Is the recession over?

No, I’m certainly not suggesting that expressing a view contrary to that of the elected (or unelected) government is undemocratic; that is an absolute right that I will defend to my dying day…

…but I was suggesting that it was difficult to see how some form of ‘socialist’ policies would be the answer to all the country’s problems (particularly national debt) when, for the last forty years at least, the electorate has (despite the worst financial crisis in a generation and the ‘failure of capitalism’) utterly rejected any party with a remotely ‘socialist’ agenda.

Even if ‘socialist policies’ are the answer it is irrelevant unless you can get people to vote for them; if you believe in democracy the electorate cannot, by definition, vote in the ‘wrong’ government!

You are a voice crying in the wilderness…..but that is your right! 🙂

Correct! I am wary of ‘isms’ generally, so won’t climb into a box like ‘socialist’ without heavily qualifying it. People following isms tend to believe their leaders have all the answers (Fascists, Socialists, Communists), and I don’t. If anything, I am a utilitarianist (which I don’t think is a word).

I don’t think the vote is irrelevant, I just don’t agree that expressing a view contrary to that of the elected government is somehow undemocratic, which I think is what you are suggesting?

Progressive taxation:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax

You misdiagnosed me as delusional – and as a socialist!

So let me get this right…

…you’re advocating a ‘socialist’ political ideology, just after the biggest financial crisis in living memory, that most people would blame squarely on ‘capitalism’, and, although democracy is ‘sacred’, it is ‘irrelevant’ that the British electorate have chosen to elect a party (twice!) with an ideology that you claim is the exact opposite of ‘socialism’…

…but you’re not a socialist?

For what it’s worth, though, plenty of middle class people ‘go private’. I don’t think they are super wealthy…

Sure, plenty of middle-class ‘go private’; they get minor operations and cosmetics surgery but how many of them are born in private hospitals, how many rely on private hospitals in their declining years when their health fails, get dementia, alzheimer’s or cancer? How many die in private hospitals?

The vast majority of people who ‘go private’ only do so when they can afford to do so (or have insurance that covers it), and because they need to, and not just because they are so wealthy that they wouldn’t think of doing anything else.

And it is pretty damn clear that there’s a tax-take out there that’s currently being avoided…

…so long as it’s not being evaded! Right?

There’s nothing to say that progressive taxation of the users shouldn’t be used to pay for it. In fact it already is. However, there is a shortfall to be made up.

‘Progressive taxation’? Please elaborate…

…but basically more taxation, not only of the super-rich, but across the electorate (except the ‘poor’)?

Fair enough about the majority using the NHS and state education. For what it’s worth, though, plenty of middle class people ‘go private’. I don’t think they are super wealthy. You misdiagnosed me as delusional – and as a socialist!

There’s nothing to say that progressive taxation of the users shouldn’t be used to pay for it. In fact it already is. However, there is a shortfall to be made up. And it is pretty damn clear that there’s a tax-take out there that’s currently being avoided.. our own Prime Minister could tell us all about that, I’m sure. It might not pay for it all, but that doesn’t by itself make trying to raise more from the super wealthy the wrong thing to do. And it doesn’t make me a socialist to suggest it – at least not on this side of the Atlantic.

Maybe it was ‘hair cuts?’… to keep JG happy?

The NHS does not benefit us all, and neither does State Education. It benefits those who can not afford to do it privately, as you well know.

You seem to be living under the delusion that there are a vast number of extremely wealthy people in this country that manage to live completely outside the ‘state’ and who do not benefit in any way from it (let alone put anything back into it)! I believe this is a common delusion amongst ‘socialists’.

How many ‘private’ A&E departments do you know of? Private ambulance services? How many of the top Universities in the country are not part of the State Education system? Oxford? Cambridge? Isn’t that where all these privileged super-wealthy people send their kids?

