Ben Chu in The Independent
Financial incentives are important. We all know that’s true. If you were offered a job that paid £10 an hour and then someone else came up offering to pay you £11 an hour for identical work, which one would you choose?
Most of us would also accept that well-designed employment contracts can get more out of us. If we could take home more money for working harder (or more effectively), most of us would.
Bengt Holmstrom won the Nobel economics prize this week for his theoretical research on the optimum design for a worker’s contract to encourage the individual to work as productively as possible.
The work of Holmstrom and his fellow Nobel laureate, Oliver Hart, is subtle, recognising that the complexity of the world can cause simplistic piece-rate contracts or bonus systems to yield undesirable results.
For instance, if you pay teachers more based on exam results, you will find they “teach to the test” and neglect other important aspects of children’s education. If you reward CEOs primarily based on the firm’s share price performance you will find that they focus on boosting the short-term share price, rather than investing for the long-term health of the company.
Holmstrom and Hart also grappled with the problem of imperfect information. It is hard to measure an individual worker’s productivity, particularly when they are engaged in complex tasks.
So how can you design a contract based on individual performance? Holmstrom’s answer was that where measurement is impossible, or very difficult, pay contracts should be biased towards a fixed salary rather than variable payment for performance.
Yet when information on an employee’s performance is close to perfect, there can also be problems.
The information problem seems to be on the way to resolution in parts of the low-skill economy. Digital technology allows much closer monitoring of workers’ performance than in the past. Pickers at Amazon’s Swansea warehouse are issued with personal satnav computers which direct them around the giant warehouse on the most efficient routes, telling them which goods to collect and place in their trolleys. The devices also monitor the workers’ productivity in real time – and those that don’t make the required output targets are “released” by the management.
The so-called “gig economy” is at the forefront of what some are labelling “management by algorithm”. The London-founded cycling food delivery service app Deliveroo recently tried to implement a new pay scale for riders. The company’s London boss said this new system based on fees per delivery would increase pay for the most efficient riders. UberEats – Uber's own meal delivery service – attempted something similar.
Yet the digital productivity revolution is encountering some resistance. The proposed changes by UberEats and Deliveroo provoked strikes from their workers. And there is a backlash against Amazon’s treatment of warehouse workers.
It is possible that some of this friction is as much about employment status as contract design and pay rates. One of the complaints of the UberEats and Deliveroo couriers is that they are not treated like employees at all.
It may also reflect the current state of the labour market. If people don’t want to work in inhuman warehouses or for demanding technology companies, why don’t they take a job somewhere else? But if there are not enough jobs in a particular region, people may have no choice. The employment rate is at an all-time high, but there’s still statistical evidence that many workers would like more hours if they could get them.
Yet the new technology does pose tough questions about worker treatment. And there is no reason why these techniques of digital monitoring of employees should be confined to the gig economy or low-skill warehouse jobs.
One US tech firm called Percolata installs sensors in shops that measure the volume of customers and then compare that with the sales per employee. This allows managements to make a statistical adjustment for the fact that different shops have different customer footfall rates – it fills in the old information blanks. The result is a closer reading of an individual shop worker’s productivity.
Workers who do better can be awarded with more hours. “It creates this competitive spirit – if I want more hours, I need to step it up a bit,” Percolata’s boss told the Financial Times.
It’s possible to envisage these kinds of digital monitoring techniques and calculations being rolled out in a host of jobs and bosses making pay decisions on the basis of detailed productivity data. But one doesn’t have to be a neo-Luddite to feel uncomfortable with these trends. It’s not simply the potential for tracking mistakes by the computers and flawed statistical adjustments that is problematic, but the issue of how this could transform the nature of the workspace.
Financial incentives matter, yet there is rather more to the relationship between a worker and employer than a pay cheque. Factors such as trust, respect and a sense of common endeavour matter too – and can be important motivators of effort.
If technology meant we could design employment contracts whereby every single worker was paid exactly according to his or her individual productivity, it would not follow that we necessarily should.
Wednesday 12 October 2016
Sunday 9 October 2016
An Open Letter to Moderate Muslims
Ali A Rizvi in The Huffington Post
Let’s start with what I’m not going to do.
I’m not going to accuse you of staying silent in the face of the horrific atrocities being committed around the world by your co-religionists. Most of you have loudly and unequivocally condemned groups like the Islamic State (ISIS), and gone out of your way to dissociate yourselves from them. You have helped successfully isolate ISIS and significantly damage its credibility.
I’m also not going to accuse you of being sympathetic to fundamentalists’ causes like violent jihad or conversion by force. I know you condemn their primitive tactics like the rest of us, maybe even more so, considering the majority of victims of Islamic terrorists are moderate Muslims like yourselves. On this, I am with you.
But I do want to talk to you about your increasingly waning credibility — a concern many of you have articulated as well.
You’re feeling more misunderstood than ever, as Islamic fundamentalists hijack the image of Muslims, ostentatiously presenting themselves as the “voice of Islam.” And worse, everyone seems to be buying it.
The frustration is evident. In response to comedian Bill Maher’s recent segment ripping liberals for their silence on criticizing Islam, religious scholar Reza Aslan slammed him in a CNN interview. Visibly exasperated, he ultimately resorted to using words like “stupid” and “bigot” to make his points. (He apologized for this later.)
We’ll get to Aslan’s other arguments in a bit. But first, let’s talk about something he said to his hosts that I know many of you relate to: that moderate Muslims are too often painted with the same brush as their fundamentalist counterparts. This is often true, and is largely unfair to moderates like yourselves.
But you can’t simply blame this on the “ignorance” or “bigotry” of non-Muslims, or on media bias. Non-Muslims and the media are no more monolithic than the Muslim world you and I come from.
The problem is this: moderate Muslims like you also play a significant role in perpetuating this narrative — even if you don’t intend to.
To understand how, it’s important to see how it looks from the other side.
***
Tell me if this sounds familiar:
(1) A moderate Muslim states that ISIS is wrong, they aren’t “true” Muslims, and Islam is a religion of peace.
(2) A questioner asks: what about verses in the Quran like 4:89, saying to “seize and kill” disbelievers? Or 8:12-13, saying God sent angels to “smite the necks and fingertips” of disbelievers, foreboding a “grievous penalty” for whoever opposes Allah and his Messenger? Or 5:33, which says those who “spread corruption” (a vague phrase widely believed to include blasphemy and apostasy) should be “killed or crucified”? Or 47:4, which also prescribes beheading for disbelievers encountered in jihad?
(3) The Muslim responds by defending these verses as Allah’s word — he insists that they have been quoted “out of context,” have been misinterpreted, are meant as metaphor, or that they may even have been mistranslated.
(4) Despite being shown multiple translations, or told that some of these passages (like similar passages in other holy books) are questionable in any context, the Muslim insists on his/her defense of the Scripture.
Sometimes, this kind of exchange will lead to the questioner being labeled an “Islamophobe,” or being accused of bigotry, as Aslan did with Maher and his CNN hosts. This is a very serious charge that is very effective at ending the conversation.No one wants to be called a bigot.
But put yourself in the shoes of your non-Muslim audience. Is it really them linking Islam to terrorism? We’re surrounded with images and videos of jihadists yelling “Allahu Akbar” and quoting passages from the Quran before beheading someone (usually a non-Muslim), setting off an explosion, or rallying others to battle. Who is really making this connection?
