The Great Big Homelessness/Capitalism/Socialism Thread

economic

Jack_Johnson_the_acorn wrote: »

P.S you still haven't answered my question: If the government weren't squandering money (debatable)and one can afford to pay taxes without suffering any hardship or relative loss. At what point if any does it become morally questionable to avoid tax and why/ not?

I'll answer it for him in simple terms so that others on this board can see how shockingly bad your thinking is on this is topic.

- There are no real checks in place to see if government do or do not squander money so you have no idea. This is serious since its all our (taxpayer) money at risk. Not some shareholder of a company who will vote simply by pushing the sell button on his investment platform.

- Capital is more efficiently allocated in the private sector not public sector. This is simply due to incentives. Private sector wants to boost returns for its shareholders and so is incentivized to produce goods and services that will be in demand. Public sector simply just wants to be or remain in power so could not care less about a return on investment (taxpayer's investment that is).

- Any loss or hardship of someone is not the fault of someone else who has more. It should be left to the individual with more what he wants to do with his wealth and whether or not he should help those less fortunate then him. The government, through the tax system, should not force anyone to help those less fortunate.

economic

Jack_Johnson_the_acorn wrote: »

Why are you so amazed by poverty stricken areas having shops targeted at what poverty stricken people can afford?

Surely you've already figured that out for yourself.

when did i say i was amazed?

Cakeguts

economic wrote: »

when did i say i was amazed?

I think the poverty stricken shops was in my post. It is completely obvious when you think about it but there are some differences that are not. One of them is tinned fruit. I remember hearing on the radio one day about a lady who on benefits gave her children tinned oranges on the basis that it was easier to divide a tin of fruit between two children than to give them half a fresh orange each. It must have been obvious to anyone listening to this that the half of an orange had less sugar and more fruit than half the tinned variety. If this was the way that most people thought the shops would only have tinned fruit. It took someone from a different background to want to buy fresh fruit and vegetables rather than the tinned variety. In areas where no one in certain families has worked for several generations you can see how the tinned fruit thing becomes normal and if all the people round you and all your relatives are still working on tinned fruit is easier to divide unless people who don't want to eat tinned fruit arrive in an area you are never going to get the shops to sell fresh and this isn't even anything to do with cost.

So in a way the shops were reflecting a diet tradition rather than lack of money.

This actually happened to a relative. A labour councillor told a group of teachers that they were not allowed to select members to play in a particular music group. They were told that an orchestra was elitist and that anyone who wanted to play in the youth orchestra regardless of how long they had been playing any instrument and regardless of how good they were they would have to be given a place. This was agreed to as long as it applied to all youth groups including the youth football team. That anyone who wanted to play on the local football team was given a place to play regardless of how good they were or how long they had been playing football for because selection was elitist. You can guess what happened next. It all went very quiet. Then the orchestra continued as it always had with the members being selected to play with others who were the same standard.

It was alright for the youth orchestra to be dragged to the bottom but as soon as it was applied to football selection it suddenly stopped being elitist to select on ability.

So we have a situation where someone who is very good at sport can be selected on talent for extra training in the sport but someone who is very intelligent cannot be selected to study in a school with similar people because this is not fair on the people who are not selected. If you carry on down with this idea you reach the point where people cannot be selected over others for jobs which was the situation with our local council a few years ago. It was run by the loony left. It eventually ran totally out of money because workers were not selected on how well they could do their jobs and the council finished up with a large workforce of people who couldn't do what they had been employed to do. This was before any government grants were reduced it was just very badly run. At one point we had 13 council tax bills for the same property in the same year. If you multiply that over a whole council and whole council services you can see why they ran out of money. They will have less in government grants now and yet they have not run out of money.

It isn't true that lack of taxes is to blame for poor services. Poor services can also be provided by people who don't know how to provide value for money. It is odd though how the poor value for money type services tend to be provided by labour councils regardless of the wealth of the area. One of our local labour councils ran out of money again inspite of it being one of the richest areas. They just can't budget. However much extra tax anyone in that borough pays it still won't mean that they can budget they will just waste money on something else that no one needs.

GreatApe

economic wrote: »

I'll answer it for him in simple terms so that others on this board can see how shockingly bad your thinking is on this is topic.

- There are no real checks in place to see if government do or do not squander money so you have no idea. This is serious since its all our (taxpayer) money at risk. Not some shareholder of a company who will vote simply by pushing the sell button on his investment platform.

- Capital is more efficiently allocated in the private sector not public sector. This is simply due to incentives. Private sector wants to boost returns for its shareholders and so is incentivized to produce goods and services that will be in demand. Public sector simply just wants to be or remain in power so could not care less about a return on investment (taxpayer's investment that is).

