2% of popn. own half the wealth

[Irish Frank]

Quoting Steveo from 23:53, 6th Dec 2006

Your comment, Bryn, smacks of the usual liberal crying and moaning, without any idea of a solution. You've made a bandwagon jumping comment, and that doesn't surprise me, because like many students, you've got wishy washy, wet drip liberal down to a tee.

This is why the Tories, try as they might, just can't get elected. Instead of a solution we have intolerant froth.

A solution to this global problem is:

- domestically - redistribution and progressive taxation, the bete noire of the Tory party as it annoys their tax-dodging financiers

- internationally - ending the Common Agricultural Policy and US protection of agriculture to allow Third World produce to compete fairly in First World markets, lifting people in the Third World out of poverty. International aid and loans should be conditional on increased social, health and education programs in the recipient states. Thus the First World should increase their aid and cut tariffs that prevent Third World goods competing here, which would help the Third World economies grow and people move off the breadline.

[Senethro]

Quoting Irish Frank from 10:48, 7th Dec 2006

Quoting Steveo from 23:53, 6th Dec 2006

Your comment, Bryn, smacks of the usual liberal crying and moaning, without any idea of a solution. You've made a bandwagon jumping comment, and that doesn't surprise me, because like many students, you've got wishy washy, wet drip liberal down to a tee.

This is why the Tories, try as they might, just can't get elected. Instead of a solution we have intolerant froth.

A solution to this global problem is:

- domestically - redistribution and progressive taxation, the bete noire of the Tory party as it annoys their tax-dodging financiers

- internationally - ending the Common Agricultural Policy and US protection of agriculture to allow Third World produce to compete fairly in First World markets, lifting people in the Third World out of poverty. International aid and loans should be conditional on increased social, health and education programs in the recipient states. Thus the First World should increase their aid and cut tariffs that prevent Third World goods competing here, which would help the Third World economies grow and people move off the breadline.

Would never happen. Those policies are similarly unelectable. How many people, apart from Green voters, would vote for a party that causes a decrease in their living standard?

[Humphrey]

Actually the Tories aren't in power is because New Labour are far better at being a conservative government. Thatcherism has not been discredited, it has become the political concensus.

[hr]

http://www.livejournal.com/users/humphrey_clarke/

[Senethro]

Quoting Humphrey from 11:53, 7th Dec 2006
Actually the Tories aren't in power is because New Labour are far better at being a conservative government. Thatcherism has not been discredited, it has become the political concensus.

[hr]

http://www.livejournal.com/users/humphrey_clarke/

Despite this, there are thousands of furious posts at Have Your Say telling us how Blair and New labour are the worst thing ever!
I'm glad Cameron isn't trying to out-Conservative Labour.

[Fíníneach Cróga]

Quoting Steveo from 23:53, 6th Dec 2006

Quoting Bryn from 22:39, 6th Dec 2006
There are some really horrible people on The Sinner, who don't seem to care about other people at all. You people are the future of this country? That's just terrifying.

The idea that you may one day shape any sort of future would terrify me, however, I diverge from the task in hand.

It bothers me not one bit that a small percent of people own a large percentage of the wealth. Firstly, I am reminded of Lady Thatchers famous speech to the House of Commons on 22nd November 1990, where she says that, and I quote:

"He were rather the poor were poorer provided the rich were less rich. That way you will never create the wealth for better social services".

Your comment, Bryn, smacks of the usual liberal crying and moaning, without any idea of a solution. You've made a bandwagon jumping comment, and that doesn't surprise me, because like many students, you've got wishy washy, wet drip liberal down to a tee.

Wealth concentrated as it is isn't a problem, redistribution is:

"So long as the gap is smaller, they'd rather have the poor poorer, you do not create wealth and opportunity that way".
- M. Thatcher 1990

No amount of distance lends enchantment to socialism and redistribution. It led to Britain having the lowest growth rate in Europe.

[s] Edit: Spelling errors.

Dear dear dear. Such a venomous attack on Mr. Bryn. Wouldn't be simply down to sour grapes over him pipping you to the post in the elections for association chair recently, would it?

Word of advice should you ever want to run for a position again and secure my vote: Acknowledge someone back when they nod to you on the street instead of looking like you have you have just been raped with a dead cat, and *perhaps* try and understand that other people may not share your view that Maggie Thatcher wasn't the greatest thing to exist since sliced poll tax. This gratuitously applied liberal-bashing is beginning to become most tedious.

[Gubbins]

Quoting Irish Frank from 10:48, 7th Dec 2006
- internationally - ending the Common Agricultural Policy and US protection of agriculture to allow Third World produce to compete fairly in First World markets

One of the aims of the CAP/US agriculture protection is to safeguard against poverty and unemployment of agricultural producers in the "First World". Whether the system works or not is another matter, but removing such support entirely only exacerbates the domestic problem.