What would you do if this situation was reversed? What are non-Muslims supposed to think when even moderate Muslims like yourselves defend the very same words and book that these fundamentalists effortlessly quote as justification for killing them — as perfect and infallible?
Like other moderates, Reza Aslan frequently bemoans those who read the Quran “literally.” Interestingly enough, we sort of agree on this: the thought of the Quran being read “literally” — or exactly as Allah wrote it — unsettles me as much as it unsettles Reza.
This is telling, and Reza isn’t alone. Many of you insist on alternative interpretations, some kind of metaphorical reading — anything to avoid reading the holy book the way it’s actually written. What message do you think this sends? To those on the outside, it implies there is something lacking in what you claim is God’s perfect word. In a way, you’re telling the listener to value your explanations of these words over the sacred words themselves. Obviously, this doesn’t make a great case for divine authorship. Combined with the claims that the book is widely misunderstood, it makes the writer appear either inarticulate or incompetent. I know that’s not the message you mean to send — I’ve been where you are. But it is important to understand why it comes across that way to many non-Muslims.
If any kind of literature is to be interpreted “metaphorically,” it has to at least represent the original idea. Metaphors are meant to illustrate and clarify ideas, not twist and obscure them. When the literal words speak of blatant violence but are claimed to really mean peace and unity, we’re not in interpretation/metaphor zone anymore; we’re heading into distortion/misrepresentation territory. If this disconnect was limited to one or two verses, I would consider your argument. If your interpretation were accepted by all of the world’s Muslims, I would consider your argument. Unfortunately, neither of these is the case.
You may be shaking your head at this point. I know your explanations are very convincing to fellow believers. That’s expected. When people don’t want to abandon their faith or their conscience, they’ll jump on anything they can find to reconcile the two.
But believe me, outside the echo chamber, all of this is very confusing. I’ve argued with Western liberals who admit they don’t find these arguments convincing, but hold back their opinions for fear of being seen as Islamophobic, or in the interest of supporting moderates within the Muslim community who share their goals of fighting jihad and fundamentalism. Many of your liberal allies are sincere, but you’d be surprised how many won’t tell you what they really think because of fear or political correctness. The only difference between them and Bill Maher is that Maher actually says it.
Unfortunately, this is what’s eating away at your credibility. This is what makes otherwise rational moderate Muslims look remarkably inconsistent. Despite your best intentions, you also embolden anti-Muslim bigots — albeit unknowingly — by effectively narrowing the differences between yourselves and the fundamentalists. You condemn all kinds of terrible things being done in the name of your religion, but when the same things appear as verses in your book, you use all your faculties to defend them. This comes across as either denial or disingenuousness, both of which make an honest conversation impossible.
This presents an obvious dilemma. The belief that the Quran is the unquestionable word of God is fundamental to the Islamic faith, and held by the vast majority of Muslims worldwide, fundamentalist or progressive. Many of you believe that letting it go is as good as calling yourself non-Muslim. I get that. But does it have to be that way?
Having grown up as part of a Muslim family in several Muslim-majority countries, I’ve been hearing discussions about an Islamic reformation for as long as I can remember. Ultimately, I came to believe that the first step to any kind of substantive reformation is to seriously reconsider the concept of scriptural inerrancy.
And I’m not the only one. Maajid Nawaz, a committed Muslim, speaks openly about acknowledging problems in the Quran. Recently, in a brave article here right here on The Huffington Post, Imra Nazeer also asked Muslims to reconsider treating the Quran as infallible.
Is she right? At first glance, this may be a shocking thought. But it’s possible, and it actually has precedent.
***
I grew up in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, before the Internet. We had an after-school tutor who taught us to read and recite the Quran in classical Arabic, the language in which it’s written.
My family is among the majority of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims — concentrated in countries like Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Turkey and Iran — that doesn’t speak Arabic. Millions of us, however, can read the Quran in Arabic, even if we don’t understand it.
In most Muslim households, the Quran is physically placed at the highest place possible. In our house, it was at the top of a tall bookshelf. It cannot be physically touched unless an act of ablution/purification (wudhu) is first performed. It cannot be recited or touched by menstruating women. It is read in its entirety during the Sunni taraweeh prayers in the holy month of Ramadan. In many Muslim communities, it is held over the heads of grooms and brides as a blessing when they get married. A child completing her first reading of the Quran is a momentous occasion — parties are thrown, gifts are given.
But before the Internet, I rarely met anyone — including the devoutly religious — who had really read the Quran in their own language. We just went by what we heard from our elders. We couldn’t Google or verify things instantaneously like we do now.
There were many things in the Quran we didn’t know were in there. Like Aslan, we also mistakenly thought that harsh punishments in Saudi Arabia like decapitation and hand amputation were cultural and not religious. Later, we learned that the Quran does indeed prescribe beheadings, and says clearly in verse 5:38 that thieves, male or female, should have their hands cut off.
Now, there are also other things widely thought to be in the Quran that aren’t actually in there. A prominent example is the hijab or burka — neither is mentioned in the Quran. Also absent is stoning to death as a punishment — it’s mentioned in the hadith (the Sunnah, or traditions of the Prophet), and even in the Old Testament— but not in the Quran.
Neither male nor female circumcision (M/FGM) are found in the Quran. Again, however, both are mentioned in the hadith. When Aslan discussed FGM, he neglected to mention that of the four Sunni schools of jurisprudence, the Shafi’i school makes FGM mandatory based on these hadith, and the other three schools recommend it. This is why Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, mostly Shafi’i, where Aslan said women were “absolutely 100% equal” to men, has an FGM prevalence of at least 86%, with over 90% of families supporting the practice. And the world’s largest Arab Muslim country, Egypt, has an FGM prevalence of over 90%. So yes, both male and female genital cutting pre-date Islam. But it is inaccurate to say that they have no connection whatever to the religion.
***
That is the kind of information I could never reliably access growing up. But with the Internet came exposure.
Suddenly, every 12-year-old kid could search multiple translations of the Quran by topic, in dozens of languages. Nothing was hidden. It was all right there to see. When Lee Rigby’s murderer cited Surah At-Tawbah to justify his actions, we could go online and see exactly what he was talking about. When ISIS claims divine sanction for its actions by citing verse 33 from Surah Al-Maaidah or verse 4 from Surah Muhammad, we can look it up for ourselves and connect the dots.
Needless to say, this is a pretty serious problem, one that you must address. When people see moderates insisting that Islam is peaceful while also defending these verses and claiming they’re misunderstood, it appears inconsistent. When they read these passages and see fundamentalists carrying out exactly what they say, it appears consistent. That’s scary. You should try to understand it. Loudly shouting “Racist!” over the voices of critics, as Ben Affleck did over Maher and Sam Harris last week, isn’t going to make it go away.
(Also, if you think criticizing Islam is racist, you’re saying that all of Islam is one particular race. There’s a word for that.)
Yes, it’s wrong and unfair for anyone to judge a religion by the actions of its followers, be they progressive Muslims or al Qaeda. But it is appropriate and intellectually honest to judge it by the contents of its canonical texts — texts that are now accessible online to anyone and everyone at the tap of a finger.
Today, you need to do better when you address the legitimate questions people have about your beliefs and your holy book. Brushing off everything that is false or disturbing as “metaphor” or “misinterpretation” just isn’t going to cut it. Neither is dismissing the questioner as a bigot.
