Does anyone actually back the government these days?

I didn't say anything about the state of health of those using healthcare. Yes, the wealthy are more likely to enjoy better health than lower income groups. However, they consume a greater amount of healthcare resources despite their better health 'status'. Will provide links when not on phone for you niceguy.

I'd love to see the evidence to back that claim up.

Everything I've read suggests that the opposite is true. Those who have money are generally healthier because they have more options. They can eat better quality food, pay for gym memberships and are much less likely to smoke.

In fact I just found this article from the Guardian which is usually pretty left leaning and even they agree! Link

^This year the welfare bill is £200Bn. NHS costs £120Bn. Education £95Bn.

Rich people don't use any of those things. They're not the ones forcing my taxes up. Evil socialists force my taxes up.^

Actually healthcare is considered to be a luxury good by economists. As your income rises your demand for healthcare (especially publicly funded healthcare) rises. The richest income groups demand and consume healthcare more than the poorest income groups do.

I am right Hamster, your income is falling, that is what I said was it not?

Labour is no longer a socialist party, I can't imagine why you think they are, could you explain why you think they are socialist? I agree with merci, they are all puppets to the corps and the rich, they just wear different coloured ties.

I am self employed too and I agree with you about tax ( only so far as middle earners pay far too much) but I am a socialist, in terms of minimising the exploitation of workers and saving the capitalists the trouble of digging the grave for capitalism I would suggest a return to "big" government of the kind we had btw 1945-1979 when the debt to GDP ratio fell during that time and the income gap between rich and poor was 15:1, when we had very low levels of unemployment and businesses were still investing because there was demand for goods and services. Whilst the government levied heavy taxes on the rich and the corporations, working people neither paid heavy taxes or needed welfare to top up their income. We had rising prosperity for all, one adult wage could keep a family and we had social mobility.

Being angry with the poor and low waged workers, the sick and disabled and children who receive state education, pensioners who are sick and frail or the millions of young people who can no longer afford to train or study and the millions who now find themselves either unemployed or underemployed is evil.

Read up about Maggie, neo-liberalisation of the markets, the project to change the way people think. It started in the 50's, long before Maggie came to power. Why? because after Roosevelt levied 95% tax on the rich they started their fight back, the Mont Pelerin Society was founded in 1947 by Friedrich Hayek and he found plenty of support from rich industrialists.

You sound very embittered Hamster and as is the case with the brainwashed army of capitalism apologists, self centred and selfish.

This year the welfare bill is £200Bn. NHS costs £120Bn. Education £95Bn.

Rich people don't use any of those things. They're not the ones forcing my taxes up. Evil socialists force my taxes up.

flatpackhamster, yes, be angry at rich people

it may help to think of the country as being run by and for rich people. sometimes we call them labour, sometimed we call them tory. they wear different colours to give an illusion of choice. there is also a small difference in policies, and imo the conservatives could do with rrflecting a bit more on the dangers of leaving the majority with no money and no stake in society.

MiniTheMinx

Now Mrs hamster and MrNice unless you are one of the top 1% expect your income to decrease over time as it surely will.

My income decreased under Labour. I'm self-employed, so if I want to earn more I have to work harder. I don't get an automatic increment like public sector workers. I had 8 tax rises in 7 years - corporation tax, NI, Employers NI (which, as a self-employed person I had not been liable for but Golden Brown thought it was a lovely wheeze to make me pay it), higher income tax, higher VAT. Even though my company's income doubled, my hourly earnings fell to the point where I was nearly on the equivalent of minimum wage - all through tax.

My cost of living rose, thanks to Labour, as mass immigration and the credit bubble trebled the price of housing in my region over a 10 year period. Everything was priced out of my reach - thanks to tax and spend socialists.

And you want me to be angry with a bunch of rich people.

But of course Labour did so much on tax avoidance!!!!!

Did the difference between rich and poor go down while Labour wherein power. Did it heck! It increased. What did the unions do when state pensions were increased in age. Sod all. I wrote to my MP who raised the issue with David Blunkett and 'there were no proposals to raise State Retirement Age.' The unions soon got involved as soon as the Tories tried to reduce pensions for their darling public sector workers. If you work in the private sector the unions and Labour do not help you. Don't kid yourselves. Do you really think a Labour Party would not make the kids where unions are not involved. Most of the recent policies to protect workers have been EU directives so thank them not the public school dominated Labour Party that were in power for so long.

By the way our CEO earns 15 times' average earnings so not all callous bastards like people on here would have us believe.

Anything to stop Labour getting back in again. Agreed with most lib dem policies and glad to see tax free amount is gradually rising as promised. Far better for me for lower earners to be tax free rather than slaves to tax credits.

