Hilarious!: ‘Too rich’ Brits lack desire, says Heseltine

Yes, I think the elite funded the Club of Rome and its 'Limits to Growth' study, which started the whole green bandwagon which is all about 'limits to growth' of ordinary people.

Policy wonks, these people do not exist outside the social totality anymore than you or I. Just as the Club of Rome or the Mont Pelerin Society (just two examples) have been funded by someone but who? I didn't fund them, you didn't and neither did the tax man. So who did? wealthy people who want to shape policy and education. These ideas are pushed by a wealthy class who wish to maintain their wealth, they are pushed into universities where they assume a veneer of respectability under the auspices of academia.

The other great thing about a nationalised industry is that we have a say in its management through our representatives in parliament. We have a say in these scandals that have occurred. We want changes made so that they never happen again. But we have no say in how Apple operate their business, and rightly so.

There are certain things that we all use and that are common to all of us and these are best nationalised and paid for out of all of our taxes.

We don't all buy Apple computers, so that does not need nationalisation. It is not an essential and needs to compete in the market for the consumer's attention.

No I don't agree with that. Because healthcare is not a product, it is a matter of life and death and we pay our taxes to have that service provided.
The overall regulation of the health service is the government's responsibility. They appoint the bosses who male policy, so it is not an autonomous business like Apple or Microsoft, and unlike Apple or Microsft to whom our taxpayer money is not paid, we pay for the NHS out of our taxes.

If you get run over, the ambulance service will rescue you. We don't have competing ambulance services. We have one coordinated service that we all pay for.

In that case you won't be too concerned that the NHS is being auctioned off piecemeal to American corporations.

Steve Jobs was a great man who spent his time thinking up new products to help people and to stay ahead of his competitors. He didn't have time to think up how to exploit anyone. He wasn't interested in that, he was interested in product development and business.

It is policy womnks who make decisions that affect the lives of millions, that decide on taxation or energy policy etc. They often have not worked in industry and usually end up in think tanks or charities or foundations etc. They are not interested in business decisions or beating competitors in a free market. They are not capitalists, they operate in a different sphere and sometimes from ivory towers. Steve Jobs knew what people wanted, he met customers, he listened and produced what people wanted. He, like most capitalist business people, was not in the game of spin, deception or exploitation.

'So the capitalist then looks around and finds new areas of exploitation/markets, ideally ones where the product produced has to be purchased without exception and it becomes a non-discretionary commodity, like fuel but increasingly health and education'

Capitalists are in a competitive environment, they try to create products that are better than their competitors. There is no easy "exploitation" of anybody, because there is always competition from competitors who provide products that stop another company from exploiting anyone. Competition gives the consumer choice and those who fail to compete go out of business. The consumer makes the decision about which product is best. The consumer is not an easy sitting target for exploitation because of free competition in an open market.

However, arbitrary taxation on the population and carbon taxes and green taxes etc could be considered as a form of exploitation of ordinary people by an elite who faces no competition. There is no choice for the public, they have to pay. They are hostage to the system and although communities do not want windfarms on their unspoilt greenbelt land, there is not much they can do about it, because there is no competition of ideas - the elite are all in it together, they are not in competition, unlike businesses in a capitalist system.

I can't do this anymore........read the bloody book Capitalism is not a force of good or evil, just a plain old socio/economic system no better or even worse than what went before. It will fail because of the reasons I listed above and other contradictions (in total about 7-10 major contradictions) we won't have a choice and we will develop other social systems over time. Revolution is slow..........just as we were not made in seven days.

Marx is not wrong. Cultural marxists???? ignore. Increasingly those on left are going back to the source instead of poncing about worrying about how some literature was produced or some other obscure nonsense. I think what you have been picking up on is a lot of cultural marxism.

Marx doesn't call them elites (that's not to say that he never did) but capitalists and in later volumes covers monopoly tendencies.

I starting reading Marx because I considered it a must read like Robinson Crusoe, Madame Bovary, Crime and punishment...... I had no idea that I would never "think" in the same way ever again

' However because value must be stolen from the worker in the form of the profit or surplus value he produces, workers will never have enough money collectively to buy all the commodities that they produce'

The founders of Microsoft and the early employees all had shares in Microsoft and when their enterprise succeeded many became multi-millionaires overnight. No one stole from these workers, they became rich. The 25 year old traders who are lucky enough to work in a successful bank often earned hundreds of thousands with their bonuses. No one stole from them, they were in the right place at the right time and were given opportunities.

Capitalism is a force that aims to create successful businesses which generate profit and which employ people, some of whom become rich in these enterprises. No one is stealing from the employees.

Mini, you are wrong about the reason why the elites push the green agenda. Yes they will make money out of it but that is not their main goal. Their main goal is to stymie the progress and prosperity of the world population.

They don't need windmills in which to invest their capital supluses. They could more usefully put it into house building, which would give the homeless and people living in overcrowded accommodation somewhere to live and which would provide jobs and increase the standard of living of the country.
But that would be helping people.

Mini, although Marx and Marxists are wrong on most things, they are correct that elites do exist

'The relevance of Marx?s Das Kapital to the modern capitalist world is once again getting a hearing. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the opening up of China to international capitalism the political and economic elites declared that a new economic paradigm had arrived, bringing with it undreamt promises of wealth and consumer bliss as long as the market was left to do its own thing.'

www.counterfire.org/index.php/articles/141-literature/15849-why-reading-marxs-das-kapital-still-matters

I haven't read Marx, but I am sure that in all of his thousands of pages, he must have mentioned elites.

