Prime Minister Brown?

[David Bean]

Mushroom God: Your point is completely irrelevant, since I was advancing an argument to suggest that Scandinavia isn't that great a place to live after all. You can't really defeat that by saying 'oh, but it is anyway': we call that baseless assertion.

Badger Machine: the only mark of a good society is how well off the poor are? Has anything quite so ridiculous ever been written? People are poor in a capitalist system precisely because they are not able to give others what they want: they are less instrumentally valuable to their fellows, and so they receive less reward. Your argument suggests that the only mark of a good society is how well off it can render its least useful members, at the expense, presumably, of those who are more useful.

Now, if you believe that how hard a person works, and how useful they are able to make themselves to others, is utterly irrelevant to how they should be treated by everyone else, then you might have a reason for thinking like this; I hope you extend this to its logical conclusions in your personal relationships by, for instance, not distinguishing in the way you think of and treat people by how pleasent they are to you. I, however, think that this is a load of nonsense, and that people should receive just rewards for their work, and that these rewards should include the ability to choose between as diverse a range of goods and services as possible.

None of this shows that the state shouldn't care for those who are genuinely disadvantaged, but it does illustrate precisely why equality of outcomes should never be pursued as a political end.

[HungryDan]

Ask a 14 year old kid living in some run down area in Glasgow or Dundee or any other major large town or city why he thinks he lives in shithole house in a shithole area overrun by drug and alcohol problems and why his gets beaten by an alcoholic father. I dont think the answer is because he is not able to give the economy what it needs.

If you think the mark of a good society is "the ability choose between as diverse a range of goods and services as possible" then you are wrong. The ability to choose between what useless fancy junk I can buy does not make you a happy person.

[The Badger Machine]

Quoting HungryDan from 20:57, 30th Apr 2005
Ask a 14 year old kid living in some run down area in Glasgow or Dundee or any other major large town or city why he thinks he lives in shithole house in a shithole area overrun by drug and alcohol problems and why his gets beaten by an alcoholic father. I dont think the answer is because he is not able to give the economy what it needs.

If you think the mark of a good society is "the ability choose between as diverse a range of goods and services as possible" then you are wrong. The ability to choose between what useless fancy junk I can buy does not make you a happy person.

Well said. I wonder if Mr Bean would have the same opinion of the unemployed if he found himself out of work during a recession. What if someone is a hard-worker and is useful to society but cannot get a job? What of them?

I actually had somehow come to believe that everyone in Britain had rejected the Samuel Smiles 'Self-Help' Victorian bollocks and come to realise that being poor is not, in the vast majority of cases, the fault of the poor themselves. But alas, the right-wing reactionaries continue to live on in the St Andrews enclave. I find it appalling that implied in your statement 'Your argument suggests that the only mark of a good society is how well off it can render its least useful members, at the expense, presumably, of those who are more useful,' is the idea that the poor should somehow be deprived of state support and left to die. While this obviously is not what you would intend, as i am assuming that you're not so devoted to the Laissez-faire doctrine as to deny support to those living below the poverty line, it is what we are left with if we follow your ridiculous argument to its conclusion.

Even if someone provides no benefit to society, surely they still deserve to live? What should we do then Mr Bean, you can't have it both ways, you either have to support the poor, and as you would have it uselss, or you don't. The only humane answer is clearly obvious.

Equality in economic terms, it seems to me, is only not desireable as a politcal end if you happen to be above equal. I think your perspective will change greatly if you have to live on the dole for any length of time.

[David Bean]

The idea that the poor should be left to die was one that you inferred, not one that I implied. However there is, I think you must agree, a vast deal of difference between a situation that allows the poor to die, and one that seeks to prop up the standard of living of those who are able to work but unwilling to a standard equal to those who are.

And to the previous poster, if having a wide variety of goods and services to choose from would not make you happy, that's good, I agree with you. But please don't seek to impose economic policies on others that deprive them of their freedom and deny them such choice.

[The Badger Machine]

Quoting David Bean from 22:39, 30th Apr 2005
However there is, I think you must agree, a vast deal of difference between a situation that allows the poor to die, and one that seeks to prop up the standard of living of those who are able to work but unwilling to a standard equal to those who are.

Contrary to what you might read in the Daily Telegraph, and I know this is going to come as a great shock to you, there are very few people on the dole who actually want to be there. The myth that there are thousands of lazy slobs unwilling to work and draining all your hard earned money from the state is surely not one that a supposedly intelligent person would believe in.

But please don't seek to impose economic policies on others that deprive them of their freedom and deny them such choice.

Your economic ideas would deprive the poor of choice as they would not have the income to be able to afford to choose. So you do exactly the thing that you criticise others for. And if you define 'freedom' as the ability to choose between nike and adidas or burger king and macdonalds then that is surely a freedom that we could really do without. Or if you define freedom as the ability to chooose which private school you send your children to, or something else along those lines, then that limits freedom to the rich and that is something we could definately do without.

[Ga]

So, we have gone from "socialisum never works!" to, "Well it does, but I don't like it much.".

Job done.


[hr]

If everything in life had a point, life would be pointless

[Steveo]

Quoting The Badger Machine from 17:39, 1st May 2005

Your economic ideas would deprive the poor of choice as they would not have the income to be able to afford to choose. So you do exactly the thing that you criticise others for. And if you define 'freedom' as the ability to choose between nike and adidas or burger king and macdonalds then that is surely a freedom that we could really do without.

Who the hell gets to decide what freedoms I can do without? Where does it stop? One day it's food, next it's clothing, then you have a life completely controlled by a centralised government.

My freedoms, and i'll keep them all thanks.

