Do you prioritise your social or your economic beliefs.

PoliticsNerd

butterandjam It sounds like you are one of the lucky ones whose economic and social view sit pretty much in the same place.

What is ‘lucky’ about having economic views which are completely contradictory of the truth?

MaizieD

^UK is the 4th largest exporter in the world .
2024 it had a trade imbalance, imported less than we export.*

Where are you getting your figures from, butterandjam? A quick search brings a set of search results which unanimously agree that the UK imports more than it exports (and that the imbalance has been getting worse since Brexit)

Yes, my bad. you're correct.

Obviously nothing MaizieD.you are right as always.

What is actually meant by "economic views"? Do people mean macro-economic views, which would affect the whole country, for example by improving our balance of payments or GDP? Or do they mean their personal economics? For example, I'd love every 70 year old with over 45 years of NI contributions to be give a substantial bonus (because I think I'm worth it ) - however, I don't think it would do the country much good .

About only resource we export is oil, which we also import, we have virtually stopped mining for environmental reasons,

We, the elderly, the pensioners, have not paid for health services or pensions we receive, working people have been paying for decades, in addition to their own taxes, mortgages and everything else, topped up with borrowings too. The Tories from Thatcher onwards bought votes with giveaways, Blair thought deregulation was the answer, that went well in 2008, Cameron was making progress until Brexit ended that, forget May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak.
At least Starmer knows how to improve the economy but it’s going to get watered down so much and won’t be effective.

We all want to help the poor, the vulnerable, the disadvantaged, but we don’t want to put our hands into our pockets and loose any of our lifestyle, it’s someone else’s responsibility.

PoliticsNerd

butterandjam It sounds like you are one of the lucky ones whose economic and social view sit pretty much in the same place.

Does it? What do you think is my economic view, or my social view?

Neither have much to do with political parties. I don't belong to any.

Unless tactical voting is required . I usually support the candidate whose political history proves they are a hard worker with integrity aiming at improving lives in the constituency . Which is rarely anything to do with their Party or whether its in power.

David49 speak for yourself, I know many pensioners who are paying tax still, some at the higher rate.

It’s ridiculous to say that pensioners haven’t paid for health services or pensions we receive.

I pay more in tax each month than my pension.

PoliticsNerd

David49 we could argue the "theories" you express but they are only partially supported by agreed economic and political theories and that by such as dependency theory and studies of authoritarian regimes.

These views are not universally accepted as comprehensive truths. Modern development strategies emphasise internal capacity-building and legitimacy rather than reliance solely on external income or coercion.

I wonder if this extreme view of economics is because you actually vote according to your social views and use what you believe to be proved in order to substantiate them?

What seemed to be simple suddenly seems much more complicated!

The agreed political theories have patently failed the UK for decades, or do you have a list of economic successes?.

Growstuff, we are talking about how people vote, or rather why they vote the way they do. Left wing economics would appeal to those wanting the state to oversee things, running them or tightly regulating them. Extreme left would want the state to control everything).

On the right economically you have free market capitalism. The extreme right wing is very free market - no regulations, let the market decide.

Socially "authoritarian" is probably self-explanitory. It covers those who have strict rules for how others should behave and may have an expectation that authority figures should be treated with obedience and respect. They are generally unaccommodating of those who live by different cultures or different ways of living.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for the attempted explanation PoliticsNerd. I understand the concept of left-wing economics. Unfortunately, I don't think it really explains why people vote as they do - or whether they really understand the difference between macro and micro economics (which was the topic of a recent thread).

We hear so many arguments that the Labour Party has betrayed the working class. What these people really mean is that changes have affected them personally without looking at the wider picture.

I agree with you about social authoritarianism, although it doesn't really fit arguments about social liberalism. For example, some people think the country has become too "woke". They complain that people have imposed ideas of social liberalism on everybody - so is that authoritarianism? Ironically, thy'd probably like to impose their own ideas of moral acceptability.

GrannyGravy13

David49 speak for yourself, I know many pensioners who are paying tax still, some at the higher rate.

It’s ridiculous to say that pensioners haven’t paid for health services or pensions we receive.

I pay more in tax each month than my pension.

I agree that many (most) pensioners still pay income tax. Not only that, but they pay all sorts of other taxes, which all contribute to the national "pot".

What they don't pay is National Insurance, which currently takes a significant chunk out of workers' wages - in some cases more than they pay in income tax.

I've given up trying to understand NI accounts at a national level, but my understanding is that effectively the money is notionally added to the big national "pot" and re-distributed. I certainly paid more in NI than I was in income tax during the few years before I retired. It made a significant difference to my total income when I could stop paying it.

David49

About only resource we export is oil, which we also import, we have virtually stopped mining for environmental reasons,

We, the elderly, the pensioners, have not paid for health services or pensions we receive, working people have been paying for decades, in addition to their own taxes, mortgages and everything else, topped up with borrowings too. The Tories from Thatcher onwards bought votes with giveaways, Blair thought deregulation was the answer, that went well in 2008, Cameron was making progress until Brexit ended that, forget May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak.
At least Starmer knows how to improve the economy but it’s going to get watered down so much and won’t be effective.

We all want to help the poor, the vulnerable, the disadvantaged, but we don’t want to put our hands into our pockets and loose any of our lifestyle, it’s someone else’s responsibility.

That is absolute twaddle! We export all sorts of tangible goods. Not only that, but the UK exports billions of pounds of services.

“That is absolute twaddle! We export all sorts of tangible goods. Not only that, but the UK exports billions of pounds of services.

If it was twaddle we wouldnt have record borrowings and deteriorating pubic services, we have been paying ourselves too much for decades.

How do you suggest the government is going to find the money to pay for the benefits you want.

Yes, it is twaddle.

The sentence I was disputing was this one:

"About only resource we export is oil, which we also import, we have virtually stopped mining for environmental reasons,"

We export all sorts of other resources, including services, which are worth billions.

I was not disputing that we have a balance of payments deficit, but it is not just tangible resources we need to export.

In fact, historically, the UK has never had that many physical resources to export. The country's wealth was built on adding value to raw materials.

PS. Which benefits do I allegedly want? I haven't written anything about them.

In any case, this is way off topic.

Jackiest

Alf Garnet was created to poke fun at right wing racist people.

Interesting how right wing and racist are so often tied together!

How do you seperate them?

Teazel2

Jackiest

Alf Garnet was created to poke fun at right wing racist people.

Interesting how right wing and racist are so often tied together!

What is your definition of right-wing?

No we havn’t, because we consumed them at home in our industries during the Industrial Revolution, exporting finished goods. Now cheap subsidized imports of raw materials and finished goods, make strategic industries uneconomic

Interesting point of view David49 but not many (if any) appear to agree with you.

I know threads go off topic and often lead to even more interesting discussions, however, this was about which area you favour when voting, your social view of politics or your economic one. Rehashing old arguments doesn't give us any idea which area is the one that helps GNETTERS decided where to cast their vote. But then, perhaps it's only me that's interested

David49

No we havn’t, because we consumed them at home in our industries during the Industrial Revolution, exporting finished goods. Now cheap subsidized imports of raw materials and finished goods, make strategic industries uneconomic

Which is why the country needs to export services!

PS. We didn't consume our imports. Generally, we added value to them and made profit from exporting them. What we were actually exporting was our ability to turn useless raw materials into something worth buying.

This little island doesn't have that many resources, so we have to use one of our main resources, which is our education and brains.

growstuff

PS. We didn't consume our imports. Generally, we added value to them and made profit from exporting them. What we were actually exporting was our ability to turn useless raw materials into something worth buying.

This little island doesn't have that many resources, so we have to use one of our main resources, which is our education and brains.

We of course consume a lot of imports for home consumption, building materials and food in particular, as for exporting brains, yes a lot of good people leave for pastures new and we have to recruit migrants to replace them, is that good?.