We used shells as means of * exchange (sorry rushing, should be working) must make more money.

OK, money can not be wasted in the way that you probably think. Money is the means of exchange, the only way in which a worker can acquire the means to maintain and reproduce (his) life. That is the purpose of money. However because value must be stolen from the worker in the form of the profit or surplus value he produces, workers will never have enough money collectively to buy all the commodities that they produce. Capitalists then start to feel the pinch because some commodities go unsold...ie no demand. So the capitalist then looks around and finds new areas of exploitation/markets, ideally ones where the product produced has to be purchased without exception and it becomes a non-discretionary commodity, like fuel but increasingly health and education. Can you see though there is a potential problem? thats right we still won't ever have enough money to pay for it. More so because what is being produced relies on less labour hours.

So of course these elites are simulataneosly acting as a class but also in competition to each other.

Money can not be wasted, as long as money is in constant circulation through many hands. However because the worker hands over the surplus value he creates in his labour, the money does not stay in circulation in the "real economy" acting as means of exchange btw workers and btw workers and capitalists. Increasing accumulation at the top. This money then must be reinvested.

Thus capitalism can only work where money as exchange never stands still and where new areas of exploitation/markets can be found and where there is 2-3% compound growth.

Where it fails in short crisis, some wealthy people become wealthier, however they can not and will never be able to maintain their wealth in a no growth economy. Hence why the elite will never be cycling backwards.

''monetary resources can not be wasted it is actually impossible!'

Are you saying that using taxpayer money to pay for some MPs' moats, duck houses and bath plugs was not a waste of monetary resources?

It is all about priorities. Time and money are finite, they do not grow on trees as some in New Labour seemed to believe. Godon Brown's reported statement that New Labour had abolished boom and bust was patently false, and as Mandelson recently said they had abolished boom.

There is lots of waste because there are lots of wrong ideas and decisions made by policy wonks who work in charities and foundations and think tanks but not in industry.

I think as times have been comparatively prosperous for many in the last 20 year or longer a certain complacency has set in. In the past even if you haven't busted a gut you could still generally find a position that meant a job for life. If you lost your job and your money ran out you wouldn't be made homeless or reliant on food stamps. Your family wouldn't starve to death.

There's an emerging middle class in countries where traditionally if you haven't worked you've starved, countries where education is valued so highly children would walk miles without shoes to get to school. We need to be worried.

Claig you would make an excellent socialist if you would just leave off the conspiracy (very strange man) !

Elites.....what or who are they, I would propose that first you need to understand what capitalism is and isn't.

It isn't simply the way in which we exchange money and goods. That has gone before in every socio/economic system throughout human development. We used shells as means of production in some societies in others glass beads and metals, eventually gold coin.

What it is characterised by is: Exploitation of workers and the accumulation of capital surpluses. In later stages of capitalism you have monopoly tendencies (or as Lenin said imperialism) This concentrates wealth in fewer and fewer hands......these are your elites. They are capitalists.

Windmills, oil, green lobby, carbon trading how does this fit in?

I would suggest that as we live under the socio/economic totality of capitalism that these phenomena are caused by the need to create capital surplus. (you have to otherwise you go broke) In the 1900s the mining companies pushed up commodity prices by claiming there was a shortage of key natural resources, Opec have pushed up oil prices claiming we have a shortage, elec/power companies make similar claims and then invest money in deriviatives and windmills are just another way of extracting money out of us (remember money can not lie idle) and then you have hedge funds that sell short and so it goes and others that bet on commodity prices whilst others horde certain key essential commodities to push the price up.

There is no great secret.

ssd, OK, we will have to agree to disagree on that one.

Are you saying that paying some NHS Trust bosses their huge salaries and expenses and sometimes first-class rail travel is not a waste of public money that could be put to better use to provide better patient care in the NHS?

claig I couldn't disagree with you more re "maggie"

no more to add, really

'monetary resources can not be wasted it is actually impossible!'

Are you saying that bailing out banks with billions in quantitative easing is a better use of scarce monetary resources than building homes and stimulating the real economy?

Are you saying that banks gambling with people's savings and then blowing that money is not a waste of valuable monetary resources?

Are you saying that paying taxpayer money to house someone on benefits in Belgravia is not a waste of public funds that could be more efficiently used by housing that person somewhere where ordinary people can afford to live?

Are you saying that using taxpayer money to subsidise rich aristocratic landowners to erect inefficient windmills is not a waste of public money?

I say bring back Maggie. She would sort some of this craziness out without doubt!

monetary resources can not be wasted it is actually impossible!

That is the sort of myth that allows Osborne to peddle his crap.

'Capital surpluses must be reinvested, they always are, the problem is where'

Yes but if they are invested in windmills, then that is a waste of precious monetary resources which should be put to use in creating jobs that lead to exports.

'The rich can never be totally idle'

But the phrase 'idle rich' has become common parlance, just like the phrase 'New Labour spin'.

They both reflect some truth.

I assume he isn't referring to actually rich people. He's whinging about how the lower classes have it 'too easy'.