The people who have everything also run everything.

There was no bashing of rich people in the article and I certainly haven't bashed any. It is about equality of opportunity and having a decent start in life.

Good post Razzy. Last paragraphs particularly.

Here is a link to a more conventional explanations for why you cannot just print more money
www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&channel=crow&q=Why+you+cannot+solve+problems+by+printing+more+money

I haven’t read the entire thread but why is there so much bashing of rich people? Whatever happened to aspiration and working hard? Money does not always bring happiness.
We have seen a big increase in children and adults needing support either due to poverty or disability or both and this should always be a priority. But the majority of people can make choices in life. You can choose to work your butt off, gain qualifications, improve your life, or you can choose an easier route. That hasn’t changed over the years. Families have changed. It seems the norm now that some leave education and have children as soon as possible, and end up needing a lot of help whereas others work like crazy, save money and get a mortgage later, then have a family when they can afford it. It seems that kids don’t stay living at home, with the social and practical benefits, as long as they used to. Families become fragmented, housing is under strain and support falls to other workers paying higher taxes rather than families supporting their own.
I hate all the anger and jealousy. Most of it I have heard personally from people who just don’t want to work hard.
I left school at 16, my parents had no money, I’ve been poor and I worked my way out of it. So it annoys me when people moan at people who have money.

I have looked at the link you gave. I think the best I can say is that it is an interesting view, but to my mind, speaks more of Utopia than how the fiancial system actually works.

Maizie Where on earth do you get your economic facts from? Britain came off the Gold Standard in 1931. About 35 years before Harold Wilson became Prime Minister

Unfortunately, whether we have a 'sovereign' currency or not does not mean that the rules of basic economics and finance no longer apply.

Your suggestion means we would be like Zimbabwe did in the Robert Mugabe years, or Germany in the 20s and 30s.. Print lots of money that becomes more and more valueless as inflation goes ap,e with inflation at 100s if not 1000s % every year. You cannot be serious.

Money is only worth what someone will pay for it and if the value of money, that is the overseas exchange rate goes down, the cost of everything goes up. The price of our imports would rocket. We would then become like Zimbabwe, where the only acceptable currency was the US dollar. What a humiliation. That or like inter wars Germany where a wheelbarrow of paper notes would be needed to buy a coffee.

Is that really what you want?

If you can start LG using facts Maizie you will get Gransnetter of the year from me (possibly decade )

Like the countries who print money like there is no tomorrow, cause rampant inflation and a banana ends up costing £50.

Boringly predictable response, lemon. Try reading the website I linked to.

I like all the hundred or so new polices that socialist Labour would bring in,
They would not bring in all these policies because there would simply not be time.

We have had the rampant inflation scenario here before, and not because there were no goods to buy.
I expect Monica knows something about economics and doesn’t need a lecture.

Like the countries who print money like there is no tomorrow, cause rampant inflation and a banana ends up costing £50.

They can do it one of two ways, either they soak the lot of us or they increase the national debt even faster than the Conservative party and then, like Harold Wilson before them they have to bring in the IMF and World Bank etc and like Greece bow down under the crack of their financial whip.

We have a sovereign currency, MOnica. We can issue as much as we like to do whatever we wish to do without having to borrow it from anywhere or raise it by taxation.

When we went to the IMF in the 70s we had only just come off the gold standard. The gold standard was a limiting factor because currencies had to be backed by a country's gold reserves. That no longer applies. The gold standard was abolished in 1972 and at the time the IMF was involved economic thinking hadn't really got to grips with the implications of the abolition. Nearly 50 years on there is a better understanding. Quantitative Easing has been used on more than one occasion since the world financial crisis of 2007-2008. The some £200+ billion QE the UK has issued was not 'borrowed', it was created by the Bank of England. Some of it was in the form of the issue of government bonds, so that created an obligation for the government to pay interest on them and redeem them at term, but a large proportion of it wasn't. It was just money creation by the state.

The idea that a national budget is like a household budget is completely wrong, just about any economist will tell you that. As long as there are resources available to spend it on a government using their own sovereign currency cannot get into difficulties. The difficulty occurs when there is nothing to spend the extra money on; that's when inflation takes hold.

Greece is an entirely different case. They don't have a sovereign currency under their control. It was being in the euro that caused their problem; the euro being controlled by the ECB which still believes that deficit spending is Bad and that austerity must be imposed to reduce the deficit. Tell that to Japan, which runs a perfectly successful economy with a huge deficit.

