A Millennial Speaks out

Arklight

kabayiri wrote: »

Those two things were not as they are now.

If people today had the welfare state/NHS introduced post WW2, they would be shocked at the basic level of service provided. It makes comparison limited.

Maybe the issue is function creep. What would stop a health system from demanding more and more resources, until it just collapses?

If it was right after the war they might do, but historically the real value of benefit income is about the same now as it was in the late 60s and 70s.

http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06762/SN06762.pdf

The quickest way to reduce the burden on the NHS would be to ration free healthcare to the over 60s. Why is it fair that a young working person with no savings and mental health problems can’t access adequate care because LHA's have cut back so much on mental health provision, but a 65 year old with savings and a million pounds of housing equity gets a free double hip replacement?

ukcarper

Arklight wrote: »

If it was right after the war they might do, but historically the real value of benefit income is about the same now as it was in the late 60s and 70s.

http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06762/SN06762.pdf

The quickest way to reduce the burden on the NHS would be to ration free healthcare to the over 60s. Why is it fair that a young working person with no savings and mental health problems can’t access adequate care because LHA's have cut back so much on mental health provision, but a 65 year old with savings and a million pounds of housing equity gets a free double hip replacement?

Did you actually read and look at report you posted.

GreatApe

Moby wrote: »

I'm only far left compared to someone who would distribute wealth by IQ levels. Would you use calipers to measure skull size as well?

People who stand to inherit large sums haven't done anything to earn that money. An accident of birth placed them in a comparatively wealthy family and they have benefited from that their whole life. Also in the UK, official statistics suggest around £77bn is passed on in inheritance each year (tax avoidance means the real amount could be even higher). That's money that no living being has a moral claim to, according to standard justifications of wealth inequality and private property. Were that money redistributed by the state, it would cover the cost of adult social care several times over. It could plug gaps in NHS, education and police funding. It could provide the kind of comprehensive welfare state that meant nobody had to worry about their family after they passed away because there would always be a safety net. Why do we automatically assume that the wishes of the dead to control that wealth should take priority?

All the great apes look after their young including the sapiens

What makes you think you can stop a million years of evolution?

Of course you too are trying to look after your young, by taking from the young of others. But you will find its not so easy. The wealthy are wealthy mostly because they are smart capable and willing to work and succeed. You will never set up a system where those groups are inferior to the group who are dim lazy and incapable. At most you will succeed in driving the net producers away or to them becoming non net producers.

GreatApe

Arklight wrote: »

The success of the West is largely due to slavery and imperialism actually. I!!!8217;m not sure what you have against McDonalds now. Unaccountable corporations economically colonising the globe with one sided franchise agreements should be right up your street politically.

Maybe the Mao Nuggets campaign they ran put you off.

Such nonsense

If slavery was the route to riches the Africans would be have been the richest nations on earth

The west was poor for a long time. We only really began our exponential growth around the late 1940s thanks mostly to electricity. Europe and the USA got electricity in large amounts and reliable and stable around 1940s and we boomed from there. The Chinese got the same around 1990 and started their exponentiall growth. The Indians entered that stage in 2010. The African nations most of them (south Africa excepted) are still for all intents per electricity and that is why they are still very very poor.

As for McDonald face and his partner I don't trust them one bit. Even if I was 95% sure they wouldn't lead us down the road to communist hell the 5% is far too big a risk.

triathlon

GreatApe wrote: »

Such nonsense

If slavery was the route to riches the Africans would be have been the richest nations on earth

The west was poor for a long time. We only really began our exponential growth around the late 1940s thanks mostly to electricity. Europe and the USA got electricity in large amounts and reliable and stable around 1940s and we boomed from there. The Chinese got the same around 1990 and started their exponentiall growth. The Indians entered that stage in 2010. The African nations most of them (south Africa excepted) are still for all intents per electricity and that is why they are still very very poor.

As for McDonald face and his partner I don't trust them one bit. Even if I was 95% sure they wouldn't lead us down the road to communist hell the 5% is far too big a risk.

No, it is you that is talking nonsense.

There is a saying, all great cultures evolved from cruelty and slavery, and once they stop they fade away. Roman empire, Egypt, some would even say the British Empire.

The planet is loaded with civilised cultures that were founded on slavery, even the ones you appear to admire the most it seems and who used it up until recently, the good old USA

GreatApe

triathlon wrote: »

No, it is you that is talking nonsense.

There is a saying, all great cultures evolved from cruelty and slavery, and once they stop they fade away. Roman empire, Egypt, some would even say the British Empire.

