Europe is haunted by the myth of the lazy mob

It suits the wealthy to turn the debate about poverty into a morality tale, but the reality is that inequality is structural

• 
• • Ha-Joon Chang
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 29 January 2013

'Markets are frequently rigged in favour of the rich.' Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA

"A spectre is haunting Europe." Thus began the famous opening passages of The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Today, once again, Europe is haunted by a spectre. But, unlike back in 1848 when Marx and Engels wrote those passages, it is not communism, but laziness.

Gone are the days when the upper classes were terrified of the angry mob wanting to smash their skulls and confiscate their properties. Now their biggest enemy is the army of lazy bums, whose lifestyle of indolence and hedonism, financed by crippling taxes on the rich, is sucking the lifeblood out of the economy.

In Britain, the coalition government constantly slags off those welfare slobs in the working class suburbs, sleeping off their hard night's slog with Sky Sports and online casino. It is their shameless demand for "something for nothing", pandered to by the previous Labour government, we are told, that has created the huge deficits that the country is struggling to get rid of.

In the eurozone, many believe that its fiscal crisis can be ultimately traced back to those lazy Mediterranean types in Greece and Spain, who had lived off hard-working Germans and Dutch, spending their time sipping espresso and playing card games. Unless those people start working hard, it is said, the eurozone's problems cannot be fixed.

The problem with this story is that it is, well, just a story.

First of all, it is important to reiterate that the fiscal deficits in the European countries, including Britain, are largely due to the fall in tax revenues following the finance-induced recession, rather than to the rise in welfare spending. So, attacking the poor and eviscerating the welfare state is not going to cure the underlying cause of the deficits.

Moreover, on the whole, poorer people typically work harder. They usually work in jobs with longer hours and tougher working conditions. Except for a tiny minority, they are poor despite the welfare state, not because of it.

The point comes into a sharper relief, if we compare nations. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, people in Greece, that famous nation of skivers, worked on average 2,032 hours in 2011 – only a shade less than the supposedly workaholic South Koreans (2,090 hours). In the same year, the Germans worked only 70% as long (1,413 hours), while the Netherlands was officially the "laziest" nation in the world, with only 1,379 hours of work per year. These numbers tell us that, whatever else is wrong with Greece, it is not the laziness of their people.

Now, if the laziness story has such flimsy bases in reality, why is it so widely believed? It is because, in the past three decades of dominance by free-market ideology, many of us have come to believe in the myth of the individual fully in charge of his/her destiny.

Starting from Disney animations we watch as young children telling us that "if you believed in yourself, you can achieve anything", we are bombarded with the message that individuals, and they alone, are responsible for what they get in their lives. This is what I call the L'Oreal principle – if some people are paid tens of millions of pounds a year, it must be because they're "worth it"; if others are poor, it must be because they are either not good enough or not trying hard enough.

Now, it is politically difficult to criticise the poor for their incompetence, so the attack is focused on the mythical lazy slob, who has no moral leg to stand on. But then the end result is the dismantling of a whole set of policies and institutions that help all poor people in the name of punishing the lazy.

The beauty of this worldview – for those who disproportionately benefit from the current system – is that, by reducing everything down to individuals, it draws people's attention away from the structural causes of poverty and inequality.

It is well known that poor childhood nutrition, lack of learning stimulus at deprived homes, and sub-par schools restrict capability developments of poor children, diminishing their future prospects. When they grow up, they have to contend with all sorts of prejudices that constantly discourage and deflate them, especially if they have the wrong gender or the wrong skin colour.

With these sandbags on their legs, the poor find it difficult to win the race even in the fairest market. Markets are frequently rigged in favour of the rich, as we have seen from a series of recent scandals surrounding deliberate mis-selling of financial products, lies told to the regulators, to the rigging of the Libor rate.

More importantly, money gives the super-rich the power even to rewrite the basic rules of the game by – let's not mince our words – buying up politicians and political offices (think of all those former banker-turned-US treasury secretaries). Many deregulations of the financial and the labour market, as well as tax cuts for the rich, in the last three decades are results of such money politics.

By turning the debate into a morality tale of laziness, the rich and powerful can divert people's attention away from all of these structural problems that create more poverty and inequality than is necessary.

All of this is not to say that individual talents and efforts should not be rewarded. Attempts to completely suppress them can create societies that are ostensibly equal but fundamentally unfair, as in the former socialist countries.

However, it is vital to recognise that poverty and inequality also have structural causes and start a real debate on how to change those things. Ridding the debate of the pernicious and baseless myth of the lazy mob is an important first step in that direction.

