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Quote from: scawsby steve on April 05, 2020, 05:03:28 pmQuote from: BillyStubbsTears on April 04, 2020, 08:16:04 pmSSThose people who "take the moral high ground"?What exactly do you mean by that?I can't believe someone as intelligent as you is even asking that question. There are countless examples of it, far too many to mention them all on here, but I'll give you a couple of examples.After her humiliating defeat in the Election, that clown Jo Swinson got on her soapbox and practically accused the nation of being full of racists and xenophobes. Who the f*cking hell does she think she is?A similar thing was going on with this forum during the last 3 years, with people being accused of being racist and xenophobic because they voted for Brexit. I've never been racist and xenophobic in my entire life, so what right have people who don't even know me to accuse me of those things?That's what's known as taking the moral high ground, but I think you already knew that.You've hardly backed up your opinion in a credible way there.1) You used the word 'practically'. 2) Your own opinion of what others may or may not think of you.1/10. Must do better.
Quote from: BillyStubbsTears on April 04, 2020, 08:16:04 pmSSThose people who "take the moral high ground"?What exactly do you mean by that?I can't believe someone as intelligent as you is even asking that question. There are countless examples of it, far too many to mention them all on here, but I'll give you a couple of examples.After her humiliating defeat in the Election, that clown Jo Swinson got on her soapbox and practically accused the nation of being full of racists and xenophobes. Who the f*cking hell does she think she is?A similar thing was going on with this forum during the last 3 years, with people being accused of being racist and xenophobic because they voted for Brexit. I've never been racist and xenophobic in my entire life, so what right have people who don't even know me to accuse me of those things?That's what's known as taking the moral high ground, but I think you already knew that.
SSThose people who "take the moral high ground"?What exactly do you mean by that?
Steve, you have done well there, one out of ten from a no mark. Miss Beal and Mr Dixon would have been proud of you.
Quote from: SydneyRover on April 04, 2020, 10:33:59 pmSS-you have congratulated him and Selby? do you want KS to do well, the labour party to win? I'm with DW could never ever vote on the right I don't understand where you're coming from, one an ex minier and both of you spend you're time putting the boot into labour.Well done Sydney, you've just confirmed how confused you are about certain things. First of all, there's only one thing I've ever accused Labour of, and that's their stance on Brexit, which I always maintained would lose them the Election, and was proved right.As regards the other thing, have you heard of the word "magnanimous"? I always congratulate people on achieving things, whether or not I like them or agree with them, because to do otherwise is acting like a sore loser or a petulant child. I think you know exactly what I mean.
SS-you have congratulated him and Selby? do you want KS to do well, the labour party to win? I'm with DW could never ever vote on the right I don't understand where you're coming from, one an ex minier and both of you spend you're time putting the boot into labour.
Quote from: selby on April 05, 2020, 06:04:26 pmSteve, you have done well there, one out of ten from a no mark. Miss Beal and Mr Dixon would have been proud of you.You'll not believe this Brian, but I actually was never taught by Miss Beal (Aunty B) or Mr Dixon (Deadshot). For geography I had Bob Oliver, and for science Mr Groom.As regards Iberian Red, well at least he got out of this sh*t country, I'll give him that. The trouble is, just like Sydney, he can't keep away from our politics.It baffles me as to why.
Interesting Shadow Cabinet shaping up. Dodds at Shadow Chancellor is a big move. She is one of the intellectual rising stars of the party and has a chance to make the case for the very different economics we will need post-virus. This editorial today from the Financial Times (The FINANCIAL TIMES!) shows what a different world we are going to be in after the virus.https://mobile.twitter.com/rcbregman/status/1246371782698905600Starmer is sending a pretty uncompromising message to the Corbynistas too. No place for them in the very highest levels of the Shadow Cabinet. Interesting thing now will be to see if and at what level he makes room for Long-Bailey.
BST, the older people haven’t had it all good though have they.There are lots of older people who are living on a pittance and a 3.9% increase on a weekly pension adds a couple of quid to their wealth.Some people have been savvy and disciplined enough to save money for their futures, possibly by investing in private pensions, rather than blowing everything they had and expecting the state to look after them later on.Is it fair to hit the savers now?Some of the older people have also had to pay for their kids to go through the a University system too.Those same kids will, or have already, benefited from inheriting those houses that soared in value.Higher taxes for higher earners is the norm isn’t it but to penalise the older generation for building a pot to keep them comfortable in old age isn’t right.
