We’re all familiar with paying taxes to the government to spend on the public sector. But I wonder if anyone questions the less conspicuous ‘tax’ that some of us pay to the private sector?
Really, I’m sure any employee notices the fact that 8 hours a day, 5 days a week seems a bit much for an average wage to afford an average life. There’s barely any time left to spend it!
It’s easy to accept, or so it seems from analysing the work attitudes of the average work colleague, that “it’s just life - get on with it. Maybe complain a fair amount, but as long as we’re complaining together it’s fair and we can get it off our chest”. But it turns out that average full-time job hours are not derived from what’s equivalent to simply renewing the conditions to keep an average employee’s life going.
Complete self-sufficiency in actual fact requires about half this amount of labour time. 4 hours a day, 5 days a week suffices to renew the conditions for you to live an average life. Further, if you were to have access to all modern day technology, this amount is halved again to 2 hours a day, maybe even 1 and a 1/2. Yet the standard is 8+ hours? Does anyone know these things or question this norm? I never seem to hear it in any depth from anyone else at least.
The extra hours you work to get to the same point of being able to renew an average life, that full time wage affords, what are they for?
Obviously the labour value that doesn’t get translated into your own subsistence still goes towards the company, but towards profits. These profits are soley put towards maintaining the business for a “non-profit” organisation. For a public service, profits are also put towards the government for expenditure on public services for the average person to use for their own benefit. For a private company, the profits are also put towards expanding the business, and used by the employers themselves to spend on themselves.
But I ask anyone who works for a private business, are you aware that your employer gets around 4/5 of the fruits of your labour? When your remaining 1/5 gets taxed anyway, but at least towards public services? This is assuming you live in a country that is socialist enough to provide any significant degree of public service at least. But in either case, you essentially pay 80% tax to the private sector before you’re even given your pay-cheque (usually at the end of the month too & not while you work so the private sector even gets credit on your 20% as well).
For a free market, it is required by definition for the market environment to be unfettered. This simply means that competition is unfettered for the greastest intensity of challenge, should you find yourself able to take it on (a miniscule percentage of the population). But this competition gets to the point that business expanditure becomes detrimental to factors that get in the way of free market competition - at least relative to the laws in place to provide at least some mercy.
The capitalist employer is of course struck with the terrible dilemma of whether to invest 80% of your work’s value into either this expansion by conducting a simple transaction, or on luxuries for themselves. Often this is the entirity of their “work” contribution.
We work more than we “need” to because it is not needs that drive our behavior, but wants, desires. We are conditioned to want and want and want, wanting is the basic state of man - we are consumers, and thus we will work as much as we reasonably can (that is we will make as much money as possible given the extreme limits of our time and talents) in order to consume as much as possible.
Granted our wage-slave labor does drain productivity from us, but that is the definition of wage labor itself - selling your labor for a wage. In this way he to whom you sell your labor gains your productivity, he uses it for his own ends, and you get a (small) compensation for this which will never be equivalent to the actual production-value of your labor itself; ie. the employer must make a gain from your work, else he would not employ you.
In point of fact, taxes are everywhere and ubiquitous in our societies. You might consider any charge over and above the cost of production a “tax”, ie. a profit. Tax to the government is profit for government, just like profit for business is “tax” that you pay when you buy their product. Yet this is just the way it is, the entire system is based on a tax/profit schema, and that cannot change unless the entire system changes, which is of course not going to happen.
If you are saying that we ought to only be working 2-4 hours a day, then by all means you should only work that much. If you can afford your life on this basis, more power to you. I know that I cannot afford my life with less than 40 hours/5 days a week, due to debt (student loans) which is also an intrinsic part of our captialist system. Debt keeps us locked in, where we cannot leave. But even more so, it is the consumer desire implanted deep within us, the identification of our identity itself with products that keeps us entangled in this capitalist net. Perhaps the entire system could somehow be reformed so that most people only work 2-4 hours instead of 8, but this would then undermine the consumerist-schema upon which the entire system itself is based. So no, it would not work, the system would collapse if not for the surplus waste-production and waste-consumption. It is the production and consumption (and thus labor) over and above the minimum “necessary” which is in fact the most necessary part of our modern capitalist economic systems. Without this surplus waste, without the capacity to buy meaningless things that none of us needs, this entire system would not survive a day.