- Any loss or hardship of someone is not the fault of someone else who has more. It should be left to the individual with more what he wants to do with his wealth and whether or not he should help those less fortunate then him. The government, through the tax system, should not force anyone to help those less fortunate.

While the government represents 45% of the economy it only represents 17% of the workers
The 17% is probably more representative of how much control the government exerts

1.5 million work for the NHS
I would argue the NHS is more efficient than a realistic free market alternative because doctors are clever people and they form rackets in the guise of keeping safety and standards up. £220,00 average physician wages in the USA vs about 1/4th of that in the NHS. So we are getting value. Of course you might argue you can create a proper competitive healthcare market where doctors are paid £30k a year but I don't trust that to be a realistic outcome

400,000 work for the armed forces and police. Most people would agree those services should be done by the government

Take those two groups out and you get to about 11% working for the government outside of Health police and armed forces. I'm sure there are other state workers that should not count eg the courts perhaps firemen etc so let's round it down to 10%

This is how we can be a rich efficent country.
Although the government controls 45% of the funds it only controls about 10% of the man power (exc heath police armed forces)

Even if they are inefficient they only control 10% of the workforce to be inefficient with

It seems to be a successful formula.
We have far better fed housed and educated lower class than the Soviets could dream of
It's also why comrade corbyn and McDonalds face are dangerous they want to expand this 10% to as high a figure as they can with a program of nationalisation. That would be dangerous and probably end in disaster

Moby

Jack_Johnson_the_acorn wrote: »

When labour was weakening the regulatory regime, did the Tory party actually oppose any of the legislation? I already know the answer.

So how is this solely Labours fault?

Even if our financial sector had been markedly different, we still would have been hit. Germany, for example, has a banking sector less than half the size of ours and had a deeper recession. And remember, the US followed us in implementing measures to control the crisis. The lesson to be learned? Financial regulation matters. Yet going into the crisis the Tories were pushing us to deregulate further.

Some people don’t let truth get in the way of their fantasies.

Moby

economic wrote: »

I'll answer it for him in simple terms so that others on this board can see how shockingly bad your thinking is on this is topic.

- There are no real checks in place to see if government do or do not squander money so you have no idea.

Yes I agree your answer was very simple and so is your understanding. You see your very first sentence was inaccurate. There are checks in place and they are rigorous ones. In the public sector we have national standards set for what we do, for example deadlines for work we do such as reports, interviews, assessments etc. There are performance targets and tables produced showing for example how one borough of London compares with another in the work of our service. I have a 6 monthly appraisal of my performance by my line manager and targets set for my next review. I have meetings I have to attend and monthly supervision. I am subject to observations on what I do. All this is to measure my performance and I've been working in the same area for nearly thirty years. Above all this we are then subject to scrutiny by Inspections. The inspectors are appointed by the Govmt of the day. They then produce reports of what they have found which are public record. I also have to do the job I get paid for of course!

This is serious since its all our (taxpayer) money at risk. Not some shareholder of a company who will vote simply by pushing the sell button on his investment platform.

Yes I agree it is serious because the work I do matters probably more and has a bigger impact on peoples lives than some desk jockey, software geek who are 10 a penny, live their lives in a virtual reality and still don't know what a girl looks like.

- Capital is more efficiently allocated in the private sector not public sector. This is simply due to incentives. Private sector wants to boost returns for its shareholders and so is incentivized to produce goods and services that will be in demand.

Again I agree with you Economic....not often we can say that. The private sector is driven by profit for the shareholders of that company rather than the public good. With regard to your assertion about incentives. Those incentives again are often profit at the expense of the public good. Look at the sub prime mortgage market in the USA and read about what happened. Although doubtless you'd probably prefer Western Promises denial that such events took place. Also it is generally accepted that markets are not as efficient as you assert. Ask commuters about their latest rail fares hike....seen the outcry about this? How many nailbars and hairdresses do we really need on the high street? in contrast we definitely don't have enough good plumbers or electricians though at a reasonable price. That's not efficient. Also the housing market is not being efficiently run for the public good is it!

Public sector simply just wants to be or remain in power so could not care less about a return on investment (taxpayer's investment that is).

First time I've ever been told how powerful I am. I'll take that as a compliment and see first reply with regards our accountability.

- Any loss or hardship of someone is not the fault of someone else who has more. It should be left to the individual with more what he wants to do with his wealth and whether or not he should help those less fortunate then him. The government, through the tax system, should not force anyone to help those less fortunate.

