Some of the effects of Tory party policys

mrjudgey you say it's anti-democratic to make the wealthy leave the country; how about the poor made to leave London & south east?

www.pcs.org.uk/en/campaigns/campaign-resources/there-is-an-alternative-the-case-against-cuts-in-public-spending.cfm

or we can carry on with this madness

In regards to the Conservatives and the assault upon welfare, I would point to increasing spending on security, there are parallels with the Reagan amd Maggie era, but now we are fighting "terrorism" the new bogey man because communism is dead, hahahahah, you might be, but they are not. The boggey man is anything be it individuals, states, organisations that threaten capitalist hegemony. Although they will convince you its cultural or religious fundamentalism.

Its ideological only in the sense that they are waging a class war, they can't do this without your ignorance. Which makes perfect sense when you read the piece in Leithlurkers link. Because George and Scameron are not idiots they know what effects their economic policies are having, they also know from history that waging war on welfare goes hand in hand with waging war on the left, and that right wing politics necessitates huge state spending and debt, just not on things that benefit ordinary people.

er, no one is suggesting that North Korea is an example of a brilliant democracy ! or planned economy. In fact to have a planned economy puts you at a disadvantage because the liberal west is hostile.

I'm making the point that we have to trade with other nations. Some nations are excluded on ideological grounds, this impacts their ability to feed their populations. Haiti is another good example of where neo-lib reforms were forced on a population that repeatedly shows it doesn't want privatisations and foreign investment, unless its on their own terms. Instead they get totalitarian regime that implements policies favoured by corporations and the american state. They are of course still hungry and nothing materially has changed for these people.

The liberal west is always happy to support totalitarian regimes, Pinochet, saddam, Shah of Iran, The Reagan administration gave varying degrees of support to anti-Communist dictatorships, including those in Guatemala the Philippines and Argentina and armed the mujahideen in the Soviet war in Afghanistan, gorillas during the Angolan Civil War, Contras in the Nicaraguan Revolution as a means of ending Left or Communist governments in those countries, it matters not whether these brutal regimes created gulags and killed their own citizens, as long as it was business as usual with nothing impeding capital accumulation.

One problem with the North Korean planned economy is that they consistently fail to plan to grow enough food to eat. However, and by no means coincidentally, they are able to plan hugely effective gulags, the Kim family have planned it that they never starve and get access to many western luxury brands and they've planned one of the worlds largest standing armies. Holding North Korea up as an exemplar of planned economies is disrespectful to those who pay the ultimate price for having the misfortune of being born in such a shithole.

www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2012/12/new-highly-detailed-image-north-koreas-lack-electrical-infrastructure/4201/

"Can you even think of a single country past or present where a planned economy has been a good thing?"

I think the French are much more planning orientated than our laissez-faire approach and they have been successful with it. I think they originated "indicative planning" and this has successfully been used by the Chinese government too.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indicative_planning

I think some sort of planning, foresight and forethought are necessary.

The only problem appears to be if the planners are the progressives of New Labour - because that appears to be the road to rack and ruin and the pathway to progressive perdition with money pissed up the wall and up a windmill on a windswept windfarm in order to combat what they claim is "catastrophic climate change". It is catastrophic alright, which is why the public kicked them out of office!

We once had a thriving cotton industry niceguy but could we grow cotton?

North Korea has suffered from typhoons and flooding and several other natural disasters.

So have other countries in the region. In fact we've had floods here ourselves last year and hurricane's are commonplace in the Americas region. Yet despite that, most other countries can still feed their population. So your logic is somewhat flawed.

Why don't you just admit that planned economies are a big steaming pile of poo. Can you even think of a single country past or present where a planned economy has been a good thing?

And thanks ttosca, I have signed the petition.

