AIBU to want a party to "take on the rich and powerful"

Keir Starmer constantly talks about a fairer economy. Head down this route and you end up with communism where everyone is equal. And there is no inequality and hard work is not rewarded. We all know how that ends up.

Everyone gets 13 years of free education. And the internet has increased people's access to knowledge. Some people could be improving their chances but haven't.

But it isn’t levelling the playing field. If anything it is widening the gap

Those that it will affect the most might have paid an amount that they deemed fair. But by pushing things up to what they feel is an unacceptable level they will have employed tax specialists to work out how they now will pay a smaller amount or £0 in inheritance tax.

Labour will have banked on a higher amount of income from inheritance tax and spent accordingly. So they will raise tax on other things or lower the threshold for inheritance tax to kick in to make up the losses.

It happened in the 60s and 70s

Income tax for top earners reached 97.5%. Except top earners just flew out of the country leaving the massive spending bill to be covered by the ones who couldn’t just leave the country..

So taking on the “rich and powerful” just meant higher taxes for everyone else

People voting against the 'woke' stuff is how Trump came to power. He ran a devastating campaign ad saying "Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you". And people bought in to it, knowing they'd be supporting the plutocratic elites, but happy to oppose the 'woke' alternative.

If you want your sort of party then you're going to have to address the issue of state funding of political parties. All major parties are captured (and funded) to some extent by the elites that you oppose. And individual membership subs won't fund a party to the extent that's required to win an election.

Are you a communist op?

basically watch the show billions to see how the world of high finance etc operates and govts etc.

plus the old rich and poor gap

lets say you gave every single person in the uk 1 million £ how long before some saved, some invested and many spent it all ? then what eg that guy michael carol i think it was won 10 milllion then blew it all etc.

so if the public cannot be better with money then how can the rich and poor gap divide be closed ?

I'm not sure it's the "woke", as you like to disparage them, that seem to be so laser focussed on "identity politics"...

How do you want them to be “taken on”?

Most people understand totally wrong then and shouldn't just change the definition of words willy nilly. And I would say that woke, even misused, is about as far away from identitarianism as you can get unless you're choosing your own definition for that too!

@BlueJuniper94

Commies think liberalism is bullshit as well OP and they want to redistribute wealth. You've been very vague about how you want to achieve your aims.

The OP is talking about social injustice which whiffs of bullshit liberalism to me. They're probably a commie.

"...I believe greater economic equality will solve most, if not all, social injustices." That's a bit woke, isn't it?

Economic redistribution isn't necessarily about social justice though - it's about money. Nobody needs to make moral judgements about anything.

You want them to take on the rich but without all the woke stuff. Woke means 'a state of being aware of social and political injustices', so how can you tackle a social injustice without the awareness of social injustice?

What will solve economic inequality?

Agreed. I was with you until you said that.

I do think the Labour party has lost its way in that it needs to concentrate on material circumstances rather than seeing economic inequality as just another tranche of victimhood to be shoehorned into the oppressor Vs oppressed, goodies Vs baddies narrative that it's been bent on with moralistic zeal for most of this century. It's even bled into common discourse with people talking nonsense about "economic privilege" instead of using words like "rich".

Even Blair knew that it's all about the money, domestically speaking.

Socialism isn't supposed to be about sanctimonious emoting but about economic structures and god knows the UK has enough bent, suspect, solidly entrenched economic fat pads that would keep an actual socialist party with a mind set to dismantle them busy for several parliamentary lifetimes, without needing to bother itself one iota about hierarchy of identity or culturally mediated models of privilege or any of the rest of it.

….By which you mean you have no reasonable response, just reform sound bites.

The UK has borders, to say anything else is ridiculous. You disagree with, presumably, immigration polices, but frankly not sure how you link that to “taking on the rich & powerful” who in reality would not be affected by changes to immigration polices. We also need immigration to refresh and renew our workforce.

You say bring back manufacturing, but most British people wouldn’t do that work, it is too physical and not well paid, so who would do it? We have created a society where individualism and capitalism is king, I agree that isnt necessarily optimal for everyone, but people have bought in and you can’t just easily change that.

It also isn’t fair so say money and IP are not real and of value. In some respects it is harder to develop a clever invention than, say, build an item, but the intangibility does not make the former of less value. I also don’t think the equalisation of earnings point you make is valid, why on earth should someone who has chosen to invest in further education, worked 60 hours a week for years, taken risks, innovated etc not be rewarded for that? I agree in a safety net of social security but at a basic level only, work is valuable and important and should be rewarded. Before you jump on me about care workers I don’t believe their work is less important, but it arises from a different servies of circumstances, choices and abilities and you just can’t say it is “worth” the same economically as say a lawyer, doctor, engineer etc.

By all means work on a fairer society, but don’t be naive, simplistic or dog-whistling in your posts.

Edited for typos.

When the EU proposed rules to stop the "rich & powerful" from hiding their assets offshore, they got together and convinced the country to, narrowly, vote against their own interests and make the whole country poorer.

So basically, it's not going to happen while so much of the country is pig ignorant...