[hr]

...but then again, that is only my opinion.

[LonelyPilgrim]

Part of the 'problem' is that most people don't understand wealth. We are still inclined to think of wealth in terms of possessions... land, gold, goods, etc. The fact is that once money was seperated from either a gold or silver standard in the West, and free floating exchange rates were introduced, 'wealth' in the form of GDP is divorced from any tangible physical possession. Likewise it became possible to 'create' wealth, since money and wealth were ideas rather than physical possessions. After all, a stock certificate has no absolute value beyond the value of hte paper it's printed on. Same with your ten quid note.

So to some extent, at least since the end of colonialism, most of the wealth in the West has come from internal development and investment and not from rapine and unfair trade practices (though I'm not saying that such practices don't exist). There are a lot of reasons why the 'Third World' isn't as wealthy as the West and most of them have very little to do with the West. A lot of them are cultural. Development requires an entrepenueral ethos and a modern middle class that can take generations of education and infrastructure development before they reaches a take off point in any given country. All of which can be derailed by civil strife, revolution, or unfavorable trade environments.

Also, let us not forget that a massive amount of the 'wealth' of the West is tied up in it's infrastructure and public services, so trying to 'transfer' it to the Third World would be impossible. You can't just pick up the A6 and give it to Ghana, or loan the NHS to Mozambique.

[hr]

Arma virumque cano...

[Frank]

Quoting LonelyPilgrim from 00:55, 8th Dec 2006You can't just pick up the A6 and give it to Ghana, or loan the NHS to Mozambique.

Talk about laying down the gauntlet!

[hr]

"There is only ever one truth. Things are always black or white, there's no such thing as a shade of grey. If you think that something is a shade of grey it simply means that you don't fully understand the situation. The truth is narrow and the path of the pursuit of truth is similarly narrow."

[Irish Frank]

Quoting Gubbins from 14:00, 7th Dec 2006

One of the aims of the CAP/US agriculture protection is to safeguard against poverty and unemployment of agricultural producers in the "First World". Whether the system works or not is another matter, but removing such support entirely only exacerbates the domestic problem.

The reason that politicians care about the rural vote is that rural farmers have serious cash. Cash obtained from the EU. Now that Labour have destroyed their English rural vote with the anti-foxhunting legislation, why not do something truly visionary and end the CAP and state subisidies of agriculture? Labour have nothing to gain from keeping the current system which is directly contributing to African starvation.

The Tories are, as ever, an anachronism, as Steveo has shown.

[Lid]

Quoting Irish Frank from 01:12, 8th Dec 2006
The Tories are, as ever, an anachronism, as Steveo has shown.

In a post full to brimming with generalisations, I'm only going to take issue with this one. Steveo is a Tory. Steveo is not the Tories.

[hr]

We are not drunks, we are multi-millionaires

[Sr. AGiC.]

One cannot help the poor by being poor.

[Sr. AGiC.]

Just one more comment -

I was also a student a few years back, and it it is all well and good students talking about wealth redistribution and progressive tax when you dont pay an awfull lot of it - queue much moaning about 'how much tax us students pay'. Yes, i agree, we all pay a lot of tax through VAT etc, however wait until £1500 of tax and £300 on NI is deducted direct from your earnings every month. Then let me know what you think.

However, the fact is we all go to Uni to be able to get a better more fulfilling and ultimately, better paid job.

When you get your good, well paid job you will feel you deserve it as you have worked hard for it and so you should. You have.

But when you see all the tax being taken from your pay and then hear people on the street saying things like (and you do hear this in London) "Yeah, my mate Candice is up the duff again, but she's appy as she gets more benefits" as they are swanning (sp) around in the middle of the day drinking beer, it annoys me. It annoys me that my hard earned money is being given to lazy, workshy people like that.

I would object far less to paying extortionate amounts of tax if i felt it was helping those who need it most. But it does not. We have soldiers suffering post traumatic stress but have no specialist hospitals to go to to get treated, we have children living on the poverty line, we have the elderly who cant afford to heat their houses beacause they have to pay extortionate council tax bills. These are the people i want to help with my tax bills not the Candice's of the world and there alcoholic boyfriends.

Then, when i have worked hard ALL my life and paid 40% tax most of my life and i am on my death bed i will think well at least i have worked hard to achieve this and give my children a head start in life. WRONG. THINK AGAIN. The tax man will take another 40% and give it to more beer swilling louts that the labour party like to prop up as that is their voting majority!

Thank you for listening....