‘Yes, we spent money on paid news ads’

P. SAINATH

   

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Confessions by politicians to EC belie claims of innocence by top newspapers

The political class is more honest than the media when it comes to ‘paid news’ during elections, judging by the fact that several poll candidates have owned up to this corrupt practice. At least, after the Election Commission and the Press Council of India shot off notices to them and held inquiries into the matter. They have acknowledged guilt by belatedly adding their “news” buying expenses to their election statement of accounts. Some candidates have accepted in writing that they bought what are now called, somewhat oxymoronically, “Paid News Advertisements.” But not a single one of the newspapers they say they gave their money to has accepted any wrongdoing. 

These are not just any papers. In readership terms, they include three top-ranked dailies.

In some cases, the battles are still on, involving both the politicians and newspapers concerned. On January 15, the EC found that Madhya Pradesh Cabinet Minister Narottam Mishra “failed to lodge his accounts of his election expenses in the manner prescribed by law.” He faces possible disqualification. The EC’s notice to Dr. Mishra concerns 42 news items on him during the November 2008 state elections. These, it pointed out, “read more like election advertisement(s) in favour of you alone rather than (as) news reports.” The EC names four newspapers in its notice: Dainik Bhaskar, Nai Duniya, Aacharan and Dainik Datia Prakash. Dainik Bhaskar is the second most-read daily in the country.

Less than a month earlier, the Press Council of India held quite a few dailies guilty of doing much the same thing during the 2010 Bihar assembly polls. These include Dainik Jagran, the newspaper with the highest readership in the country. The others are Dainik Hindustan, Hindustan Times, Dainik Aaj and Purvanchal Ki Raahi. Also, Rashtriya Sahara, Udyog Vyapar Times and Prabhat Khabhar.

In many cases, the route to exposure followed the pattern set in the classic case of the former Congress Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Ashok Chavan. His 2009 poll campaign for the State legislature drew scores of full pages of “news.” Not a single one of those pages ever mentioned the name of Madhav Kinhalkar, his rival for the Bhokar seat. In a 2009-10 investigation into paid news, The Hindu found a hagiographical article on Mr. Chavan appear word for word in three major rival publications. In two of them, on the same day, in all of them under different by-lines (The Hindu, Nov. 30, 2009).

The 2010 Bihar polls saw a similar pattern. This time, though, one paper came up with a truly novel defence. Same story in different papers? That’s not paid news, argues Udyog Vyapar Times. It submits that other newspapers “hack their computer site and publish the same news.” So what might look like paid news, contends Udyog Vyapar Times, is merely the outcome of desperate rivals hacking into the internal network of this Aligarh-based daily to steal their national exclusives.

How did the candidates issued ‘Paid News’ notices for the Bihar polls by the EC react? All but one seem to have accepted their guilt. According to the EC, they did so by simply adding “the expenditure included by them on account of these ‘news’ in their accounts of election expenses.” In fact, the District Election Officer of Muzaffarpur in Bihar stated flatly that the dailies had carried “news for payment.” He even had letters from the candidates owning up to buying “news.”

The Press Council of India, acting on the matter referred to it by the EC, issued show cause notices to Dainik Jagran, Dainik Hindustan, Hindustan Times et al, between July and September 2011. On December 21, 2012, the PCI, on the basis of its own inquiry committee’s report, got tough. Of the high-profile line-up, only Prabhat Khabhar escaped “the highest penalty” of the Press Council — censure — under Section 14 (1) of the Press Council Act of 1978. This was the only case where the paper and the candidate both firmly denied the charge. (In all the other cases, the candidates accepted they had purchased “news”.) And Prabhat Khabar’s own record — it has strongly campaigned against paid news — added weight to its defence. The paper offered to apologise if the EC produced proof of any such aberration. It was “cautioned for the future.”

All the other dailies denied the charges, too. But, as the PCI’s inquiry committee puts it, “in all these cases, the candidate in question admitted before the Election Commission of India that he paid for the impugned material.” These dailies were found “guilty of having carried news reports that were in fact self-promotion material provided by the candidate in the fray,” and so faced the highest penalty of censure.

So quite a few politicians seem willing to confess to their paid news sins. They face penalties, too. Just 16 months ago, the EC disqualified Umlesh Yadav, then sitting MLA from Bisauli in Uttar Pradesh, for a period of three years for failing to provide a “true and correct account” of her election expenses. She had skipped any mention of her spending on advertisements dressed up as news during her 2007 poll campaign. She was the first legislator ever to bite the dust on grounds of excessive expenditure (and paid news). Dr. Mishra, Health Minister in the BJP government of Madhya Pradesh, now faces charges of the kind that got her disqualified.