This government are an entirely unrepresentative bunch of millionaire ex-public schoolboys with no concept of life for ordinary people. Their contempt for those worse off than them seeps from every pore. No, I didn't vote for them, and I never will.

Cant stand the current government. No idea of how to govern.

I do so laugh at this comedy assertion that the UK was purely the victim of global economic crises.

We were a huge part of the cause, not just the victims.

Every strata of UK society played its part in creating the global credit crisis. From the unemployed, the minimum wage workers, blue collar workers, middle classes and wealthy. From the small businesses, larger corporations, local authority councils and through to the govenrment.

The frenzy for ever increasing debt to fund unbridled spending throughout those social, corporate and governmental groups has been truly astonishing.

Nearly as astonishing as the childish pretence that it's "everybody else's fault". But I guess it always makes one feel better to blame someone else.

Well, Gideon's latest wheeze, taking money from carers of adult disabled children, should enable to few more tax perks for his rich chums:

www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/dec/16/parents-disabled-offspring-benefit-cap

Of course, if these people have to go into homes, far from any savings made from this cap, it will cost taxpayers thousands per week, but I don't think Gidiot can have two consecutive thoughts running in tandem.

Gotta love cuts apologists.

ttosca

How many times do I have to explain this? Our GDP/Debt ratio has remained, on average, the same (at around 35%) for the past 30 years:

You're still in denial about the scale of the debt. There's PFI, there's the public sector pensions deficit, and the state pension deficit. These three chunks of money along take our real debt/GDP ratio closer to 150% of GDP. PFI adds an extra 2.5%, and that's a mere £35Bn. The epic scale of the other debts dwarfs PFI.

Deficit Deniers. Gotta love 'em.

Seriously 'nice'guy, why don't you just stop. Please, just stop it. Everything you say is ignorant.

Oh Ttosca. You do make me laugh. It's a matter of public record that we've had a balanced/surplus budget for about 4 out of the last 30 years.

We've had budget surpluses six times in the last 30 years.

www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/oct/18/deficit-debt-government-borrowing-data#zoomed-picture

So given we've had a deficit for around the last 26 years, how do you credibly say that our debt hasn't been 'accumulating'? In short, how do you borrow money for nearly 30 years without increasing your overall level of debt?

How many times do I have to explain this? Our GDP/Debt ratio has remained, on average, the same (at around 35%) for the past 30 years:

www.economicshelp.org/blog/334/uk-economy/uk-national-debt/

The GDP/Debt ratio is what is important, because it is indicative of our ability to pay back the debt. If you disagree, than ask yourself which is worse - a millionaire with a £1000 debt, or a homeless guy with no job and no skills with a £500 debt.

The GDP/Debt ratio jumped at 2008 - as you can clearly see from the chart - as a result of the financial crisis and recession. If the ratio were the result of too much public spending, then we should have seen a steady slope increasing since 1980. We don't see that. We see a slope which went slightly up and down for the past 30 years, but average around 35% until 2008, when the financial crisis hit.

I still maintain that we needed to make drastic spending cuts. But I never ever said they'd be great for the economy. Clearly they wouldn't be. But it doesn't mean it wasn't necessary.

That's just stupid. The ostensible purpose of the cuts is to 'fix' the economy. This statement belies the fact that you support ideological cuts - even when they harm the economy.

Tax avoidance. Well...let's see when the dust settles how much will actually be clawed back. We need to promote successful businesses, not vilify them.

Whether we managed to claw back revenue from tax avoidance is a different issue than whether tax avoidance is a problem or not.

'Promoting successful business' is a separate issue from paying tax. It's too bad that you think we are 'vilifying' them by requiring them to pay their fair share of tax.

Please, just stop writing garbage. Everything you write is ignorant and wrong. You refuse to listen and you refuse to learn anything. You just keep repeating the same old nonsense.

"What is the deficit? When the ONS talks about the deficit, they take a simple measure - the gap between what's coming into the government in taxes and receipts versus what's being spent. Most commentators look at net borrowing as the deficit figure, because it includes investment spending. It's different to the national debt - which is the total the country owes"

Debt and deficit are two different things entirely.

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2012/05/29/uk-public-debt-1900-2010/

If you click the link, it will show you a chart of our debt from 1900

What actually matters in measuring debt is debt to GDP ratio.

If you notice this fell from 1946/47

The reason for this is: huge amounts of investment into rebuilding, renationalisation, the birth of health and welfare and rising wages that closely correlated with rising productivity.

www.epi.org/publication/ib330-productivity-vs-compensation/

scroll down and look at the chart, it clearly shows that from 1947 wages and productivity grew at the same rate with workers sharing a greater percentage of the wealth created.

After 1979 (when thatcher took over) the productivity shot up because of the consolidation of wealth and class power and a change in labour relations, whilst wages started to decline in real terms.

