Yellow jacket freedom fighters spreading to London

ukcarper

Arklight wrote: »

As someone who was "pretty senior in an investment bank" you must be good with figures.

You'll understand then, how disgraceful it is that 4.1 million children in the UK (the world's 5th richest country) are growing up in poverty. Of these, 64% have a parent in work. The literal definition of the working poor.

A child classified thus is on a conveyor belt which is going the opposite way to their peers the moment they are born. On average they will earn much less, die earlier, and be far more likely to end up homeless than their peers.

These children can't choose their parents of any of their other circumstances. So no, 99% of your situation is not of your own making.

I hope your industry enjoyed the hundreds of billions of dollars / pounds of free corporate welfare handouts funded by various taxpayers after the banks' failure to manage their own risk annihilated the western economy in 2007.

That was the era which was the last time that average people could look forward to feeling better off the following year than the one last gone, rather than the reverse.

The thank you seems to have got lost in the post.

You must also realise that relative poverty is a bad way of measuring poverty.

Enterprise_1701C

How about starting by the people supposedly in poverty doing something for themselves?

I look at people supposedly living in poverty, on substantial state benefits, and I watch them smoke heavily, mostly both partners if there are two partners. I watch them constantly having more kids without thinking about how they can afford them, I watch them drinking heavily, then I watch them demanding more money because they never have enough.

Now, I know it is not all of them, I know that some of them actually try, but if you live in poverty you do not spend a fortune on extras such as smoking, drinking, mobile phone bills, extra television channels and the suchlike.

We would have been classed as being in poverty not that long ago, we were within a fortnight of losing our home, but we did everything we could and we saved it. We didn't have new clothes, we didn't smoke (OH actually gave up his miniature cigars until he could afford them again), we didn't drink, the kids' presents came from car boot sales. There was times when I basically did not eat because we could only afford enough food for the kids and OH, I told the kids I was eating with OH and vice-versa, I know what poverty is and I know how you have to work to get out of it.

I know this will be shot down, mainly by Arklight. I do not know but I get the impression he is a twenty something chap still living with his parents who thinks the whole world is against him and will not be happy until we are living under a communist regime and everyone is brought down to his level, the idea that people earn more than him pains him even if the top 2% of earners contribute 60% of the tax and if labour get in an awful lot of that tax income would disappear to other countries.

No, I don't like people being in poverty, but as long as it is defined by something like being below 60% of national average income then logically there is ALWAYS going to be people "in poverty", it is simply the way they deal with it that matters. The only way that poverty will cease is if you use an altogether different definition.

MobileSaver

Arklight wrote: »

You'll understand then, how disgraceful it is that 4.1 million children in the UK are growing up in poverty.

You do understand that regardless of how well this country and its people are doing there will always be people "in poverty" because of the way "poverty" is defined by the government? It's literally impossible for the official statistics to show zero poverty!

Back in the real world there is almost no real poverty in the UK and what there is is almost always caused by people's own poor choices.

Thrugelmir

Enterprise_1701C wrote: »

No, I don't like people being in poverty, but as long as it is defined by something like being below 60% of national average income then logically there is ALWAYS going to be people "in poverty", it is simply the way they deal with it that matters. The only way that poverty will cease is if you use an altogether different definition.

New technology has changed the nature of work. Days of John Harvey Jones starting on the shop floor and rising to be Chairman of ICI are over. There's no longer the career path and opportunity to move up the ladder to better oneself. The announced redundancies at both Rolls Royce and Jaguar are spoken of in terms of removing management and admin.

Operations are becoming increasingly streamlined. Even Amazon has automated warehouses. Where use of manual labour is being pared back. Once the final step of dispatch is automated. Human intervention is going to be minimal.

zagfles

Arklight wrote: »

As someone who was "pretty senior in an investment bank" you must be good with figures.

You'll understand then, how disgraceful it is that 4.1 million children in the UK (the world's 5th richest country) are growing up in poverty. Of these, 64% have a parent in work. The literal definition of the working poor.

What is disgraceful is the assumption of geographical privilege, ie that someone should have a right to a better life than others just because of their location of birth. That's just as "disgraceful" as the assumption that someone should have a better life just because of the family they're born into, or the colour of their skin.

This assumption is fundamental to the definition of poverty used by the govt and NGOs - as it's a measurement relative to the average income in the country. The generally used measure is 60% of median household income fiddled (equaivalised) to account for household size (sometime before housing costs, sometime after).

Even the definition of "absolute" poverty used by the govt is relative! It's basically the same, except relative to the average at the start of the decade!

Also when talking about "child poverty", measuring that just in terms of household income is completely brain dead. It depends more on how the parents manage money, what their outgoings are, and where their children come on their priorities. Who do you think is poorer, a child in a household just above the meaningless "poverty line" who smokes, drinks and gambles and neglects their children, or a child in a household just below who doesn't smoke, drink, manages money sensibly and prioritises their children? The stats will tell you the first child is not "poor" but the second is.

