paid for greater social cohesion, he would accept the trade-off. I suspected then, and believe still more firmly now, that many – and not only Brexiteers – would agree with him.
Given that recent increases in national GDP have been shared more inequitably in the UK than in almost any other developed country; given, too, the extent of London’s economic dominance, some evening out of the disparities is surely overdue. Could it even be that a necessary internal economic and social rebalancing is eventually judged – even by reluctant Remainers – to be an actual benefit of Brexit?