*tripled the American Debt (must proof read)

North Korea has suffered from typhoons and flooding and several other natural disasters. The USA sees itself as the guardian of capitalism, any help or relaxation of trade restrictions is subject to demands, all of which are in relation to opening up North Korea to capitalist expansion. Now North Korea is communist and quite understandably is trying to resist this imperialism. "We will continue to keep the pressure on them and they'll continue to isolate themselves until they take a different path," Obama said, so the plan is to starve them into submission.

Its all very well saying that Korea shouldn't be testing missiles but they are under threat, the threat may not be violence in the sense of all out war, but what is waged upon all socialist nations is a form of war, an economic war waged through sanctions, CIA coups, media. Did you know that the CIA owns media companies around the world? do you care? what is more the USA spends more on its military than almost all other nations combined.

"The countries directly battered by US military actions in recent decades (Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, then again Iraq), along with numerous other states that have been threatened at one time or another for being ?anti-American? or ?anti-West? (Iran, Cuba, South Yemen, Venezuela, Syria, North Korea, and others) have one thing in common: not one of them has wielded a nuclear deterrence?until now......... ?No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons.? But that is exactly what the United States is trying to do in regard to a benighted North Koreaand Iran. Physicist and political writer Manuel Garcia, Jr., observes that Washington?s policy ?is to encourage other nations to abide by the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treatyand renounce nuclear weapons--while exempting itself. Michael Parenti. www.michaelparenti.org/NorthKorea.html

Look at all the money America stole and borrowed to fund its war against Russia. Regan tripped the american debt, not because he was protecting ordinary citizens but because he was acting in the interest of capitalism.

And the first part of my argument does stack up and here's why.

If I have two pairs of shoes, you have £20, you can buy one pr. If I have two prs of shoes and £20 and you have no money, I keep the shoes and the £20 and you have no shoes. I could invest my capital to make more shoes but because you have no money there is no effective demand for the shoes. Unmet human need sits beside capital surplus and in this instance commodities, I will not employ you because there is no demand and therefore I can not accumulate more money. Some Marxists have tried to say that under-consumption theory isn't correct by saying that capitalists themselves make up the difference in purchasing power. If this is so, why does the west indebt its governments to cleave open non capitalist countries to trade/investment and try to open up every area of human life to profiteering? The answer is because: wages are too low to create demand for service/commodities and also because the capitalist class themselves do not make up the short fall. There is after all only so much food anyone can eat, miles they can travel, clothes they can wear. Even for those who have vast wealth, there is a limit to how much they spend, the rest must find suitable investment opportunities. The only reason we do not have piles of waste is simply because capitalism regulates to some extent the excess by people withdrawing investment. But when this happens as has been the case over the last 20-30 years, we see financification where money is invested into markets and not into production for human need.

We need a larger percentage of the wealth created to be shared through wages, we need effective global tax rules and we need governments to continue to meet the welfare needs of people or we need a far more radical solution. Otherwise this system will fail sooner rather than later.

Leithlurker

You must really hate the idea that you were born 100 years to late FPH, you would have so loved to have been a victorian/Edwardien, except of course if you had have been born poor.

I assume that by choosing to attack me personally (with one of the laziest, most contrived and pig-ignorant smears I have seen in quite a while, so well done) rather than address the point I made, you are happily admitting that your lunatic socialists are quite happy to dissemble and smear your wicked propaganda?

Jolly good.

You are totally correct Ttosca that we throw away a lot of food and it's not a desirable thing given all the starving people in the world. If your definition of efficiency is for us not to be throwing away food then beware.

Look at the alternatives. When USSR was under communist rule following a planned economy...sure there was very little wastage. But then there was very little produced! In China before they adopted free market reforms people literally starved. To the point where to be called fat was actually a compliment since only the rich could afford to eat so much!

And look at the world today. One of the few remaining planned economies, North Korea. Many of it's citizen's only survive because of the generousity of the wicked capitalists giving food aid made from their evil free market economies.

So if you give me the choice of living in an 'inefficient' free market economy or the 'efficient' planned economy then I'd take the first everytime. Call me but I do like to eat.