Ashok Chavan case

Oddly enough, the Ashok Chavan case, which triggered off a spate of such cases, is itself bogged down in both the EC and the Supreme Court. The case of former Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Koda is likewise held up in the courts. Judicial delays could have a serious and possibly adverse impact in the fight against Paid News in the 2014 general election.

But what action do habitual offenders in the media face? The Paid News Committee constituted by the Election Commission has concluded that those 42 “news items” involving Dr. Mishra “appear to be advertisements in the garb of news” and fall “within the definition of ‘Paid News’.” The Press Council defines Paid News as “any news or analysis appearing in any media (print or electronic) for a price in cash or kind as consideration.” A Press Council team appointed by PCI Chairperson Justice Katju found last month that Paid News had been rampant in Gujarat during the State polls there in December 2012.

So what happens where media outlets concerned are found guilty? Where the “highest penalty” is censure and that draws not even an apology? Of course, Paid News is not only about elections, though that’s where it does greatest damage to the greatest number. It is an everyday activity in much of the media. The cloying coverage that powerful corporations get routinely reeks of it. You can see it in some completely corporate “sporting” events or “partnerships.” Governments, too, buy “news” sometimes. You can see it at work in Davos, too. Who funds journalists and channels from India at that World Economic Forum event each year is worth looking at. But that’s another story. Watch this space.

sainath.p@thehindu.co.in

Keywords: paid news, Press Council of India, Paid News Advertisements, Narottam Mishra, Paid News Committee

George Osborne is destined to be remembered as the most inept Chancellor in British history

DAVID BLANCHFLOWER

Sunday 27 January 2013

Endless grim news confirms our worst fears about the man running the Treasury. And until workers see a growth in their real earnings, our economy is go rise?

It wasn’t a great week for the Coalition. First the Prime Minister made hismuch-awaited EU speech, which increased the levels of uncertainty for UK businesses just when they needed it least. Firms are sitting on loads of cash but are not willing to invest it as consumers aren’t spending; they are even less likely to do so now after David Cameron’s intervention.

This may have satisfied his Eurosceptic MPs, but was disastrous in economic terms. Any foreign firm considering setting up business in Britain as a gateway to Europe will inevitably be having second thoughts. The speech was clearly bad for growth and jobs.

Then the IMF lowered its growth forecast for the UK, and its chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, called for a fiscal U-turn. A few weeks earlier Mr Blanchard had argued in an important paper that fiscal multipliers – estimates of the impact of tax hikes and spending cuts on overall GDP – were much larger than the Office for Budget Responsibility had factored in, with the implication that any decline in growth was likely to have been caused by 11 Downing Street.

Debacles, cont'd

Next, the PM was caught out on a party political broadcast where he claimed the Coalition had been reducing the country’s debts even though they have been increasing it. Data on the public finances released last week also confirmed that, far from having cut the deficit by a quarter, it has in fact risen over the last 12 months. Then there was the Pizza¬gate PR disaster, when Dave and Slasher noisily celebrated their apparent success over a deep dish in Davos. Commentators took it to mean that GDP numbers – that the two would have already seen – were going to be positive. Debacle on debacle.

As I had feared, the growth numbers were bad again. The recession deniers had forecast positive growth, of course, but this was just wishful thinking: even the hopeless MPC had predicted a fall in output. A 0.3 per cent contraction means that the economy hasn’t grown for the last year at all. The economy is running on empty. In terms of the speed at which lost output has (not) been restored the economic pygmies in the Coalition are now responsible for a much worse slump than the Great Depression.

The economy was growing nicely when the Coalition took over in the spring of 2010. Indeed over the period Q32009-Q32010 the Labour government under Alastair Darling generated five successive quarters of growth; the economy grew by 2.7 per cent. During the succeeding nine quarters, Q42010-Q42012, under George Osborne the economy has grown by 0.4 per cent, zero over the last year. Four of the last five quarters have been negative.

For comparison purposes over the last five quarters, in contrast to Mr Darling’s growth the economy has shrunk by 0.3 per cent. The economy has still not restored half of the drop in output experienced from 2008Q2-2009Q2 of 6.5 per cent, and there is no chance under current policies that output will be restored before the 2015 election. Our part-time Chancellor will go down in history as the most inept ever; his austerity strategy has failed; borrowing is up, and the economy has been flatlining for two years. Ed Balls can now say he warned us this was going to happen. Told you so. Triple-dip here we come.

Boris Johnson stirred things up at Davos when he said it was “time to junk the language of austerity” and that the language of cuts was “not terribly useful in this sort of climate”. Good for him. He went on to argue for infrastructure spend on housing and transport for starters, and that “the hair-shirt Stafford Cripps agenda is not the way to get Britain moving again”. I couldn’t agree more – at long last someone who is prepared to lift animal spirits. At last someone in the Tory ranks is stirring things up.