[Senethro]

Quoting Sr. AGiC. from 08:37, 8th Dec 2006
Just one more comment -

I was also a student a few years back, and it it is all well and good students talking about wealth redistribution and progressive tax when you dont pay an awfull lot of it - queue much moaning about 'how much tax us students pay'. Yes, i agree, we all pay a lot of tax through VAT etc, however wait until £1500 of tax and £300 on NI is deducted direct from your earnings every month. Then let me know what you think.

However, the fact is we all go to Uni to be able to get a better more fulfilling and ultimately, better paid job.

When you get your good, well paid job you will feel you deserve it as you have worked hard for it and so you should. You have.

But when you see all the tax being taken from your pay and then hear people on the street saying things like (and you do hear this in London) "Yeah, my mate Candice is up the duff again, but she's appy as she gets more benefits" as they are swanning (sp) around in the middle of the day drinking beer, it annoys me. It annoys me that my heard earned money is being given to lazy, workshy people like that.

I would object far less to paying extortionate amounts of tax if i felt it was helping those who need it most. But it does not. We have soldiers suffering post traumatic stress but have no specialist hospitals to go to to get treated, we have children living on the poverty line, we have the elderly who cant afford to heat their houses beacause they have to pay extortionate council tax bills. These are the people i want to help with my tax bills not the Candice's of the world and there alcoholic boyfriends.

Then, when i have worked hard ALL my life and paid 40% tax most of my life and i am on my death bed i will think well at least i have worked hard to achieve this and give my children a head start in life. WRONG. THINK AGAIN. The tax man will take another 40% and give it to more beer swilling louts that the labour party like to prop up as that is their voting majority!

Thank you for listening....

The bad people are why we can't have nice things

[Senethro]

Was reading an interesting paper today attempting to model how cooperation could evolve in early hominids.

In the model individuals could cooperate with their community (pay taxes) or defect on their community (receive handouts). The cooperators could also pay further tax to punish the defectors.

Every individual was born as a conformist (who copied the most common behaviour in a community) or an imitator (who meets a succesful role model and copies them).

Cooperation would always break down in models run without Conformists or without the option to punish defection. Cooperation would always break down if the group grew too large but didn't have enough Conformists. Defection would always become widespread because it gave such a good reward and when Conformists started defecting, the community would be utterly fucked. While I don't think Britain is close to that situation, perhaps we can think of some nations which are.

However, there was another event included in the model: War. Communities of individuals would be pitted against each other with the winner being decided partly by how many defectors were in their populations. Inter-group competition where the price of losing was extermination drove defector numbers down fast. Sadly, defection was never completely removed because of mutation and immigrants from other groups.


Therefore, I propose that we divide Britain into its political constituencies and have wars between them once a generation. In this way we shall further decrease the defectors amongst us. We must also strive to purge the mutants and not permit those immigrants with the Defector behaviour to be among us. Above all, we must Conform.

Then perhaps after a hundred generations we will be ready to conquer the world again!

[Mr Comedy]

40% taxation is an absolute arse. Particularly when you factor in national insurance, (which is effectively tax as there is no way there will be a state pension when I retire), I'm paying close to 50%. Literally this can mean I'm paying £4-5,000 in tax a month, which is supporting a raft of bums who can't be arsed to find a job.

Bugger.

[hr]

"I am in no way interested in immortality, but only in the taste of tea. " -Lu Tung

[Senethro]

How long you been graduated that you're in a £100k job?

[Sr. AGiC.]

Quoting Senethro from 13:54, 8th Dec 2006
How long you been graduated that you're in a £100k job?

I presume you are talking to Mr Comedy and not me, who's tax bills do indeed seem a little high for someone of our age.

Maybe he should employ and accountant!

[Sr. AGiC.]

Quoting Mr Comedy from 13:49, 8th Dec 2006
40% taxation is an absolute arse. Particularly when you factor in national insurance, (which is effectively tax as there is no way there will be a state pension when I retire), I'm paying close to 50%. Literally this can mean I'm paying £4-5,000 in tax a month, which is supporting a raft of bums who can't be arsed to find a job.

Bugger.

[hr]

"I am in no way interested in immortality, but only in the taste of tea. " -Lu Tung

I think you may have been a little over on your monthly tax bill. If you are paying £4-5,000 a month you must be earning approximately £165,000 PA. You may be, but it does sound a little high for someone just graduated.

[Senethro]

If this is the case Mr. Comedy, then all I have to say is boo-fuckng-hoo. Honestly.

[Sr. AGiC.]

Quoting Senethro from 14:15, 8th Dec 2006
If this is the case Mr. Comedy, then all I have to say is boo-fuckng-hoo. Honestly.

I would not say that, as this also means annually he will be paying £55,000 in tax which is outragous!