Such a good samaritan aren't you. Luckily there are many good people out there who do good work for little reward and do it because it's the right thing to do, not because it's incentivised. Also it's not about 'fault'. It's about living and working in a civilised place where things work and you don't have to look over your shoulder. People in public services do jobs that matter. If you are in danger you don't phone a software manager, you call the police. If a child is at risk you don't tell your financial adviser you call social services....likewise the NHS, Criminal Justice system, Fire fighters, local council services such as removal of waste etc.
That is why through collective action called democracy we expect everyone to contribute through tax and the backsliders should be forced through the Courts into paying their tab. Those who choose to be mealy mouthed about it and argue the toss about the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion need to shown the error of their ways or invited to move to say Nigeria...where they probably not need to worry about tax at all and they can wallow in their moral relativism without scrutiny.

Jack_Johnson_the_acorn

economic wrote: »

https://youtu.be/eyGND49CBYk

You're incapable of answering a simple question....didn't have high hopes for you though so luckily I'm not too disappointed.

westernpromise

Jack_Johnson_the_acorn wrote: »

Ok make your mind up....

Tories would have cut all regulations and that would have been better, because they're Tory. I understand now.......

I believe that fanaticism kills intellect. But when you're so blinded by your "fanaticism" you can't recognise when your showing the signs of this phenomenon.

P.S you still haven't answered my question: If the government weren't squandering money (debatable)and one can afford to pay taxes without suffering any hardship or relative loss. At what point if any does it become morally questionable to avoid tax and why/ not?

Rubbish, the Tories would not have "cut all regulations" - this is just a Labour yobbo football chant. The Tories designed, implemented and presided over an effective regulatory regime that lasted for decades until Labour came along and dismantled it in 1997. Notably, instead of banks being overseen by the Bank of England, they were overseen by the box-ticking intellectual pygmies of the FSA, which quite happily waved through appallingly dangerous business models such as that of Northern Rock. It was then only a matter of time before the whole thing blew up, a risk accurately foreseen in detail by the Tories the moment it was unveiled.

It's worth remembering why Labour deliberately wrecked the regulation of the world's second-largest financial centre. It was because the last Labour government got inflation up to 27%. The cure for this is interest rates and Labour wanted to ensure that if that happened again they could fasten the blame elsewhere. So they made the Bank of England responsible for setting interest rates and gave it an inflation target. Having done that, they figured they'd cut it down to size, so they took banking regulation away from it and gave that to a bunch of monkeys whose nonjobs only existed because of Labour. 5,000 lovely client state votes, all paid for by levies on the firms the FSA misregulated.

This construction failed at the first test. What we now have resembles what we had before 1997, most importantly in the area of who regulates banks and clearing houses, because that actually worked.

People's views aren't formed in a vacuum. You need to consider whether the reason people hate and despise Labour is because empirically they are utterly loathsome and contemptible.

westernpromise

economic wrote: »

This is so perfectly put especially on the intelligence vs football team example. This is something i have been thinking about as well.

It is very clear to me the best system we have so far is capitalism and we need to provide incentives for smart hardworking people to innovate and produce so that all levels of society to benefit.

As i said before i would only consider "donating" my hard earned cash in the form of investments to innovators who will come up with new generation of goods and services that would benefit many.

Some people are better-looking than others, and therefore cop off more successfully with other good-looking people and also tend to get better jobs. This is grossly unfair, and so a future Labour government should arrange for a small quantity of acid to be thrown in the faces of good-looking people so that everyone is roughly as ugly as, say, Diane Abbott. Over time, plainer people will start to look relatively good compared all these acid-scarred or simply unprepossessing people. No problem - they can have some acid too. They can also pay more tax to fund the acid.

It is is also grossly unfair that the Royal Ballet only accepts, and puts up to perform, the best dancers it can find. A future Labour government will address this inequity by attaching sash weights, dumbells, sand-bags and other encumbrances to the Royal Ballet's dancers, so that instead of being outstanding, they are all just average clumsy clodhoppers.

Malthusian

Moby wrote: »

Yes I agree your answer was very simple and so is your understanding. You see your very first sentence was inaccurate. There are checks in place and they are rigorous ones. In the public sector we have national standards set for what we do, for example deadlines for work we do such as reports, interviews, assessments etc. There are performance targets and tables produced showing for example how one borough of London compares with another in the work of our service. I have a 6 monthly appraisal of my performance by my line manager and targets set for my next review. I have meetings I have to attend and monthly supervision. I am subject to observations on what I do. All this is to measure my performance and I've been working in the same area for nearly thirty years. Above all this we are then subject to scrutiny by Inspections. The inspectors are appointed by the Govmt of the day. They then produce reports of what they have found which are public record. I also have to do the job I get paid for of course!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult

Endless pretend interviews and assessments, armies of inspectors checking on the work of other inspectors, reams of paper full of standards with no definition of failure, and nobody ever gets fired for being incompetent.