[hr]

IMAGE:www.conservatives.com/UploadedFiles/GRAPHIC%5CDOWNLOADTHUMB%5Cthumb-torchlandwordspos.jpg

[Smith]

nike = shit
adidas = shit
mcdonalds = shit
burger king = shit.

Surely we would all be better off with less shit in the world.

[hr]

I tried thinking of an innovative witty remark, but could only come up with this...

[HungryDan]

Do you really beleive that living in a consumer, materialistic society gives you freedom? I would argue that all this crap controls you rather than sets you free. It is a vice.

Given the choice I would much rather have good public services and cleaner streets and living area's like those in Scandinavia. However, I dont agree with the state poking its nose into your buisness, like many scandinavian governments. It is the state's job to support pensioners and more unfortunate members of society as well as provide good public services.

[The Cellar Bar]

Quoting Steveo from 23:09, 1st May 2005
Who the hell gets to decide what freedoms I can do without? Where does it stop? One day it's food, next it's clothing, then you have a life completely controlled by a centralised government.

My freedoms, and i'll keep them all thanks.

The problem is that there's only really one way that we have any freedom of any kind. And that's because "our" rulers decide which they are going to give us and which they are going to refuse. It's a nonsense to believe that we "have" freedoms... like we have blue eyes or a dose of the 'flu.

Those "freedoms" can be taken away from us far more easily than they were obtained. Invariably it was through struggle that we wrenched them, under threat, out their hands in the first place. But none of us have the power to keep any of them if the government decides otherwise.

And it's a nonsense to believe that somehow the power to buy anything we've convinced ourselves we want is somewhow a true "freedom". You talk about the freedom to buy food. The food market is dominated by legislation that prevents you buying just anything you want. Either because it's dangerous or somehow a threat otherwise. That in itself is a pretty well-constructed con (no offence) generated by the very people who want us to buy things from them. We might be "able" to buy something, so long as it's in circulation. But that's hardly a freedom in the sense that millions have died across the world to live in a "free" country. It's just a glorified romanticised use of the word to make you believe you have real choice.

[treehugger]

Firstly Gordon Brown would make an excellent prime minister, hes bulit one of the healthiest economies in the developed world and used the gains to deliver a string of tax credits to the poor and pregnent.
Secondly money does consitute a lot of what i would consider freedom to be, in our society people with money can live the way they want to live and people without cant.
Only in st andrews would you get a student spouting such torygraph bollocks, Mr Bean seems to equate being poor to being lazy or stupid. If at any point in his over privalaged life he had visited the real world he would of found that less well off people were almost always born poor and very often stay poor. Are the working class just born lazier than the rich? when you come from a backround where no-one ever expected you to go to university or do well in school or be paying top rates of tax then you probably wont. Being poor is a restriction of freedoms; when you have to work a crap job to make ends meet, when you cant eat what you want to eat, live where you want to live or give your kids what you want them to have thats a restriction of freedoms. As a developed society we ought to be able to give everyone the oppertunity to 'be more useful members'. If your wondering whats in that for you then its useful to note that most of the probelms that you actually pay taxes to solve come largely as a result of poverty.
i feel like 'common people' by pulp explains a lot of this.

[Tweedle-Dum]

Our economy isn't really in that good a shape, and it's doing artificially well due to the massive amounts of debt that this government has got itself in to. If Labour are still here when we face this harsh reality you won't be praising them, but it's never really stopped them before; safe in the knowledge that the Tories will be back just in time to take the fall.

[hr]

Live by the sword, die by the arrow.

[The Cellar Bar]

Quoting Tweedle-Dum from 15:11, 2nd May 2005
Our economy isn't really in that good a shape, and it's doing artificially well due to the massive amounts of debt that this government has got itself in to. If Labour are still here when we face this harsh reality you won't be praising them, but it's never really stopped them before; safe in the knowledge that the Tories will be back just in time to take the fall.

it's not just the Government's debt that is giving that misleading sense of well-being. Personal debt through credit cards, store cards and the rest, is at a massive level currently. And sits at about £11,000 per adult in the country at the moment.

That in itself is driving the economy as people essentially buy beyond their earning power in order to keep up with the Joneses. And create these ridiculous episodes on TV where advert after advert for conservatories, new kitchens and new cars are peppered with adverts from Loan companies for "easy" term debt repayment. All of which invariably end with the comforting thought that once you've rearranged your debt, you'll "still have enough left for that new kitchen or holiday you've been promising yourself". The fact that that attraction was probably what got you into debt in the first place is conveniently ignored. I suspect that without that as an element of the economy, it would be a different story altogether.

In reality, behind all the warm cosy glow, the fact remains that the shift in share of income has moved again under Bliar. Before 1997, about 85%+ of all income was taken home by about 11% of the working population. Now it's at about 91% taken home by about 8%. That's a grotesque skew in favour of a tiny minority of the population and essentially cannot last much longer. There's so little left for them to accrete! And sooner or later, the bubble simply has to explode. Credit levels cannot possibly be allowed to continue as they are right now because defaulting will inevitably reach such a level that the banks won't tolerate the pressure that they created on themselves in the first place. We might well have seen initial effects of that as Christmas sales seemed to fall well below expectations and companies were "banking" on having a good Easter to make up for it. When you reach that stage, things are very definitely not healthy.

That will then reflect itself in Base Lending rates, mortgage rates, house prices and prices generally. And that will in itself lead to the potential for some pretty interesting wages negotiations from the "ordinary punters" of this world who have suffered little more than increases in line with inflation for the past decade.

It's all been tremendously well sold/spun as a successful economy but the base line reflects something completely different.