One big puzzle

There is one big puzzle; poor growth jars with the recent news on the labour market, which showed some improvement. Of course some of this has to do with workers being hours constrained. The main explanation, though, appears to be that instead of big increases in unemployment, there have been big falls in prices, that is in wages and earnings. The graph above illustrates the movement in real earnings over the last decade; it simply takes annual weekly earnings (AWE) growth and deducts from it from inflation.

So if weekly wages grew by 5 per cent and the consumer prices index rose by 2 per cent real earnings increased by 3 per cent. It is clear that real earnings growth has been negative since the start of the recession – with one brief exception in early 2010 as the economy started growing before the Coalition took office and stopped that. Between March 2008 and November 2012 weekly earnings have risen from £440 a week to £472, or by 7.3 per cent; over the same time period prices have risen by 17.2 per cent, so real earnings are down by a tenth.

Wages have taken the strain. Falling real wages means that people’s living standard are falling, and they aren’t spending. How¬ever, this fall has been mitigated somewhat for people with mortgages by the decline in their mortgage payments due to low interest rates on their trackers. This means that any increase in interest rates would decimate living standards of working people even further, so sorry savers. Falling real wages have prevented unemployment from rising.

Recent work by Paul Gregg and Steve Machin suggests that wages recently have become a lot more responsive to an unemployment shock, that is the wage unemployment elasticity of pay (the “wage curve”) has risen. My own research suggests that hasn’t happened in the United States, which may help to explain why it has had a much bigger rise in unemployment for around half the drop in output the UK had. Until workers start to see a growth in their real earnings, this economy is going nowhere. Maybe those folks in Davos should think about sharing some of their profits with their workers. Hey boss, can I have a pay rise? 

No room for nuance in this fragile republic

By Harsh Sethi

In the rush to condemn Ashis Nandy and demand that he be jailed, no one bothered to understand what exactly he had said about corruption and caste

It is symptomatic of the times we live in, of the climate of political discourse that we have contributed to, that even relatively innocuous statements can get so easily misrepresented and twisted to convey a meaning that is diametrically opposite to what was said and meant. The Jaipur Literature Festival 2013, which until the morning of Republic Day had managed to successfully steer clear of any controversy, was suddenly rocked by angry protests based upon (and this must be stressed) a total misreading of remarks made by Ashis Nandy.

The panel discussion on “The Republic of Ideas,” featuring IBN7 Managing Editor Ashutosh, author and Tehelka editor Tarun Tejpal, historian Patrick French, philosopher Richard Sorabji, and social psychologist Ashis Nandy, was moderated by the author and publisher, Urvashi Butalia. Following a fascinating exchange on the “promise” of the Indian Republic and Constitution, the discussion turned to the theme of corruption and the significance of the anti-corruption protests led by Anna Hazare.

Making a passionate plea to deconstruct the sociology of corruption, Tarun Tejpal argued that we need to understand the “corruption” of the poor and the marginalised as a necessary strategy to break through the stifling nature of our rules, regulations and laws. Characterising Indian society as deeply stratified, hierarchical and oppressive, our laws and rules, he claimed, are mostly designed to “keep out” the erstwhile excluded strata from having their say. The corruption of “people like us” — an elite which has both the resources and power to subvert the system — often goes unnoticed, and if discovered, rarely results in prosecution. The misdemeanours of the “others,” in contrast, not only get caught, but also generate outrage, in part because they do not have the necessary skills to successfully cover up their corruption.

Grounded in earlier remarks

Subsequent remarks made by Ashis Nandy need to be read and understood in the context of what Tarun Tejpal said speaking before Nandy did. Agreeing with Tejpal, Nandy went on to argue that such “corruption” of the excluded — the Dalits, tribals, Other Backward Classes (OBC) and minorities — is inevitable if they are to break out from the bonds of an oppressive web of rules and regulations. He went on to say, referring to both himself and Richard Sorabji, that if they “arranged” to get fellowships for their children at Harvard or Oxford, as part of a trade in mutual and selective favours, none will comment about that, as if it is axiomatic that the fellowship was awarded on the basis of merit. Politicians or leaders of the oppressed strata, being new to the game and relatively untutored in the skills of manipulation, are unlikely to seek academic fellowships as a form of graft, and are more likely to covet and corner licences to operate petrol pumps. These pumps are publicly noticeable and can provoke outrage. Their licensees are linked to their “corrupt” benefactors, who are then condemned by the chattering classes in metropolitan cities.

