Double Dip Recession

But not all capitalists are in effective monopoly areas such as energy. For instance, delivery companies are hurt by increasing fuel prices and they can't just put up their prices because the big suppliers squeeze them and force them to be competitive with the thousands of other delivery companies.

Increased energy and water prices (some caused by green regulations) are like a tax on the public, and that tax harms consumption and the economy as there is less money in people's pockets.

"The green taxes on business are slowing growth and increasing energy prices for consumers, which prevents them buying other goods to keep the wheels of teh economy growing" and that is a very interesting dialectic and one of the major flaws in capitalism, a complete contradiction and irrationality.

Competition for consumers is at the heart of how we live now, generally speaking a need will be made from the servicing of another and companies are competing and are not inclined to act rationally, its what some economists call rational irrationality. They do not act in accord they act independently and in competition, whilst one pollutes the rivers, another makes a new technology that will mop up the mess.

Whilst the worker/consumer is paid low wages which makes greater surplus capital for his employer, the employer competes to offer his commodity at a lower price. (this makes ever greater surplus capital that must find new markets to invest in) Whilst the worker/consumer is screwed financially and can not meet his unmet need for commodities (except through credit/as in this crisis) and pulls back from buying some things, the capitalist will find a new market/a new commodity where the consumer has little choice but to purchase. This is being seen with the public/private nexus in health and welfare as well as new green technologies.

Yes you are right about the derivatives trading of carbon credit.

The green taxes on business are slowing growth and increasing energy prices for consumers, which prevents them buying other goods to keep the wheels of teh economy growing. That is why, fortunately, Osborne has slowed some of the drive to green taxes down, despite the much of the media and political class howling him down. He even said something like we will not bankrupt Britain to save the planet.

We need growth, we need prosperity. People are suffering, and some people would like zero growth.

Capitalist are in favour of green taxes because the costs will be met by consumers and the need for new technologies open up new areas of market exploitation. Incl in areas such as the financial markets in derivatives etc,

"There is a need to tackle environmental degradation, such as pollution of rivers and seas due to industrial chemicals or nuclear waste. Dropping depleted uranium doesn't help the environment. There is a need to rein in the GM frankenfood enthusiasts"

Who caused this as yet unmet need? who will profit from the need to create new technologies and new markets?

'But Claig they really are'

When you say that, do you mean that the people are really stupid? I linked earlier to a socialist New Statesman article which asked "Why we don't believe it?" about global warming. It was wringing its hands asking what could policy makers do to convince the people that global warming is real.

Despite all of the think tanks, the Oxbridge brains, the BBC and the media conditioning and shock tactic adverts, the people (not as stupid as Marx thought) still don't believe the great and the good.

Why would capitalists be in favour of green taxes on business? Why would they want more regulations?

There is a need to tackle environmental degradation, such as pollution of rivers and seas due to industrial chemicals or nuclear waste. Dropping depleted uranium doesn't help the environment. There is a need to rein in the GM frankenfood enthusiasts who may affect the health of the people. But climate catastrophe is a con and that is what the majority actually think. But the elite are wedded to it. Yes they will make some money out of it, but that is not their real objective.

But Claig they really are. An example of this is one of your pet hobby horses, global warming and environmental degradation. You and I are rather sceptical in respect of the need for new technologies and new markets in this area, possibly for different reasons.

You deny there is a need to tackle environmental concerns whilst it is clear that capitalism uses new markets to renew itself. It creates a need which must be met. It is obvious to even the most casual observer that climate change is purported to be catastrophic and man-made (despite the fact that geologists tell us this has all happened before) The elite that you speak of want to slow growth and stunt prosperity (your words not mine) I disagree, it is the age old way in which capital accumulation renews itself through offering commodities for a need it has created.

Years a go my Grandmother would not have dreamt have buying out or season fruit of vegetable but now the average consumer will expect to purchase tomatoes in December and in doing so services a need that otherwise would not have existed.

But people are not as stupid as Marx thinks.
If you go to a greengrocer, there are apples and pears and cherries and oranges, all provided by workers and delivered by workers and sold to workers. It is all there waiting to be consumed, but the consumer makes a choice about whether to consume or not. The consumer doesn't buy the lot. The consumer is given choice, unlike in communist East Germany, where the consumer could only buy a Trabant.

The producers of the Guardian produce the Guardian, but I choose not to consume it. Because it doesn't taste very nice and because it often contains nonsense that is indigestible and makes you choke on the cup of tea that you did choose to consume.

I'm not saying that Farage is right about everything, but he was right about the Euro and I think that Mandelson is wrong.

Mandelson was on Radio 4's Today programme and predictably the socialist said that Greece is the author of its own problems. Farage doesn't say that, he says it is the Euro enthusiasts and technocrats and political class who made the wrong decision for the Greek people and are now causing their suffering. And he says that the same people won't let them get out of it.

If you wanted to hvae a baby in Greece on their NHS you slipped £3000 cash to the doctor. The system was corrupt from top to bottom and I know people there and it is not just the "elite".

Human nature means most people want to do better than others. That is great. It is how we survive. However most of us temper that with wanting also to look after those whom we love. Humans are a mixture of those two aspects. That is why capitalism seems to be the best system we have come up with. We have current problems but we often have in the past. Cycles come and go. This will be over and things will improve again.

The UK is not them and us. There is nothing to stop any woman on mumsnet setting up a business. We are a good country for giving people a free education and chances. We all know plenty of women who have made money having started with very little.

