Extreme Inequality in UK

[tones]

What Have Fourteen Years of Conservative Rule Done to Britain?

Living standards have fallen. The country is exhausted by constant drama. But the U.K. can’t move on from the Tories without facing up to the damage that has occurred.

www.newyorker.com

 

[clivem2]

What Have Fourteen Years of Conservative Rule Done to Britain?

Living standards have fallen. The country is exhausted by constant drama. But the U.K. can’t move on from the Tories without facing up to the damage that has occurred.

www.newyorker.com

Superb. It’s a must read for anyone thinking about voting Tory. Quite how anyone can get us out of the mess we’re in though… It needs the country to wake up to what’s happened and a real leader to emerge with a strong vision and execution over many years.

 

[ks.234]

“Are you interested in a small financial elite representing those with considerable wealth to hold the power over the capacity of the state to supply services to meet needs, or would you rather that an elected government, chosen by the people of a country, doing its best to meet that needs have that power instead? In other words, are you a democrat, or not? That is the question that MMT poses, and which everyone needs to answer”​

Are you a democrat, or not? That is the question that MMT poses, and which everyone needs to answer.

This comment/question was put up on the blog this morning by someone called Peter Rodd. I am presuming it is genuine: Enjoy your posts and the comments thereon. What do you think of Prof Stephanie Kelton’s interpretation of MMT, in particular her book The Deficit Myth? She visited here...

www.taxresearch.org.uk

 

[vince rocker]

Superb. It’s a must read for anyone thinking about voting Tory. Quite how anyone can get us out of the mess we’re in though… It needs the country to wake up to what’s happened and a real leader to emerge with a strong vision and execution over many years.

"Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters"
I don't trust "strong leaders". I think we need a strong society to work together for collective change rather than a strong leader. Of course society is deliberately kept weak and divided.

 

[laughingboy]

What Have Fourteen Years of Conservative Rule Done to Britain?

Living standards have fallen. The country is exhausted by constant drama. But the U.K. can’t move on from the Tories without facing up to the damage that has occurred.

www.newyorker.com

Good article, despite the England-as-Britain bias. It also should have taken longer to assess Thatcher/Major and Blair/Brown, rather than focusing so much on the period after 2010. Austerity was politically effective because it promised to insulate the middle classes, by diverting the economic pain onto someone else. But the social consequences of austerity were catastrophic because, for the bottom half of society, it merely accelerated their immiseration. Danny Dorling, mentioned in the article, is good on the socio-political context and history before 2010:

I took from the article a thread of desperation. Willets suggests that, post-austerity, only the top fifth of the population isn't feeling its living standards erode. Dorling points out that the people who voted for Brexit were mostly 'middle-class' and 'southerners'. The implication being that even 'middle Britain' Tory voters are suffering, and desperately casting around for change - hence, Brexit and Johnson. Recent poll results suggest that they have finally given up on the Tories as vehicles for change.

If this is true of a significant section of 'middle Britain, it partly explains Starmer's lead. Some in 'middle Britain' are lending Starmer their vote because the Tories have failed them. If Starmer fails them too, what then? How can a defeated Tory party offer desperate voters the prospect of change? Where do we think we are headed?

 

[clivem2]

"Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters"
I don't trust "strong leaders". I think we need a strong society to work together for collective change rather than a strong leader. Of course society is deliberately kept weak and divided.

I still say a strong vision is needed, ie one where people buy into fixing inequality (south east vs the rest) with proper funding of infrastructure & services; of course there’s much more to mention. Whether the leader needs to be strong is a different factor. Keir could be the person for all I know but I wish he would elucidate more clearly.

Society has all sorts of issues, I don’t see that will change sufficiently in less than a generation or two, so much is baked in. Both top down and bottom up are needed.

 

[Mr_Sukebe]

What Kier has publicly stated makes him out to be a waste of space.
He's suggested nothing of note that I've read.

I'm hoping that Kier is doing a "boris", i.e. lie about what he'll do, then do something completely different.
In Kier's terms my hope is that he'll STOP offshoring of money to the Caymans, and pay off a good deal of the national debt with cash from the ultra rich, big Oil and similar. With the savings on the interest payments, pay for things like new windfarms, updates to the national grid and other key infrastructure.
With the injection of those funds, that in itself would help push money INTO the country and help alleviate some of the other underlying issues after years of kleptocratic policies.

 

[ks.234]

What Kier has publicly stated makes him out to be a waste of space.
He's suggested nothing of note that I've read.

I'm hoping that Kier is doing a "boris", i.e. lie about what he'll do, then do something completely different.
In Kier's terms my hope is that he'll STOP offshoring of money to the Caymans, and pay off a good deal of the national debt with cash from the ultra rich, big Oil and similar. With the savings on the interest payments, pay for things like new windfarms, updates to the national grid and other key infrastructure.
With the injection of those funds, that in itself would help push money INTO the country and help alleviate some of the other underlying issues after years of kleptocratic policies.

The National Debt is just bonds sold as private savings vehicles for organisations like pension funds and insurance company, paying off the debt would cause enormous economic problems, which is why nobody in it‘s long history have tried to do it. One consequence of paying down government debt, is an increase in private debt which is the background condition of The Wall Street Crash and 2008.

The National Debt is used as a tool to artificially constrain spending public money on public ends.

 

[Mr_Sukebe]

Are you saying that we as taxpayers don't pay the interest payments?

 

[ks.234]

Are you saying that we as taxpayers don't pay the interest payments?

Yes. The bottom line is that tax does not fund anything. Once paid, tax is deleted. it has no further functional life.