The planet is loaded with civilised cultures that were founded on slavery, even the ones you appear to admire the most it seems and who used it up until recently, the good old USA

In the USA it ended in 1865 in 1865 almost all Americans were poor very very poor

Americans became rich post about 1940 slavery had nothing to do with Americans becoming rich

I can accept some slave owners became rich but it did nothing for the mass of Americans

Likewise the UK was supposedly the world super power but even in 1900 most Brits lived in squalor

People really have no idea how rich we are now and how poor we were just 3+ generations ago

The Chinese will go from abject poverty to wealth over 40 years. 1990-2030
The Americans and Europeans did so over about 50 years 1940-1990
Maybe the Indians will achieve it in 35 years 2015-2050
In all cases the biggest enabler is the arrival of robust strong reliable national electric grids.

Slaves picking cotton didn't make America rich, a cotton economy is not wealth.
Electricity enabling real mass production of everything is what made the Europeans and Americans rich

GreatApe

triathlon wrote: »

No, it is you that is talking nonsense.

There is a saying, all great cultures evolved from cruelty and slavery, and once they stop they fade away. Roman empire, Egypt, some would even say the British Empire.

The planet is loaded with civilised cultures that were founded on slavery, even the ones you appear to admire the most it seems and who used it up until recently, the good old USA

All cultures are cruel not just 'great' cultures.

Do you think the Africans were or are a peace loving cruelty free hippie culture?

The story of humanity is not lefties voting for better lives

The story of humanity is technology. Technology is what enabled the animals known as homosapiens to tame the cruelty of nature and the cruelty of chance and the cruelty of insufficient supply of needs and wants.

The biggest enabler of technology to date was electricity. Not steam engines they played a small part in our story. It was electricity that turned us from poor cruel animals to civilised animals.

If you disbelieve this go set up a nation without electricity and see how much left wing laws get you anywhere. Have slaves as many as you want but without electricity you will still be dirt poor.

Cakeguts

Moby wrote: »

I'm only far left compared to someone who would distribute wealth by IQ levels. Would you use calipers to measure skull size as well?

People who stand to inherit large sums haven't done anything to earn that money. An accident of birth placed them in a comparatively wealthy family and they have benefited from that their whole life. Also in the UK, official statistics suggest around £77bn is passed on in inheritance each year (tax avoidance means the real amount could be even higher). That's money that no living being has a moral claim to, according to standard justifications of wealth inequality and private property. Were that money redistributed by the state, it would cover the cost of adult social care several times over. It could plug gaps in NHS, education and police funding. It could provide the kind of comprehensive welfare state that meant nobody had to worry about their family after they passed away because there would always be a safety net. Why do we automatically assume that the wishes of the dead to control that wealth should take priority?

I notice that the wealthy pass on wealth that they haven't earned but a family living entirely on benefits also hasn't earned anything. I would like to see the research into how much money generation of families who have never worked have had for free. Based on benefits of £20,000 per year and not increased in line with inflation is over £1million entirely from tax payers. If that way of life is passed onto the next generation where no one works they will get another £1million from the working population for doing nothing and living a life of luxury.

So what we are doing is in the case of families where no one works and where no one has ever had a job we are giving them over £1million free over a lifetime.

What you want to do is to tax people who have inherited wealth from a previous generation who worked for it and hand it to people who don't contribute anything to society and have never worked but are given over £1 million free? Why??

There would be enough money for adult social care if the people who currently can't be bothered to get a job or who are waiting for the imaginary "graduate" job to appear worked and paid tax.

Or as in the case of a council local to me didn't employ chief executives that the council doesn't need. London could save an absolute small fortune by getting rid of the mayor and his employees who do basically nothing except draw salaries.

cogito

triathlon wrote: »

You do realise that a socialist government gave us the NHS and the welfare state, two of arguably the greatest UK reforms, you do also realise that most of the greatest social reforms in the UK came from socialist Labour.

The Beveridge report was commissioned by the Lab/Con coalition government in WW2. Beveridge was a Liberal.

All parties committed to it in their manifestos for the 1945 election. It just happened that Labour won the election but it would also have been implemented if the Tories had won. In that case, the Tories would have been able to take credit for socialist reforms.

Cakeguts

cogito wrote: »

The Beveridge report was commissioned by the Lab/Con coalition government in WW2. Beveridge was a Liberal.

All parties committed to it in their manifestos for the 1945 election. It just happened that Labour won the election but it would also have been implemented if the Tories had won. In that case, the Tories would have been able to take credit for socialist reforms.

Just at the moment I am having a major worry about the NHS. It isn't accountable to anyone about what it offers as "treatments." I am beginning to feel that it is about as bad as having a nationalised water supply. There is one treatment that I can think of that is actually a huge experiment because not enough research has been done into the causes that need the treatment.

I am pretty certain that most of the people involved in the experiment don't know they are part of the experiment.