A reasonable article about statements from a think tank concerning a 21 hour working week being the ideal.
It’s pretty funny when you think about it:
Loads of people work too much
Loads of work is done that doesn’t need to be (management consultancy, for example)
Loads of stuff is consumed that doesn’t need to be
Loads of pollution is caused that doesn’t need to be
Loads of debt is created that doesn’t need to be
And yet:
Loads of people don’t have enough to eat
Loads of people are unemployed
Loads of people suffer directly from the effects of pollution but the West only gives a shit about computer models predicting global warming
Our economic system is full of fail. Globally it has all the hallmarks of a ‘failed state’, and yet instead of overthrowing it, national governments are reinforcing it by integrating with it yet further.
Yes, it is irrationality at its finest, because it serves the ends of the institutions, and so they will perpetuate it as long as they can lie to us and make us think it is all in our best interests.
A higher consciousness of global issues is one thing; a global dictatorship of elites which only further empowers the current repressive and destructive state by making it totally indestructible (via the crumbling-away of national sovreignty) is entirely something else.
As usual, these politicians and despots use well-meaning issues like ‘environmentalism’ and ‘helping the poor’ as clever deceptions to cover-up their true agenda, which is the expansion of fascist-corporate control over all aspects of your life, and they use their loyal lap-dog, the mass media, to push this agenda as “cool” and “hip” and “trendy” and “liberal”, when in fact it is anything but these.
Really it isnt that hard to see this, provided one shifts his paradigm slightly out of the artificial-cultural-conformity perspective that he has been conditioned/brainwashed into accepting as “life”.
I cannot disagree with this strongly enough. I certainly live in a society where what you describe is the stress and focus, and I assume you do too. But this does not mean we are always this way independently of contemporary societal conditions.
What about sleep and leisure? Perhaps there’s some of what you describe in each of these. Creativity and defiance? An over-exposure to other people amplifies a desire to stand out from the crowd - sometimes in reactive ways. Simple pleasures? Where’s the want and want and want to consume and make as much money as possible when walking through the countryside on holiday, posting on a philosophy board, converting to a religious life of ascetic virtue, playing an instrument to yourself, cuddling for hours with a loved one, or renouncing normal life to live on a self sufficiency farm etc? Back to sleep: it is a desire as well as a need, but not a consumptive or money-making one. Leisure can be performed in ways I’ve barely even started to list for free. To spend on leisure can be consumptive, but doesn’t have to be. Moreover, when it is consumptive it’s because someone has found a way to make money from you doing something you would have done without spending money, if you could. If consumption is any form of ‘doing’, it can always potentially take place without money or maximising efficiency.
One thing that this boils down to is a disrespect towards breathing out. Possibly what sickens me most about these current societal demands is the relentless pace. Nothing is given time to settle. As soon as an idea is introduced, it is ‘capitalised’ upon and worn out before it’s even had time to grow. Also, there is a great deal of copying. With no room for growth and matured creativity in what I am practically unavoidably surrounded by, I feel positively suffocated.
“Work” is actually a word to denote transformations, like in physics where work describes energy going from one form to another. A task is done to convert one resource into another that is deemed to have more value. Nowhere in this word is any reference to money or inequality in employee/employer relations. It doesn’t even intrinsically contain unpleasantness. These are associations that have spawned since the industrial age started, and capitalism entered maturity. In the russian revolution, the proletariat famously went into the boss’s offices, carried them out the door and shut them out. Then they carried on working.
Transparent tax i.e. the one that is visible on your payslip, is to the government - to provide public services for your benefit. It never ceases to amaze me how hilariously depressing it is that the american working population have been persuaded to fight against a government that supports the supply of public services. I think one of the arguments that is used is ‘death lists’ that would happen under a publicly funded health care system, due to the necessary allocation of limited resources. Apparently this is worse than unwritten ‘death lists’ that include simply the poor majority who need health care because they are poor.
I do work 2-4 hours a day with no other source of income. It’s superb. The point though, is that 2-4 hours a day in terms of actual labour is equivalent to producing what a full time wage affords you. Do you understand what I mean? A full time wage actually equals 2-4 hours’ work. Under capitalism, we are given a full time wage for 8+ hours’ work. It’s enough that the rich keep the poor poor. But nowadays it’s become not even enough to keep the poor fluctuating either side of zero wealth. They are kept UNDER zero, in debt where - as you say - they cannot leave… whilst still effectively taxing you 80% lol.
