Jameshow
Established Member
The irony!
You said there is no such thing as absolute truth^^^^!
Queen Elizabeth has passed away.
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You said there is no such thing as absolute truth^^^^!
Narnia .......... my name for my Wife. The hair of a lion, the face of a witch and the body of a wardrobe.I find voiceovers can sometimes fall a bit flat as well. I remember watching the Narnia films with my children. Very disappointed with the voice of Aslan. I would have cast Brian Blessed. He has the sort of voice I can imagine a lion might have, and would have been Very good at any roaring required
Jacob
New Luddism. Awake and resist!
This thread is taking a very philosophical turn!
The study of how we know things is called "epistemology" and a bit of googling could keep you going for some time.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/epistemology
Not at all. But all your quoted references tend to be from the red end of the spectrum, hardly balanced. And even verifiable facts can be presented in a misleading way. For example, if I say to you, "my neighbour passed his driving test thirty years ago, and has never had an accident". What impression forms in your mind as to his likely competence as a driver? What if I now say " of course thats hardly surprising, as he has never owned or driven a car since he passed the test". How has your view now changed? The first stement might be factually accurate, but presented without context or qualification, is actually potentially misleading.
Jacob
New Luddism. Awake and resist!
Surely you need alternative opinions and interpretations for balance? Not just from the Daily Mail, Telegraph, and the great un-woke.
And what is "balance" anyway? How would you know that you had achieved it?
I agee entirely, but do you pratice this? You are fond of quoting from the Guardian, when did you last read the torygraph? Incidentally I very rarely read newspapers, if your comment was intended to reflect your view of my likely reading material then you are quite wrong.
As to knowing if you have acieved balace, or more particularly whether you have got at the truth of an issue, sometimes it is very difficult to know. All you can do is weigh up all the information you can find and come to a conclusion based on the evidence available. But for this process to be worthwhile you have to embrace all sources, not just those that are agreeable to you.
PhilipL
Established Member
A postscript. Top of Queensferry Street in Edinburgh was resurfaced just before the cortege arrived. Looked lovely. Today it has been ripped up again. I asked the workmen, why? They said they have to put the proper surface down for the bus lanes - they did a temporary job for the funeral. The cost! In a climate of food banks and fuel poverty and Truss promising more austerity.
No expense spared in this dreadful country for the already wealthy. As we can now see.
To lay down a temporary surface doesn't cost that much, at least not in the grand scale of things compared to paying people not to work.
I'd suspect the measures to overregulate business and encourage them to operate and locate elsewhere has cost you a whole lot more than a temporary paving job.
when they do temp paves here, which they often do if there is utility work, they're in and out in a day or so and the aggregate is stripped with relatively few man hours - some charge for equipment, I'm sure, but the aggregate torn up is sorted out by machine and reused.
We, too, have far bigger cost giveaways than this, but we get the same news manufactured outrage about one offs that cost very little - convenient misdirection.
GweithdyDU
Established Member
I hear what you're saying (writing) and it is one of the reasons for my approach to the issue of the current monarchy, (see earlier post/response above). However, in general terms, lots of small costs, make up a big cost overall, which is of course the current govt's approach to spending, 'save a bit here, pinch a bit there, make every penny of taxpayers money accountable and good value' and so on. Until of course it is the super-wealthy that have to make 'sacrifice' and no, I'm not a Labour voter and never have been. As a Neo-Marxist in favour of hereditary peerage and the monarchy (slightly 'tongue in cheek, but only slightly!) and for the dismantling of the Dis-United Kingdom, my politics are far too complex to slavishly follow any current party.
What's the share of the taxes paid by the wealthy there? It's the bulk here, both by percentage as well as nominally by far.
most of the money spent by the government here is either for defense, infrastructure or or social benefits.
And everyone screams that it doesn't benefit them. I'd love to see the defense spending cut, but wonder who else will pick up the bill and what cost we'd incur if it actually encouraged international disputes beyond just annexing a bit of ukraine temporarily.
Looks like your top 1% paid 30% of the nominal taxes in the UK in the last several years. If you want to be really poor, you can encourage them to move overseas.
I don't like being around overcompetitive wealthy piggish behavior people, but would rather they were paying taxes here (in the states) and creating corporate value in a stock market (that I can invest in) than to chide them. The real debt issues for us, and for you, are voting for money for ourselves. Not because we can't get enough out of rich people.
most of the money spent by the government here is either for defense, infrastructure or or social benefits.
And everyone screams that it doesn't benefit them. I'd love to see the defense spending cut, but wonder who else will pick up the bill and what cost we'd incur if it actually encouraged international disputes beyond just annexing a bit of ukraine temporarily.
Looks like your top 1% paid 30% of the nominal taxes in the UK in the last several years. If you want to be really poor, you can encourage them to move overseas.
I don't like being around overcompetitive wealthy piggish behavior people, but would rather they were paying taxes here (in the states) and creating corporate value in a stock market (that I can invest in) than to chide them. The real debt issues for us, and for you, are voting for money for ourselves. Not because we can't get enough out of rich people.
