Toynbee - Plan C for public sector workers

Graham_Devon

Conrad wrote: »

Increasing wages would merely push up costs - all you MSE'rs bargain hunters hate cost rises don't you?
It would also lead to captial flight to areas of lower cost - no one invests for a lower return if they can help it - your Mum wont buy shares unless the reward / risk balance is correct.

It would do all that, but thats why the root problems have to be looked at. Afterall, it doesn't have that effect in other countries where a living wage IS paid.

For instance, commerical landlords are pushing their own clients out of business through rent charges. It's insanity.

Conrad

Graham_Devon wrote: »

It would do all that, but thats why the root problems have to be looked at. Afterall, it doesn't have that effect in other countries where a living wage IS paid.

For instance, commerical landlords are pushing their own clients out of business through rent charges. It's insanity.

Which countries? If you say Germany I'd want proof and also be mindful they actualy make stuff people buy.

In the end all you shopper arounders greedy for bargains, force wages down / offshoring. In other words WE are part of the problem. If you want higher wages, pay proper prices for goods and to your local builder / gardener / restaurant.

heathcote123

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Its the only system we have. By your logic pot noodles are the best thing to buy from a shop that only sells pot noodles.

Its time for a change, its time for radical, hardcore, Socialism.

And what if people don't want radical, hardcore socialism? Should it be imposed on them?

How far do you take it? - a boss of a small company on 100k a year, how much of their wealth would you take over and above the 50% or so they already pay?

Seems we already have pretty hardcore socialism to me.

heathcote123

[QUOT=ruggedtoast;47603167]Name a single country where it has actually been tried.

And oligarchical kleptocracies don't count.[/QUOTE]

Cuba?

flimsier

FTBFun wrote: »

Right, so you're proposing replacing a system which although not perfect, is adopted by every developed country in the world and where although there is relative poverty, absolute poverty is minimal; with an untried economic theory which might not actually work?

It's never been "adopted" by anyone (possibly the Stalinist Bureacracies of China and the like can be argued to have "adopted" a version of it), it was born in bloodshed from the revolutions that overthrew feudalism.

In the entirity of human history it has only existed for a very very small proportion of that time, and based on that fact, it is likely to be another transient system.

It is, as a famous philosopher and economist said over 150 years ago, a system that by its nature spreads - a system that is more innovative and dynamic than any of its predecessors, but it is also likely to be a system that is overthrown for a more progressive one. The direction of time is associated with a direction of progressivism.

One problem is that the competitive model of capitalism is also manufacturing a model of destruction because of finite resources - hence the barbarism of war and the huge increase in the number of people's lives taken from wars predicated on competition. Capitalism can't carry on forever, for that competition will produce extreme barbarism.

Of course, the same philosopher and economist pointed out that people living in that society would find it very hard to imagine the one after. In the same way that few people in feudal societies (apart from the capitalists) could imagine feudal society falling, few people in capitalism can imagine anything beyond...

"the ruling ideology of any society is that of the ruling class"

Now I'm no Marxist, but it's disturbing how much ignorance there is "show me a country where socialism has worked" - is an example when Marx himself said that socialism in one country is a myth - it can't work because it will be crowded out by the dynamic of capitalism. That's why Russia degenerated when the German revolution failed (and incidentally, hence ushered in Hitler).

As for your final point; actually Marx said that as well. The dynamism of Capitalism has made it possible to eliminate absolute poverty. The competition and requirement for surplus value (profit) means that it never will - it requires people to be starving. This is why they build ships that dump grain in the ocean rather than send it to those that are starving. Capitalism has made it physically possible to eliminate absolute poverty. It is stopping us from actually doing it.

flimsier

Conrad wrote: »

ALL OF YOU I URGE YOU TO STOP ADMIRING WEALTHY FOLK SUCH AS BILLY CONNOLY OR FRANK SKINNER unless they give away much of thier wealth.

I agree with this. There's only so many times you can watch a rich person say "just £500 will feed this village for a year" and scream at the TV "well bloody well give it to them then!"

The_White_Horse

ruggedtoast wrote: »

You dont have to be a pawn. You can be a tool! A giant tool sticking itself in the machine and making something better.

you seem to be a giant tool.

Loughton_Monkey

Any thread based upon the rantings of a pinko, left wing, namby-pamby, so-called 'socialist' like Toynbee cannot be taken seriously. Do you really think she owns her Tuscany home so that she can let it out rent free to 'poor' Romanians trying to earn a crust in Italy?

It is well known that if you took the ridiculous stance of taxing the rich so much that you 'equalised' everyone's financial resources, then in 6 months, some would be millionaires, and many would have spent the lot and be living on handouts. This is the way any society works.

I agree with Boris Johnson about Toynbee:

"She incarnates all the nannying, high-taxing, high-spending, schoolmarminess of Blair's Britain. She is the defender and friend of... every gay and lesbian outreach worker, every clipboard-toter and pen-pusher and form-filler whose function has been generated by mindless regulation. Polly is the high priestess of our paranoid, mollycoddled, risk-averse, airbagged, booster-seated culture of political correctness."

My only surprise is such an eloquent sentence from Boris himself.

ruggedtoast

Poverty is hard wired into capitalism. Relying on a fractional reserve closed system based around compound debt, makes it virtually mathematically impossible for the majority of participants to acquire much, while the minority gorges itself.

It is a sham. Money equals nothing but labour or the promise of labour. Property is theft, both can be withdrawn by the people. Change is coming.

robmatic

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Poverty is hard wired into capitalism. Relying on a fractional reserve closed system based around compound debt, makes it virtually mathematically impossible for the majority of participants to acquire much, while the minority gorges itself.

It is a sham. Money equals nothing but labour or the promise of labour. Property is theft, both can be withdrawn by the people. Change is coming.

Meanwhile, the property owning class as a percentage of the population has massively increased over the last century.

This will not lead to revolution.