Brexit, The Economy and House Prices (Part 2)

GreatApe

Arklight wrote: »

I could comment at length about everything factually wrong with this diatribe of ill informed, resentful, closed minded ignorance, but I'll just summarise by pointing out that you have no idea what you are talking about.

There are many reasons why people are referred to food banks and only a few places you can be referred from, you can't just walk into one like it's a supermarket handing out free food.

I an not really sure what you have contributed to the planet to consider yourself worthy of such lofty superiority. It doesn't appear to have brought you anything other than bitterness and dislike of those less fortunate.

I am not bitter nor do I dislike those less fortunate than me
If you read my posts you will see I say luck and good/bad fortune play perhaps the biggest part in peoples lives both for people who have !!!! lives and people who have great lives

However I will stand by what I said earlier, perhaps 10-20% of people and households are extremely dysfunctional and these are often the poorest in society. Being poor doesn't make you dysfunctional, being dysfunctional makes you poor. Many of the people and households that are dysfunctional become so from addictions mostly from gambling/drugs/alcohol but also others reasons like abuse and violence

Rusty_Shackleton

GreatApe wrote: »

No one mentally stable in the UK needs to use a food bank but if they are available then people will make use of them. And yes people will take from food banks so they have more money to spend on other things.

Oh and of course there are some normal people who are stupid and will spend their last dime one stupid things and then have little to nothing left until the next paycheck. Students come to mind, spend 80% of their grants in the first week buying alcohol and going out and the rest of the two months before they get their grant they only have enough for beans and toast.

Right, this argument of food bank supply creates demand is complete rubbish, there is supply because of the need for it.

For one, you don't just rock up to a food bank, grab a basket, and do your weekly shop - you have to be referred from job centre, council etc. Second, food banks don't accept endless repeat customers - it is intended as a short term solution. As far as I'm aware they don't allow anyone to keep coming back continuously (I imagine any exceptions to this are subject to more scrutiny than the initial referral). There's also the sheer embarrassment of having to go to a food bank, do you really believe many people would choose to put themselves through that to save a few quid?!

Lastly, please answer me this: If you fell on hard times and were genuinely struggling to buy enough food for your family, would you use a food bank? What if you could just about afford food, but that meant you had money for nothing else... would you be tempted to fraudulently use a food bank, in order to get something else (and if you're that poor, literally being able to afford anything else would feel like a luxury).

Now tell me, WHY wouldn't you do that? Assuming that you wouldn't and that you've given a perfectly valid, moral based answer for why you wouldn't... why do you assume that millions of others lack those basic morals? If you wouldn't do it, I wouldn't do it, nobody you know would do it, why do you assume loads of others would? They'll always be a few fraudsters and chancers, but the vast majority of people don't tend to be genuinely bad. I pity you if you feel the need to question the intentions of so many around you in such a way.

GreatApe wrote: »

sure, three are parallel universes where the poor are rich and the rich are poor
However we live in this universe and the rich who already give up half their wealth are not happy about giving more of it away.

Having empathy for other people less fortunate doesn't involve giving up any wealth. It just involves not being an a***hole. If you don't want to provide better benefits because you don't want to pay more tax, your entitled to think that, and you can say so. But don't try to blame the less fortunate for situations that are often beyond their control (or beyond their knowledge of how to fix) in order to justify your desire to not share more wealth. The only good thing about people's denial in this way is that actually, deep down, they know they should be ashamed.

GreatApe

Arklight wrote: »

Maybe your conscientious friend just deserved the minimum wage to be a living wage for the jobs he was doing.

It was a living wage he managed to live on it for a decade

I don't want to be the bearer of ill tidings but your friend has the odds stacked against him. While it is very easy to get on a plumbing course at an FE college, training positions in plumbing companies which are required to actually become a plumber are like hens teeth.

Yes I know I did tell him that. He has managed to find two companies that are willing to give him a training contract. He is a very likable guy and is extremely conscientious so I do not think he will have a problem.

Due to mandatory education til 18 the FE sector is awash with young men and women training in professions for which there are simply no jobs for them.

It was a mistake to increase mandatory education until age 18, I only recently learned that was the case I thought it was still age 16

I know one young guy who was on a plumbing course, passed all the exams, and couldn't get an apprenticeship anywhere. Not one person in his cohort managed to get one either.

There must be a reason for it. There is definitely a shortage of plumbers in London

He now works in mental health care on minimum wage. A profession which will never pay much more than minimum wage.

