Cameron upping 40% tax rate band from 41k to 50k

13m! I'd love to see their definition of unskilled, it certainly doesn't cater for the experienced. However, like anything else minimum wage is a marker, if that goes up so do the rest of the lowly rates by default. My argument is the same although I shall drop the word 'legally' from it because naturally companies will pay a little extra to those they have trained or have proved reliable if they don't want to lose them. There is also a regional aspect, just look at the cost of living in the Southeast.

You can't ignore that the proposed raised mnimum has met fierce opposition from company bosses including those that don't compete internationally (construction, retail, service industries etc.) and should have no qualms, they merely see it as an attack on their own bludgeoning earnings. My scathing critcism of some businesses is merited, especially those that arrange their affairs to avoid UK tax.

 

It really is an appalling state of affairs that not only are the bosses underpaying their workers but they've now started to bludgeon them as well.

 

We won't have proper socialism (i.e. one world, no money) until the majority understand what it is and want it. That, I feel, is where the Soviet Union etc went wrong. The idea of an enlightened vanguard leading the unthinking, ignorant masses to socialism doesn't work. You can't expect to force people to share or adopt socialist attitudes through force.

Education is the key.

Once most people understand and want socialism, it will be unstoppable.

In a couple of generations the idea of a person dying of a preventable illness when there are doctors and medicines right there, or the idea of someone starving to death when there's food in abundance right there, will seem incredible to future historians.

Capitalism is outdated, cruel, wasteful and chaotic. It might have been the best suited system for us back in the days of the industrial revolution when they wanted to get workers out of agriculture and in the factories, but it's long since outlived any usefulness and been corrupted into the wildly unbalanced neo-liberalism we have currently. Even the most cursory examination of the world's situation shows you it's devastated by wars, famine, ignorance and waste. Look at built in obsolesence or the long list of people on the mobile telephone thread insisting they must throw away their telephone and have a brand new one each year. Look at the food thrown away and wasted. Look at the useless jobs administrating capitalism (bankers, accountants, advertising men, landlords, insurance men, financial services etc).

It makes such obvious and blinding sense to PLAN to meet people's needs rather than leaving it for them to sink or swim in the chaos of the private market, that there's absolutely no doubt whatsoever that it WILL happen in future.

After all, it's what you'd do if you were washed up as one of a dozen people on a desert island isn't it? You'd look at how much shelter was needed, how much food and water, how much cooking is required, whether we're going to build a raft to get home etc. and you'd divide those jobs up equally amongst the 12. Everyone would work and everyone would eat equally.

Who would dream of having a system of paper notes and metal discs to 'pay' for such essentials? Who would consider telling the builder that once he'd completed our shelter he was now considered 'redundant' and 'unemployed' must go and sit on his own on the other side of the island without any shelter or a share of the food for himself?

It's such common sense that it simply must happen.

 

Your post started off so well Clive. I was looking forward to being "educated".

But then you just went back to your usual script. Slamming everybody and everything and then suggesting that, because socialism would be the best policy starting from scratch with a handful of souls on a desert island, it would also be the best policy in the real world.

Dream on Clive, dream on.

You disappoint me.:dismay:

 

Despite calling myself 'left of centre' I can't really accept most of what you say here Clive. I think your argument is based on two fundamental flaws:

1. You misunderstand basic human nature and the desire for most to be competetive and 'get on' in the world for themselves and their families and

2. You assume that if everyone was better educated they'd inevitably see the light and opt for a collective rather than simply being better 'tooled up' to fend for themselves in the big wide world as at 1. above.