Now you (and Jeremy Corbyn?) may believe you can balance the books and get the country to live ‘within its means’ simply by taxing this group of super-wealthy people, and by that I mean taxing them vastly more than the large tax burden they already bear, but that is a fantasy, there simply aren’t enough of them; the sums simply do not add up! Even assuming these people stay resident in the UK to be taxed.

So, to balance the books, and, presumably, improve public services beyond the ‘inadequate’ current levels, you (and Jeremy Corbyn?) must be planning to raise the taxes of the rest of us that rely on the NHS and all the other public services?

Jolly defensive – you sound like a scalded spokesman.

I didn’t say it was a quote from anybody in Government. In fact, it may not be a quote – but you’d be hard pressed to argue that, for example, John G on this very forum hasn’t posited that belief very clearly, and it is one that you know comes straight from the pages of the Daily Mail.

Well, luckily, I don’t have to worry about what ‘John G’ or the Daily Mail think…

…they’re not running the country!

I wish I could point you to it but I can only remember something about ‘fairer cuts’; Jeremy Corbyn certainly has made a commitment to eliminate the deficit though, and for the country to ‘live within its means’.

Or maybe I’m confusing ‘fairer cuts’ with something Ed Miliband said pre-election? Maybe?

Jolly defensive – you sound like a scalded spokesman.

I didn’t say it was a quote from anybody in Government. In fact, it may not be a quote – but you’d be hard pressed to argue that, for example, John G on this very forum hasn’t posited that belief very clearly, and it is one that you know comes straight from the pages of the Daily Mail.

I am fully aware of the reason cuts affect the poor – I was instead referring to the justification (‘undeserving poor’) provided by this supporting chorus.

The NHS does not benefit us all, and neither does State Education. It benefits those who can not afford to do it privately, as you well know. I would not advocate further cuts while it is necessary to provide that support. On the other hand, they are things we can be proud of, however many attempts are made to undermine them.

I admit, I wasn’t aware of what Corbyn said about cuts (apart from Trident)- can you point me at it?

Re blame.. There are those who champion further cuts because the money that is so ‘urgently’ needed to pay our debt is currently ‘wasted on scroungers’. That’s blaming the poor.

That’s a direct quote from somebody in government is it; who?

What about the ‘cuts’ that Jeremy Corbyn has promised to make when he gets elected; will those be lovely Labour cuts rather than these nasty Conservative cuts?

Of course, the reason that the cuts are made against the poor, is because most of the spending of the welfare state goes towards ‘the poor’…

…unless you think we should be cutting the NHS that benefits us all, or education, or transport, or defence?

I was not arguing about what the British people want or don’t want. Seems like a diversion from the debate. I have a perspective that might be out of step from the electorate (though I sense decreasingly so), but that doesn’t alter the facts under discussion one iota.

We are where we are, and we should hold it up to the light and look at it. One might equally argue that we are where we are because of whom we elected. B. Liar included. Did the fact of it all being democratic make it all so great with hindsight? Democracy is a principle to be defended to the death. The principles of those democratically elected are another matter.

So who is / was then? Jeremy Corbyn?

What seems to have escaped your notice is that the British people don’t want ‘socialism’ then (remember democracy?); and my first-hand political knowledge takes me back to before 1978 so call it forty years!

CD, the last Labour government were no more Socialist than you.

Re blame.. There are those who champion further cuts because the money that is so ‘urgently’ needed to pay our debt is currently ‘wasted on scroungers’. That’s blaming the poor.

I agree it would be good to raise the debate above cynical point scoring.

Re Quantitative easing – I feel that a ‘proper old fashioned’ socialist wouldn’t agree with it on structural grounds. OK, I’ll hold up my hands and say I don’t actually know what socialist policy is, as there hasn’t been such a thing for a long time, but I can’t see it sitting right.