A child classified thus is on a conveyor belt which is going the opposite way to their peers the moment they are born. On average they will earn much less, die earlier, and be far more likely to end up homeless than their peers.

As I posted in aother thread recently: There's definitely a correlation between poverty and all kinds of other issues such as mental/physical health, life expectancy, smoking, alcoholism, underperformance at school, etc etc. Left wing pressure groups will show you graphs proving the correlation. They are right.

However - the mistake they make is that correlation does not prove causation. Poverty in most cases is a symptom. If you make bad choices in life, such as not bothering at school, smoking, drinking too much, if you have mental health issues etc, you are more likely to end up poor. So poverty is a symptom, not a cause.

So you can't fix it eg by increasing benefit rates. You're just addressing a symptom, not the cause. Someone with issues will still have those issues and affect their children in the same way.

That's not to say we shouldn't address "poverty" - just that we shouldn't be blaming poverty for all the other problems we see predominantly in the "poor".

These children can't choose their parents of any of their other circumstances. So no, 99% of your situation is not of your own making.

I hope your industry enjoyed the hundreds of billions of dollars / pounds of free corporate welfare handouts funded by various taxpayers after the banks' failure to manage their own risk annihilated the western economy in 2007.

That was the era which was the last time that average people could look forward to feeling better off the following year than the one last gone, rather than the reverse.

That was the whole problem leading up the FC. The banks, government etc though we were richer than we actually were. We were living beyond our means, on credit. This included the govt, who were continually boasting about how they're abolished boom and bust, so increased spending on borrowed money. We were in a credit fuelled boom, and only a few saw the inevitable bust coming.

All that actually happened was a bit of unwinding of the previous unrealistically high growth on credit. We went up too far and just came down a bit, we're back to the level we were in about 2006, was it really so bad then?

This assumption that we must have constant growth, that we much get richer every year otherwise we've failed, is fuelled by greed. The idea that someone has an automatic right to a better life than their parents is not any better than the assumption they have an automatic right to a better life than someone born in a different country.

I'd prefer it if other countries in world caught us up, and that will inevitably happen. We don't have a God given right to be richer than the rest of the world.

kabayiri

Thrugelmir wrote: »

New technology has changed the nature of work. Days of John Harvey Jones starting on the shop floor and rising to be Chairman of ICI are over. There's no longer the career path and opportunity to move up the ladder to better oneself. The announced redundancies at both Rolls Royce and Jaguar are spoken of in terms of removing management and admin.

Operations are becoming increasingly streamlined. Even Amazon has automated warehouses. Where use of manual labour is being pared back. Once the final step of dispatch is automated. Human intervention is going to be minimal.

There was a guy on the radio the other day who described himself as a technology evangelist, employed by Google.

In the discussion, he made casual reference to the notion that in future we should expect 6 decades of employment, because people will be able to live to 100 !

6 decades! Some in our Public Sector have had enough after 3 decades.

There seems to be a complete disconnect between the expectations fed to the people by career politicians, and the technology architects shaping the next generation of work.

It's a recipe for future conflict I suspect.

51mm5

Yellow vest protester arrested

https://twitter.com/timothygmitch/status/1084080564074889219

‘the whole country is with you James’

Erm.....no, they really are not.

John_G_Jones

Arklight wrote: »

As someone who was "pretty senior in an investment bank" you must be good with figures.

You'll understand then, how disgraceful it is that 4.1 million children in the UK (the world's 5th richest country) are growing up in poverty. Of these, 64% have a parent in work. The literal definition of the working poor.

A child classified thus is on a conveyor belt which is going the opposite way to their peers the moment they are born. On average they will earn much less, die earlier, and be far more likely to end up homeless than their peers.

These children can't choose their parents of any of their other circumstances. So no, 99% of your situation is not of your own making.

I hope your industry enjoyed the hundreds of billions of dollars / pounds of free corporate welfare handouts funded by various taxpayers after the banks' failure to manage their own risk annihilated the western economy in 2007.

That was the era which was the last time that average people could look forward to feeling better off the following year than the one last gone, rather than the reverse.

The thank you seems to have got lost in the post.

Yes, I think it terrible that children are growing up in poverty, and think the parents need at the least a good hard slap for what they are doing. Sadly many people will have children that they can’t afford nowadays, and seem to feel no shame about it.

I don’t have a solution, I’ll just do my best to make sure that my children don’t do the same thing.

Fortunately the state will educate them, take money off better parents to pay for this, and take more money off better parents to cover their health care, the nation’s infrastructure and so on.

Are you blaming your parents for your lot, then, or did you actually get a good start in life and chose to mess it up after you left home?

