British rioters the spawn of a bankrupt ruling elite

Right on, Comet, there is never a reason for people to express displeasure with their leadership and tyranny has never enveloped a nation. Everyone should just bend right over, and accept whatever the masters send their way.

 

The deregulation started with Thatcher and I consider New Labour to be right of centre.

 

Yeah, well maybe you should have waited before posting your little 'aha!' moment.

 

A right-wing extremist is one who, like the odious Thatcher, destroys our shipbuilding, mining and steel industry, sends thousands of honest hard-working men and women to the dole-queue as a result of her petulant vindictiveness, simply because she had a personal beef with trades unions.

She got what she deserved in the end. I'll personally dance on that mad old (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)'s grave when she's dead.

 

Fair enough... There is the possibility that I might move to Ireland sometime in the near future. It's all up in the air right now, depending on what directions the American economy and the EU economy go in.

 

True, but it wasnt just personal, she was the personification of the desire of the capitalist class as a whole, to take revenge on the workers, who had ended Heath's government.

 

lol But yeah... I've mostly heard good things about Ireland in general. Their economy seems to be the only downside right now, but I figure that will change soon enough.

 

Interesting.... That definitely doesn't look good (for the short run at least).

 

Per head of population, the bank bailouts have cost 10 times more in Ireland than America. This gigantic bill will have to be paid by the working class in the form of cuts, privatisations and so on. But cuts in public sector jobs mean less tax revenue and smaller markets. Ireland has massive debts now, 4 times larger than in 2007 in relation to GDP. This is expected to rise another 25% by 2015. This is a massive contradiction, the cuts to pay the debts will shrink the economy.

Ireland's debt to GDP is nearly 100% and will rise higher. This is dangerous. It means that to just pay the interest the country's growth rate and inflation rate must equal the interest rate.

So even in 2020 Ireland could have a debt/GDP ratio of 87% after a decade of austerity, if growth is 3%.

In Ireland a debt/GDP ratio of 115% = a debt/GNP ratio of 140%.

This means a default is almost certain.

 

I thought they already defaulted?

Well, what do you think is the best way out of their mess?

 

Have they? I dunno. Couldnt find anything on a quick google.

What I would advocate is fight all cuts and austerity measures. Rebuild the trade unions. The workers need to build a socialist alternative to capitalism.

 

It's difficult to see why she had a problem with trade unions. Just because they rape the country with their over-inflated wages that they passed to consumers in the form of high prices is no reason to dislike them.

 

lols - are you sure you picked the right name?

Jean Paul Sartre took part in a trade union demonstration in Paris when he was 75 years old - the year of his death.

He believed in trade unions!

 

Part of the problem with some of our unemployed youths is that they want to work in a job where they start at the top. They refuse to work in what they think of as menial labour.
They leave school barely educated and go straight into government handouts till it becomes a way of life.
How many of us started a job with top wages and no qualifications? Not many I would think.
Many young folk who left school unqualified for much, have worked their way up and are now earning good money as a result of their own hard work while the shiftless continue to live off the rest of us
If you offered half of them honest work they'd run a mile.

 

I believe it's completely wrong for people to just go around assuming they know all the rioters motives and to paint all rioters with the same picture.

Rioting is wrong, damaging small businesses is wrong, hurting, mugging, beating up people, and killing is wrong.

Attacking government buildings, banks and such, excusable, given that services which provided the majority of the poor in Britain with a life in which one could actually sit down and feel happy for once, to be able to achieve something or have the options to do so, or in some communities simply a building in which young people can do things together to pass their time are now being taken away by the Tory government in response to the utter mess both the Torys and Labour have gotten the British economy in.

The poor of Britain did not have say in how our government would go around starting wars it could not win, starting wars based on lies, giving money to rebels, bombing civilians, letting open the flood gates to global immigration and allowing the tides to swamp everyone already living here.

The poor of Britain did not have say when the large corporations and businesses moved labour abroad simply for financial greed not necessity, the poor of Britain don't have a say when energy companies are making the poor pay so much that sometimes it's a decision between heating or eating, the poor of Britain did not have a say when our governments do what they wish, when they wish how they wish and inevitabley screw everything up.

But the poor watch, watch how these "upper class" idiots ruin the country, ignore the basic needs of the poorest, punish the poorest financially for mistakes that not the poor but THEY have committed, all the while sipping their fine wines, going on 5 star holidays when they wish and only coming back to do their job when there's a social crisis, then try to act like super heros and take all the credit for putting order back on the streets when infact it was the police and communities who did so.

An unjust society in a rich country, in the future, in my hope, maybe not in my lifetime but that of my descendants, would cease to exist. Politics need to change with time, or else they will become isolated and alienated and hated for being so.

 

I picked the perfect, ironic, name. Sartre was the antithesis of me.

