Is it OK to break the law if you are a Tory?

Fleurpepper I thought socialism had the oligarchs paradoxically

Where on earth did I say that !?!

Fleurpepper so we can all chill about Zahawi as he has paid up! I think it’s time to revise the tax system.

Capitalism in the UK and many parts of the world is changing fast, to an oligarchy system, with shades of fascism.

A very very different kettle of fish.

Katie59 Cuba exports trained doctors to the third world but then I guess Australia does have ours! Cuba has loads more doctors and nurses per head of population than here but apparently health outcomes are similar. It has a community focus health care system where gp lives in same neighbourhood as patients and there is a relationship plus annual health check ups. Salaries for employees are kept low. Not sure about the profit bit. Is it more cohesive society as opposed to fragmented?

Not so sure how to gauge capitalism v socialism these days.

Very few are asking 'We are not going to change the system and live in some kind of socialist utopia, '

but we certainly do not want to life in a far right capitalist hell! Do you?

And there is the problem ronib. All this nonsense about people who criticise Zawahi and others in the same league being jealous of their wealth. NO, I will admire anyone who builds a great business- if they employees have decent conditions and fair pay, and IF THEIR PAY THEIR TAXES.

Venture capitalists used to contribute most in taxes to the economy on huge profits years ago. Don’t know if still true.

I think it's you who are being obtuse, Kati59.

Wwmk2. That as well, but it's consumers who are handing over the money.

Maisie you are being deliberately obtuse, if pensions or other investments were just sitting there it would be true it’s wasteful. It’s not because the cash is being invested and grows to keep pace with inflation, so that we can have a better life in retirement. Along the way it creates jobs and a lot of taxation from those that do have enough, probably the most wasteful activity is the way we all buy what we “want” rather than what we “need”.

We are not going to change the system and live in some kind of socialist utopia, we saw in September what happens when polititians step out of line, we all suffer and the poorest suffer most. Maybe you think the socialist systems in China, Russia, Cuba and Venezuela should be held up as improving the lives of the poorest.

Despite its faults the UK system provides a good standard of life for most, changes do need to be made but no electable government is going to make big changes. If Truss taught us anything it’s step out of line, loose confidence, will cost us all a great deal. The wealthy should pay more, that is likely to include those with quite modest income, that has already started with freezing tax bands.

I prefer to think that without those that labour for them, they would be nothing.

I'd like to know where Katie59 thinks 'the wealthy' got their wealth' from in the first place.

I'll tell, you, most of them got it from us in the first place. Us, the 'consumers' who , directly or indirectly' buy the goods and services they sell. Their money didn't just materialise out of thin air. Murdoch got rich by selling us media, Dyson did it by selling us vacuum cleaners. The Saudis did it by selling oil. Bezos did it by selling books and extending the range. Without our money they would have nothing.

Think about it.

MaizieD the name of the game these days … start ups! You think of a product, you don’t make it, you talk it up and get investors interested. Get investors on board, still no product, get more investment… no product, no worries, go to next project. Or so it was explained to me so not everyone sitting on trillions apparently!

You can’t despise all wealth because it provides us with pensions, life insurance

Hang on there, Katie59, apart from state pensions, that's our money, part of what we have earned that goes into pensions and insurance. The 'wealthy' have no part in it.

and taxation to run the government, As taxation doesn't fund spending this is irrelevant.

Without the opportunity to have a better life there is no point in any kind of enterprise or education just sponge off someone else.

God, you are funny, Katie59. Removing some of some people's wealth, or giving them less opportunity to accumulate and hoard it, wouldn't make any difference to the need that most people have to earn a living. The wealthy aren't exactly handing out their excess to the less well endowed, are they? They're not handing it to anyone; they're just sitting on it. Trillions, just doing nothing...

MaizieD I was trying to cheer myself up. What is going on at the global level? Why does someone now living in Thailand see the need to donate money to various political parties in the Uk to the Brexit cause.

I was trying to persuade myself that despite the highest level of State interference in our lives, we appear to have poor outcomes and Sunak is at least economically solvent, unlike his predecessor. I had hoped he might be less dependent on vested interest groups.

My husband was muttering globalisation, the equivalent of a takeover like the British Empire but without the land grab! Good question though why is Rishi Sunak bothering?