As I started to explain, consumption isn’t the only human desire. Creativity and self-improvement don’t imply consumption. I am not saying that everyone would be creative and self-improving if they were given the chance. But not even being given much of a chance at all is pretty abhorrent. And there-in lies the crux of capitalism: in reducing creativity and self-improvement, leisure time and personal time, it succeeds in becoming a secret form of DESPOTISM.
The free market is certainly freedom - in the market place. This is all that’s actually true of the ‘freedom’ of capitalist societies. Freedom ‘from’ is the kind of protection that keeps you restricted. Capitalism is used to rule. Perhaps this is in some ways appropriate?
A 21 hour week still contains a 50% private sector tax. I already have one, roughly. Just without the full-time wage that this would equate to if all those hours were only spent on directly renewing my own conditions of living. I certainly agree that my work quality increases hugely when given ample rest time.
I would say that the virtuousness contained in passages like this is counter-productive. This too easily resigns the more apathetic citizen into thinking “it’s all very well that it may or may not improve the planet a bit, but it doesn’t change that I need to earn enough money to live!” What the public needs are motivations that are parallel to what motivates them to participate in capitalism. If there was a simple need pushed to work less, be healthy, care for the environment, spend less, pollute less and stay employed under a system that benefitted the poorer peoples - you bet they’ll be on the case right away!
It definitely best serves government to lie. This has been recognised and written about since at least the 14th century by Machiavelli. No doubt this tactic runs back far further into history. All you need to do is dissipate the attention of the general public before they look too deeply. Pushing ‘liberal agendas’ in words just gives the idea that they’re doing all they can to help stem the less pleasant inevitabilities of life. Enough coverage about this and lack of transparency at a deeper level, and they’ll never even suspect that these less pleasant inevitabilites arise as a result of the basic underlying systems that they support in action. Further, it is only as a result of advancing up the capitalist hierarchy that one actually has disposable income, that you can now donate more towards causes that can only STEM the effects of what you have been spending your time supporting!!
Yes, very nice. Whether that was a joke or not, songs like that trivialise matters. Videos like that just sensationalise to the same end.
Perhaps things like that would be more effective once a movement was formed that wanted unity and raised spirits?
Until then, a great deal more anger or sorrow would fit the subject matter far more adroitly. This is not because I want to bring the spirit of this matter or of other people down, it is definitely not because my spirit is down - it is because a free market has inherently led us to antagonistic despotism that can only serve to bring unknowing and trapped workers down. You don’t have to treat this severe problem severely, a little light hearted mockery is easy when you’re resting in your private comfortable leisure time, having understood a small amount about how workers have so far been thwarted in their efforts to fight for a better life.
If you are an employee and you are informed, you are a Socialist - by definition. You may not like this - I understand this term attracts a lot of ridicule. Yet Socialism derives simply from being involved in a group of people. Communism derives from teamwork. Even Republicanism used to be closer to its derivation of being a thing of the people. Democrats derive from a system where the people are in charge. All of these, implying hierarchy or not, equate to the same thing, but they have come to mean very different things. Whatever they have respectively come to mean, they all have in common that they consist of a majority of people. Yet Republicanism has somehow adopted privatisation that puts power into a tiny proportion of people’s hands - and still goes by the name of a ‘thing of the people’? Even Democrats in America are hugely capitalist relative to the rest of the world. Their extensive privatisation therefore still counters the notion of being led by the people.
To adopt the values of those in favour of privatisation - when you are a member of the public - is to have been tricked. Your repression is sold to you in very nice words, and they really do make sense as long as you don’t look into them. And looking into them won’t even occur to the uninformed majority.
This thread is primarily a question as to whether people who have jobs - or those who don’t - who post on here are informed. (Those looking for a job or on government funding suffer in direct proportion to relative privatisation too.)
Dude, Ernst Busch was totally part of a movement and he sought to affect real change. That his songs remain provocative now as they did back in the '40s is a damning statement of the capitalist system under who yolk we yet work. What is wrong with galvanizing people? What is wrong with propaganda? Propaganda we disagree with, sure. But if we agree that propaganda has an effect (and anyone who argues against that is pretty much completely insane) then why not direct it towards the good?