You think it's OK for the poor, the group that most likely doesn't pay a dime to help build those buildings, to destroy them because the government teat is being turned off and they'll actually have to get a job and work for a living commensurate with their level of skill? Are you insane or a socialist?

 

The facts. In 1948 miners wagers were 29% above the average pay of manual workers but by 1970 they were 3.1% below the average. Can you guess why they stuck for higher pay? They won a pay rise in 1972 but by 1973 their position had dwindled. In 1974 they struck again and it brought down the Heath government. Thatchers job was to take revenge.

Let me tell you how well paid state workers were in 1970s Britain. My parents were both teachers. My day had been in the merchant navy for 10 years, worked his way up, and never spent a penny, so he managed to pay for about half our house in cash. Nevertheless we had no phone, no car, second hand clothes etc when I was young. We got a car when I was about 13 and a phone a couple of years or so later. My mum, who refuses to even say who she votes for, was on strike at one point. I think they earned about £4,500.

You have to bear in mind that there was very high inflation, so people needed wage rises to pay the bills.


Interesting fact - the share of national wealth going to wages peaked in 1973 at 65%, and is down to 53% today. This cutting of wages is what caused the crash- low wages means smaller markets for capitalism, and it means borrowing. Exactly as Marx predicted.

 

No money left? UK corporations are sitting on a £600bn surplus

http://falseeconomy.org.uk/blog/no-money-left-uk-corporations-are-sitting-on-a-600bn-surplus




Pay gap widening to Victorian levels

High pay commission forecasts top earners' slice of national income will rise from current 5% to 14% by 2030
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/may/16/high-pay-commission-wage-disparity


Wage disparity between the UK's top earners and the rest of the working population will soon return to the levels of the Victorian era unless action is taken to curb executive pay, a new report by the high pay commission claims.

At the same time a new ICM poll shows that 72% of the public think high pay makes Britain a grossly unequal place to live, while 73% say they have no faith in government or business to tackle excessive pay.

The high pay commission was set up last November to scrutinise the rising pay of those at the top of the public and private sectors. Its research suggests that if current trends continue, the top 0.1% of UK earners will see their pay rise from 5% to an estimated 14% of national income by 2030, a level not previously seen in the UK since the start of the 20th century. At present, top earners in this group take as big a slice of national income as they did in the 1940s, the report says.

 

Did Marx predict that the UK would evolve from a labor-intensive manufacturing base to a service-based/financial-based economy that requires fewer entry level workers?
Your economy has evolved just as the US' has. Your graphs paint an inaccurate picture IMO.

It is none of my business what an executive working for a non-governmental entity is, but it is certainly my business what a public employee is paid because they work for us.

 

Its all your and our business, please think about it some more.

executive pay, skill gaps wage gaps its all our business, anything else is a dereliction of duty to your country.

 

interesting graph.

I'm surprised (well maybe not) that nobody's bothered to address what is happening.

they can't really expect people will just lie down and take it.

 

Here's another graph

 

Not sure. What he did say was that profits in traditional industries would tend to fall. This happened and was one reason British and American capitalists went over to finance instead. Finance is now 40% of US corporate profits. He also said that people in finance believe they are making money, and this is false. They create fictitious money and when this gets noticed we have a massive crash. The real money they get is simply by taking it off other people.

I know

oh

And an executive in a private company gets paid by aliens? God? The devil?

The people are not happy but they dont know what the alternative is. A reasonable sized minority want to scrap capitalism (25% on a global scale, 13% in the USA). Most (67%) want it reformed to make things fairer. In the USA, 41% support a more active role for government in distributing wealth more evenly, compared to 37 % who support a less active role and 18 % who support the government’s current role.

Under 30s in the USA are evenly split between supporting capitalism and socialism.

The problem is, lack of workers parties, and the 'lesser evil' vote which keeps people voting for the lesser of two evils, eg Democrat to stop the Republicans, fearing that a vote for someone like Nader would have been wasted or splitting the anti-Republican vote. Problem is you just perpetuate the same old stuff.

link to global poll on capitalism

 

I did read the rest of the comments and started responding to each of them, but it is so completely inaccurate there is little point.

The article is just a rant, its intentionally contentious. I'm not going to waste my time responding to obvious flamebaiting (from you, again).

I will say though, if the author is really a medical doctor he should lose his job. His attitude to the people he is paid to serve is seriously skewed and quite worrying.

 

Its not the people I'm thinking about. those in positions of power and influence must surely know that increasing wealth disparity does not bode well for stability in the long term?

or maybe they do and they are using the current system as a get rich quick scheme - only where will they run to when the (*)(*)(*)(*) hits the fan?

WRT the US - they seem to still have a cold war hangover .

being the world's no 1 economy for so long meant they could nurse it even though times have been getting tougher for ordinary people for decades, but with the situation at present it will not last.

the US self concept of rugged individualiam and their trigger happy culture will not combine well when they understand what is happening.