I do agree with you though that education is the key but I think the outcome that might be reasonably expected from that in moving to a more co-operative society is that everyone would see that if you're better educated you're more likely to be self sufficient and less of a drain on resources. You're likely to be healthier, get more exercise, drink and smoke less and not get addictively involved with illegal drugs and consequently you're less of a drain on health care resources. You're more likely to be working in a better paid job and therefore not a drain on social security. You're less likely to get on the wrong side of the law (particularly if you haven't got to fund an illegal drug habit) and consequently you're less of a drain on police and prison resources. So the thinking man comes to the conclusion that if they help fund a state-of-the-art public education system and maybe some other support mechanisms too, then, in the longer term, there'd be less need to spend as much money funding other arrears of public expenditure. Speculating to accumulate. And there's no need to be altruistic to deliver this. That would fly in the face of evolutionary biology where true altruism doesn't exist (and that applies to human nature too). There's a gain to be had for all in funding a public education system that is as good as the private one so that the only reason parents would have for having their children privately educated would be snob value. No need to ban it or anything silly like that though. I've digressed on the detail of the education argument a bit here but what I'm really promoting is a higher taxation (at least initially) system with better social provision, particularly in the education field, along the lines of the Scandinavian model.

Your desert island analogy isn't really approptiate when applied to the incredibly complex wider world of seven billion people. Of course a dozen people would co-operate in the way you have described in extremis but how about 100, what about 1000 and what about seven billion? I agree that on occasion a larger group can work co-oparitively together. Our WW2 spirit and 'blitz mentality' would be an example but even then there were black-marketeers and others who took advantage. So where we always come back to is ZZT's three groups specified in his #105 and my precis of them in my #221. Where I disagree with you is that you don't give enough credence to jealousy and envy being a motivator for dissatisfaction in group 1., together with a degree of laziness and inertia, and where I disagree with him is that he plays down greed being a prime motivator for an out-of-control minority in group 3. But that broad analysis applies to whatever system humanity is organised under. Sure, the uneducated masses in the USSR were dragged into a system, promoted by a small group of intellectuals, that they didn't have a real investment in. The selfish builders of the ostentstious dachas (the USSR's selfish go-getting minority) were still able to run riot as was their descendant, the ousted Ukranian president and his private zoo. So it's relatively easy to convince the masses to smash something up (especially if a critical mass of group 2 become dissatisfied). There does come a point where numbers can out-muscle the organs of the state controlled by an undeserving elite. The 'organs of the state' would of course include the police and army who might also have become dissatisfied themselves. Where I am less confident than you is in seeing something better being put in place irrespective of better education.

I disagree with you in thinking capitalism now is really any different than during the industrial revolution. What we have now is just an evolution of that. Labour input is still mostly simply regarded as a cost of production. However, even back then, there were enlightened industrialists and entrepreneurs who took great care of their workers welfare, education and recreation. Robert Owen at New Lanark, Lever Bros. at Port Sunlight and Cadbury's at Bournville are perhaps the best known examples. ZZT seems to agree with me that a model where labour gains some of the profits is desirable. I agree with you that built in obsolesence should be resisted. It is incredibly wasteful of natural resources and an artificial tool to tie us all into over-consumption. But I don't think mobile phones are a good example of that. Like it or not, we do live in the age of the white heat of developing IT technology and it's not unreasonsble to want a new toy with all the new bells and whistles that are already so much better than in the six month old one. What is most important, as I know you agree, is to recycle the raw materials!

If you think that my above analysis is unduly pessimistic then please don't. Now that we understand the role of the selfish gene in the the way organisms behave, including our own species, then we do have an opportunity to modify it. If we can selectively breed a wolf to look either like a Great Dane or a Pekinese, if we can selectively breed crops to yield unheard of quantities of grain and if we can stick an Arctic Flounder's gene into maize so that it's resistant to frost then we also have the opportunity to engage our intellects to modify our own behaviour too. But if you deny the role our competitiveness plays in our psyche, and the need to give it its head, then I don't think you'll get anywhere new fast.

 

Capitalism is that it is a system entirely built on population growth and consumption. Even without revolution, when the population can't grow anymore and the majority poor can't afford manafactured (mainly imported) goods that will be the end of it. Britain will just become another backwater state of the US .... It really is not that far off.

 

Should be burgeoning.
Sorry bout that ... if it's not down to autocorrect then I blame the painkillers I'm on.

 

I know. A bit of a cheap trick of me to point it out maybe but I thought it'd be a bit of a larff! I'm very pleased that I've now found the 'edit after the event facility' for my own posts! I'll get back to you re. your #251 above in a bit.