"It's like some guy time traveled forward from the 19th Century."

Oh the irony of a Marxist saying THAT!

"It's such an efficient arbitrator of supply and demand that there is a chronic problem of unemployment and wages so low that the state has to intervene to subsides peoples wages so that they can afford to live."

Ok then a) why the fuckity bumble does the state tax the lowest earners? and, b) the state sets a minimum wage AND we have high unemployment - wouldn't it be better to allow individuals to earn a 'clearing rate' and have more people in employment?

You must really hate the idea that you were born 100 years to late FPH, you would have so loved to have been a victorian/Edwardien, except of course if you had have been born poor.

Leithlurker

So interestingly another way of looking at the OP is to say that the Tories have deliberately added to the problem by misleading and in a partisan way setting the context of benefits as one where lies and misunderstandings lead public opinion, not an honest and open debate about what the welfare state is for, nor what kind of society we want to live in.

'Misleading' and 'Partisan' could be used to describe people using the term 'bedroom tax' or claiming the NHS is being privatised. In fact practically every chicken-little sky-is-falling story that has poured out of the left-wing press since 2010 fits the same description.

ISTM that your objection is not that there is misleading and partisan information, but that you are losing the propaganda war, despite the vast taxpayer resource (the BBC) which is fighting it on your behalf.

Easy to say that the public support getting tough on benefit scroungers which leads to the safety net of benefits being pulled out from under those most in need, if the public have no idea of the reality of the cost and where the money goes.

If they had any idea of the reality of the cost, I think they'd be even more appalled at the expenditure.

Mini, the first part of your argument doesn't stack up. The market is merely an efficient arbitrator of supply and demand. The trick is to maximise efficiency of a given resource (whether its land, oil or any other traded good) - this is the creative destruction of capitalism. Think about it like this, if the price of wheat spikes due to a bad harvest, there is a simple mechanism by which farmers can tweak the following years supply, similarly, the price acts as a disincentive to purchase (why buy wheat when rice is cheaper for example) - the nett effect is to smooth the price out over time. This just isn't possible in a planned economy.

Similarly, the 'contradictions' in capitalism, when compared to the alternatives, should be seen as features, not bugs. Even your point about concreting over the countryside is wrong as eventually farm land adjusts in price to balance supply and demands.

Your final point about companies sitting on cash reserves but not investing (whilst I question your figures) actually supports my point. More investment opportunities could be supported by a lower tax rate on companies.

Niceguy - I totally agree about the need for tax statements, particularly at a time when money is tight and spending budgets are being squeezed.

I do think there is a huge problem between perception and reality.

But I don't think there's a very easy solution to make papers like the DM right objectively without seriously encroaching on freedom of speech.

And naturally MP's will skew the figures to suit them just like night follows day.

What I would like to see though is these personal tax statements mentioned a while back.

Right now your average Joe Bloggs on the street hears of these billions of pounds spent every year on benefits whilst he's working his arse off and barely meeting the mortgage. Naturally he's not right happy and gets the impression he's being milked.

But if he got a statement each year which shows actually, out of the say £5000 tax he paid last year, £1k went on this, 2k went on that. Those are figures he can understand and relate to.

And when the DM or MP's are wittering on about cracking down on fraud, he can also see 'wait...only a tiny amount lost there. The elephant in the room is the £2k I'm paying towards xyz'.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-public-wrong-about-nearly-everything-survey-shows-8697821.html

So interestingly another way of looking at the OP is to say that the Tories have deliberately added to the problem by misleading and in a partisan way setting the context of benefits as one where lies and misunderstandings lead public opinion, not an honest and open debate about what the welfare state is for, nor what kind of society we want to live in. Easy to say that the public support getting tough on benefit scroungers which leads to the safety net of benefits being pulled out from under those most in need, if the public have no idea of the reality of the cost and where the money goes.