Sorry, correction ..the same view of how to acquire wealth as they do...

ronib

Whitewavemark2 or another way of looking at it is that Rishi Sunak might be a safer pair of hands as he is independently wealthy. Maybe even richer than Harborne?

Just because Sunak is independently wealthy (well, his wife is wealthier than him) doesn't make him any safer than any other wealth acquirers in his party. He is imbued with the concept for wealth for the sake of it and moves in the same circles as those with the same aspiration. Where has he shown any indication that he has any understanding of how a national economy works, or any empathy with those who have less than him, or any desire to improve their lives?

The only people who could even begin to think he is a safe pair of hands are those who know that he has the same view of how to acquire wealth as he does and that he will do all he can to protect what they now have and help them to acquire more.

God knows why he went into politics...

You can’t despise all wealth because it provides us with pensions, life insurance and taxation to run the government, yes investors actually do pay tax, lots of it. The successful ones amongst us do have more choices but we all end up in the same care home.

Without the opportunity to have a better life there is no point in any kind of enterprise or education just sponge off someone else.

Whitewavemark2 or another way of looking at it is that Rishi Sunak might be a safer pair of hands as he is independently wealthy. Maybe even richer than Harborne?

Whitewavemark2 Christopher Harborne is presumably the donor. There’s a fair bit about him on the internet.
Also gave £13.7 m to Reform Party apparently and £6m to Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. One could say Boris was short changed with only £1mil.

Interesting that Ben Wallace was overseas director at QinetiQ which has a global revenue of £1.3 billion.

Something else that smells

The man who gave a £1m donation to Boris Johnson is the largest single shareholder in a UK defence company that secured an £80m government contract.

Some have speculated the donation was intended to fund a potential return to leadership.

Yup there are some very odd ideas on all sorts of topics .. have just printed out the paper.

ronib

MaizieD I can stop banging my head against a brick wall. I am so grateful for your views. I shall come back to you.

👍

I don't think I'm the only one with odd ideas about money on Gnet, though.

MaizieD I can stop banging my head against a brick wall. I am so grateful for your views. I shall come back to you.

Well, try starting a thread about this, ronib and watch how many posters come to the defence of the accumulation of wealth. It's like Stockholm syndrome. identified in situations where people held to ransom by extremist groups come to sympathise and identify with their captors. People seeing the acquisition of wealth as a desirable objective because they hope that they will be able to do it themselves. Even though most of them have no chance...

Heaven knows, I've tried it in the past.

Root of the problem as I see it is that the acquisition of money, which is merely a token which facilitates the exchange of goods and services, is seen as a desirable objective in itself, not because it can enable the purchase of goods and services, but just for the sake of having enormous amounts of it. Most of which does nothing at all but sit in accounts of one sort or another doing absolutely nothing, except perhaps attract more money to itself in the form of interest and dividends. It's just dead stuff.

The other problem, for me, is that people don't seem to take on board the fact that the money that is being accumulated was originally their money. Money that they pay for goods and services which generates huge profits for the wealth accumulators. Profits to be hoarded because that is the objective of wealth accumulation; just the acquisition of more and more unused, dead, money.

The system is rigged because admiration of the wealthy has put them into positions where they can control how they acquire their money. Adam Smith warned against this in the 18th century

...Smith is adamant that law and policy should never be entrusted to those who live by profit.

"The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the publick, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the publick, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.”

dboucoyannis.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/9/3/13938365/smith_paper_oct_2013.pdf

(this is well worth reading because Smith is held to be one of the founding fathers of the justifications for capitalist economies)

Smith's warning was, of course, ignored because those who controlled the law were the wealthy and influential members of society who made the law to benefit themselves. This was so in Britain until the early 20th century. So admiration for, and aspiration to, wealth for its own sake is engrained in the national consciousness. The wealthy and the aspirants to wealth have fought hard against any attempt to limit their wealth and any attempt to distribute it more equably. Aided by voters who inexplicably think that wealthy people people will know how to 'run the country', when in fact all that most of the wealthy know is how to run their finances so as to accumulate more wealth. What is more, these voters believe that they are dependent on the wealthy for their own financial survival and tend to support their justifications for not paying their workforce more.

IMO it is obscene how many unused, dead, trillions of various currencies lie unused in a world so full of poverty.