How, then, to respond?
***
For starters, it might help to read not only the Quran, but the other Abrahamic texts. When you do, you’ll see that the Old Testament has just as much violence, if not more, than the Quran. Stoning blasphemers, stoning fornicators, killing homosexuals — it’s all in there. When you get about ten verses deep into Deuteronomy 20, you may even swear you’re reading a rulebook for ISIS.
You may find yourself asking, how is this possible? The book of the Jews is not much different from my book. How, then, are the majority of them secular? How is it that most don’t take too seriously the words of the Torah/Old Testament — originally believed to be the actual word of God revealed to Moses much like the Quran to Muhammad — yet still retain strong Jewish identities? Can this happen with Islam and Muslims?
Clearly from the above, the answer is a tried-and-tested yes. And it must start by dissociating Islamic identity from Muslim identity — by coming together on a sense of community, not ideology.
Finding consensus on ideology is impossible. The sectarian violence that continues to plague the Muslim world, and has killed more Muslims than any foreign army, is blatant evidence for this. But coming together on a sense of community is what moves any society forward. Look at other Abrahamic religions that underwent reformations. You know well that Judaism and Christianity had their own violence-ridden dark ages; you mention it every chance you get nowadays, and you’re right. But how did they get past that?
Well, as much as the Pope opposes birth control, abortion and premarital sex, most Catholics today are openly pro-choice, practice birth control, and fornicate to their hearts’ content. Most Jews are secular, and many even identify as atheists or agnostics while retaining the Jewish label. The dissidents and the heretics in these communities may get some flak here and there, but they aren’t getting killed for dissenting.
This is in stark contrast to the Muslim world where, according to a worldwide 2013 Pew Research Study, a majority of people in large Muslim-majority countries like Egypt and Pakistan believe that those who leave the faith must die. They constantly obsess over who is a “real” Muslim and who is not. They are quicker to defend their faith from cartoonists and filmmakers than they are to condemn those committing atrocities in its name. (Note: To their credit, the almost universal, unapologetic opposition against ISIS from Muslims is a welcome development.)
***
The word “moderate” has lost its credibility. Fareed Zakaria has referred to Middle Eastern moderates as a “fantasy.” Even apologists like Nathan Lean are pointing out that the use of this word isn’t helping anyone.
Islam needs reformers, not moderates. And words like “reform” just don’t go very well with words like “infallibility.”
The purpose of reform is to change things, fix the system, and move it in a new direction. And to fix something, you have to acknowledge that it’s broken — not that it looks broken, or is being falsely portrayed as broken by the wrong people — but that it’s broken. That is your first step to reformation.
If this sounds too radical, think back to the Prophet Muhammad himself, who was chased out of Mecca for being a radical dissident fighting the Quraysh. Think of why Jesus Christ was crucified. These men didn’t capitulate or shy away from challenging even the most sacred foundations of the status quo.
These men certainly weren’t “moderates.” They were radicals. Rebels. Reformers. That’s how change happens. All revolutions start out as rebellions. Islam itself started this way. Openly challenging problematic ideas isn’t bigotry, and it isn’t blasphemy. If anything, it’s Sunnah.
Get out there, and take it back.
A Free Market in Tax
Nick Cohen in The Guardian
Donald Trump’s tax affairs are as nothing compared to those of the great global corporations
Keeping it offshore: Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven for the world’s rich. Photograph: Alamy
Donald Trump is offering himself as president of a country whose federal income taxes he gives every appearance of dodging. He says he is fit to be commander in chief, after avoiding giving a cent more than he could towards the wages of the troops who must fight for him. He laments an America where “our roads and bridges are falling apart, our airports are in third world condition and 43 million Americans are on food stamps”, while striving tirelessly to avoid paying for one pothole to be mended or mouth to be filled.
Men’s lies reveal more about them than their truths. For years, Trump promoted the bald, racist lie that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and, as an unAmerican, was disqualified from holding the presidency. We should have guessed then. We should have known that Trump’s subconscious was trying to hide the fact that he was barely an American citizen at all.
He would not contribute to his country or play his part in its collective endeavours. Like a guest in a hotel who runs off leaving the bill, Trump wanted to enjoy the room service without paying for the room. You should never lose your capacity to be shocked, especially in 2016 when the shocking has become commonplace. The New York Times published a joint piece last week by former White House ethics advisers – one to George W Bush and one to Barack Obama, so no one could accuse the paper of bias. They were stunned.
No president would have nominated Trump for public office, they said. If one had, “explaining to the senate and to the American people how a billionaire could have a $916m ‘loss carry-forward’ that potentially allowed him to not pay taxes for perhaps as long as 18 years would have been far too difficult for the White House when many hard-working Americans turn a third or more of their earnings over to the government”.
Trump’s bragging about the humiliations he inflicts on women is shocking. Trump’s oxymoronic excuses about his “fiduciary duty” to his businesses to pay as little personal tax as he could are shocking. (No businessman has a corporate “fiduciary duty” to enrich himself rather than his company.) Never let familiarity dilute your contempt.
And yet looked at from another angle, Trump is not so shocking. You may be reading this piece online after clicking on a Facebook link. If you are in Britain, the profits from the adverts Facebook hits you with will be logged in Ireland, which required Facebook to pay a mere €3.4m in corporate taxes last year on revenues of €4.83bn . If you are reading on an Apple device, Apple has booked $214.9bn offshore to avoid $65.4bn in US taxes. They are hardly alone. One recent American study found that 367 of the Fortune 500 operate one or more subsidiaries in tax havens.
Trump may seem a grotesque and alien figure, but his values are all around you. The Pepsi in your hand, the iPhone in your pocket, the Google search engine you load and the Nike trainers you put on your feet come from a tax-exempt economy, which expects you to pick up the bills.
The short answer to Conservatives who say “their behaviour is legal” is that it is a scandal that it is legal. The long answer is to invite them to look at the state of societies where Trumpian economics have taken hold. If they live in Britain or America, they should not have to look far.
The story liberal capitalism tells itself is heroic. Bloated incumbent businesses are overthrown by daring entrepreneurs. They outwit the complacent and blundering old firms and throw them from their pinnacles. They let creative destruction rip through the economy and bring new products and jobs with it.
If that justification for free-market capitalism was ever true, it is not true now. The free market in tax, it turns out, allows firms to move offshore and leave stagnant economies behind. Giant companies are no longer threatened by buccaneering entrepreneurs and innovative small businesses. Indeed, they don’t appear to be threatened by anyone.
The share of nominal GDP generated by the Fortune 100 biggest American companies rose from 33% of GDP in 1994 to 46% in 2013, the Economist reported. Despite all the fuss about tech entrepreneurship, the number of startups is lower than at any time since the late 1970s. More US companies now die than are born.
For how can small firms, which have to pay tax, challenge established giants that move their money offshore? They don’t have lobbyists. They can’t use a small part of their untaxed profits to make the campaign donations Google and the other monopolistic firms give to keep the politicians onside.
John Lewis has asked our government repeatedly how it can be fair to charge the partnership tax while allowing its rival Amazon to run its business through Luxembourg. A more pertinent question is why any government desperate for revenue would want a system that gave tax dodgers a competitive advantage.
