Corbynomics: A Dystopia

Arklight

GreatApe wrote: »

Its a sad state of affairs that the country as a whole might lean towards your way of thinking and vote in an imbecile. Robots automation and technology are the way to much better living standards even the communist Russians understood and believed that so much so they were world leaders in some sectors like rockets for quite some time. Too bad their system is intrinsically inefficient

Anyway think of the UK economy as an army of 32 million workers.
We dedicate roughly 3 million workers to heathcare
We dedicate roughly 3 million workers into constructing and maintaining the vehicles
We dedicate roughly 3 million workers to growing and processing and distributing the food
etc
etc

If robots or software make for instance 1 million of our healthcare workers redundant we dont just throw away these 1 million people. What happens is we still have 32 million workers and we put them to work doing the next most important need or want. This is why we have had 300 years of progress yet today we still have full employment for those who care to work and we have much easier lives than people of the past so much so that if you are in decent heath you could expect to only work half of your life. Your first 22 years as a child in school and then from 66 to 90 as a pensioner thats more than half your life not working. Even your working life is only 88,000 hours which is just 10% of your life you are at work and many peoples work is now so easy they have dozens of hours a week to spend on facebook youtube and MSE fourm during work hours.

Life is good in the west thanks to all the jobs that were destroyed by technology
The alternative are 3rd world countries with little to no technology

What you mean is not that today we have all that. What you mean is that in your day you had, or more precisely have that.


The generations below you do not know anything like full employment. I don't know how you can look at someone graduating university today getting by on gig jobs and privately renting some dump from someone with multiple houses when they will never own one, and tell them that they'll be retiring in their mid 60s.


You get to retire in your mid 60s. You seem to have forgotten to pass that privilege onto the generations below you, mostly by loading trillions of pounds of debt onto them before they were born.


Even then, the retirement age for the boomer sacred cows was raised, what do you think they are planning to do to us?


The Tories do not give a toss whether Amazon's automation strategy puts one million people out of work. As far as they are concerned that's another million Labour voters evicted from their homes and off the electoral roll and the automated Ocado vans will have quieter roads to drive on.

Malthusian

Moby wrote: »

Like you and Gadget below I have my own story of doing pretty well despite a difficult background....but if I had a more privileged background I may have done even better!

What a sad way to go through life, fantasising about how much happier you'd be if you'd been the child of a millionaire.

I think Victorians often used to indulge this kind of fantasy, imagining that they might actually be children of the aristocracy and one day their true identity would be revealed and they would be swept away to a better life like in a Charles Dickens novel. But back then there was much less social mobility than there is now and I thought this fantasy had largely been extinguished as people have better things to think about.

They don't have any positive role models. Their role models are high status gang members making lots of money from selling drugs and of course as soon as they get a conviction their job chances plummet.

They have any number of better role models they can choose from thanks to TV and the Internet, if they want to. This old racist idea that a British Afro-Caribbean boy from a council estate has to choose another British Afro-Caribbean male from a council estate as his role model is quite tiresome. When I was young I saw Nelson Mandela as a role model despite the fact that he wasn't a white British male like myself. Perhaps that was cultural appropriation on my part.

System

Malthusian wrote: »

They have any number of better role models they can choose from thanks to TV and the Internet, if they want to. This old racist idea that a British Afro-Caribbean boy from a council estate has to choose another British Afro-Caribbean male from a council estate as his role model is quite tiresome. When I was young I saw Nelson Mandela as a role model despite the fact that he wasn't a white British male like myself. Perhaps that was cultural appropriation on my part.

Plenty of working class kids done good on this thread (me included).

It's nice to put it down to gumption and positive life choices which anyone can make because that's the sort of narrative we like to tell ourselves.

What, however, if it's nothing more than randomness and success bias playing a mind trick?

There are bound to be some kids who do well in spite of their parents and upbringing. What if we're those kids and by telling ourselves it's because we're special we're unfairly suggesting kids who aren't as lucky that they're lazy and making stupid life choices?

Arklight

Eric_the_half_a_bee wrote: »

For as long as parents are allowed to take their children on a walk in the park, read to their children at bedtime, talk to them over dinner, or help them with their maths homework, there will never be equality of opportunity. Equality of opportunity is an unachievable aim.

You are conflating luck with something the government has any control over. This seems to be a tactic employed nearly constantly by people on the Right who want to conflate social democracy with communism and the end of western civilization.