And claig, if you seriously think Nigel Farage is the Answer, then I fear for your sanity, or at least your sense of humour.

Mandelson is no more a socialist than the average grabby little 18 month old child. He wants what you have and he wants more than you have, in fact as long as he is rich he doesn't give a hoot if you eat ants.(although no one is making a penny out of ant eaters)

As for McRipOff and the sustainability question in regards health, environment and growth it is a question of creating a need that otherwise may not have existed before and then profiting from it, which is something that capitalism thrives on.

"Production, for its part, correspondingly (1) furnishes the material and the object for consumption. [15] Consumption without an object is not consumption; therefore, in this respect, production creates, produces consumption. (2) But the object is not the only thing which production creates for consumption. Production also gives consumption its specificity, its character, its finish. Just as consumption gave the product its finish as product, so does production give finish to consumption. Firstly, the object is not an object in general, but a specific object which must be consumed in a specific manner, to be mediated in its turn by production itself. Hunger is hunger, but the hunger gratified by cooked meat eaten with a knife and fork is a different hunger from that which bolts down raw meat with the aid of hand, nail and tooth. Production thus produces not only the object but also the manner of consumption, not only objectively but also subjectively. Production thus creates the consumer. (3) Production not only supplies a material for the need, but it also supplies a need for the material. As soon as consumption emerges from its initial state of natural crudity and immediacy ? and, if it remained at that stage, this would be because production itself had been arrested there ? it becomes itself mediated as a drive by the object. The need which consumption feels for the object is created by the perception of it. The object of art ? like every other product ? creates a public which is sensitive to art and enjoys beauty. Production thus not only creates an object for the subject, but also a subject for the object. Thus production produces consumption (1) by creating the material for it; (2) by determining the manner of consumption; and (3) by creating the products, initially posited by it as objects, in the form of a need felt by the consumer. It thus produces the object of consumption, the manner of consumption and the motive of consumption. Consumption likewise produces the producer?s inclination by beckoning to him as an aim-determining need."
Grunrisse, chapter 1 Production & Consumption.

Production and consumption are dependent upon each other, consumption is also a constituent of production and vice versa. This illustrates how need is met and at the same time stimulated, this is something that is not particular to capitalism but it is the mechanism whereby our mode of production creates needs otherwise not known/otherwise not commercial.

This explains quite clearly many things such as the market in creating insecurity in women and flogging the beauty myth for money and the fact that now plastic surgery is becoming the norm rather than the exception. The pervasive porn culture we live in creates a new market in dealing with peoples insecurities, it creates a need, the need goes unmet, it creates a product to meet the need it has created. The same is seen with most forms of welfare including treatments for obesity/diabetes.

So who is really for the people, their sovereignty and prosperity?
The capitalist or the socialist?

And who, in the UK, foresaw all of this? Who warned that this would happen? Who was a lone voice foretelling the disaster that would strike?

Nigel Farage and UKIP and the Tory Eurosceptics.

And who tells us now, after all that has happened, that we should one day still join the currency union?

The socialist, Mandelson.

'while on a fast-track to youthful and generously-pensioned retirement'

and do you think that all those highly paid financial advisers, on their huge generous bonuses, weren't aware of the early retirement in Greece?

And yet they turned a blind eye, and cooked the books and fiddled the figures. Why? Because they wanted the country inside the Euro zone. They tricked the people and after the crash and the whiplash that they inflicted on the people, they can now cut and cut and enslave the people. And they tell the people that it was all their fault because they were lazy tax evaders who wanted early retirement.

But the people haven't fallen for their lies. They are challenging the puppets and refusing to be slaves for centuries. So we will have to see who wins - the people or the puppets.

And if you have reason to say it, do you not think that the high and the mighty had an inkling about the endemic tax evasion before they allowed them into the currency union and if they knew all this then why did they let them in and why didn't they stamp down on the tax evasion?

And does that include the Greek cleaner? And what have the ruling politicians done to change that? Have they jailed all these tax evaders? Are the jails full due to endemic tax evasion?

I have reason to say that tax evasion is endemic throughout the nation.

So is abuse by public employees drawing their pay and neglecting their duties, while on a fast-track to youthful and generously-pensioned retirement.

PigletJohn, do you think that the Greek cleaner or the Greek careworker or the Greek teacher or the Greek nurse didn't have to pay taxes?

I suppose you also think that some MPs didn't fiddle their expenses.

I think they are Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Yes, I don't agree with everything the Mail says. I am a realist and think that the elite control the Mail and the Guardian.

"Ordinary Greeks had to pay taxes just like ordinary people do here"

Oh, is that what you think.

Claig that would be the mail that are almost certainly responsible for the class warfare that became bash a chav.

The elite's media smears our people too. It says they are too lazy to work, that they are scroungers and haven't got a work ethic and that foreign workers are much more preferable to employers.

Ordinary Greeks had to pay taxes just like ordinary people do here. Super billionaire Greeks could evade their taxes, just as they can here.

The media smnears ordinary people and says it's all their fault, just as they tell us that it's our fault that the banks lent us too much, and that's why we got our just desserts.

What the ordinary Greek taxpayer didn't pay is peanuts to what teh Grek billionaires didn't pay. And any non-payment of taxes had been going on for decades without causing the financial misery that Greece is now suffering. The Greek people were tricked by their puppets (most probably socialists, but I don't know which party took them into the European currency union) to get into the elite's monetary union. Then they were handcuffed and sentenced to penury by an elite that pumps out the media message that it was all the little guy's fault.

You think it's a lie, that Greeks didn't (don't) like paying tax?