The militarism and neo-liberalism of major international players is a knife to the heart of social progress. So arise ye starvlings from your slumbers and let’s affect some real change!
thing is, i don’t think being informed helps much - i feel informed, and nothing in this thread comes as anything new to me, but i also feel like i’m being fucked up the ass by the system, and knowing all about it doesn’t help assuage the unpleasantness of it or empower me to change much . . .
Ok, I thought perhaps you were using the music video sarcastically - I expected there to be a much more hostile response to this thread than there has been. I’m glad to add you to the contributors to this thread thus far, and thus to those who understand what their real interests are.
I don’t disagree with propaganda, in as far as it causes an effect. The only aspect of it that I disagree with is when it’s used nostalgically or otherwise inappropriately. My reaction to your video was based around it being of an old movement that is far enough removed from contemporary ways. Even though the struggle is essentially the same, the association of it with a old attempts is counter-productive. This is why I trivialise terms like republicanism and socialism. The popular association with such terminology is negative, and if it’s the popular majority who needs convincing, getting round prejudice and misunderstanding is what needs to be done. I have nothing against the usage of lies or any means towards pressing causes like this.
Modern propaganda would be much more appropriate that doesn’t rely on morals for motivation, terminology that attracts prejudice, or other methods that are counter productive.
UPF - when the informed are impotent through their minority, no matter how informed each person is, they are still impotent. Being informed is the first step towards spreading the information to rally a majority. Then, an informed majority can actually act and assauge all they need. The informed also need to know that others are informed so that a movement can be recognised as formable, before it forms.
I dunno. I think old school symbols have meanings. That they are polarizing demonstrates this!
I’ve gone marching on May Day with a red flag. I’ve overwhelmingly met with no response what-so-ever. But that is to be expected, most people don’t care. Or at least don’t care enough to say/do anything which amounts to the same thing. There is a slight bias towards a positive response (3 out of 4 responders, estimated) but given the public spectacle a positive response is more likely. Plus the person assaying the situation is more likely to view horn-honks as an affirmation as opposed to condemnation when they may well not be, so a 50/50 distribution is a reasonable estimate after accounting for situational and observer biases.
But that other portion of responders? Boy are they positive! Symbols are important in any movement, look at what Napoleon said about his flag. What symbols do we have now that could supplant the old ones? At least in America, Conspiracy Theorists are rallying around hatred of the Covetous Jew and the Black right now – those are powerful old symbols. If we, the righteous, can’t offer something similar we are doomed to lose. And a world where the John Birch Society and the KKK win is too terrible for me to imagine!
I agree with you. I do not mean to imply that the natural condition of man is one of a mindless consumer, or that we are “always this way”. The fact that man today is in part a mindless consumer is the result of a combination of essential (genetic) factors as well as social ones. Neither can shoulder the entirety of the responsibility, but both share in it.
I did not say that being a consumer is all that we are; I did not say that all we do is want and want and want. The fact that this sort of behavior is common and deeply psychological, at this point, still does not mean it is our entire nature. Of course we are many other things besides this, as well. But the existence of these other states of mind and behavior does not counteract the consumerism that is a rampant and pervasive aspect of modern human culture, as well as of most people’s individual psychology.
As with most things, we are more than can be defined by only one concept or type. My analysis was not meant to be taken as all-encompassing, exclusive or absolute.
I agree completely.
Maybe not in the “word” itself, but the concept of employment work usually includes the additional concept of money as well as inequality (ie. profit).
Perhaps not intrinsically, but in fact, in the majority of cases in the real world, it does.
When theory contradicts with reality, then theory is incorrect. Regardless of your personal beliefs regarding what work is intrinsically, or in an ideal world, or whatever, in this world work mostly consists of unpleasant wage-slave labor where one sells his body and mind in order to produce for an employer, who then pays the employee a fraction of the amount of value that he actually produced. This is the way it works in most cases.
What do you mean by this, “fight against a government”? Do you mean that workers ought not to be upset or angry that the government takes a large percentage of their wages before they even see them? Are you trying to imply that there is no waste, inefficiency, fraud, abuse or corruption in government’s public systems? I do not really understand your point here.
That someone dies because he does not have health insurance is tragic. But this is an unfortunate fact of life, and we can work to help people better help themselves, as well as work to erect safety nets to protect people who are poor, but ultimately we cannot give everyone who is poor free healthcare. It is unfeasable.