I dont know the individual but if he is a hard worker and or has a quick mind (IQ >110) he will do just fine and should be encouraged to look for higher paying sectors and jobs. Of course if he is lazy or hard to get on with or dim then the best advise is either to get the easiest full time job he can find (probably min wage)

The "pull your socks up and hard work = big money" is fine for people who haven't had the ladder pulled up before they got to it, or people who haven't had the rug pulled out from under them. But it simply doesn't match the reality of many people.

hard work does not guarantee big money at all but hard work can guarantee average (about £30-£35k) money to get more than that you need to be quite smart and or make use of contacts (nepotism). Big money is only possible with hard work smarts and luck of course there is always the one in a million that makes it with not much work or smarts

Rusty_Shackleton

GreatApe wrote: »

I am not bitter nor do I dislike those less fortunate than me
If you read my posts you will see I say luck and good/bad fortune play perhaps the biggest part in peoples lives both for people who have !!!! lives and people who have great lives

However I will stand by what I said earlier, perhaps 10-20% of people and households are extremely dysfunctional and these are often the poorest in society. Being poor doesn't make you dysfunctional, being dysfunctional makes you poor. Many of the people and households that are dysfunctional become so from addictions mostly from gambling/drugs/alcohol but also others reasons like abuse and violence

How you can acknowledge that luck plays such a big part in peoples life outcomes, while saying the rest of it, is truly beyond me.

I'd like to know where your figures are coming from, but that dysfunction can also come from people's bad luck in life. Dysfunction could well be due to mental health problems. Yet you're treating it as if these are life choices, like smoking. They the vast majority of cases, they are not choices. Who the hell would choose these things?!

Rusty_Shackleton

GreatApe wrote: »

hard work does not guarantee big money at all but hard work can guarantee average (about £30-£35k)...

This is simply delusional. No other way to put it.

Average UK salary is £27k. There is a serious shortage of decent paying jobs., and ignoring the discussion of unemployment figures, low wage and zero hours contracts are far more prolific than they have been in the past.

Arklight

GreatApe wrote: »

I am not bitter nor do I dislike those less fortunate than me
If you read my posts you will see I say luck and good/bad fortune play perhaps the biggest part in peoples lives both for people who have !!!! lives and people who have great lives

However I will stand by what I said earlier, perhaps 10-20% of people and households are extremely dysfunctional and these are often the poorest in society. Being poor doesn't make you dysfunctional, being dysfunctional makes you poor. Many of the people and households that are dysfunctional become so from addictions mostly from gambling/drugs/alcohol but also others reasons like abuse and violence

One of my family members works in a family information service that can refer people to food banks.


These are some of the people who have had to be referred to foodbanks or given discretionary payments.


The young mother who's landlord refused to repair her oven even after it short circuited and almost killed her, so she had to buy hot food for her kids that she hadn't budgeted for. The centre manager also drove round to her house and lent her her own portable one.


The numerous women who have arrived at the centre with black eyes and kids in tow who have fled violent partners with nothing apart from the clothes they are standing up in.


The single father who woke up one morning to find his partner had taken all their money, left him with a 2 year old and a baby to look after and that was the last day he was going to be going to work for a while.


They would have been at the food bank lining up with the people who have their benefits terminated because they went to a job interview rather than signing on. The disabled people who failed their pip assessment as they can walk 100 metres before keeling over. The people who suddenly have to pay a bedroom tax but can't afford to move.

GreatApe

Rusty_Shackleton wrote: »

Right, this argument of food bank supply creates demand is complete rubbish, there is supply because of the need for it.

So in areas with no food banks people are dropping like flies and dying of hunger?

A quick google suggests food bank useage went from 41,000 to 1.2 million over the course of 7 years. Do you really think the number of poor people went up 30x in 7 years?

You may think or believe that but I am not stupid enough to buy it

For one, you don't just rock up to a food bank, grab a basket, and do your weekly shop - you have to be referred from job centre, council etc.

and how many people can they refer if there isnt a local food bank? If one opens up how many can they refer?

Second, food banks don't accept endless repeat customers - it is intended as a short term solution. As far as I'm aware they don't allow anyone to keep coming back continuously (I imagine any exceptions to this are subject to more scrutiny than the initial referral).

dont be dim

There's also the sheer embarrassment of having to go to a food bank, do you really believe many people would choose to put themselves through that to save a few quid?!

Yes of course they would, but I dont think many do. I would hazard a guess some of the users of food banks are taking the !!!! but most are people in !!!! situations because they have dysfunctional lives and families

Lastly, please answer me this: If you fell on hard times and were genuinely struggling to buy enough food for your family, would you use a food bank?