So far so good. Nandy then went on to more provocatively stretch the argument, asserting that it is precisely this kind of “corruption” that has “saved” the Republic and democracy by enabling a degree of social and economic mobility and pluralising the composition of India’s elite. Furthermore, he argued, that it is most likely the list of “corrupt” could be inordinately dominated by Dalits, tribals, minorities and OBCs. Despite his prefacing his last remarks, saying that what he was about to say may shock many people, and that he nevertheless wished to stress the point about how we understand corruption, many in the audience (and one on the panel) completely missed Nandy’s point, and immediately accused him of casteist bias, calling upon him to withdraw his remarks and tender an apology. Some in the audience demanded that he should be charged under the Protection of Civil Rights Act for hurting the sentiments of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes.

Competitive outrage follows

Nandy’s protestations that what he said and meant was completely the opposite of what he was being charged with were not persuasive once the atmosphere was charged with heightened emotions. Competitive outrage, taking on the familiar form favoured by some overly strident and aggressive TV anchors, evidently gives no quarter to nuanced arguments, any irony, or even black humour. When Nandy characterised the former Chief Minister of Jharkhand, Madhu Koda (now in jail), as India’s first dollar billionaire, he was hardly extolling the virtues of corruption or turning a blind eye to the “perfidies” of upper caste politicians. At best, in an underhand and sly way, he was expressing admiration for the abilities of a tribal leader in matching up to what has hitherto been an exclusive preserve of India’s upper caste elite.

Accusations of Nandy of being anti-Dalit/tribal/minority groups, the calls for registering a FIR against him, and demanding that he should be arrested would, in our better days, have been dismissed as an irrelevant, if not comic, aside. Such innocent days have faded, unfortunately, into a distant past. So quick are we now to take offence and demand immediate retributory action against alleged offenders that we almost never take a moment to pause, to ascertain the facts, understand what was said and meant, in what context, and to what ends. All we want is action, and now!

Signals shrinking discourse

Subsequent demands by the Bahujan Samaj Party leader, Mayawati, by the chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes P.L. Punia, and others, to arrest Ashis Nandy, even though none of them was present during the discussion, illustrates the danger of a growing kind of prickliness and intolerance. Worse still, such occasions are used by politicians to signal their commitment to their constituencies and shore up their images. In the process we are left with a diminished public discourse. Even liberals, usually quick to defend “freedom of speech,” advocate caution and temperance in the expression of reactions to intemperate allegations of the kind made against Nandy. Is this stance, one wonders, a compensatory guilt, marking what is politically correct, an obverse privileging of the erstwhile dispossessed?

Ashis Nandy’s choice of words, phrases, and examples can be questioned. He is not an organised and scintillating public speaker. One can also differ with his argument and analysis, for instance, his failure to distinguish between “corruption of the poor” and the “corruption of their leaders,” whose subversion of rules often results in them robbing the very poor who are also their constituents. Nevertheless, Nandy’s argument that the “rules of the game” have been set by an elite class to which he belongs, which remains a privileged lot, and therefore, that the deliberate subversion of those rules is an inevitable strategy for those striving for survival and upward mobility, certainly has merit. Clamping down on nuanced utterances and elliptical statements of the kind Nandy made will only make us a poorer democracy and Republic.

Padma Awards - Patronage Tools

The Hindu

Can it ever be the case that the Padma awards are announced and there are no accusations and controversy following them? Instituted in 1954 to acknowledge “distinguished and exceptional” individual achievements in various fields, the once prestigious awards have since come into so much bad odour thanks to lobbying and arbitrariness that today the Padma recognition has lost some of the lustre that accompanied it in the early years of the republic. Consequently, it has become something of a pattern for well-regarded individuals to decline the “highest civilian” commendation, the latest to do so being accomplished playback singer S. Janaki who, with four national awards behind her, felt it beneath her dignity to accept a Padma Bhushan at age 74. Ms Janaki’s anguish was all the more for South India not getting recognition commensurate with the region’s abundant talent. The charge is by no means baseless. This year, 20 recipients from Delhi figured among the awards compared to 21 from all the four southern States put together. Is it any wonder then that Padma awards have come to be viewed as payment for services rendered to the government than as an honour conferred for service to the nation?