Equality of opportunity is kids having a decent education whether or not their parents can afford Gordonstoun. It's the opportunity to go and do A levels at a decent sixth form or FE college, something the Tories took from many low income 16-19 year olds when they removed the Educational Maintenance Allowance. It's going to a Russell Group university on the strength of your grades not where you went to school and your surname.


It's being able to apply for a decent job that pays a living wage without a mandatory three year unpaid internship that only the Ruperts and Camillas can apply for.


All of this is in retreat under Toryism.

Arklight

Malthusian wrote: »

What a sad way to go through life, fantasising about how much happier you'd be if you'd been the child of a millionaire.

I think Victorians often used to indulge this kind of fantasy, imagining that they might actually be children of the aristocracy and one day their true identity would be revealed and they would be swept away to a better life like in a Charles Dickens novel. But back then there was much less social mobility than there is now and I thought this fantasy had largely been extinguished as people have better things to think about.


They have any number of better role models they can choose from thanks to TV and the Internet, if they want to. This old racist idea that a British Afro-Caribbean boy from a council estate has to choose another British Afro-Caribbean male from a council estate as his role model is quite tiresome. When I was young I saw Nelson Mandela as a role model despite the fact that he wasn't a white British male like myself. Perhaps that was cultural appropriation on my part.

The vast majority of black people in Britain are neither high status gang members, nor Nelson Mandela.


However if you have a judicial system that is twice as likely to lock up black boys than white ones, and a society that is half as likely to employ them, they are not exactly competing on a level playing field.

fatbeetle

Arklight wrote: »

However if you have a judicial system that is twice as likely to lock up black boys than white ones, and a society that is half as likely to employ them, they are not exactly competing on a level playing field.

If you have a situation where black boys commit twice as many crimes as white ones, where does the lock up statistic enter the equation?

Arklight

fatbeetle wrote: »

If you have a situation where black boys commit twice as many crimes as white ones, where does the lock up statistic enter the equation?

Why do you think black boys commit twice as many crimes as white ones?


Actually my statistic was wrong, I pulled it out of the air after all. Black boys aren't twice as likely to be jailed as white ones, they are nine times more likely.


https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/sep/01/young-black-people-jailed-moj-report-david-lammy

michaels

Arklight wrote: »

Why do you think black boys commit twice as many crimes as white ones?


Actually my statistic was wrong, I pulled it out of the air after all. Black boys aren't twice as likely to be jailed as white ones, they are nine times more likely.


https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/sep/01/young-black-people-jailed-moj-report-david-lammy

Is it because they are black or would any race with the same factors face the same sentencing outcomes?

michaels

Arklight wrote: »

What you mean is not that today we have all that. What you mean is that in your day you had, or more precisely have that.


The generations below you do not know anything like full employment. I don't know how you can look at someone graduating university today getting by on gig jobs and privately renting some dump from someone with multiple houses when they will never own one, and tell them that they'll be retiring in their mid 60s.


You get to retire in your mid 60s. You seem to have forgotten to pass that privilege onto the generations below you, mostly by loading trillions of pounds of debt onto them before they were born.


Even then, the retirement age for the boomer sacred cows was raised, what do you think they are planning to do to us?


The Tories do not give a toss whether Amazon's automation strategy puts one million people out of work. As far as they are concerned that's another million Labour voters evicted from their homes and off the electoral roll and the automated Ocado vans will have quieter roads to drive on.

Strange thing to say about govt debt when Corbyn proposes hugely increasing the deficit in the name of 'investment' and the vast majority of the current debt mountian is as a result of the tories not imposing austerity following the gfc.

fatbeetle

The data, which provides the ethnicity of the 18,091 men and boys who police took action against in London during 2009-10, looked at both violent and sexual offences.

It found that 67 per cent of those caught by police for gun crimes were black.

Among those proceeded against for street crimes, including muggings, assault with intent to rob and snatching property, 54 per cent were black males.

On sex offences, black men made up 32 per cent of all male suspects, with 49 per cent of those apprehended by police being white men.

The statistics also suggest that police hold black women accountable for a disproportionate amount of violent crime. On knife crime, 45 per cent of suspected female perpetrators were black.

Among those women and girls police took action against for gun crime, 58 per cent were black and in robberies that figure was 52 per cent.

It would seem there is a reason for them being more likely to be jailed.