My family were pretty poor, so my mother cleaned offices at night and my dad took on a second job at the weekends. They taught me good values and I left my run-down mining village to get a great degree, spend some time in th civil service doing my bit for the country and then moved into banking, where I’m please to be able to pay enough in taxes to subsidise people like you, who believe ai’m oppressing you.

And what do you want to be thanked for? You seem to be a net taker, not payer, and are hardly spreading joy to the world...

Moby

John_G_Jones wrote: »

Yes, I think it terrible that children are growing up in poverty, and think the parents need at the least a good hard slap for what they are doing. Sadly many people will have children that they can’t afford nowadays, and seem to feel no shame about it.

I don’t have a solution, I’ll just do my best to make sure that my children don’t do the same thing.

Fortunately the state will educate them, take money off better parents to pay for this, and take more money off better parents to cover their health care, the nation’s infrastructure and so on.

Are you blaming your parents for your lot, then, or did you actually get a good start in life and chose to mess it up after you left home?

My family were pretty poor, so my mother cleaned offices at night and my dad took on a second job at the weekends. They taught me good values and I left my run-down mining village to get a great degree, spend some time in th civil service doing my bit for the country and then moved into banking, where I’m please to be able to pay enough in taxes to subsidise people like you, who believe ai’m oppressing you.

And what do you want to be thanked for? You seem to be a net taker, not payer, and are hardly spreading joy to the world...

Very smug! Just because the system worked for you, you think it's the same for everyone and if it's not they're the problem. The worlds not as simple as that though. 'Your life is 99% of your own making' ..really! If you are black and brought up by drug using parents in Tottenham your life chances are a thousand times less than if your raised by middle class parents a couple of miles away in Muswell Hill, no matter how hard you strive! Also your life can change in a minute, a car crash, a serious illness etc, can change everything and then you'll regret judging others. That child the parents shouldn't have had because they couldn't afford it might be the person looking after you if you had a stroke.

Moby

zagfles wrote: »

What is disgraceful is the assumption of geographical privilege, ie that someone should have a right to a better life than others just because of their location of birth. That's just as "disgraceful" as the assumption that someone should have a better life just because of the family they're born into, or the colour of their skin.

This assumption is fundamental to the definition of poverty used by the govt and NGOs - as it's a measurement relative to the average income in the country. The generally used measure is 60% of median household income fiddled (equaivalised) to account for household size (sometime before housing costs, sometime after).

Even the definition of "absolute" poverty used by the govt is relative! It's basically the same, except relative to the average at the start of the decade!

Also when talking about "child poverty", measuring that just in terms of household income is completely brain dead. It depends more on how the parents manage money, what their outgoings are, and where their children come on their priorities. Who do you think is poorer, a child in a household just above the meaningless "poverty line" who smokes, drinks and gambles and neglects their children, or a child in a household just below who doesn't smoke, drink, manages money sensibly and prioritises their children? The stats will tell you the first child is not "poor" but the second is.

As I posted in aother thread recently: There's definitely a correlation between poverty and all kinds of other issues such as mental/physical health, life expectancy, smoking, alcoholism, underperformance at school, etc etc. Left wing pressure groups will show you graphs proving the correlation. They are right.

However - the mistake they make is that correlation does not prove causation. Poverty in most cases is a symptom. If you make bad choices in life, such as not bothering at school, smoking, drinking too much, if you have mental health issues etc, you are more likely to end up poor. So poverty is a symptom, not a cause.

So you can't fix it eg by increasing benefit rates. You're just addressing a symptom, not the cause. Someone with issues will still have those issues and affect their children in the same way.

That's not to say we shouldn't address "poverty" - just that we shouldn't be blaming poverty for all the other problems we see predominantly in the "poor". That was the whole problem leading up the FC. The banks, government etc though we were richer than we actually were. We were living beyond our means, on credit. This included the govt, who were continually boasting about how they're abolished boom and bust, so increased spending on borrowed money. We were in a credit fuelled boom, and only a few saw the inevitable bust coming.

All that actually happened was a bit of unwinding of the previous unrealistically high growth on credit. We went up too far and just came down a bit, we're back to the level we were in about 2006, was it really so bad then?

This assumption that we must have constant growth, that we much get richer every year otherwise we've failed, is fuelled by greed. The idea that someone has an automatic right to a better life than their parents is not any better than the assumption they have an automatic right to a better life than someone born in a different country.

I'd prefer it if other countries in world caught us up, and that will inevitably happen. We don't have a God given right to be richer than the rest of the world.

Agree with some of this but what you are describing are the inevitable consequences of free market capitalism. Capitalism depends on the line between 'need' and 'want' being distorted. That's how it thrives. Greed is good. That is why tories are such hypocrites. They lecture the poor about personal responsibility and how they are the cause of own poor situation when they worship at the altar of the very forces which encourage excess because after all buying things drives the market! The whole point of business is to sell, expand and make a profit. Advertising, marketing etc is there to tell you to buy something you don't really need by pretending it will make you feel better.