What applies to businesses applies to individuals. The tax take depends as much on national culture as the threat of punishment, on what economists call “tax morale”.
No one likes paying taxes, but in northern European and North American countries most thought that they should pay them. Maybe I have lived a sheltered life, but I have no more heard friends discuss how they cheat the taxman than I have heard them discuss how they masturbate. If they cheat, they keep their dirty secrets to themselves. Let tax morale collapse, let belief in the integrity of the system waver, however, and states become like Greece, where everyone who can evade tax does.
The surest way to destroy morale is to make the people who pay taxes believe that the government is taking them for fools by penalising them while sparing the wealthy.
Theresa May promised at the Conservative party conference that “however rich or powerful – you have a duty to pay your tax”.
I would have been more inclined to believe her if she had promised, at this moment of asserting sovereignty, to close the British sovereign tax havens of the Channel Islands, Isle of Man, Bermuda and the British Virgin and Cayman Islands.
But let us give the new PM time to prove herself. If she falters, she should consider this. Revenue & Customs can only check 4% of self-assessment tax returns. If the remaining 96% decide that if Trump and his kind can cheat, they can cheat too, she would not be able to stop them.
Donald Trump’s tax affairs are as nothing compared to those of the great global corporations
Keeping it offshore: Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven for the world’s rich. Photograph: Alamy
Donald Trump is offering himself as president of a country whose federal income taxes he gives every appearance of dodging. He says he is fit to be commander in chief, after avoiding giving a cent more than he could towards the wages of the troops who must fight for him. He laments an America where “our roads and bridges are falling apart, our airports are in third world condition and 43 million Americans are on food stamps”, while striving tirelessly to avoid paying for one pothole to be mended or mouth to be filled.
Men’s lies reveal more about them than their truths. For years, Trump promoted the bald, racist lie that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and, as an unAmerican, was disqualified from holding the presidency. We should have guessed then. We should have known that Trump’s subconscious was trying to hide the fact that he was barely an American citizen at all.
He would not contribute to his country or play his part in its collective endeavours. Like a guest in a hotel who runs off leaving the bill, Trump wanted to enjoy the room service without paying for the room. You should never lose your capacity to be shocked, especially in 2016 when the shocking has become commonplace. The New York Times published a joint piece last week by former White House ethics advisers – one to George W Bush and one to Barack Obama, so no one could accuse the paper of bias. They were stunned.
No president would have nominated Trump for public office, they said. If one had, “explaining to the senate and to the American people how a billionaire could have a $916m ‘loss carry-forward’ that potentially allowed him to not pay taxes for perhaps as long as 18 years would have been far too difficult for the White House when many hard-working Americans turn a third or more of their earnings over to the government”.
Trump’s bragging about the humiliations he inflicts on women is shocking. Trump’s oxymoronic excuses about his “fiduciary duty” to his businesses to pay as little personal tax as he could are shocking. (No businessman has a corporate “fiduciary duty” to enrich himself rather than his company.) Never let familiarity dilute your contempt.
And yet looked at from another angle, Trump is not so shocking. You may be reading this piece online after clicking on a Facebook link. If you are in Britain, the profits from the adverts Facebook hits you with will be logged in Ireland, which required Facebook to pay a mere €3.4m in corporate taxes last year on revenues of €4.83bn . If you are reading on an Apple device, Apple has booked $214.9bn offshore to avoid $65.4bn in US taxes. They are hardly alone. One recent American study found that 367 of the Fortune 500 operate one or more subsidiaries in tax havens.
Trump may seem a grotesque and alien figure, but his values are all around you. The Pepsi in your hand, the iPhone in your pocket, the Google search engine you load and the Nike trainers you put on your feet come from a tax-exempt economy, which expects you to pick up the bills.
The short answer to Conservatives who say “their behaviour is legal” is that it is a scandal that it is legal. The long answer is to invite them to look at the state of societies where Trumpian economics have taken hold. If they live in Britain or America, they should not have to look far.
The story liberal capitalism tells itself is heroic. Bloated incumbent businesses are overthrown by daring entrepreneurs. They outwit the complacent and blundering old firms and throw them from their pinnacles. They let creative destruction rip through the economy and bring new products and jobs with it.
If that justification for free-market capitalism was ever true, it is not true now. The free market in tax, it turns out, allows firms to move offshore and leave stagnant economies behind. Giant companies are no longer threatened by buccaneering entrepreneurs and innovative small businesses. Indeed, they don’t appear to be threatened by anyone.
The share of nominal GDP generated by the Fortune 100 biggest American companies rose from 33% of GDP in 1994 to 46% in 2013, the Economist reported. Despite all the fuss about tech entrepreneurship, the number of startups is lower than at any time since the late 1970s. More US companies now die than are born.
For how can small firms, which have to pay tax, challenge established giants that move their money offshore? They don’t have lobbyists. They can’t use a small part of their untaxed profits to make the campaign donations Google and the other monopolistic firms give to keep the politicians onside.
John Lewis has asked our government repeatedly how it can be fair to charge the partnership tax while allowing its rival Amazon to run its business through Luxembourg. A more pertinent question is why any government desperate for revenue would want a system that gave tax dodgers a competitive advantage.
What applies to businesses applies to individuals. The tax take depends as much on national culture as the threat of punishment, on what economists call “tax morale”.
No one likes paying taxes, but in northern European and North American countries most thought that they should pay them. Maybe I have lived a sheltered life, but I have no more heard friends discuss how they cheat the taxman than I have heard them discuss how they masturbate. If they cheat, they keep their dirty secrets to themselves. Let tax morale collapse, let belief in the integrity of the system waver, however, and states become like Greece, where everyone who can evade tax does.
The surest way to destroy morale is to make the people who pay taxes believe that the government is taking them for fools by penalising them while sparing the wealthy.
Theresa May promised at the Conservative party conference that “however rich or powerful – you have a duty to pay your tax”.
I would have been more inclined to believe her if she had promised, at this moment of asserting sovereignty, to close the British sovereign tax havens of the Channel Islands, Isle of Man, Bermuda and the British Virgin and Cayman Islands.
But let us give the new PM time to prove herself. If she falters, she should consider this. Revenue & Customs can only check 4% of self-assessment tax returns. If the remaining 96% decide that if Trump and his kind can cheat, they can cheat too, she would not be able to stop them.
Friday 7 October 2016
Thank God Theresa May is continuing the historic Tory tradition of fighting the elite
Whenever an elite is unjust, anywhere in the world, from South Africa to Chile to Saudi Arabia, it’s been the Conservative Party that has bravely fought them by selling them weapons and inviting their leaders to dinner.
Mark Steel in The Independent
What a welcome message from Theresa May, that she’s sick of the elite. The Cabinet all applauded, as you’d expect; although 27 of them are millionaires, that doesn’t make them elite – they all got their money by winning it on scratch cards.
The Prime Minister was only abiding by a change to international law that states everyone who makes a public speech now has to insist they can’t stand the “elite”. Donald Trump – a man whose background is so modest that, in one of his castles, he has to go outside to use the moat – hates the elite. Iain Duncan Smith with his modest 15-up 15-down Tudor mansion is fed up with the elite, too. Boris Johnson stands up against the elite, because his background was so humble that one of the kids at his primary school had an imaginary friend who didn’t have his own valet.