Hound.The elderly have been the one and only demographic group that has been protected by Austerity. There has been a huge inter-generational shift in wealth from the youngest to the oldest over the past 30 years but in particular over the past decade.The baby boomer generation (not all but many of them) have had generous occupational pensions and have profited from crazy increases in house prices. Millennials have had all that taken away from them. Millions of boomers had society subsidise their improvement by paying them to go to free Universities. They then voted for parties that ripped that away from the younger generation and told them if they wanted the same benefit, they would have to rack up £50k+ debt.I've said for years that there was a reckoning coming. It's here now. This cannot continue and it won't continue after the virus. There will have to be policies that redistribute wealth between the generations. Higher taxes for high earners and policies that water down the value of houses, whether taxes on wealth or policies that grind down house prices through higher inflation over the decades. It won't be popular among those who have benefitted, but it is coming because the alternative is not tenable.By the way, I'm saying that as someone who isn't officially in the baby boomer generation, but has had many of the benefits they had. I am one of the ones who will need to be paying more.
Hound if you don't tax those that earn more where are you going to get the revenue from?
And that's why I said "not all but many of them".Question for you. When did you buy your first house?
You didn't but it's obvious to most that when the flannel has been wrung as it has for 10 years and more there is nothing left so you have to spread your net wider and ask those with more money to pay more, no?
Quote from: drfchound on April 06, 2020, 09:43:23 amBST, the older people haven’t had it all good though have they.There are lots of older people who are living on a pittance and a 3.9% increase on a weekly pension adds a couple of quid to their wealth.Some people have been savvy and disciplined enough to save money for their futures, possibly by investing in private pensions, rather than blowing everything they had and expecting the state to look after them later on.Is it fair to hit the savers now?Some of the older people have also had to pay for their kids to go through the a University system too.Those same kids will, or have already, benefited from inheriting those houses that soared in value.Higher taxes for higher earners is the norm isn’t it but to penalise the older generation for building a pot to keep them comfortable in old age isn’t right.Hound.1) State pensions are not fantastic of course. But they have been protected against Austerity cuts while working age benefits have been savaged over the past ten years. That is one generational inequality.2) Your comments about people putting by for their families is precisely where the issue is. That has led to grossly unfair outcomes because of grossly unequal differences in the growth of assets in different parts of the country. House "values" (I use the word advisedly because they are not real values, just a result of a screwed up economic system) have risen far faster in Guildford than in Denaby. So someone who "invested" £1000 in property in those two places in 1970 has seen a very different outcome in wealth today.That is manifestly unfair and it is a market failure. It needs to be addressed for the good of society as a whole. Why should a grandkid in Guildford inherit a share in a £1m house while the kid in Denaby gets a share in a £50k house? And that's assuming the parents were ever able to get on the housing ladder.3) Why should a person's ability to get an education depend on their grandparent's success on the house price lottery?There is a very well established field of economic theory, backed up by lots of real-world evidence which clearly shows that societies in which wealth is allowed to pass through families see higher and hiher concentrations of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, and a long term decline in the economic health of the society. We've lived through two generations of saying that the ideal is to be selfish (that's not a perjorative term, I mean it in the most basic sense) but that is now coming to an end. If we are sensible. Like that FT editorial says, we will need far more Govt intervention in how society is run and how wealth is spread in future.
TykeIt doesn't really make any difference. The FT has it nailed. The issue is that the economics don't add up any other way. There's effectively nothing more to wring out of Austerity. The debt we will have at the end of this can only be dealt with in the way we did after WWII. There's a term for it which I can't remember off the top of my head, but effectively it means inflating away the debt.Here's an example of how that works.My parents bought their house in 1965. It cost £2200. Their mortgage payments were £15/month fixed over 30 years. That was a crippling debt to a young couple. We had very little spare cash when I was young. But that was an age of high inflation and high wage rises. So, by the time they made their last payment in 1995, it was barely loose change. That is effectively what the entire global economy will have to do over the next generation.That will mean keeping interest rates low while encouraging inflation to take off up to 4-5-6%. That will erode the value of savings and property, but so be it. There's no other way out. We cannot afford to let people sit on hoarded wealth (non-productive savings, property etc), however unfair that might seem to those it hits. That is precisely what we did after the War, whilst also investing in things like mass higher education to build the next generation of wealth creators.If you run inflation at 6%, a debt of £200bn today is effectively worth only £100bn in 12 years time, £50bn in 25 years time and £10bn in 50 years time, without paying a penny of it off. Unfortunately the same thing applies to savings; their value goes down even if you don't spend any of it. But as I say, we are going to be moving into an era where the key thing is driving down the effect of debt, not looking after savers.