Also, these so-called death lists that a public health system would implement are for the most part a scare tactic by anti-reform advocates (conservatives). But in addition to this, there is some legitimacy to the concern that a public health system will have to make a choice of one person living at the cost of another dying. Yet this happens already in healthcare, and will always happen because resources are not infinite. The general idea of the argument, however, as it applies to a public health system, is that these sorts of rationing and life/death choices would increase under a public health system, for a variety of reasons.
I am not saying that I necessarily buy that argument myself, but I do acknowledge that there is some merit there - there is at least a reasonable cause for some concern, at least regarding the theory of public healthcare.
I am jealous. What is your career?
Well, I am not really sure how you can make this judgment. If someone works 8 hours a day and produces X value, then if they were to work in the same manner for 4 hours a day they would produce 0.5X value. It seems that what you are actually critiquing is the methods of employment, not the amount of time worked. But if you are going to compare 8 hour days to 4 hours days, then this assumes that these methods are the same in both instances, else the comparison is meaningless with regard to hours worked. So really I do not see what you mean here.
That much work is inefficient to some degree? I agree with that. That capitalism engenders waste and inefficiency? Well, perhaps, but more so than this it sacrifices individual potential and autonomy for productive efficiency via collecting and organizing individual energy into corporations and industry. While I detest this sort of dehumanization and exploitation in principle, I also realise that it does, in reality, make economic production far more efficient than it would be without the corporation or industrial organizing.
But for myself, I do not place a primary importance on productive efficiency, so this is where I disagree with the current system. I do not deny that production is made far more efficient under capitalism than it otherwise would be, from the point of view of the product itself and the time/energy it took to create it, but I consider the down-sides of capitalism far more relevant than any increase in productive efficiency. And of course productive efficiency has its own problems, as well, such as the break-neck pace of technological development which, as you seem to say, no one has the time to catch up with and rationally understand what the hell they are doing or inventing, or what it will reasonably be used for.
Ah good. Then we are in agreement afterall. There are genetic factors that demand consumption. There are genetic factors that favour indulgence in excess consumption. But as we also agree, where capitalism caters only for the presence of these genetic factors, it doesn’t cater for the presence of other genetic and social factors that favour lack of consumption and indulgence.
There is a physiological need to breathe out, rest, recuperate. Capitalism pushes efficiency to the point that when one person rests, another freshly rested person comes in to take your place. But if one person exhibits more lasting production, they will be favoured and the battle commenses to push yourself towards company values and away from your own - to keep your source of income at all. Curiously though, Capitalism intentionally keeps employment at a certain level so that there is always a significant pool of people needing to replace you if you don’t match the pace. This reveals Capitalism as counter-efficient, and simply a form of control and despotism. You are demanded - by your own need to stay alive and healthy being used against you - to suffer for the benefit of a system that is in place, supposedly for the production of goods and services to benefit the employees who exist within it!
Certainly ‘work’ and ‘labour’ are unpleasant in the current real world. When I go to my girlfriend’s self-sufficiency smallholding, one thing I love to do is split logs. This is work, and yet it seems to inspire a huge deal of simple satisfaction within me! I love starting fires as well haha. Gardening and cooking are forms of ‘work’ too, yet they are also soures of a great deal of pleasure in many people. Outside of self-sufficiency, and in answer to your later question as to my job, I simply work in a shop. When there is no rush and pressure, I’ve actually enjoyed sorting the stock out. It’s when efficiency has gotten to the point that you must do this to a certain standard, but also keep an eye on customers in case they’re thieves or they want help, and then serve them, and keep tight control on money, and paperwork - all while on your own for hours at a time - that the simple pleasures are somehow lost…
All the above is real life. Real experiences are what I relate my theory to.
Not so. You must be American. In England, you don’t need health insurance. You simply make an appointment at the National Health Service, and you get sorted to a decent standard, by qualified professinals according to what healthcare knows so far. When I pass a hospital, the proportion of poorer people heavily increases. Loosely speaking, they are the ones who need healthcare the most. A healthcare system that favours the rich who can afford health insurance is absolutely backwards. Government public services can be of a very good quality. You’re definitely right that conservatives use scare tactics. It seems they capitalise on lack of information too. There really is no merit in private health care, except for the minorities of the rich and the capitalists.
