Hey Guv can you lend us a fiver?

[Serial_Apologist]

i feel it is too late ... how can young persons fund a family, a house, education, health and a pension and still eat in our present economic circumstances ..... both economic growth and the cause of civilisation are dependent on a relative prosperity for the middle classes [in the American sense of middle class] ... this prosperity is the real demand driver of growth and finances the advances in social provision, education, sciences and culture as well as sustains the rule of law and an open society .... and we are broke and getting poorer with increasing inequality ....

we do have to stop the taxpayer financing the downturns in the global casino and tax it until the bankers faint ...... the argument used to be that they paid billions in taxes, but they dodged paying billions, and have just cost us a lot more .... they are now paying themselves in excess of the £14bn they paid in 2010 ... i wonder how much Mr Letwin was paid at Rothschilds?

There is nothing writ into the laws of capitalism that says the system's continuation depends forever more on trickle down, or expanding purchasing power to the lower orders. In the end it rests on what are persuaded as competititive efficiency, advantage, productivity of labour and profitability. A social surplus product is something else entirely, and could be determined by communities getting together with workforces to use and develop know-how and technology to meet needs sustainably and in a democratically decided fashion, where those of the much-vaunted "entrepreneurial mindset" could get their fulfilment by the giving of themselves without extortionate financial reward, privilege or the need to lord it over others - though we are persuaded the two are synonymous. If we let capitalism continue, we cannot not envisage the possibility of the system retracting back to what at present would be seen as a primitive early stage in its development, one more akin to parts of present-day Latin America, as the rich gate themselves off into privileged ghettoes, protected behind electrified razor-wire fences, minefields and armed watchtowers, and sustained by foodstuffs produced in artificial forcing conditions, while outsided the rest fight and scavenge over outdated ideologies and what is otherwise left in terms of means of production and distribution.

How quickly this could happen? One only has to look at what happened to what one always thought advanced civilisations after the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Maybe I'm just feeling a bit gloomy today - maybe its just the manopause.

S-A

[eighthobstruction]

Here you are folks ....a little tipple for £75k....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14296263

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

My view is that the real problem in the UK over the past few decades has been that labour's share of economic output has been in decline as a result of the running down of manufacturing, weaker trade unions, privatisation and globalisation. To maintain or improve their living standards, people have worked longer, taken on second jobs and - most important of all - got themselves deeper into debt. The liberalisation of financial markets has lubricated this process. A more stable and sustainable economy requires higher incomes for labour so that they are less dependent on borrowing and rising house prices. That, though, requires stronger trade unions and tighter regulation.

Larry Eliot in the Graun today


and Will Hutton, always good on paper

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

....well the bankers and the media have had a light shone [much good it does eh?] ...how about the others?

IT for example

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

oh my bankers are suffering .. well some are but not the fat cats i bet

[burning dog]

"Liberal" Capitalists, who are extremley laissez faire seem to be in the ascendency, classic 'right wing' noises on social issues are there to placate the Mail readers (sorry to stereotype them, but you know what I mean. )

[Serial_Apologist]

Unasble to sleep last night, (the heat; things on the mind), I switched on The World Service to hear an informative discussion with an American political commentator. In response to the question as to where "middle America" could possibly turn for political leadership, faced with the widening gulf between "liberal" democrats and right-wing Republicans over the "debt settlement", the latter stated in very worried terms that the "middle ground" of American political opinion had now virtually become vacated.

S-A

[burning dog]

Slightly off topic but I love the comment on here by Lytton333 "Live Long and prosper......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93cdeMAY3cA

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

it does not get put much better than this


and he has some positive suggestions

and an interesting TUC publication

[eighthobstruction]

Sounds like a job for 'the central scrutinizer'

I am quite happy to take on Judge Dread like authorita....I think I would able to cold bloodedly kill 'perpitrators'....nice bike and uniform too [tax free?]....

When I was working on a farm in Devon, I used to lunch with a bunch of feral kittens, lovely little things....until you tried to pick one up....jeez CLAWS....

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

american article on their 'middle class', informed by evidence, interesting and pertinent here

[Serial_Apologist]

american article on their 'middle class', informed by evidence, interesting and pertinent here

Within the first 2 paragraphs of this article the author comes to the same conclusion I was trying to articulate a month or so ago somewhere on here - the there's nothing stopping capitalism retracting right back to catering mainly for just the luxury needs of the few at the top, as in eg Latin American gated communities. This seems to concur with conservative economic opinion in this country.

People who argue narrowing the income/wealth owning capacity as the solution nevertheless have to observe that the phenomenon of capitalists living in among the general populace in crowded Japan at no great income gap, still did not forestall Japan's economic problems, ironically in large part down to indigenous underconsumption!

The underlying is SYSTEMIC, attributable to unsustainability and intrinsic waste - not to do with envy, greed, human nature etc etc

Its why I will continue arguing for a politics of the Left till blue in the face - one that learns the mistakes of the past: only a class politics will provide the objectively , note objectively-defined family adequate to the needs of the tearaways on our streets.

So much to catch up with in these discussion threads, so little time to plot next week's Radio Times in the sun with a fag!

S-A

[PhilipT]

The underlying is SYSTEMIC, attributable to unsustainability and intrinsic waste - not to do with envy, greed, human nature etc etc

Er, no. The underlying problem is not economic, it is moral. The last couple of generations have been brought up to believe in 'rights' without 'duties', to the point where dutiless rights are now enshrined in law, heaven help us. This belief in rights without responsibilities applies equally to the bankers and the underclass, and has helped lead to their respective mis-behaviours. Human nature is part of the problem, because the evolution of human nature hasn't caught up with the density of modern populations, especially in cities. Without a legal and moral framework to constrain behaviour human nature is a destructive force in modern societies. A densely-populated but economically-sustainable, non-wasteful city would still require such a framework.

[Serial_Apologist]

Er, no. The underlying problem is not economic, it is moral. The last couple of generations have been brought up to believe in 'rights' without 'duties', to the point where dutiless rights are now enshrined in law, heaven help us. This belief in rights without responsibilities applies equally to the bankers and the underclass, and has helped lead to their respective mis-behaviours. Human nature is part of the problem, because the evolution of human nature hasn't caught up with the density of modern populations, especially in cities. Without a legal and moral framework to constrain behaviour human nature is a destructive force in modern societies. A densely-populated but economically-sustainable, non-wasteful city would still require such a framework.

With respect, if you tell people from birth they are intrinsically flawed in the ways you see reflected in these riots, you will get that reflected back. Furthermore I don't agree with you that one can so easily divorce the moral from the economic, the econimic from the social, or the social from the historical, or talk generally about "human nature" in a vacuum.

[PhilipT]

With respect, if you tell people from birth they are intrinsically flawed in the ways you see reflected in these riots, you will get that reflected back.

To what do you refer? I never made any suggestion about telling people from birth that they are intrinsically flawed. To take an analogy: untamed, uneducated human nature cannot make someone a safe driver on modern roads. Education, training and some rules of the road that apply to all drivers are also required. To say that is not to tell learner drivers that they are flawed.