The only reason that the pinch hasn't been felt by ALL up until now is because working people mitigated against falling wages with two workers per household and by taking on personal debt.

Going back to sovereign debt, it is clear from the data, that debt is accumulated during times of war and during economic crisis. What is also clear is that globalisation and neo-liberalisation of the economy is having mixed results across the globe. The most liberal economies are now in decline because they created the conditions under which there own businesses could spread over the globe in search of not only markers but cheap labour and resources whilst turning a blind eye to government tax receipts. the fact is, not enough money is flowing into the UK treasury. making cuts will cut expenditure but it won't raise income and it is increasingly becoming clear that welfare needs under capitalism are growing, so how is the health and welfare of our people going to be paid for?

Actually Mini, if we want to be accurate the deficit is technically traceable back to WW2 and straight after as Ttosca has pointed out in the past the state took on huge loans to rebuild our shattered nation.

But if we look back around the 30 year time then you will also note that when Thatcher took over in 79 that she inherited around a 5% budget deficit.

The thing is we have had deficits no matter which party has been in power. Our financial issues go well beyond party political issues and we can only solve them if we are willing to take the extremely tough & unpopular decisions now. But even now I don't really see evidence of that. Just tinkering around the edges.

All this screaming & shouting about how deep and unfair the Tory spending cuts have been. The reality is that they've not been anywhere near as deep as they originally wanted. The truth is that they've only about managed what Labour had said they wanted to cut.

You can interpret that in two ways. Either you can believe that Labour was therefore right about not cutting too fast/too deep. Or you can argue that had Labour have been in power then they'd have wussed out even more and we'd be in worse situation than we are now.

Either way, things will get worse before they get better.

Nice Guy So given we've had a deficit for around the last 26 years, how do you credibly say that our debt hasn't been 'accumulating

Thatcher became prime minister in 1979 that is 33 years. When she took over she co-opted the idea of one Keith Richards who was pro Neo-liberalisation.

The deficit can be traced back to there.

Oh Ttosca. You do make me laugh. It's a matter of public record that we've had a balanced/surplus budget for about 4 out of the last 30 years. So given we've had a deficit for around the last 26 years, how do you credibly say that our debt hasn't been 'accumulating'? In short, how do you borrow money for nearly 30 years without increasing your overall level of debt?

I still maintain that we needed to make drastic spending cuts. But I never ever said they'd be great for the economy. Clearly they wouldn't be. But it doesn't mean it wasn't necessary. Personally I wish the politician's would be more honest. This is a long term decline brought about because our economies have not been competitive with the asian ones like S. Korea, China, India etc. For too long we've given ourselves the illusion of prosperity because we've borrowed money to fuel our economies. Unless we take radical action to tame our spending AND promote businesses to expand and to compete then our standards of living will continue to fall.

Tax avoidance. Well...let's see when the dust settles how much will actually be clawed back. We need to promote successful businesses, not vilify them.

Lastly, if the system is fine why are you constantly promoting violent protest and why are we in such dire straits?

And we still don't know what ttosca thinks is the solution.... I'm going to have to assume that's because they know if they set it out, others will rip it to shreds.

NicolasTeakozy Out of interest what is it in particular in terms of policy and ideology that puts you off the SWP ?

I do belong to a party but it isn't the SWP.

Niceguy So rather than face the facts that your logic is flawed you instead try to make out that it's the system that's wrong and that violent protest is the correct way forward.

but the system is wrong, since the 1980's there has been a huge widening of the gap between rich and poor. In the 60's the difference in income was at it's lowest. OECD countries registered a huge increase in inequality because of Thatcher and Regans neo-liberal policies.

In 1970 the average CEO earned 15 x what their average staff were paid, by 1998 CEOs earned on average 500 x what their staff were being paid.

What is more, don't think because you have a pension scheme managed by a fund or you have a few shares that you are benefiting from the free market either. CEOs have over time, paid themselves excessive salaries, devalued their companies and strategically known when to cash in their shares. Many of these businesses that traditionally invested in there core business started to trade in stocks and other financial products, meaning more profit but less work being made available. And so it goes on........

Now Mrs hamster and MrNice unless you are one of the top 1% expect your income to decrease over time as it surely will.

In Britain the the top 1% have doubled their share of national income 6.5% to 13% since 1982.

So yes if you are rich, the system works very well.

What do people think an economic system is? How central is it to everyones lives? is one system better than another? do we even know what will come out of capitalism in the end game?

For what it is worth, asking lefties to describe a new social,political and economic system, is as useful as asking the Russian and French people what they wanted, they went out for bread! they ended up with a revolution.That is what we will end up with unless the rich and the elite pay heed to the damage that their "system" is creating and the poverty being visited upon the 99%.

I refused to join the SWP as their views are idiotic. Not as idiotic as yours, but still.