There is no conceivable situation that would put me into that situation, if it somehow happened (which is impossible) my extended family is functional enough that they would support us just as I would support them but even if they couldn't or if I had no extended family I would not need a food bank because the benefits system exists. You might say oh what happens if benefits are not paid or paid late. Well I have savings, if those are depleted I have assets, if those are depleted I have personal belonging I could sell like this laptop or my car or if necessary even flogging unwanted/unneeded cloths on ebay but perhaps the best resource is the uk economy I am confident I could get a job within 1 week it might not be a great job or high pay but it would be a job that paid an income and I could then look for more suitable higher paid work

What if you could just about afford food, but that meant you had money for nothing else... would you be tempted to fraudulently use a food bank, in order to get something else (and if you're that poor, literally being able to afford anything else would feel like a luxury).

The only realistic way to get that poor is if you are dysfunctional and often it has to be a dysfunctional family. Actually you need to be extremely dysfunctional to get that poor because I know plenty of dysfunctional families who have no trouble feeding or clothing themselves they are poor and have !!!! troubled lives but lets not pretend they cant eat or cloth themselves

Now tell me, WHY wouldn't you do that?

I have already said you need to be extremely dysfunctional to get to that point, so yes If I were a hard drugs addict or a true alcoholic etc then there is probably nothing I wouldn't do from crime to indecency to using food banks and other charities (and probably being unthankful for it)

Assuming that you wouldn't and that you've given a perfectly valid, moral based answer for why you wouldn't... why do you assume that millions of others lack those basic morals?

There are maybe half a million users of food banks who make use of it 2 x a year which sounds very much like the very bottom of society using them very sparsely.

If you wouldn't do it, I wouldn't do it, nobody you know would do it, why do you assume loads of others would?

not loads, about 1% of people and only 2 times a year. supposidly

They'll always be a few fraudsters and chancers, but the vast majority of people don't tend to be genuinely bad. I pity you if you feel the need to question the intentions of so many around you in such a way.

10-20% of individuals and families are highly dysfunctional its not a moral judgement. If a man beats his wife that is dysfunctional. If a woman has a gambling addiction so spends her babies milk money on the slots that is dysfunctional. If someone is on hard drugs and looks like a walking corpse that is dysfunctional. If a household is a war zone of verbal abuse that is dysfunctional. If a household is so dirty and unhygienic you cant walk into the house without disgust that is dysfunctional.

Having empathy for other people less fortunate doesn't involve giving up any wealth. It just involves not being an a***hole. If you don't want to provide better benefits because you don't want to pay more tax, your entitled to think that, and you can say so. But don't try to blame the less fortunate for situations that are often beyond their control (or beyond their knowledge of how to fix) in order to justify your desire to not share more wealth. The only good thing about people's denial in this way is that actually, deep down, they know they should be ashamed.

I would prefer that the 10-20% of the population that are highly dysfunctional sort their lives out but I dont know how that can be done and a hundred years of government and charity hasn't solved it yet either. I can think of some ways that maybe some small parts of the problem can be helped, like making gambling shops and gambling machines illegal even though that means less tax for the government so I have to pay more to make it up

GreatApe

Rusty_Shackleton wrote: »

This is simply delusional. No other way to put it.

Average UK salary is £27k. There is a serious shortage of decent paying jobs., and ignoring the discussion of unemployment figures, low wage and zero hours contracts are far more prolific than they have been in the past.

I was talking about full time jobs, your £27k average figure includes part time jobs

always_sunny

GreatApe wrote: »

That is not true because their jobs are dependent mostly on the number of homes there are not the number of people.

That's baloney. From a 'forecasting' perspective the council may say that x homes = x people occupying therefore x amount of waste but that is an assumption in the model and not the reality.
You could have homes that are empty and homes occupied by a single person (which the council would know) not producing as much waste.

Waste is also cultural, in 2017 there is barely recycling in the UK and folks still wanting garbage collected rather than adapting to high density with collective bins.
Waste is also a byproduct of stores. i.e. buy most items in the UK and you will end up with loads of rubbish.
Waste is also a personal choice, i.e. I choose to avoid wasting food and buy what I need.
etc.

GreatApe

Rusty_Shackleton wrote: »

How you can acknowledge that luck plays such a big part in peoples life outcomes, while saying the rest of it, is truly beyond me.

I'd like to know where your figures are coming from, but that dysfunction can also come from people's bad luck in life. Dysfunction could well be due to mental health problems. Yet you're treating it as if these are life choices, like smoking. They the vast majority of cases, they are not choices. Who the hell would choose these things?!

Sure, free will does not exist I accept that to be true so there is no choice in the matter but we must act as if there is free choice

Like i said before I know an alcoholic man a true alcoholic, with all the love and will of his wife he is barely on this side of life. He causes her all manner of ill and pain. If she cant fix him how can you or the state?