 

Sure we've got a problem with population growth but I don't think that's simply a problem for, or caused by, capitalism. Sure capitalism does require continuous and maybe increasing consumption but it doesn't necessarily require an increase in numbers. Increasing global population is driven by:

1. Increases in longevity due to improved medical science and

2. Despite being increasingly subject to 1. above, the third world has yet to catch up with the first world with regard to dercreasing the birth rate. So globally births currently far outstrip deaths and the global population rises inexorably.

Pretty much all models of population growth predict a finite global population of 12 billion or less. OK, that is significantly more than now but it isn't infinite. All these models predict that at some point before about 2050 the third world birthrate will slow right down. However, there is a bloke who suggests that, with judicial organ transplants we might all live to be 1000 which would obviously be a bit of a game-changer!

Anyway, if you think there's population disaster on the horizon, which there might well be, why do you think that whatever comes out of the end of that would be anything significantly different from a reduced global population and Capitalism Mark 2?

 

I'm thinking mainly on a local scale ... Once we've been bled dry our capitalists will concentrate elsewhere and they won't be paying their taxes here when they do. I think you can safetly reckon on us being nigh on a third world country before we're seen as ripe for investment again.

 

Well once again, we arrive at the core of the argument. Is socialism impossible because of fundamental greed, envy and jealousy that is an integral part of the human condition?

I believe that those despicable traits, which are all too obvious anywhere you care to look today, are a RESULT of the capitalist system rather than being its raison d'être.

Look at how you're forced to struggle to survive. Look at how you're forced into competition with the next man. Capitalists make no secret of their love of competition. Devil take the hindmost! Only the strong survive! Second place is nowhere! It seems hardly a surprise to me that people entirely surrounded by this type of society every day of their lives become twisted and corrupted. I don't believe babies are born greedy, jealous, envious any more than I believe they're born racist. They can only take in what their eyes and ears tell them are the realities and you have to admit that the values we live by at the moment are not exactly exemplary, are they?

If people have this indelible stain of greed as a fundamental, biological part of being human, then how does one explain all the noble acts of solidarity, sacrifice and charity towards others? Solidarity with unrelated others is the noblest sentiment of the human condition. I don't agree with you that true altruism doesn't exist. You yourself must surely have experienced random acts of kindness by strangers. I certainly have and in most countries I've visited too. That this beautiful human solidarity blossoms DESPITE the "me me me" culture that's so overwhelmingly prevalent, is surely at least equal proof that they are integral parts of being human.

The debate amongst scientists about "nature or nurture" when it comes to human traits has been going on for centuries. Kant and Freud of course had very different views on the subject.

As for me, I don't know if it's possible to have a heaven on earth.

What I do know is, that's it's impossible not to struggle for that aim.

 

I think you ought to read up on what capitalism really means. Capitalism does not mean greed. Proponents of the capitalist system actually believe that it is the best way of achieving a reasonable standard of living for all. Of course you will disagree, but that is what capitalists think. It is the economic system that matters. Greed does not come into it.

No way does a capitalist think that only the strong should survive or that second place is nowhere. You completely misunderstand the concept.

Neither do I or anyone feel believe that babies are born greedy, envious, jealous, etc. but personalities are partly nurtured and a very small fraction will be overly greedy as they develop into maturity. Most capitalists would just like the freedom to develop into as successful as they can be, and that will mean different things for different people. The freedom part is what we like, whereas it is the freedom bit that socialists so dislike. Personally, all I want is to be able to look after my family comfortably and live away from day to day pressures, in the sunshine. That is all I want. I place to live in the sun and ( in today's prices) about £3k a month income, at the most. That isn't being greedy.

Instead of continually and incorrectly ranting against capitalism, why don't you re-educate us as to why socialism/communism would work in our current world?

 

Why are you always on about women, Stan?

 

I don't need to read about capitalism. I can see it and experience it every day. If capitalists really believe their aim is to altruistically make a reasonable standard of living for all, why don't they give it up as a bad job? It's obviously not working. Look around the world. The majority live in material, cultural and educational poverty. Wars rage and diseases run unchecked. The resources are ravaged and wasted and most people spend most of their time engaged in a desperate struggle just to survive. How can the human race develop itself in these conditions?

