14 million in poverty

[Prospero]

18 minutes ago, Hamster said:

Google is your friend (or enemy) in this case. 

 

My life is rather splendid and I have already stated I don't believe our woes are the Tory's "fault". 

Next pointless and unchallenging quip please......................😂  😴  

Pants on fire.

[besty57]

Hamster are you a politician, you can't or wont answer a straightforward question.

[grrclark]

6 minutes ago, Hamster said:

The first sign that capitalism fears others who may succeed is characterising and normalising terminology meant to demean, by any measure of decency the US and its "democratic" two party (one end result) system is a Regime. 

Good thing too, even the basics don't sound right to me.

That did make me larf 😂  23 trillion $ worth of debt and with our world natural resources and world on the brink, that's some kind of flourish. 

I agree the US is as much a regime as China or Russia, just not quite such an autocratic one although they have taken a step closer.  Likewise the UK is a regime and right now I wish it was autocratic as we are damn near impotent in being able to make meaningful change.

So long as we have partisan politics driven by soundbites and emotive rhetoric we will never be able to address the big issues of the day.

The stupid thing about debt is that whilst it is used as a measure to suit some agendas, it is pretty meaningless when you can game the system to suit and capitalism is flourishing because it allows people to game the system and that is human nature. 

[Hamster]

3 minutes ago, Rewulf said:

Ive googled it, and the answers are somewhat mixed, but most answers say there are NO socialist countries in Europe.

There are socialist governments, social democratic governments, and countries with social policies.
But to have a socialist country (in the true sense) you need a one party system with public ownership of most of industry and infrastructure.
All European countries are capitalist democracies , which makes a socialist country impossible in most peoples eyes.

Depends how you interpret what you read, to me a one party system sounds like the beginning of a theocracy or communism or even fascism. I have personal friends who migrated here from Sweden because as a dentist she can enjoy a far better standard of living (compared to say a plumber) and earnings here than it was possible there so clearly there are negatives to absolute socialism hence why I have never pretended to be one, I have never even pretended to fully understand it. 

As for public ownership of industry that's clearly a non starter but I personally see nothing inherently wrong with public ownership of infrastructure such as rails or utilities, some things just should not be "for profit" . 

[Prospero]

You are just another keyboard socialist with a degree in marketing. Same old tired arguments theoretical socialism etc etc 🤣🤣

[Hamster]

2 minutes ago, besty57 said:

Hamster are you a politician, you can't or wont answer a straightforward question.

Google the meme "I could never be a politician" with Samuel L Jackson 😂  that is definitely me. 😂

[Rewulf]

4 minutes ago, Hamster said:

Depends how you interpret what you read, to me a one party system sounds like the beginning of a theocracy or communism or even fascism. I have personal friends who migrated here from Sweden because as a dentist she can enjoy a far better standard of living (compared to say a plumber) and earnings here than it was possible there so clearly there are negatives to absolute socialism hence why I have never pretended to be one, I have never even pretended to fully understand it. 

As for public ownership of industry that's clearly a non starter but I personally see nothing inherently wrong with public ownership of infrastructure such as rails or utilities, some things just should not be "for profit" . 

Thats exactly what it will become, but you cant have a true socialist state, if every time you want to push the agenda, there is dissent from other parts of the house/parliament.
You also havnt truly got a democracy then, because the socialist agenda must over ride all other considerations to stand a chance of working.
So the first thing in socialism , is to suspend democracy.
The first step to totalitarianism and the gulag.

Its difficult to understand socialism, because by its definition, its an idea that has many forms of implementation.
Its like communism, the few that still tout it (usually idealistic uni students) bleat it has never been 'done ' right, and thats why its never worked.
Socialism is just neo communism, and will never work either, in part (a major part ) like Grr says , due to human nature.

[Westward]

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of the miseries".

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill

[KB1]

1 hour ago, Hamster said:

ither way yes we know China has been doing what can be described as a damn good job compared to the rest of us

There's more abject poverty in China than there is wealth......