GweithdyDU
Established Member
Hi. That's fine but what about the almost 3/4 of Dis-United Kingdom adults that don't invest? Investment is not an option for the majority of citizens. Trickle down has again and again been shown to not reduce inequality or make the poor better-off. The system here is broken (and seemingly in the US as well, but I'm no expert) and the current politics/policies of the so-called left are not so different that they will change the status-quo in any real meaningful way. So, here we are, two of the 'rich nations' and yet we have a huge disparity between the wealthy and the rich that leads to a situation where poor people in the Dis-United Kingdom are worse off than people in so-called poorer countries that were in the Former Soviet Union and some of the poorest folk in the Americas live in the US. Perhaps it is time for nations like the US and the Dis-UK to genuinely invest in people rather than seeing a few richer folk investing in stocks, bonds as the only answer to such inequity.
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Do you really believe the poor are worse off than the poor in russia?
There's a matter of human nature that will always be a problem. I see it even in myself. I work more than I should have to, at least I feel like I do, and use little in public service because there is an incentive for me to do it. To be able to provide more for my kids and hopefully create a generational financial comfort that we haven't had in our family in the right way, and really until the last generation or two, at all.
But if the government was willing to give me a baseline that was "just barely comfortable plus maybe a little more", I could very easily fall into doing that because I don't get a big personal thrill from having extra money. I seek having it to provide. Doing almost nothing and eating cheap food wouldn't be a real problem to me.
Every level you seek to provide incentives for a large cross section of the poor, or I should say security without incentive, you will see a large increase in that group and the line where people are willing to drop into it goes up. The line is a double whammy - you remove productive members to being consumers and takers.
This creates an addtional problem - let's call it the 83 IQ problem - the point where the US military won't take voluntary servers because it's difficult to find a task that they can do. People who are truly disabled or who are born with the 83IQ problem are now pooled in with a group of people who are taking what they should have.
So, would this be so bad if you were to say, create a situation where everyone could work 2/3rds as much in the UK and have half as much (because you sure couldn't borrow if you don't have economic leverage to do it). I guess that's really up to everyone to decide- what would make you happy in life? I would be happier as an individual in that situation - I deal with boredom better than being overworked, but the day to day things we do here - like paying for my daughter's orthodontia last week, getting a car fixed timely, getting to the dr. timely several times a year and getting high quality care - those would be cut back. I don't need to take care of myself - at least I don't feel like it, but my kids, I have a higher standard for what they get, and my parents were the same way.
So, let's assume everyone feels like me and we could cut back a good bit other than early life standards - who will pay the debt? Life will always be some kind of struggle. The real challenge is to codify taking care of the people who can't handle the struggle without allowing a bunch of other people to claim they can't.
International competition becomes another problem for the rest - the very wealthy wield political influence for one reason - they can leave. If they leave, then the foundation that all of the social benefits are built on is gone. We are all levered against our future economic value (as countries) - if the ability to store monetary or economic value over time and stably goes away, we'll be back to bartering.
GweithdyDU
Established Member
Who said anything about the poor in Russia???? I certainly didn't. However, Ukraine (current situation excepted), is a better place to be poor in and Estonia certainly is. Personally I think the US is one of the most awful places to be poor in with your very poor living in conditions many developing countries would not accept. Communism certainly doesn't provide the answers but then fundamentalist capitalism is even further away from providing solutions. We may just have to agree to disagree. Cheers
Jameshow
Established Member
T
Totally agree btw.
We need jobs for all not just the brightest and best!
Think your missing a Not if I understand you??
Totally agree btw.
We need jobs for all not just the brightest and best!
GweithdyDU
Established Member
hahaha, You're quite right. I missed a 'not'. thanks
GweithdyDU
Established Member
Duly edited as there were two "not"s I'd missed out.
I think if you're poor in the US, a lot of it has to do with location. If you're poor in a high crime area and you don't want to relocate because your entire family is there ,that's tough.
If you're poor in a nice area, it's hard to argue that it's that bad. If you're poor in the US, especially if it's out of your control, you will receive:
* food assistance (possibly free)
* housing assistance (possibly free)
* utility assistance
* likely income on top of that
* probably the ability to get charity benefits, though charities will have more parameters than the government - as in, they may require you to do certain things
* health are under medicaid
What's tough in the us is being almost poor. Being poor may be boring and seem personally limiting. It could also be annoying if you live in a nice area with all kinds of opportunities to be economically involved or spending money. If you're on indigent benefits here, you'd better not be earning income or you'll get in trouble, and that makes it hard to be a spender, because the public benefits meet your needs and that's about it.
Our spending just on medicare and medicaid (two public medical benefits - one for retirees and one for the poor, including long term care for the indigent) is about half of the size of the GDP of the entire UK ,and total spending is actually larger than the spending on private health insurance. Our total spending on state retirement or indigent benefits, income and welfare is about the size of the united kingdom (it's about $3T).
But on one sense - there is some truth to what you say - I wouldn't want to be truly poor in ultra rural or high crime areas.
There is no fundamentalist capitalism in the US. There hasn't been for at least 80 years.
I think there's probably a lot of TV program fantasy about people living in appalachia or whatever, especially by the BBC. Same as the fat man programs or redneck programs that you guys get that don't really look like much of america. There's some notion that this is an ultra capitalist society and it's way off the mark - not the least comparing medical spending - more public medical spending in the US than there is with private insurance, and private insurance buoys the the social programs by paying much more per patient and making it financially feasible for docs and medical systems to take social payment. The US society is kind of a poorly organized social state with a core regulated barrier to entry capitalist economy. Small business is that terrible here, though, but going from small to large is tough unless you're doing something really unique. The regulatory barriers are pretty harsh if you are more than relatively small.
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