This year, the Queen will probably start her Christmas speech by saying, “My husband and I are sick to death of the elite. When one has been required to reign as a working-class monarch, one rather views these elite types with sufficient disdain to get the right hump.”
But May was more specific. She singled out the “Liberal Metropolitan Elite,” for ruining our lives.
You can understand why, because these are the very people who have spoilt everything with their liberal ways. There’s Topshop’s Philip Green, who wasted millions so he could complete a course as a human rights lawyer and get his hipster beard trimmed. Mike Ashley, condemned for his treatment of staff at Sports Direct, has “homeopath” written all over him.
There’s Alan “cycle lane” Sugar, who, if I remember right, turned down his knighthood as a protest against the number of toads that get run over. And the most powerful man in the media is Rupert Murdoch, who publishes newspapers full of feminism and media studies.
One way we must stop these liberals, she insisted, is prevent human rights lawyers from haranguing the army. She’s right there: if there’s one area in which human rights lawyers have absolutelyno need to investigate, it’s war. Whoever heard of an army that isn’t careful to look after human rights? They should concern themselves with real human rights culprits, such as florists.
These abuses have come about because, for 35 years, British life has been relentlessly liberal. It started with Margaret Thatcher, who shut down the mines so they could be replaced by documentaries on BBC4 about Tibetan dance. And she brought in the Poll Tax, but only because she was convinced this would lead to wider ownership of African wood carvings bought from antique shops in Notting Hill.
Then we had liberal Tony Blair with his liberal invasion of Iraq, in which he insisted the air force only used Fairtrade depleted uranium. Now, at last, we’re all sick of being ruled by these elite liberals.
Conservative figures such as Amber Rudd have this week been forced to ask “can we at last talk about immigration?” Thanks to the elite, who can think of a single occasion in the last six months when anyone in public eye has mentioned immigration?
There are some programmes on radio or television that simply refuse to discuss the issue. For example, during a first-round clash in the Swedish open snooker championship on Eurosport, a whole four minutes went by on the commentary without mention of how you can’t move in Lincolnshire for Bulgarians. And two minutes passed by without any talk of immigration during the two-minute silence on Remembrance Day at the Cenotaph. And if we can’t talk about protecting our borders at that time when can we discuss it?
The idea that we should welcome immigration is a perfect example of how the Liberal Metropolitan Elite operates, because foreigners are alright for some with their cheap nannies but down-to-earth types, bless them, can’t stand people who have the nerve to move over here and fix radiators or bed-bath the elderly.
This week is the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, when thousands of people assembled in East London to prevent the British Union of Fascists from marching through a Jewish area. I wonder who was in the crowds that day, linking arms to defy the supporters of Hitler? It can’t have been the working class, since they must all have said “it’s alright for the elite, but these Jews come over here and lower our wages.” So it must have been the Liberal Metropolitan Elite who took on the fascists, by hurling antique carriage clocks at them after distracting them with an avant-garde contemporary dance evening.
Theresa May seems ambitious, because she said she’s going to battle an “international elite”. So they’re global, these elites, and they can only be fought by determined earthy salt-of-the-earth types such as Anna Soubry. Jeremy Hunt, for example, looks exactly like someone who’s just come off an eight-hour shift driving a forklift truck carrying tomatoes round a warehouse for Lidl, shouting “there you go sweetheart, stack them up while I sort out these elite doctors giving it all that about weekends”.
If there’s one thing we know about the Conservative Party, it’s the natural home for common folk who want to take on the international elite.
Whenever an elite is unjust, anywhere in the world, from apartheid South Africa to military Chile or patriarchal Saudi Arabia, it’s been the Conservative Party that has bravely fought them by selling them weapons and inviting their leaders to dinner. Just like the poor-but-happy folk down any council estate always keep a door open for a military dictator, the little darlings.
Lies, fearmongering and fables: that’s our democracy
George Monbiot in The Guardian
What if democracy doesn’t work? What if it never has and never will? What if government of the people, by the people, for the people is a fairytale? What if it functions as a justifying myth for liars and charlatans?
There are plenty of reasons to raise these questions. The lies, exaggerations and fearmongering on both sides of the Brexit non-debate; the xenophobic fables that informed the Hungarian referendum; Donald Trump’s ability to shake off almost any scandal and exposure; the election of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, who gleefully compares himself to Hitler: are these isolated instances or do they reveal a systemic problem?
Democracy for Realists, published earlier this year by the social science professors Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels, argues that the “folk theory of democracy” – the idea that citizens make coherent and intelligible policy decisions, on which governments then act – bears no relationship to how it really works. Or could ever work.
Voters, they contend, can’t possibly live up to these expectations. Most are too busy with jobs and families and troubles of their own. When we do have time off, not many of us choose to spend it sifting competing claims about the fiscal implications of quantitative easing. Even when we do, we don’t behave as the theory suggests.
2.8 million voters punished Al Gore for the floods and droughts of 2000 – ironic, given his position on climate change
Our folk theory of democracy is grounded in an Enlightenment notion of rational choice. This proposes that we make political decisions by seeking information, weighing the evidence and using it to choose good policies, then attempting to elect a government that will champion those policies. In doing so, we compete with other rational voters, and seek to reach the unpersuaded through reasoned debate.
In reality, the research summarised by Achen and Bartels suggests, most people possess almost no useful information about policies and their implications, have little desire to improve their state of knowledge, and have a deep aversion to political disagreement. We base our political decisions on who we are rather than what we think. In other words, we act politically – not as individual, rational beings but as members of social groups, expressing a social identity. We seek out the political parties that seem to correspond best to our culture, with little regard to whether their policies support our interests. We remain loyal to political parties long after they have ceased to serve us.
Of course, shifts do happen, sometimes as a result of extreme circumstances, sometimes because another party positions itself as a better guardian of a particular cultural identity. But they seldom involve a rational assessment of policy.
The idea that parties are guided by policy decisions made by voters also seems to be a myth; in reality, the parties make the policies and we fall into line. To minimise cognitive dissonance – the gulf between what we perceive and what we believe – we either adjust our views to those of our favoured party or avoid discovering what the party really stands for. This is how people end up voting against their interests.
We are suckers for language. When surveys asked Americans whether the federal government was spending too little on “assistance to the poor”, 65% agreed. But only 25% agreed that it was spending too little on “welfare”. In the approach to the 1991 Gulf war, nearly two-thirds of Americans said they were willing to “use military force”; less than 30% were willing to “go to war”.
Even the less ambitious notion of democracy – that it’s a means by which people punish or reward governments – turns out to be divorced from reality. We remember only the past few months of a government’s performance (a bias known as “duration neglect”) and are hopeless at correctly attributing blame. A great white shark that killed five people in July 1916 caused a 10% swing against Woodrow Wilson in the beach communities of New Jersey. In 2000, according to analysis by the authors 2.8 million voters punished the Democrats for the floods and droughts that struck that year. Al Gore, they say, lost Arizona, Louisiana, Nevada, Florida, New Hampshire, Tennessee and Missouri as a result – which is ironic given his position on climate change.
The obvious answer is better information and civic education. But this doesn’t work either. Moderately informed Republicans were more inclined than Republicans with the least information to believe that Bill Clinton oversaw an increase in the budget deficit (it declined massively). Why? Because, unlike the worst informed, they knew he was a Democrat. The tiny number of people with a very high level of political information tend to use it not to challenge their own opinions but to rationalise them. Political knowledge, Achen and Bartels argue, “enhances bias”.
Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems
Direct democracy – referendums and citizens’ initiatives – seems to produce even worse results. In the US initiatives are repeatedly used by multimillion-dollar lobby groups to achieve results that state legislatures won’t grant them. They tend to replace taxes with user fees, stymie the redistribution of wealth and degrade public services. Whether representative or direct, democracy comes to be owned by the elites.
This is not to suggest that it has no virtues; just that those it does have are not those we principally ascribe to it. It allows governments to be changed without bloodshed, limits terms in office, and ensures that the results of elections are widely accepted. Sometimes public attribution of blame will coincide with reality, which is why you don’t get famines in democracies.
In these respects it beats dictatorship. But is this all it has to offer? A weakness of Democracy for Realists is that most of its examples are drawn from the US, and most of those are old. Had the authors examined popular education groups in Latin America, participatory budgets in Brazil and New York, the fragmentation of traditional parties in Europe and the movement that culminated in Bernie Sanders’ near miss, they might have discerned more room for hope. This is not to suggest that the folk theory of democracy comes close to reality anywhere, but that the situation is not as hopeless as they propose.
Persistent, determined, well-organised groups can bring neglected issues to the fore and change political outcomes. But in doing so they cannot rely on what democracy ought to be. We must see it for what it is. And that means understanding what we are.
What if democracy doesn’t work? What if it never has and never will? What if government of the people, by the people, for the people is a fairytale? What if it functions as a justifying myth for liars and charlatans?
There are plenty of reasons to raise these questions. The lies, exaggerations and fearmongering on both sides of the Brexit non-debate; the xenophobic fables that informed the Hungarian referendum; Donald Trump’s ability to shake off almost any scandal and exposure; the election of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, who gleefully compares himself to Hitler: are these isolated instances or do they reveal a systemic problem?
Democracy for Realists, published earlier this year by the social science professors Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels, argues that the “folk theory of democracy” – the idea that citizens make coherent and intelligible policy decisions, on which governments then act – bears no relationship to how it really works. Or could ever work.
Voters, they contend, can’t possibly live up to these expectations. Most are too busy with jobs and families and troubles of their own. When we do have time off, not many of us choose to spend it sifting competing claims about the fiscal implications of quantitative easing. Even when we do, we don’t behave as the theory suggests.
2.8 million voters punished Al Gore for the floods and droughts of 2000 – ironic, given his position on climate change
Our folk theory of democracy is grounded in an Enlightenment notion of rational choice. This proposes that we make political decisions by seeking information, weighing the evidence and using it to choose good policies, then attempting to elect a government that will champion those policies. In doing so, we compete with other rational voters, and seek to reach the unpersuaded through reasoned debate.
In reality, the research summarised by Achen and Bartels suggests, most people possess almost no useful information about policies and their implications, have little desire to improve their state of knowledge, and have a deep aversion to political disagreement. We base our political decisions on who we are rather than what we think. In other words, we act politically – not as individual, rational beings but as members of social groups, expressing a social identity. We seek out the political parties that seem to correspond best to our culture, with little regard to whether their policies support our interests. We remain loyal to political parties long after they have ceased to serve us.
Of course, shifts do happen, sometimes as a result of extreme circumstances, sometimes because another party positions itself as a better guardian of a particular cultural identity. But they seldom involve a rational assessment of policy.
The idea that parties are guided by policy decisions made by voters also seems to be a myth; in reality, the parties make the policies and we fall into line. To minimise cognitive dissonance – the gulf between what we perceive and what we believe – we either adjust our views to those of our favoured party or avoid discovering what the party really stands for. This is how people end up voting against their interests.
We are suckers for language. When surveys asked Americans whether the federal government was spending too little on “assistance to the poor”, 65% agreed. But only 25% agreed that it was spending too little on “welfare”. In the approach to the 1991 Gulf war, nearly two-thirds of Americans said they were willing to “use military force”; less than 30% were willing to “go to war”.
Even the less ambitious notion of democracy – that it’s a means by which people punish or reward governments – turns out to be divorced from reality. We remember only the past few months of a government’s performance (a bias known as “duration neglect”) and are hopeless at correctly attributing blame. A great white shark that killed five people in July 1916 caused a 10% swing against Woodrow Wilson in the beach communities of New Jersey. In 2000, according to analysis by the authors 2.8 million voters punished the Democrats for the floods and droughts that struck that year. Al Gore, they say, lost Arizona, Louisiana, Nevada, Florida, New Hampshire, Tennessee and Missouri as a result – which is ironic given his position on climate change.
The obvious answer is better information and civic education. But this doesn’t work either. Moderately informed Republicans were more inclined than Republicans with the least information to believe that Bill Clinton oversaw an increase in the budget deficit (it declined massively). Why? Because, unlike the worst informed, they knew he was a Democrat. The tiny number of people with a very high level of political information tend to use it not to challenge their own opinions but to rationalise them. Political knowledge, Achen and Bartels argue, “enhances bias”.
Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems
Direct democracy – referendums and citizens’ initiatives – seems to produce even worse results. In the US initiatives are repeatedly used by multimillion-dollar lobby groups to achieve results that state legislatures won’t grant them. They tend to replace taxes with user fees, stymie the redistribution of wealth and degrade public services. Whether representative or direct, democracy comes to be owned by the elites.
This is not to suggest that it has no virtues; just that those it does have are not those we principally ascribe to it. It allows governments to be changed without bloodshed, limits terms in office, and ensures that the results of elections are widely accepted. Sometimes public attribution of blame will coincide with reality, which is why you don’t get famines in democracies.
In these respects it beats dictatorship. But is this all it has to offer? A weakness of Democracy for Realists is that most of its examples are drawn from the US, and most of those are old. Had the authors examined popular education groups in Latin America, participatory budgets in Brazil and New York, the fragmentation of traditional parties in Europe and the movement that culminated in Bernie Sanders’ near miss, they might have discerned more room for hope. This is not to suggest that the folk theory of democracy comes close to reality anywhere, but that the situation is not as hopeless as they propose.
Persistent, determined, well-organised groups can bring neglected issues to the fore and change political outcomes. But in doing so they cannot rely on what democracy ought to be. We must see it for what it is. And that means understanding what we are.
Thursday 6 October 2016
PG Wodehouse's creative writing lessons
Sam Jordison in The Guardian
Anyone wanting to learn about plotting, not to mention prose perfection, should look to Leave it to Psmith's lean, absurd genius
Anyone wanting to learn about plotting, not to mention prose perfection, should look to Leave it to Psmith's lean, absurd genius
'I always feel the thing to go for is speed' … PG Wodehouse at his typewriter at his Long Island home in 1971. Photograph: AP
"I have been wondering where you would take this reading group for the book, although very enjoyable, isn't particularly nuanced or layered. What you read is all you get."
So wrote Reading group contributor AlanWSkinner wrote last week. I've been wondering too – worrying even. Leave It To Psmith offers plenty of delights. I laughed all the way through this story of impostors, jewel thieves and poets at Blandings Castle. But it's true that most of the novel's pleasures lie on the surface. AlanWSkinner may be right that there isn't much more than meets the eye. That's not a problem. But what scope does it leave for literary inquisition?