Indeed, the awards have been used as patronage by successive governments, which have honoured both dubious individuals and men otherwise distinguished but rewarded specifically for a favour done. The Manmohan Singh government awarded the Padma Bhushan to the controversial hotelier Sant Singh Chatwal on the specious plea that he had played a key role in facilitating the India-United States civil nuclear agreement. The Padma Bhushan award for Chittaranjan Singh Ranawat came in the wake of his successful knee surgery on Atal Bihari Vajpayee. This arbitrariness has vested the Padma decision-making process with needless mystique, leading to frustrations and charges of bias. Admittedly there are men and women of great eminence who richly deserve to be honoured, and some of them do make it to the Padma awards. And yet the opaque selection process places them alongside those suspected to have won the awards by means more foul than fair. It is not that there are no selection guidelines. In 1996, a high-level committee headed by K.R. Narayanan, who was Vice-President at the time, set stringent qualifications for the award, stressing the “exceptional” nature of the recipient’s service. Just how well the guidelines were observed can be seen from the fact that in 2004 President Abdul Kalam had to write to Mr. Vajpayee advising caution in the selection of the awardees. The two UPA governments have, unfortunately, continued the tradition, flouting the deadline for receiving recommendations and habitually overruling the Awards Committee.

Marx takes on Keynes, Friedman and Schumacher

The ultimate Davos debate: 

If you could construct the best panel at a World Economic Forum debate, this would be it. But what would they say about present problems? Read on …

What if Karl Marx and Keynes, Friedman and Schumacher were at the 43rd World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland? Photograph: Laurent Gillieron/AP

Imagine that you could construct the ultimate Davos panel. From the annals of history you can choose any quartet that could put the world to rights in an hour-long talk, the format beloved of the World Economic Forum.

Klaus Schwab, the man who has been organising the forum since 1971, ensured there were plenty of stellar names strutting their stuff in the high Alps last week. Davos attendees could watch Nouriel "Dr Doom" Roubini cross swords with Adam Posen, recently a member of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee about the merits of quantitative easing. They could listen to Mark Carney, soon to take over from Sir Mervyn King at Threadneedle Street, warn that the global economy is far from out of the woods. George Soros held forth on drugs; Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg spoke passionately about sexual stereotyping; David Cameron called for the G8 to act against tax avoidance and corruption.

But how about this for a panel? Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman and Fritz Schumacher, all no longer with us, kept in line by the IMF's Christine Lagarde, thankfully still alive and kicking, and one of the standout performers last week.

Lagarde kicks off our fantasy discussion with a few words of introduction. She says business leaders have left Davos in a slightly better frame of mind not because of the millions of words spouted in Davos, but because of three little words spoken by the president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, in London in July. Those words were "whatever it takes", a commitment by the ECB to buy up the bonds of troubled eurozone countries in unlimited quantities. That has removed one of the big tail risks to the global economy – a chaotic break-up of the eurozone. But, she adds, any recovery in 2013 will be fragile and timid, and there is a risk of a relapse. "Turning first to you Karl, how do you see things".

Marx: "The capitalist class gathered in Davos has spent the last few days wringing their hands about unemployment and the lack of demand for their goods. What they seem incapable of recognising is that these are inevitable in a globalised economy. There is a tendency towards over-investment, over-production and a falling rate of profit, which, as ever, employers have sought to counter by cutting wages and creating a reserve army of labour. That's why there are more than 200 million people unemployed around the world and there has been a trend towards greater inequality. It is possible that 2013 will be better than 2012 but it will be a brief respite."

Lagarde: "That's a gloomy analysis, Karl. Wages are growing quite fast in some parts of the world, such as China, but I'd agree that inequality is a threat. The IMF's own research shows that inequality is correlated to economic instability."

Marx: "It is true that the emerging market economies are growing rapidly now but in time they too will be affected by the same forces."

Lagarde: "Maynard, do you think things are as bleak as Karl says?

Keynes: "No I don't Christine. I think the problem is serious but soluble. When we last faced a crisis of this magnitude we responded by aggressive loosening of monetary policy – driving down both short-term and long-term interest rates – and by the use of public works to boost aggregate demand. In the US, my friend Franklin Roosevelt supported legislation that allowed workers to organise. After the second world war, the international community created the IMF in order to smooth out balance of payments imbalances, prevent beggar-my-neighbour currency wars and control movements of capital. All these lessons have been forgotten. The balance between fiscal and monetary policy is wrong; currency wars are brewing; the financial sector remains largely unreformed, and aggregate demand is weak because workers are not getting a fair share of their productivity gains. Economics is stuck in the past; it is as if physics had not moved on since Kepler."

Lagarde: "I gather from what you are saying, Maynard, that you do not approve of the way George Osborne is running the UK economy."

Keynes: "The man has taken leave of his senses. Britain has a growth problem, not a deficit problem."

Lagarde: "I daresay Milton that you disagree with everything Maynard has said? You would make the case, presumably, for nature's cure?"

Milton Friedman: "Some of my friends in the Austrian school of economics would certainly favour doing nothing in the hope of a cleansing of the system, but I wouldn't. Unlike Maynard, I wouldn't support measures that would increase the bargaining power of trade unions and I've never been keen on public works as a response to a slump.