I imagine there is greater sensitivity on the left to the idea that when you print money and only give it to banks, all you are really doing is redistributing a finite resource upwards (the actual wealth, not the numbers on the notes). It is this ‘take’ on what it actually means to perform QE that I think would prevent a Socialist (as opposed to Blairite or even Obama-ite) government from doing this..

…but not as dumb as blaming it on the poor.

Nobody is blaming the state of the country or the financial collapse on ‘the poor’!

However, the big hole in the pot was made by a financial collapse…

No it wasn’t; that is absolutely wrong!

The national debt has been rising for years because governments spend more than they raise in taxes; the national debt was rising even before the financial collapse.

‘Socialist’ governments, such as New Labour, added to the national debt by borrowing money (and therefore paying huge sums in interest to private banks) as much as Conservative governments did. The national debt now stands at about £1.6trillion (£1,600,000,000,000) or about £25,000 for every man, woman and child in the country!

Stop trying to convince yourself that only ‘capitalist’ governments borrow money and pay interest to the big banks!

Hmm,

Not sure I entirely agree with your initial statement. There has been a policy of Quantitive easing in place for some time – which essentially increases the amount of money in circulation, so it is effectively printing money. It came in under New Labour, and hasn’t fully gone away yet. Ultimately it benefits business first, as it frees up the flow of money when banks cannot lend.

The issue with politics, to my mind, is as to how we properly define social care, and stop using the poor as a football. I deplore Labours cynicism in buying votes with handouts as much as I do the Tories for going too far the other way. There needs to be a national discussion on how to effectively define a modern social care policy. However I cant see it happening.

Interesting observation, that.

In the UK there is no socialist policy of borrowing or printing money for the financial markets, the ‘City’ crowd. That would be absolute anathema to our Left.

There is a danger of confusing the two, and certainly the right would like that to happen.

Giving handouts to Wall Street / the City of London is not the same as social care for the poor. Let’s not get sidetracked by this false association. If they are associated in the US Presidents mind I would be surprised, even if he has done both (has he)?

It was the belief that debt didn’t matter that led to recession when they were called in and suddenly it was realised that making up money doesn’t help. It’s been quickly forgotten again now by the private financial sector, and yet the UK government like to constantly bang on about how much it matters as its a national debt and somehow thus ‘public’ money (even though it was lost privately), and can only be paid for by cuts.

Yes, I accept completely there is a relationship between government spend and national debt. The size of the pot is what it is. However, the big hole in the pot was made by a financial collapse. It might have been unwise not to keep it absolutely full to the brim just in case this happened, and that was a Government mistake. But not keeping the pot full did not cause the hole.

The difference in terms of whether the debt matters is that a national debt such as ours is unlikely ever to be called in, mainly because there’s no-one we actually owe the money to except bankers and they actually make more real money out of interest on a virtual debt, seen as an asset, then they would from making it concrete and asking for it back! The system WORKS on debt (for them), it’s not necessarily a good thing but it’s very much aligned with the free-market uber-capitalist thinking that is currently fashionable. If you follow the money it goes upwards and then offshore – so what is Osborne worried about?

So yes, getting into this position was dumb – but not as dumb as blaming it on the poor.

Just about everything Bruce said of the UK applies to the US.
The “Wall Street” crowd have enjoyed Obama’s policies of borrowing/printing money.

The liberals don’t worry about the debt, and when the conservatives mention it, they spin it around to make the them look bad. They overstate the possible impact of the cuts, and let’s face it many of their supporters are just looking for free handouts, they don’t care where the money comes from as long as they get it.

Here’s my guess….the lower and middle class are doing okay. The well off but not rich (local business owners, professionals, etc.) are nervous.
the super rich are spending money like crazy.

I write for an antique car magazine that covers collector car auctions around the world, and it’s been noted that since the first of the year, sub-$100,000 cars are selling well, as are the $1,000,000+ cars. But the $100,000 to $1 million market is suffering.
Obviously, you don’t want to read to much into that subgroup, but it’s certainly work considering.