I mean that I have heard a great deal of anti-socialist thinking from America. By members of the public. They actively work towards maintaining Republicanism because of simple measures that Republicans use to win their support - despite the majority of their policies and systems that are exactly opposed to what the public really wants and needs. They absolutely should be angry or upset that " the government takes a large percentage of their wages before they even see them". A different party could easily advocate what wins over these people, but also be more socialist and therefore, by definition, benefit the public. If there is waste, inefficiency, fraud, abuse or corruption in the system anyway, it would benefit the majority if it was in a predominantly public system than if it was in a predominantly private system.
What I mean, is that once you’re half way through your normal full time job day - under current real conditions right now using normal methods - you have given “0.5X value” and this already equates to the wage that you take only after giving “X value”. 2-4 hours a day outside of capitalism reallyequates to what a full time wage earns you.
So around 4 or 5 times more work is produced by you than what you get in return for your work. And it goes towards the rich, the luxury industry and destructive global expansion of exploitation. This does mean a hell of a lot of actual value is created in return for the value you get back for creating it. But for all the unemployment that capitalism needs, for despotism and keeping inflation down etc., capitalisms inefficiency here could be used to make up for the efficiency lost if the working day was reduced.
Much more importantly, the 80% private sector ‘tax’ could go to services or even luxuries that the public afford but never see. The extra time won from a reduced working day would mean all the more time could be used to enjoy and make use of these services, to then come back to work more refreshed, and produce more value over the course of the shorter working day because of the benefits of these services and recuperation time!!
I don’t mean to be ‘righteous’. Also, I’m not after equality. I’m just being practical and impassioned and feeling roused (galvanised) by this.
Conservative symbols withstand history because their movements hadn’t been quashed enough. A red flag, like it or not, is a symbol of failure as well as what it’s supposed to symbolise. In the public’s mind it is all-to-often a symbol of a pointless struggle because it failed. All symbols were new at one point. They all failed when the movement failed, and they all endured when the movement endured. What is needed is a new symbol that is not associated with previous failures. You may not realise it, but in revisiting old symbols, you are being conservative. This causes a mixed message, because what you want to do is change things.
Fascism is rooted in looking back to the past. To fight against the oppression that fascism has come to imply, you need to look to the future, having secretly learned from the past. Not look to the past, when wanting something from the future. Confusingly, the leadership that fascism implies, is what is needed - but one that actually leads according to the public’s interest in practice: that’s the difference. A symbol and leadership are needed, but not ones buried in nostalgia. Better to leave that red flag behind. Since there are minimal movements started on this board amongst informed people, I could be said to have started leading a movement. If anyone wants to lead one themselves, then I actively encourage this! Just learn from the past, don’t cling to it. Polarisation, whilst causing recognition, only serves to divide and unity is needed. Moreover, the polarisation of a red flag polarises a majority being against or uninterested in you: the opposite of what is needed.
An approach that spreads information to people who want information is appropriate. If you have no understanding of what you’re being galvanised for, there’s no real motivation to get behind it. This is unless everyone else is, in which case curiosity forces you to find out. But until a movement has been formed, galvanising is to be achieved by informing those who want to be informed - and informed about what they already understand to be directly causing them grief e.g. tax, money and being overworked. Is there enough motivation to get behind a movement against privatisation? Perhaps not, there has not yet been much of a response to this thread.
As a Canadian, and finance professional, I die a little inside at the smug arrogance of an obvious intellectual making ignorant claims about “free” healthcare – especially an Englishman, at this point, today – making such claims. Last I checked, the UK is bordering on soverign financial collapse. What is the Sterling trading at lately? Nearly par with the battered Euro?
The Last Man pointed out that governments providing healthcare to everyone is unfeasible – which is to say that its fiscally unsustainable – and therefore irrational. You smugly point to socialized medicine nations like ours and make sweeping generalizations about what “is” possible with no consideration of the mounting liabilities – both acknowledged and unacknowledged. I suggest you do just a smidgen of homework into exactly how the government is funding your “free” healthcare. It most certainly isn’t being funded through your taxes. Your taxes just cover the interest on the debt your nation is mounting to provide these “free” services. When it all comes crashing down – we’ll see what kind of blind faith you have in your “free” healthcare and other “free” social services.
The economic reality is that private institutions can only provide services as they can afford them. Sure they can borrow to fund shortfalls in demand and cover cost issues – but in the end, they die if they don’t run a system where demand sustains the supply. Governments, like the UK, are able to borrow against the future productive power of their economies – they don’t need to worry (in the short and mid-term) about supply-demand concerns.