"But I would certainly support what Ben Bernanke has been doing with monetary policy in the US and would support even more drastic action if it proved necessary."

Lagarde: "Such as?"

Friedman: "Well, I think monetary policy should be set in order to hit a target for nominal output – the increase in the size of the economy unadjusted for inflation. If that growth is too high, central banks should tighten policy. If it is too low, the trend since the crisis broke, they should loosen it. In extreme circumstances, I'd favour policies that blur the distinction between monetary and fiscal policy. That's what I mean when I talk about helicopter drops of money into the economy."

Lagarde: "Fritz, you have been sitting there patiently listening to Karl, Maynard and Milton. How do you assess the state of the world?

Fritz Schumacher: "I am greatly disturbed by the way the debate is being framed. There is an obsession with growth at all costs regardless of the environmental costs. Climate change was rarely mentioned in Davos: this after a year of extreme weather events. It is frightening that so little attention has been paid to global warming, and almost criminally neglectful of governments not to use ultra-low interest rates to invest in green technologies.

"As has been the case in the past, recessions have pushed green issues down the political agenda. In good times policymakers say they are in favour of sustainable development, but the pledges are forgotten as soon as unemployment starts to rise. Then it is back to business as usual: more roads, expanding airports, tax cuts to encourage consumption. When scientists are warning that global temperatures are on course to rise several degrees above pre-industrial levels on unchanged policies, this is the economics of the madhouse."

Lagarde: "Maynard, what's your response to that?"

Keynes: "I agree with him. If I were advising Roosevelt today I would be calling for a Green New Deal. I find it hard to envisage a world without growth, something that is politically unacceptable in the developing world in any case. But Fritz is right, we need smarter, cleaner growth. As you yourself said last week, Christine, if we carry on as we are the next generation will be 'roasted, toasted, fried and grilled'."

Schumacher: "I couldn't have put it better myself."

‘Life of Pi’ Ending Explained

  

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Ang Lee’s Life of Pi is racking-up critical acclaim (read our review) and pre-award season buzz along with solid box office numbers. Though, for every mention of the film’s beautiful 3D or amazing CGI tiger, there’s a fuddled viewer confused by the movie’s controversial ending.

Ben Kendrick

Readers of Yann Martel’s original novel (the ones who made it to the end) have already faced the challenging last-minute question presented by the story’s narrator, but filmgoers expecting a fanciful adventure at sea have been understandably caught off-guard by the finale. No doubt, viewers will debate the ending with friends and family – but to help steer discussion we’ve put together a brief analysis of the Life of Pi ending, explaining why the final question may not be as cut and dry as some moviegoers seem to think.
It goes without saying that the remainder of this article will contain MAJOR SPOILERS for Life of Pi - the movie and the book (especially the ending). If you do not want to be spoiled about either, turn away now.

For anyone who hasn’t seen (or read) Life of Pi and isn’t concerned about having the ending spoiled, Pi’s adventure concludes in a Mexican hospital bed – where he is interviewed by a pair of Japanese Ministry of Transport officials. The agents tell Pi that his story – which includes multiple animal companions and a carnivorous island – is too unbelievable for them to report, so Pi tells them a different version of the story: one that paints a much darker and emotionally disturbing variation of events. After both stories have been shared, Pi leaves it up to the viewer (or reader) to decide which version they “prefer.”

Personal “preference” has larger thematic meaning, when viewed in the context of the overarching story; however, before we analyze the ending (via the question) in greater detail, we’re going to briefly lay out the two versions of Pi’s story.

In both accounts, Pi’s father contracts a Japanese ship to transport his family, along with a number of their zoo animals, from India to Canada in an effort to escape political upheaval in their native country. The stories are identical up until Pi climbs aboard the lifeboat (following the sinking of the cargo ship) only re-converging when he is rescued on the Mexican shore. The 227 days that Pi spends lost at sea are up for debate.

The Animal Story

In this version of Pi’s tale, the cargo ship sinks and, during the ensuing chaos, he is joined on the lifeboat by a ragtag group of zoo animals that also managed to escape: an orangutan, a spotted hyena, a zebra with a broken leg, and a Bengal Tiger (named Richard Parker). After some time, Pi watches helplessly as the hyena kills the zebra and then the orangutan before it is, subsequently, dispatched by Richard Parker. Pi then sets about conditioning the tiger through rewarding behavior (food and fresh water), so that the two can co-exist in the boat. Though Pi succeeds, the pair remain on the verge of starvation – until, after several months at sea, they wash ashore an uncharted island packed with fresh vegetation and a bountiful meerkat population. Pi and Richard Parker stuff themselves, but soon discover that the island is home to a carnivorous algae that, when the tide arrives, turns the ground to an acidic trap. Pi realizes that eventually the island will consume them – so he stocks the lifeboat with greens and meerkats and the pair sets sail again. When the lifeboat makes landfall along the Mexican coast, Pi and Richard Parker are once again malnourished – as Pi collapses on the beach, he watches the Bengal Tiger disappear into the jungle without even glancing back.