The truth is that I'd feel like I was attacking a soufflé with a pickaxe if I were to start hacking around for deep themes, dark images and political implications. Maybe it's possible to make something of the hilarious moral qualities Wodehouse ascribes to clothing. Why does he present Lord Emsworth "mould-stained and wearing a deplorable old jacket"? When we first meet Psmith, is it important that we are treated to the sight of "a very tall, very thin, very solemn young man, gleaming in a speckless top hat and a morning coat of irreproachable fit"? If this were Shakespeare I'd be looking for great significance in the similar descriptions that run throughout the book. But in Wodehouse, it just seems too much like over-explaining the joke, like attaching too much weight to an admirably light book. I think it's probably safest to assume that the only thing that really matters is that these sartorial notes are funny and help conjure up that magical inter-war world. Safe not least because burrowing any deeper would put us firmly into the camp of the poets and poseurs that Lady Constance Keeble has started to inflict on her poor old brother at Blandings Castle. And who wouldn't sympathise with Lord Emsworth when he declares: "Look here Connie … You know I hate literary fellows. It's bad enough having them in the house, but when it comes to having to go to London to fetch 'em … "
Fortunately, although I don't want to go deep, there are still things to say about Leave It To Psmith. For a start, that surface is covered in gems:
"The door opened, and Beach the butler entered, a dignified procession of one."
"My son Frederick," said Lord Emsworth, rather in the voice with which he would have called attention to the presence of a slug among his flowers."
"It contained a table with a red cloth, a chair, three stuffed birds in a glass case on the wall, and a small horsehair sofa. A depressing musty scent pervaded the place, as if a cheese had recently died there in painful circumstances. Eve gave a little shiver of distaste."
As the erstwhile editor of a series of books about Crap Towns, I also can't resist quoting the following description of the fictional Wallingford Street, West Kensington, at length:
"When the great revolution against London's ugliness really starts and yelling hordes of artists and architects, maddened beyond endurance, finally take the law into their own hands and rage through the city burning and destroying, Wallingford Street, West Kensington, will surely not escape the torch … Situated in the middle of one of those districts where London breaks out into a sort of eczema of red brick, it consists of two parallel rows of semi-detached villas, all exactly alike, each guarded by a ragged evergreen hedge, each with coloured glass of an extremely regrettable nature let into the panels of the front door; and sensitive young impressionists from the artists' colony up Holland Park way may sometimes be seen stumbling through it with hands over their eyes, muttering between clenched teeth 'How long? How long?'"
How wonderful to be in the presence of a master.
Such writing cannot be equalled. I wouldn't recommend that anyone should try. I'd also attempt to conceal from budding authors the horrifying information that Wodehouse wrote 40,000 words of this quality in just three weeks in 1922 and wrapped up the entire novel in a matter of months.
Otherwise, Leave It To Psmith should be compulsory reading for creative writing classes around the world. Especially when backed up by PG Wodehouse's own generous suggestions for a wannabe writer in a Paris Review interview given two years before his death in 1975 (a mere half-century after he wrote this novel) :
"I'd give him practical advice, and that is always get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I always feel the thing to go for is speed. Nothing puts the reader off more than a great slab of prose at the start."
In Leave It To Psmith the younger Wodehouse does just what his 91-year-old incarnation recommends. He hits the dialogue within a page of opening, and although many beautiful descriptions follow, a quick flick through suggests that there is never any more than a single page without some conversation. No danger of getting lost in details here.
In the same interview, he said:
"For a humorous novel you've got to have a scenario, and you've got to test it so that you know where the comedy comes in, where the situations come in … splitting it up into scenes (you can make a scene of almost anything) and have as little stuff in between as possible."
Again, it's all but impossible to find anything "in between". All the action takes place in clear, discrete scenes and each one leads to the other naturally and easily and with remarkable precision. It's lean. It's heading somewhere.
It almost didn't surprise me to learn that the book was successfully adapted for the stage during Wodehouse's lifetime. Almost. Because although the scenes are laid out as neatly as moody Blandings gardener Angus McAllister's flowerbeds, there's still a fiendish complexity behind them. Wodehouse also told The Paris Review:
"I think the success of every novel – if it's a novel of action – depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, '"Which are my big scenes?'' and then get every drop of juice out of them. The principle I always go on in writing a novel is to think of the characters in terms of actors in a play. I say to myself, if a big name were playing this part, and if he found that after a strong first act he had practically nothing to do in the second act, he would walk out. Now, then, can I twist the story so as to give him plenty to do all the way through?"
Yes, he thought about how things might work on the stage. But the crucial phrase here is "twist". The practical exercise I'd give to those lucky creative writing students would be to try to draw a schematic diagram of the plot of Leave It To Psmith, using coloured pencils, and, if they want to get really fancy, algebraic symbols for each of the characters and their movements. The resulting equations would be of fiendish complexity, there would be rainbows and arrows all over the place, leading to increasingly thick clumps where, with exquisite timing, Wodehouse has managed to land everyone in the same place at the right time. To give one quick example, the way in which he gets Psmith to Blandings Castle depends on at least three incredible coincidences, four or five bravura pieces of scene shifting that ensure Psmith lands in a chair opposite Lord Emsworth (and recently vacated by the Canadian poet Ralston McRodd) – not to mention a quite brilliant sleight of hand to enable Psmith to convince the Earl that he is the "Singer of Saskatoon" and expected at Blandings … And that's before he meets the Honourable Freddie Threepwood on a train and the plot really gets moving.
It's a masterpiece of timing and technique and the beautiful thing is, as a reader, you hardly even hear this intricate mechanism that Wodehouse has set ticking, so wonderful is everything else. There's a famous quote from VS Pritchett about his fellow Dulwich college alumnus: "The strength of Wodehouse lies not in his almost incomprehensibly intricate plots –Restoration comedy again – but in his prose style and there, above all, in his command of mind-splitting metaphor. To describe a girl as 'the sand in civilisation's spinach' enlarges and decorates the imagination."
I don't entirely agree. I think his plots are extraordinary. Few writers are better at moving characters around the board, even if few make them do sillier things. Their complexity is part of their charm and it's no surprise that Wodehouse said:
"It's the plots that I find so hard to work out. It takes such a long time to work one out."
What is surprising is that he then added:
"I like to think of some scene, it doesn't matter how crazy, and work backward and forward from it until eventually it becomes quite plausible and fits neatly into the story."
Plausible! That's almost as funny as his intentional jokes. The other delight of the Wodehouse plot is that it is almost entirely, gloriously absurd. But still. If you want to know how to construct a story, there are definitely worse places to look than Leave It To Psmith.
Where Pritchett is right, is in saying that the real glory of Wodehouse's scenarios lies in providing a platform for all his other talents. For getting Freddie Threepwood into a situation where he might propose to Eve Halliday by stating: "I say, I do think that you might marry a chap." For getting us all wondering what Ralston McTodd means when he invites us to look "across the pale parabola of joy". For sending Baxter tumbling down some stairs in a "Lucifer-like descent". For making, in short, this work of genius possible.
"I have been wondering where you would take this reading group for the book, although very enjoyable, isn't particularly nuanced or layered. What you read is all you get."