I think you've already heard several times why I think socialism is the cure for this. I'll explain again in very simple terms. It's because it's purely logical, that's why it would work.

6 billion people to feed, clothe, house, educate and medically care for. So that'll be x amount of materials and y amount of labour we'll need to produce for their needs. Now we just source x amount of materials and divide y amount of work amongst the population and we're just about done. No need for money. No need for advertising. No need for insurance. Easy.

Now tell me about this 'freedom' you like so much. The "freedom" that is so precious to you that it is worth all the horrors of capitalism. The "freedom" that we socialists want to deprive you of.

What does it consist of? The freedom to do what exactly?

 

Thank you for your response Clive.

Firstly, I didn't say that humans were necessarily greedy, jealous and envious by nature. I agree with you that those traits do potentially exist in all of us and can be exacerbated under the nuture of rampant capitalism. What I did say was that we humans are, like the rest of the animal kingdom (and for that matter the plant kingdom too!) naturally competitive and if you deny us the freedom to be that then you come into conflict with basic biology and human aspiration. That's our biology. It's got little to do with philosophy. We're not forced to be competetive. We do live in a world of limited resources where life is a struggle to survive. Please don't confuse competition with greed, jealousy and envy though. And it's not to say that we shouldn't look after the more needy. Where you pitch that is the question. But, ostensibly, we're not 'born equal'. That just shows the danger of selective quotation because the full quote's 'born equal in the sight of God'. Now, as an agnostic, I'm not entirely sure what that might mean, but it certainly means something different.

As for altruism, all I've said is that what might appear to be random acts of kindness and altruism actually have a motive. And that's if you give a random act of kindness then you have a reasonable expectation of receiving one in return. Treat your neighbour as you would wish to be treated yourself and the chances are you will live in a kinder, safer mutually beneficial world. Receive kindness, charity and consideration and it encourages you to behave reciprocally. That's basically the way biologists resolve the apparent dichotomy between altruism and the selfish gene.

 

Come of it Clive, all those negatives you describe exist in every country and always has, whatever the ruling government. Did the Politburo sit down to the same meals as the farmhands. Did those farmhands spend their holidays in their dachas in the country? Millions of murdered innocents in the USSR and China under communism would fail to understand your idea of Shangri La under a non capitalist regime.

Your socialist solution is just daft. You are imagining that 6 billion people suddenly just appear in a puff of smoke and start farming the land. All 6 billion all have identical ambitions, identical intelligence, identical desire for power, etc. Christ, humans aren't robots, they have their own minds!

The freedom I am talking about is the freedom to achieve what we are capable of without people like you (the overwhelming minority) trying to stop us. It wouldn't be so bad if such stifling pressure put on us came from a majority. But the fact is less than 19% of the electorate voted for the Labour Party in 2010. (29% of a 65% turnout). What right to the likes of you have to try and stop my aspirations?

Christ, kids aren't allowed to play conkers, I'm not allowed to take a photo of my little niece at her school sports day. I'm not allowed to choose where I invest my own money. I'm expected to employ people at a loss. People who earn no money, or put no effort in to even try and earn their own living, think that they have as much right as I do in choosing what I do with my money. They expect to sit back and just steal mine in the name of equality. Grabbing, sticking their envious noses into everything they can. I'm expected to live in a world where hard work is penalised and laziness is rewarded, in the name of equality. Where law breakers are looked after but their victims are ignored.

I am more than happy to let you get on with your miserable lives that is riddled with jealousy and envy.

I don't have a nasty bone in my body, I have created jobs, my business supports families, I give to charity, with funds and with my time. I invest ethically, we don't waste food (our home food bill is about £30 to £40 a week for two).

Just leave me to get on with my own life, in relative freedom.

 

Clive.

I would say it does work reasonably well here. No-one really needs to live on the street or go hungry although, under the current regime, the safety net is under threat somewhat.

Agreed, we could solve world poverty given the will. Diverting a quarter of US defence spending would solve it as would a quarter of the income of the world's 100 richest. But wars rage irrespective of political regime.