[TIGHTCHOKE]

Wow!

Way to go hamster!

 

[Westward]

15 minutes ago, KB1 said:

There's more abject poverty in China than there is wealth......

Whereas there's no one in this country apart from the homeless, anywhere close to living in the kind of poverty experienced by countless millions of rural Chinese.

[Hamster]

25 minutes ago, Westward said:

Whereas there's no one in this country apart from the homeless, anywhere close to living in the kind of poverty experienced by countless millions of rural Chinese.

For now. 

Based on their growth since adopting some capitalist based operandi they may yet achieve enough prosperity for a larger percentage of their population than others have. The trick is whether they spot the more rancid elements and do something about it. 

[blackbird]

If this Brexit goes tits up like it’s looking to be going all 66 million of us living in the UK will be living in poverty.  😁

Edited November 14, 2018 by blackbird

[Retsdon]

Gosh, this is a wide ranging thread. It's gone from the definition of poor, to the morals of people having children, to the relative merits of differing political ideologies.... and a bit of Brexit for good measure. it's like a conversation in a pub half an hour before closing time! Marvelous stuff...

[grrclark]

6 minutes ago, Hamster said:

For now. 

Based on their growth since adopting some capitalist based operandi they may yet achieve enough prosperity for a larger percentage of their population than others have. The trick is whether they spot the more rancid elements and do something about it. 

Nah, they wont, why would they.

1.3bn is an awful lot of people to share the dosh around when millions can share the spoils between them.  There is no nationalistic altruism.

China have at least 10 fully built cities that could accommodate 1 million people, yet they still live in huts because they can’t afford the escalating property prices of the empty city appartments.

It is utterly utterly nuts.  Beyond that there is at least 1 city I know of in Africa, built by Chinese state wealth that is also completely empty, but with a neighbouring shanty town of an equal population to the number of empty appartments.

China loves capitalism and all that it can bring in power and wealth.

4 minutes ago, Retsdon said:

Gosh, this is a wide ranging thread. It's gone from the definition of poor, to the morals of people having children, to the relative merits of differing political ideologies.... and a bit of Brexit for good measure. it's like a conversation in a pub half an hour before closing time! Marvelous stuff...

Just about as coherent in parts as a pub discussion just before closing time too 🙃

[Retsdon]

4 minutes ago, grrclark said:

Just about as coherent in parts as a pub discussion just before closing time too

Well, that was sort of my point. But everyone gets the gist....

[12gauge82]

4 hours ago, grrclark said:

That is too simplistic an answer as well though.

If you increase the wages of everyone you simply make the costs of goods more expensive too so it cancels itself out.

Despite what many on here seem to think the vast majority of businesses don’t deliberately shaft their employees to keep the boss better off.

I have talked on this forum before about the last company I was an employee, and director, of.  In the UK, going back 5 or so years, we were paying people around £15k per year to pack cardboard boxes, zero skill job just relying on some manual dexterity and a lot of forebearance to put up with such a dull job.  The ones who packed cardboard boxes on the nighshift had a 25% uplift.

Skilled electronic debug technicians got around £25k.  So about £500 a month difference in real terms for doing a job that required a college education, the pressure of getting the diagnosis correct and continuous upskillIng versus lifting stuff up and down, and not even heavy stuff.

You were right on the question of “where is the incentive to work hard?”

In our Romanian factory we were paying one fifth to one third of those rates purerly because of the lower cost of doing business in Romania.  It cost us more to pack boxes in the UK than it did to debug a circuit board to component level in Romania.

We were paying the maximum the market would bear in the UK without binning 1600 UK jobs and shipping it all overseas.  The only reason the market would sustain that price differential between Romania and the UK was because of the lead time associated with shipping stuff to Romania and back again, proximity to the market saved the UK jobs.

If UK prices were forced to go up due to a change in cost in the UK through a general mandatory uplift in salaries the market would either need sufficient desire to carry that increase or it would change, ultimately the end user consumer decides what is or isn’t affordable and the market will change if the consumer says so.