So wrote Reading group contributor AlanWSkinner wrote last week. I've been wondering too – worrying even. Leave It To Psmith offers plenty of delights. I laughed all the way through this story of impostors, jewel thieves and poets at Blandings Castle. But it's true that most of the novel's pleasures lie on the surface. AlanWSkinner may be right that there isn't much more than meets the eye. That's not a problem. But what scope does it leave for literary inquisition?
The truth is that I'd feel like I was attacking a soufflé with a pickaxe if I were to start hacking around for deep themes, dark images and political implications. Maybe it's possible to make something of the hilarious moral qualities Wodehouse ascribes to clothing. Why does he present Lord Emsworth "mould-stained and wearing a deplorable old jacket"? When we first meet Psmith, is it important that we are treated to the sight of "a very tall, very thin, very solemn young man, gleaming in a speckless top hat and a morning coat of irreproachable fit"? If this were Shakespeare I'd be looking for great significance in the similar descriptions that run throughout the book. But in Wodehouse, it just seems too much like over-explaining the joke, like attaching too much weight to an admirably light book. I think it's probably safest to assume that the only thing that really matters is that these sartorial notes are funny and help conjure up that magical inter-war world. Safe not least because burrowing any deeper would put us firmly into the camp of the poets and poseurs that Lady Constance Keeble has started to inflict on her poor old brother at Blandings Castle. And who wouldn't sympathise with Lord Emsworth when he declares: "Look here Connie … You know I hate literary fellows. It's bad enough having them in the house, but when it comes to having to go to London to fetch 'em … "
Fortunately, although I don't want to go deep, there are still things to say about Leave It To Psmith. For a start, that surface is covered in gems:
"The door opened, and Beach the butler entered, a dignified procession of one."
"My son Frederick," said Lord Emsworth, rather in the voice with which he would have called attention to the presence of a slug among his flowers."
"It contained a table with a red cloth, a chair, three stuffed birds in a glass case on the wall, and a small horsehair sofa. A depressing musty scent pervaded the place, as if a cheese had recently died there in painful circumstances. Eve gave a little shiver of distaste."
As the erstwhile editor of a series of books about Crap Towns, I also can't resist quoting the following description of the fictional Wallingford Street, West Kensington, at length:
"When the great revolution against London's ugliness really starts and yelling hordes of artists and architects, maddened beyond endurance, finally take the law into their own hands and rage through the city burning and destroying, Wallingford Street, West Kensington, will surely not escape the torch … Situated in the middle of one of those districts where London breaks out into a sort of eczema of red brick, it consists of two parallel rows of semi-detached villas, all exactly alike, each guarded by a ragged evergreen hedge, each with coloured glass of an extremely regrettable nature let into the panels of the front door; and sensitive young impressionists from the artists' colony up Holland Park way may sometimes be seen stumbling through it with hands over their eyes, muttering between clenched teeth 'How long? How long?'"
How wonderful to be in the presence of a master.
Such writing cannot be equalled. I wouldn't recommend that anyone should try. I'd also attempt to conceal from budding authors the horrifying information that Wodehouse wrote 40,000 words of this quality in just three weeks in 1922 and wrapped up the entire novel in a matter of months.
Otherwise, Leave It To Psmith should be compulsory reading for creative writing classes around the world. Especially when backed up by PG Wodehouse's own generous suggestions for a wannabe writer in a Paris Review interview given two years before his death in 1975 (a mere half-century after he wrote this novel) :
"I'd give him practical advice, and that is always get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I always feel the thing to go for is speed. Nothing puts the reader off more than a great slab of prose at the start."
In Leave It To Psmith the younger Wodehouse does just what his 91-year-old incarnation recommends. He hits the dialogue within a page of opening, and although many beautiful descriptions follow, a quick flick through suggests that there is never any more than a single page without some conversation. No danger of getting lost in details here.
In the same interview, he said:
"For a humorous novel you've got to have a scenario, and you've got to test it so that you know where the comedy comes in, where the situations come in … splitting it up into scenes (you can make a scene of almost anything) and have as little stuff in between as possible."
Again, it's all but impossible to find anything "in between". All the action takes place in clear, discrete scenes and each one leads to the other naturally and easily and with remarkable precision. It's lean. It's heading somewhere.
It almost didn't surprise me to learn that the book was successfully adapted for the stage during Wodehouse's lifetime. Almost. Because although the scenes are laid out as neatly as moody Blandings gardener Angus McAllister's flowerbeds, there's still a fiendish complexity behind them. Wodehouse also told The Paris Review:
"I think the success of every novel – if it's a novel of action – depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, '"Which are my big scenes?'' and then get every drop of juice out of them. The principle I always go on in writing a novel is to think of the characters in terms of actors in a play. I say to myself, if a big name were playing this part, and if he found that after a strong first act he had practically nothing to do in the second act, he would walk out. Now, then, can I twist the story so as to give him plenty to do all the way through?"
Yes, he thought about how things might work on the stage. But the crucial phrase here is "twist". The practical exercise I'd give to those lucky creative writing students would be to try to draw a schematic diagram of the plot of Leave It To Psmith, using coloured pencils, and, if they want to get really fancy, algebraic symbols for each of the characters and their movements. The resulting equations would be of fiendish complexity, there would be rainbows and arrows all over the place, leading to increasingly thick clumps where, with exquisite timing, Wodehouse has managed to land everyone in the same place at the right time. To give one quick example, the way in which he gets Psmith to Blandings Castle depends on at least three incredible coincidences, four or five bravura pieces of scene shifting that ensure Psmith lands in a chair opposite Lord Emsworth (and recently vacated by the Canadian poet Ralston McRodd) – not to mention a quite brilliant sleight of hand to enable Psmith to convince the Earl that he is the "Singer of Saskatoon" and expected at Blandings … And that's before he meets the Honourable Freddie Threepwood on a train and the plot really gets moving.
It's a masterpiece of timing and technique and the beautiful thing is, as a reader, you hardly even hear this intricate mechanism that Wodehouse has set ticking, so wonderful is everything else. There's a famous quote from VS Pritchett about his fellow Dulwich college alumnus: "The strength of Wodehouse lies not in his almost incomprehensibly intricate plots –Restoration comedy again – but in his prose style and there, above all, in his command of mind-splitting metaphor. To describe a girl as 'the sand in civilisation's spinach' enlarges and decorates the imagination."
I don't entirely agree. I think his plots are extraordinary. Few writers are better at moving characters around the board, even if few make them do sillier things. Their complexity is part of their charm and it's no surprise that Wodehouse said:
"It's the plots that I find so hard to work out. It takes such a long time to work one out."
What is surprising is that he then added:
"I like to think of some scene, it doesn't matter how crazy, and work backward and forward from it until eventually it becomes quite plausible and fits neatly into the story."
Plausible! That's almost as funny as his intentional jokes. The other delight of the Wodehouse plot is that it is almost entirely, gloriously absurd. But still. If you want to know how to construct a story, there are definitely worse places to look than Leave It To Psmith.
Where Pritchett is right, is in saying that the real glory of Wodehouse's scenarios lies in providing a platform for all his other talents. For getting Freddie Threepwood into a situation where he might propose to Eve Halliday by stating: "I say, I do think that you might marry a chap." For getting us all wondering what Ralston McTodd means when he invites us to look "across the pale parabola of joy". For sending Baxter tumbling down some stairs in a "Lucifer-like descent". For making, in short, this work of genius possible.
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