Disease is being addressed and defeated, largely by medical effort in the west. Where is the effort to deal with ebola coming from? Where is the effort to eradicate malaria coming from? Where was the polio vaccine developed? Who eradicated smallpox?

Totalitarian countries are amongst the world's worst polluters.

The freedom is to live my life, within certain parameters, as I wish, not as I am told to.

 

Capitalism creates poverty elsewhere. You see little poverty here because capitalism steals the resources from other countries. If you take more than your share somebody else must become relatively poor, possibly not a big deal. If you take significantly more than your share somebody else must become absolutely poor, always a big deal. You cannot solve world poverty in a capitalist system because in order for the system to function somebody must always want too much.

 

Explain that comment please. Are you suggesting that hoards of capitalists are sneaking up on third world beaches and stealing bananas from the trees, or digging up aluminium in the night?

Or are you suggesting that poorer countries would be better off keeping the bananas and aluminium to themselves rather than exporting them for money to clothe and house the locals.

Please explain with real examples of stealing, bearing in mind that most of the third worlds resources are worthless without a market for them.

 

The obvious example, is that companies like Nike/Apple etc can only make such large profits by exploiting workers abroad. I read somewhere that Nike pay Michael Jordan more than they pay all of their factory workers in Malaysia put together... That's not right, surely even you can see that ZZ?

 

Ideally they would pay them more, but then it is still better than farm jobs that the workers would ovtherwise be doing.
Were it not for capitallism, you could argue nike would still produce all their clothes in the US, and the factory workers would be back to working in the fields.

 

I didn't think that Carlos was talking about labour, I thought he was talking about the natural resources.

But, if the wages paid in Malaysia by Nike are below what other workers receive in the same country then, of course, it is wrong.

But, I would hazard a guess that Nike were only built a factory in Malaysia because of the cheaper labour. It is exploiting the lower cost of living in another country. I would also guess that the Malaysian government made strong overtures and guarantees to attract the factory in the first place rather than it going elsewhere. I would also guess that if the Nike factory was not there, then many of those employees would be getting less, with no jobs to go to. That of course is the risk, if Nike started to pay more wages, then the manufacturing could go elsewhere and the factories would close.

The factories would all stay in the industrialised nations, and the inequality would therefore increase across the world.

Whilst there is a different cost of living across different countries, there will always be a cost advantage to a manufacturer in seeking out the lower wage rates.

As for Michael Jordan, I have never understood the money paid to these sport stars. But somewhere, a calculation has been done that shows it a worthwhile investment, as it brings increased demand and the need for manufacturing plants in Malaysia.

What is the answer?

 

Well why don't we take banana growing and bauxite (aluminium ore) mining as our examples?

Bananas aren't a jungle product. They're farmed in plantations. The extensive destruction of lowland rain forest in favour of banana monoculture is particularly environmentally destructive. The US company, Chiquita, are the world's biggest banana exporters. In fact, they're virtually a monopoly, a position they've achieved by all sorts of dodgy business practices. Their abuses in Central and South America are the stuff of legend. Just google it.

Like any mining industry, bauxite extraction is particularly open to the exploitation of cheap labour and environmental abuse. Just google Vedanta's, Utkal's and Lanjigarh's records in India.

As always the problem is companies regarding labour as simply a cost of production to be minimised as much as possible. No consideration is given to the common humanity of the owners and the workers and the opportunities for exploitation are rife in the third world which doesn't enjoy the same regulation as we do here. The owners would never even think about working under the conditions they expect their labour force to. Why are clothes so cheap to buy on the high street here? Because deaths in the workshops where they're made in Bangladesh aren't regarded as important in the unregulated, capitalist marketplace. Neither is there currently any place in capitalist accounting for the intrinsic value of a bauxite resource or a rain forest over and above the costs of simply digging it up or cutting it down.

Capitalism is simply an economic model. It doesn't have anything to say about what it means to be human. If it's used simply as a tool to benefit our collective wellbeing that's fine. But a slavish devotion to it doesn't benefit us. Its worst excesses need to be reined in and brought under control.

 

That is very blinkered as factories just being there will cause basic food and amenity price hikes ... for everyone. As one section of society benefits the lot of the others declines.