That is the reality of a hell of a lot of business in the UK, we are uncompetitive relative to many economies round about us in the global market, largely because of the growth in property prices and as a reaction to that we have to pay bigger wages and so the costs of goods, including property, goes up and it becomes a self propagating nightmare.

One of the biggest problems the UK has is that it has become a very consumerist society of disposable goods that we love to buy cheaply and as we love to buy cheaply we have to import as we are too expensive as a market to make them ourselves.  That is a self propagating nightmare too.  Just look at the number of relatively new cars in the UK versus countries with economies that are still hungry.

We cannot put the genie back in the bottle, at least not quickly and not without a wholescale change in our own expectations and sense of entitlement.

Fully agree with your assessment of the UK jobs market, to make a meaningful change would require a vast shift across the entire western world, which isn't going to happen anytime soon. I do fear we're heading for disaster eventually, I don't think I'll see it in my lifetime, or even the next generation, but almost every major society has eventually fallen because the top took too much from the bottom. 

[grrclark]

Just now, 12gauge82 said:

Fully agree with your assessment of the UK jobs market, to make a meaningful change would require a vast shift across the entire western world, which isn't going to happen anytime soon. I do fear we're heading for disaster eventually, I don't think I'll see it in my lifetime, or even the next generation, but almost every major society has eventually fallen because the top took too much from the bottom. 

At some point it all has to rebalance.

Also 7bn people and growing living on this wee ball will precipitate change all by itself, regardless of what the politics are.

Within our lifetime it is not unreasonable to expect to have to pay £50 - £100 for a beef burger.  Scary that!

[KB1]

15 minutes ago, grrclark said:

Within our lifetime it is not unreasonable to expect to have to pay £50 - £100 for a beef burger.  Scary that!

I was in Iceland last week, and they're not far off that price now😳

[Retsdon]

22 minutes ago, grrclark said:

Within our lifetime it is not unreasonable to expect to have to pay £50 - £100 for a beef burger.  

So what do the poor people do? Eat cake I suppose....

[grrclark]

4 minutes ago, Retsdon said:

So what do the poor people do? Eat cake I suppose....

Insect derived protein based food, bulked up with GM staples such as rice, pulses, root veg and the like.

12 minutes ago, KB1 said:

I was in Iceland last week, and they're not far off that price now😳

Yep, it’s not too far over the horizon.

[Aled]

1 hour ago, Retsdon said:

Gosh, this is a wide ranging thread. It's gone from the definition of poor, to the morals of people having children, to the relative merits of differing political ideologies.... and a bit of Brexit for good measure. it's like a conversation in a pub half an hour before closing time! Marvelous stuff...

Can I be the quiet bloke who hardly says a word but when he does speak everybody listens???? Always wanted to be one of those....Please> Cheers. Aled

Edited November 14, 2018 by Aled

[Mice!]

8 hours ago, Lord Geordie said:

But statistically I am living in abject poverty? And frankly I can’t agree with that? My

I think that's probably one of the most honest things I've read Lord Geordie, i would imagine you should be claiming something to make your life a bit easier and you would make the most of it.

[KB1]

Just to throw a spanner in the works.....  A large percentage of people classed as living below the poverty line, fork out each week on the lottery (some, way beyond their means).  Do any of you on here stop to think that you are complicit in their demise as you put yours on?

PS. I'm guilty of playing regularly, and dreaming of winning even more regularly😎 and if I did win, I would have twice as much fun as the fat cats, and couldnt give a hoot about being called any names.

Family comes first!

[Whatmuff]

Probably one of the best argued threads in a long time. Meanwhile the rest of us have less money due to real inflation and the huge debt people have taken on, has been somewhat difficult to service as interest rates are rising around the globe. Have a watch of this video (from Australia) as this shows exactly the scenario that is playing out here and the US as we speak. And for Blackbird it's has nothing to do with Brexit. Standby for next year when the masses start pointing fingers at Trump and his policies and Brexit. 

 

Edited November 14, 2018 by Whatmuff