Pi is brought to a hospital – where he tells the animal story to the Japanese officials. However, when the agents do not believe his tale, the young survivor tells a different version of his journey.

The Human Story

In this version of Pi’s tale the cargo ship still sinks, but instead of the ragtag group of animals in the lifeboat, Pi claims that he was joined by his mother (Gita), the ship’s despicable cook, and an injured Japanese sailor. After some time, fearing for the limited supplies in the boat, the cook kills the weakened Japanese sailor, and later, Gita. Scarred from watching his mother die in front of his eyes, Pi kills the cook in a moment of self-preservation (and revenge).
Pi does not mention his other adventures at sea (the carnivorous island, etc) but it’d be easy to strip away some of the fantastical elements in favor of more grounded (albeit allegorical) situations. Maybe he found an island but realized that living is more than just eating and existing – deciding to take his chances at sea instead of wasting away in apathy on a beach eating meerkats all alone. Of course, that is purely speculation – since, again, Pi does not elaborate on the more grounded human story beyond the revelation that he was alone on the lifeboat.

The Ending Explained

Even if the connection between the lifeboat parties was missed, the writer makes the connection for the audience (or readers): the hyena is the cook, the orangutan is Pi’s mother, the zebra is the sailor, and Richard Parker is Pi. However, the film’s juxtaposition of the animal story and the human story has led many moviegoers to view the last-minute plot point as a finite “twist” – which was not the original intention of Martel (with the book) or very likely Lee (with the film). Viewers have pointed to the look of anguish on Pi’s face during his telling of the human story in the film as “proof” that he was uncomfortable facing the true horror of his experience. However, the novel takes the scene in the opposite direction, with Pi expressing annoyance at the two men – criticizing them for wanting “a story they already know.” Either way, much like the ending of Inception (read ourexplanation of that ending), there is no “correct” answer – and Life of Piintentionally leaves the question unanswered so that viewers (and readers) can make up their own mind.

Facing the final question, it can be easy to forget that, from the outset, The Writer character was promised a story that would make him believe in God. In the first part of the narrative, we see Pi struggling to reconcile the differences between faith interpretations (Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam) – acknowledging that each of them contained valuable elements, even if they tell different stories (elements that together help him survive his ordeal at sea regardless of whether or not he was there with a tiger).

As a result, the larger question is impossible to answer definitively and, as mentioned, the “truth” of Pi’s story is of little concern to Martel or Lee. The real question is – which story do you, the viewer/reader prefer? Interpretation is subjective but the question is intended to serve as a moment of theological reflection. Are you a person that prefers to believe in things that always make sense/things that you can see? Or are you a person that prefers to believe in miracles/take things on faith? There are no right or wrong answers – just an opportunity for introspection.

Pi is faced with a heavy challenge: telling a story that will make a person believe in God. Some listeners might remain unconvinced but in the case of The Writer, who openly admits that he prefers the story with the tiger, and the Japanese officials, who in their closing report remarked on the feat of “surviving 227 days at sea… especially with a tiger,” Pi successfully helps skeptics overcome one of the largest hurdles to faith – believing in the unbelievable.

Since Pi marries The Writer’s preference for the Tiger story with the line, “and 

so it goes with God,” it’s hard to separate the question entirely from theology. Evidenced by his multi-religion background, Pi does not believe that any of the world’s religions are a one-stop shop for the truth of God – and his goal is not to convert anyone to a specific dogma. Instead, his story is set up to help viewers/readers consider which version of the world they prefer – the one where we make our own way and suffer through the darkness via self-determination, or the one where we are aided by something greater than ourselves (regardless of which version of “God” we may accept).

That said, aside from all the theological implications, and regardless of personal preference, it’s insular to view the ending as simply a dismissal of everything that Pi had previously described (and/or experienced) – since, in keeping with his view that every religious story has worthwhile parts, a third interpretation of the ending could be that the “truth” is a mix of both stories. Like Pi and his three-tiered faith routine, the viewer/reader can always pick and choose the parts that benefit their preferred version of the tale.

The “truth”: Pi survived for 227 days at sea, married the girl of his dreams, had children, and lived to tell two stories.

Like any quality piece of entertainment, a lot of this is subjective and there are multiple ways of interpreting the Life of Pi ending, so feel free to (respectfully) share your interpretation with fellow moviegoers in the comment section below.