Honestly, some people must live in a bubble!

 

So then when the people move out from the country to the cities for the factories - it's benefitting those left behind meaning the now aren't in poverty?

 

It may benefit some e.g. a workers family but it will definitely be worse for those without that can't afford the increased prices.

 

In answer to your question at the top, I deliberately used the example of bananas because it is an example of the the demand being created by the the industrialised nations and being met in 3rd world countries. Having spent some time myself at the Fyffes banana import facility at Southampton and being an integral part of the logistical process from I am well aware that bananas just don't grow on trees naturally, but in plantations that are only there because of other nations creating demand. That is why I wanted Carlos to explain why he thinks that they are being "stolen".

Similarly, I also chose aluminium because, if there was not a demand then it would remain in the ground as a worthless mineral.

Of course there is a major issue over exploitation of the land, etc, but that is what comes from such an exploding world population, most of which has happened in the third world.

It is somewhat disturbing what would happen if wealth was equalised across all 7billion people, what sort of effect that would have on demand if the billions in India and Africa got enough money to start "demanding".

 

Is it not worth tackling the reason there is poverty and not blame those who are expected to sort it out? Surely families having too many children that they cannot afford to feed or give a reasonable standard of living? and having a church leader that thinks that forms of birth control are immoral. I just think there are too many people on this earth for the resources to cope with and it is the elephant in the corner that no one wants to discuss.

 

I would willingly discuss this but you won't like what I have to say.

Something on the lines of 'you have no more rights than the poorest Indian rice picker or Irish peat digger to anything'.

 

You've just summed up my issues with the way of the world really. I don't buy that the inequality would remain if the production stayed in the USA, and the governments of these less developed countries are half the issue. If every country was well educated and free from corruption, they could find their own sources of income rather than being exploited by large businesses, but it's not within anyone's interests to help these countries because they benefit so much from them being poor, so I know that realistically it's never going to happen.

It's simply exploiting the poorest people to make the richest people richer.

I'm not opposed to capitalism, as a concept. But it'll never be fair, because people are too greedy. I've always wondered why people really need millions of pounds, especially when others have nothing.

I have no real solution to the problems of capitalism and equally i think Socialism could never work, because people will always want more.

 

Money is a medium of exchange and nothing more. You use money to buy resources. If you sell the resources in your country to abroad, you're left with a lot of American paper notes but no resources to buy with them. It comes back to the point about inflation - if you let all of your resources float across the ocean to America, the price level of the ones left in the country rise and your notes are worthless. It's a fraudulent argument because it tries to disguise money as some sort of magic 'living standards creator'. You can't "buy resources you need from elsewhere" because the West is buying them all up too. You'll never get the resources you've sold back because they were bought to be consumed in the West.

 

But you are ignoring my question, which was you say that resources are being stolen by capitalists, I am just asking you to explain that. Where is the theft?

 

Thank you for your response ZZT. I will say though that it's strong on an economic analysis of supply and demand but lacking in any real critique of my points regarding exploitation of the third world labour force which was the main plank of my post.

Yes, population growth is a huge issue, particularly in Asia but less so in Africa. However, with a rise in living standards ths birth rate always falls and population growth slows. Families were much bigger in this country 100 years ago. That rule is critical to predictions that world population will not exceed 12 billion.

Of course the world doesn't have sufficient resources for 7-12 billion people to have a US style, energy and resource consumption rich, standard of living. But can we deny the third world the aspiration to wish for something closer to it? Closer to our standard of living here. To my mind that suggests that we should slow down a bit, rather than worrying too much about the third world's natural desire to speed up. For example, a very good way to address climate change would be to increase energy efficiency. But that isn't given a particularly high priority because it would reduce demand and consumption and that doesn't fit the capitalist model. Our leaders and industrialists seem incapable of seeing beyond the ends of their greedy noses on that one.

 

I think that depends on real market values compaired to often corrupt deals and of course how much is then invested in that country by way of infrastructure and benefit.
We humans are blessed with something big businesses are missing ... a conscience

 

Excellent, great to hear that you think that real market values should be primary driver as to what is paid.

Godfather the capitalist landlord.:jumping1: