Secondly, I have given an example of a public institution that is haemmorrhaging funds - to the private sector. The single biggest drain on the public sector is the superprofits made by its private sector suppliers; in second place is the massive pay unaccountable politicians and civil servants award themselves.
I regard bring public servants to account, paying them an average worker's wage and eradicating the drain that private profit places on the public purse as being a far better solution to the imperfect situation than privatising everything (and just hoping it doesn't all go the way of Northern Rock). Look at the state of the infrastructure - water and power firms are laughing all the way to the bank.
So the consistently poor service, endemic corruption and shockingly bad business decisions made by state owned services are entirely the fault of the mean old private sector? These institutions have to be efficient and competetive if they're going to provide us with a proper service. Insulating them from the pressure of providing that service hasn't done us any good, and it won't magically improve by dragging the whole lot down to the same low standard.
And those water and power monopolies created out of botched privatisation by incompetent public sector employees are perfect examples of why we need proper competition to give people the best value.
Recent studies have claimed that the all-time highest quality of life for UK citizens was in the 1970s. The sum total of wealth in the UK has certainly grown since then; an overwhelmingly disproportionate amount of this is going to the rich - wages raises rarely significantly exceed inflation, whilst boardroom pay rises four times as fast. The super-rich have a message for those short-sighted workers who voted for Thatcher: "thanks, dumbass!".
Wealth creates wealth for those who are smart enough to use it properly. The incredible finances poured into the public sector since 1945 somehow haven't translated into such massive growth for us. And as the infant mortality and basic mortality rates have decreased, and life expectancy has gone up, we're objectively better off than our ancestors in at least some measures. As poverty no longer has an agreed upon measure and usually concerns relative poverty these days, theres little point looking at the wide range of survey results which aren't consistent.
Being unemployed is not laziness if there are not enough jobs. Thatcher deliberately increased unemployment to over 3 million - a figure which has been maintained - and slashed corporate and super-rich taxes, shifting the tax burden onto the higher paid and middle class.
The point he's ignoring, that I'm making, is that the amount of UK GDP that is visibly consumed by those not in work is dwarfed by the amount consumed behind closed doors in tax havens and boardrooms by unelected capitalists who never lift a finger. (Many of them own newspapers, which turn a blind eye to capitalist greed and scream blue murder at the welfare state.)
If you believe that Marx's ideology was centred around blaming the poorest for wages being low whilst ignoring rampant capitalist greed, then you clearly have never read what he had to say.
If there are no jobs, then why are we importing immigrants, skilled and unskilled, to do them?
And you're making the assumption that someone who provides leadership, management and decision making isn't providing a deeply valuable service to a company. Otherwise, why on earth would they pay them? This attitude goes a long way to explaining to awful management in the puplic sector.
Qualify this statement. Were these people scabs? Were they self-employed (no doubt totally reliant on the wages of miners trickling down to them and wondering why they lost so much trade after the Thatcher regime declared martial law to crush the unions)? Or what?
Qualifying: killing. My family and the people in our area weren't "scabs", or dependent on miners wages in any way. But there was no fuel to get to work, no power for heat and light, not enough food.
You're right, when workers organise they are under no obligation to help scabs. But they have - by campaigning for a minimum wage, free education, public health care, public pensions, welfare, peace, etc.
You're welcome!
Umm, what? Remind me again what peace was won by strike action in this country? I'm grateful to the German workers who ended world war one and saved their country from communism. What strike won us universal free education? Wasn't big business the driving force behind that? The liberal reforms that gave us social welfare and pensions didn't come from organised workers either, but were designed to protect them. So I guess I as the champion of 'capital L' Liberalism in this discussion, I can condescendingly claim credit for that too.
You're welcome!
And then along comes a supermarket which destroys the small business. And the shopkeeper blames the unions and foreigners.
Remind me again where the small business fits into the planned economy? And apparently this organic and local food craze has put the small businessman on the up.
The fundamental failure of your analysis of communism is that you assume that every government which calls itself communist is representative of everybody who calls themselves a communist. There is nothing in Marx's writings to suggest he would support the regimes of Stalin, Mao, etc.
You're right, he wouldn't, but systems attempting to follow his ideals have led inexorably to the same place. Surely there must be some correlation? Or are we to write that off completely?
[i}Schools run by pro-capitalist politicians have failed to make the working class well-informed enough to make major economic decisions, therefore the working class should not be allowed to participate in economic decision-making? Where else should we apply this maxim? This 'dumb people should not be allowed to vote' philosophy can only lead to an absolutist regime which denies education opportunites.[/i]
Well, people are better educated now than ever before, unless you really believe the exams are getting easier. That doesn't mean the education system is or should be geared around producing economic geneii. When it comes to planning an an economy I think a doctor tends to be on the same level as a carpenter. I know a number of very working class individuals who have taken the opportunity to study economics, and some extremely blue blooded people who can barely count. Birth isn't a bar to being involved in that world, only perspiration and ability.
It's certainly true that pro-capitalist economists have repeatedly been proven to be useless. Anti-capitalist economists are getting pretty sick of saying 'we told you so'. Economies will behave a lot more predictably when share & currency trading and war mongering are abolished.
Whoah, say what now? Of course, I forgot, the alternatives have proven to be so successful. And you're right, the whole history of warfare is the result of a capitalist plot. Some of the most blood soaked men of recent times haven't been unashamedly working class. The lower classes have never desired or made war, ever, and the evolution of a non barter economy has constantly held back our societal evolution.
If you take the media into public ownership so authoritarian racists like Rupert Murdock aren't spewing scaremongering antidemocratic propaganda, so-called anti-terror laws will have a far harder time getting erosions of civil liberties through.
So we're to revoke the right to free speech of people we don't like anyway? If that's the road we're to go down, what makes it so different to the one we're on now? And public ownership of companies rarely gets rid of any type of personality organically, if past examples are to be believed, so at the end of the day we're still just throwing out people we don't like.
I regard bring public servants to account, paying them an average worker's wage and eradicating the drain that private profit places on the public purse as being a far better solution to the imperfect situation than privatising everything (and just hoping it doesn't all go the way of Northern Rock). Look at the state of the infrastructure - water and power firms are laughing all the way to the bank.
So the consistently poor service, endemic corruption and shockingly bad business decisions made by state owned services are entirely the fault of the mean old private sector? These institutions have to be efficient and competetive if they're going to provide us with a proper service. Insulating them from the pressure of providing that service hasn't done us any good, and it won't magically improve by dragging the whole lot down to the same low standard.
And those water and power monopolies created out of botched privatisation by incompetent public sector employees are perfect examples of why we need proper competition to give people the best value.
Recent studies have claimed that the all-time highest quality of life for UK citizens was in the 1970s. The sum total of wealth in the UK has certainly grown since then; an overwhelmingly disproportionate amount of this is going to the rich - wages raises rarely significantly exceed inflation, whilst boardroom pay rises four times as fast. The super-rich have a message for those short-sighted workers who voted for Thatcher: "thanks, dumbass!".
Wealth creates wealth for those who are smart enough to use it properly. The incredible finances poured into the public sector since 1945 somehow haven't translated into such massive growth for us. And as the infant mortality and basic mortality rates have decreased, and life expectancy has gone up, we're objectively better off than our ancestors in at least some measures. As poverty no longer has an agreed upon measure and usually concerns relative poverty these days, theres little point looking at the wide range of survey results which aren't consistent.
Being unemployed is not laziness if there are not enough jobs. Thatcher deliberately increased unemployment to over 3 million - a figure which has been maintained - and slashed corporate and super-rich taxes, shifting the tax burden onto the higher paid and middle class.
The point he's ignoring, that I'm making, is that the amount of UK GDP that is visibly consumed by those not in work is dwarfed by the amount consumed behind closed doors in tax havens and boardrooms by unelected capitalists who never lift a finger. (Many of them own newspapers, which turn a blind eye to capitalist greed and scream blue murder at the welfare state.)
If you believe that Marx's ideology was centred around blaming the poorest for wages being low whilst ignoring rampant capitalist greed, then you clearly have never read what he had to say.
If there are no jobs, then why are we importing immigrants, skilled and unskilled, to do them?
And you're making the assumption that someone who provides leadership, management and decision making isn't providing a deeply valuable service to a company. Otherwise, why on earth would they pay them? This attitude goes a long way to explaining to awful management in the puplic sector.
Qualify this statement. Were these people scabs? Were they self-employed (no doubt totally reliant on the wages of miners trickling down to them and wondering why they lost so much trade after the Thatcher regime declared martial law to crush the unions)? Or what?
Qualifying: killing. My family and the people in our area weren't "scabs", or dependent on miners wages in any way. But there was no fuel to get to work, no power for heat and light, not enough food.
You're right, when workers organise they are under no obligation to help scabs. But they have - by campaigning for a minimum wage, free education, public health care, public pensions, welfare, peace, etc.
You're welcome!
Umm, what? Remind me again what peace was won by strike action in this country? I'm grateful to the German workers who ended world war one and saved their country from communism. What strike won us universal free education? Wasn't big business the driving force behind that? The liberal reforms that gave us social welfare and pensions didn't come from organised workers either, but were designed to protect them. So I guess I as the champion of 'capital L' Liberalism in this discussion, I can condescendingly claim credit for that too.
You're welcome!
And then along comes a supermarket which destroys the small business. And the shopkeeper blames the unions and foreigners.
Remind me again where the small business fits into the planned economy? And apparently this organic and local food craze has put the small businessman on the up.
The fundamental failure of your analysis of communism is that you assume that every government which calls itself communist is representative of everybody who calls themselves a communist. There is nothing in Marx's writings to suggest he would support the regimes of Stalin, Mao, etc.
You're right, he wouldn't, but systems attempting to follow his ideals have led inexorably to the same place. Surely there must be some correlation? Or are we to write that off completely?
[i}Schools run by pro-capitalist politicians have failed to make the working class well-informed enough to make major economic decisions, therefore the working class should not be allowed to participate in economic decision-making? Where else should we apply this maxim? This 'dumb people should not be allowed to vote' philosophy can only lead to an absolutist regime which denies education opportunites.[/i]
Well, people are better educated now than ever before, unless you really believe the exams are getting easier. That doesn't mean the education system is or should be geared around producing economic geneii. When it comes to planning an an economy I think a doctor tends to be on the same level as a carpenter. I know a number of very working class individuals who have taken the opportunity to study economics, and some extremely blue blooded people who can barely count. Birth isn't a bar to being involved in that world, only perspiration and ability.
It's certainly true that pro-capitalist economists have repeatedly been proven to be useless. Anti-capitalist economists are getting pretty sick of saying 'we told you so'. Economies will behave a lot more predictably when share & currency trading and war mongering are abolished.
Whoah, say what now? Of course, I forgot, the alternatives have proven to be so successful. And you're right, the whole history of warfare is the result of a capitalist plot. Some of the most blood soaked men of recent times haven't been unashamedly working class. The lower classes have never desired or made war, ever, and the evolution of a non barter economy has constantly held back our societal evolution.
If you take the media into public ownership so authoritarian racists like Rupert Murdock aren't spewing scaremongering antidemocratic propaganda, so-called anti-terror laws will have a far harder time getting erosions of civil liberties through.
So we're to revoke the right to free speech of people we don't like anyway? If that's the road we're to go down, what makes it so different to the one we're on now? And public ownership of companies rarely gets rid of any type of personality organically, if past examples are to be believed, so at the end of the day we're still just throwing out people we don't like.