This website explains it all much better than I can:

gimms.org.uk/mmtbasics/

Politics! Always a touchy subject. The top tenth of taxpayers paid close to 60pc of all income tax last year according to figures from HMRC. So I do believe that the rich are paying their way ... (of course there are many who will try to avoid etc etc) ... but we'd be in a pickle without them!

The Labour party did not introduce the State Pension.
The beginning of the modern state pension was the Old-Age Pensions Act 1908, which provided 5 shillings (£0.25) a week for those over 70 whose annual means did not exceed £31 10s. (£31.50). It coincided with the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress 1905–09 and was the first step in the Liberal welfare reforms towards the completion of a system of social security, with unemployment and health insurance through the National Insurance Act 1911.

Labour were Johnnie-come-latelys where the introduction of the welfare state is concerned.

I like all the hundred or so new polices that socialist Labour would bring in, so do I, but then I look at what they will cost and wonder just how they intend to finance them. The idea that soaking the rich can generate 10s of billions of £s of extra money is a fond belief but wrong.

They can do it one of two ways, either they soak the lot of us or they increase the national debt even faster than the Conservative party and then, like Harold Wilson before them they have to bring in the IMF and World Bank etc and like Greece bow down under the crack of their financial whip.

Greece has had 30% youth unemplyment for the last 10 years. That is not what I want for my grandchildren.

That is the problem with being an economist, you tend to ask how things will be paid for and who has the money. As they say in the states. 'I do the math' and this math doesn't add up.

Last post should have been to Pantglas1 Mon 08-Jul-19 10:18:43

Not annepl sorry

Ha Ha annepl

Wish my friends who are tories had your total faith in all their own policies, they might not be dithering as much as they are at the moment

Well if they took a look at all these many good polices they may actually approve, they wouldn't need to dither anymore, then say let's vote Labour for the many including ourselves!

Does anyone read posts properly? is exactly what I was going to ask.

What I said about entrepreneurs has been deliberately misinterpreted because I stated that they would be paying their due taxes and perhaps carrying out charitable works too. Those with drive, ambition and energy will often find time to spare to help others too.
If they are paying due tax there should be no need for essential public services to be 'propped up' by charity, although, the amount of fraud, theft and inefficiency reported in the NHS would, if tackled, provide more medical staff and equipment.

There are other worthwhile charities which cover areas not under the umbrella of public services, both here and overseas which always welcome help and I don't think that anyone offering their time and expertise should be sneered at.

Well, lemongrove, I really don't mind you "point scoring" - if that's what you choose to call including some facts to support your argument.

Does anyone read posts properly anymore?
Eloethan I didn’t say that your examples were point scoring, but rather that if I bothered to aquire and cite more examples myself, that would be point scoring.
You are obviously like Grany in that you fail to see good policies ( ever!) in ‘the other side’, good foot soldiers for Jeremy Corbyn.

lemongrove

"That’s the trouble with being a blind supporter of any party,
You fail to see the good things being brought in by the other one.
Both political parties have brought about some good policies to improve lives of the ‘average’ person."

You posted this opinion. I responded, asking you what great steps forward, in terms of improving the lives of the average person, this and other Conservative governments had made.

You then citede just the one recent example of cutting tax thresholds.

I took issue with this because financial experts and economists have pointed out that cutting tax thresholds has had the greatest benefit to the much better off and the least, or no, benefit to the less well off.

So, because I quote some facts that challenge your example, rather than just spout my opinions, you say you "can't be bothered" to "trawl" the net for any other examples (if there were some shining examples of progressive policies I would have thought they would have sprung to mind without having to "trawl" for them) - and my opinions, backed up by facts, are just "point scoring".

Exactly the way we are going. It's sad frightening and incredible. I remember asking my mum what is that building ( in the grounds of our Belfast hospital)and she sadly said it had been the Poor House. Do people not remember or read about the past??

the idea of relying on the charity of the rich for such care seems to me to be curiously outdated

Sadly, I fear that we may be heading back in that direction though MazieD with charities having to do more and more, ordinary people having to raise money to pay for necessary equipment and specialist medical treatments for their loved ones and the poor relying on foodbank donations in order to feed their families....

All that went well didn’t it?

I agree with you, Pantglasl.

On the other hand, I don't wish to see a state where charity is a substitute for state care. But wasn't that David Cameron's Big Idea? Cut public services and rely on charities to step in?

I hope I never see a Britain where, because the state cares for all its citizens, more fortunate individuals stop giving back to the not so fortunate.