Only the irrational mind would believe a principle as simple as supply and demand that holds the private sector to the fire wouldn’t apply to the public sector.
Sorry to derail your larger conversation. As I said – I die a little inside when I witness such financial nonsense.
Last time I checked, the Pound is almost exactly on par with the Euro. Each of which are stronger than the American Dollar…
At the moment, an English Pound is about 130-140% of the value of the American and also the Canadian Dollar. England is doing fine and even the worst of it all was not noticably bordering collapse. It was just a recession, and as a financial professional, I’m sure you’ll appreciate how recessions are a phenomenon only specific to free market capitalism, and it was our more-socialist financial model that got us, and europe out of recession.
Balancing things as important as healthcare on a market that is by definition free and wild, is a little dubious wouldn’t you say? Maybe public sector funding relies on this too, but at least their borrowing “against the future productive power of their economies” provides some stability. I am aware that public services don’t equal free services. Contribution being a cycle and whatnot. But if tax contribution goes towards a borrowing system that contributes stability in return, I’m happy to invest in that over a less predictable private institution.
Are you suggesting that since the private sector dies without a demand to sustain the supply, it needs to keep a certain proportion of the population ill enough so as to meet the demand demand?
No problem whatsoever. Economics is an area that needs addressing, possibly more urgently than social wellbeing. Perhaps if you’re an expert and in case you relate to the capitalist exploitation of the professional, you have ideas on how to improve the economic system with regards to social wellbeing and minimising the huge secret ‘tax’ to the private sector?
I should point out that the author fails to note that it was the UK Central Bank that purchased most of its recent debt issuance – which is why it “had no trouble” raising funds – it simply ran the printing presses. Again - it’s convenient to note that things “work” now… but without looking at the deteriorating conditions, a reasonable outlook for the future is impossible.
Ah - yes - the famous “socialism” prevents the regular business cycles of boom and recession myth - that capitalism means pain and suffering and socialism implies salvation from the terrors of the market. I don’t have the wind in my lungs or the patience to even attempt educating someone so clearly inculcated with socialist dogma. Rally on young soldier - rally on.
If rationalizing it this way helps you sleep at night - who am I to interfere? If you have no issues incrementally saddling your future generations with a debt load they cannot service or sustain – while at the same time running your printing presses to artificially create value, thereby robbing future buying power the future generations currencies through inflation – again – it’s not my conscious that has to deal with this. Go nuts.
Is the appearance of stability in the short run worth financial collapse in the long run? Inquiring minds want to know…
Ah conspiracy and paranoia - such wonderful bed fellows. Rock on dude - rock on.
I’m no expert – far from it. I just recognize a lemon when I see one. And the ponzi schemes that are contemporary social service programs are just that – lemons that will eventually sour the mouths of the younger generations.
The fact that you don’t recognize the staggering debt issues – compounded by debunked economic policy that believes printing money is a viable solution in such a complex and integrated world economy – is tragic. Though, this isn’t a problem isolated to the UK - it’s an affliction shared by almost all developed nations today.
No, just the other day at the bank. I have no idea why the pound is down to being on par with the euro, yet still being stronger than the dollar.
Ah - yes - the old exasperated voice of experience who can only pity the ignorant, who just needs to rest his old age and wisdom by his self. I hope you’ve passed it on for other people to continue the education. I’m not inculcated with socialist dogma. I wouldn’t even yet consider myself as someone who thought socialism was definitely better. I just have an understanding that it regulates things better, and I’m dying to know more. If you won’t tell me more, where can I go to find someone who will?
I’m aware inflation needs to be controlled for these reasons, and money supply isn’t the only solution to recession. But relative to other countries who have to do the same to some degree, increasing money supply isn’t necessarily a downward slope. As long as future production pays off ‘the solved debt’ relative to other countries, right? You seem to have a profoundly pessimistic view of the economic state of affairs, especially under socialism. Capitalism or other systems are better, are you saying?
I was simply asking if that was what you were suggesting. Not that I have much time or interest in conspiracy theories more than giving them a sensible analysis.
I recognise the problem this would cause. Is it really as simple as ‘print money to worsen debt issues’ or ‘stick to a system that’s awful’ though?