AIBU not understanding Labour's ideology?

[ChristmasSpecial]

This explanation sums up why I simply don't get it.

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Corbyn's vision of socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Corbyn's ideological plan”. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A…. (substituting grades for £ 's )something closer to home and more readily understood by all).
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.
The second test average was a D! No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.
As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
It could not be any simpler than that.

There are five morals to this story:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

1. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

1. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

1. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

1. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

I would expand that I thought the problem with Labour currently and in recent history is that a few other students would see that and try the same thing and within a few weeks the same students would be being asked to give up 1% to someone who had a bit of a hurty knee or too many kids to look after or was feeling a bit sad that week too which is why it would fail

Whilst your analogy makes more sense, it's still flawed and over simplistic. Benefit fraud, which you appear to be alluding to, makes up less than 1% of the total benefit bill, equivalent to 1.6 billion. Tax fraud costs us 20 billion.

If you're looking to blame benefit fraudsters for the lack of money in the system, you're looking at the wrong end of the scale.

For your analogy to work, a fair portion of those giving 1% of their grade would have to find a way to illegally withhold part of their 1% to benefit themselves to the detriment of everyone else.

The theory of distributing wealth to make everyone equal is very flawed anyway. It's not that black and white. Some people are intelligent; some people aren't, some people want to work hard to achieve their ambitions; some people don't. Added to this are other scenarios that might include disabilities or born into disadvantage and poverty, but most people outside these scenarios make their own path in life, which might lead to a financially comfortable life, or might not.

Not this old shit again

Oh Jeez not this crap again

My god the lack of acknowledgement of privilege is breathtaking livelovebehappy

Read this and see if it adds to the way you consider economic policy in th UK guardian article

What a misunderstanding of the labour manifesto. What I cannot understand, is why the fuck people want poor people to stay poor forever.

People who are alright with the status quo in their own immediate bubble, don't care about people in poverty, kids missing meals, foodbanks visited by thousands of people. Disabled and mentally ill people killing themselves because they cannot cope with cuts and lack of help. People sleeping on the streets, in this day and age!! It's not right.

Yes how fucking dare labour have the ideology that their should be a fairer society. The twats

OPEN YOUR EYES AND LOOK AROUND. Please have some compassion for people who are suffering in society.

I can only assume tory voters have been okay for the last few years and don't care about anybody else because they're alright jack.

Tory voters ARE selfish because they obviously don't give a flying fuck about people who aren't their family and friends.

Saw same copy and paste with Obamas name in it last year. Tedious nonsense which has nothing to do with the Labour manifesto and sure as hell had nothing to do with Obamas policies.

Don't insult your intelligence by engaging with the troll

Erm... when did JC become leader of the communist party? Misleading bollocks.

Corbyn is a socialist, not a communist. Back to AstroTurf school for you, OP!

By the logic in that, Donald Trump is harder working and more deserving than firefighters, doctors, nurses, teachers, paramedics, pretty much everyone in the world.

Hard work is NOT THE ONLY THING THAT MAKES PEOPLE RICH. People are rich because their parents were rich, because of luck, because they were in the right place at the right time, because they were born in the right decade, because their face fits, because of some combination of factors of which hard work is a minor one. Millions of people work hard and barely make enough to feed a family.

You're right. You do not understand their ideology if you think that is a good analogy. Perhaps have another read of their manifesto

I'll make it simple.
1 - The teacher was a fool who had no understanding of political theory.
2 - Communism and socialism are not the same thing. Are Tories fascists? Of course not.
3 - the British Labour party is not a socialist part - it is, as the name suggests, a party formed by the Labour movement.

That's for starters.

For you OP you need to remember that famous quote from Abraham Lincoln "don't believe everything you read on the internet"

Oh please. Also that particular example was used in the US elections last year and was floating around for years before that. Randomly attributing it to Corbyn is simply ridiculous, even if it came close to his representing his policies or manifesto which it does not.

It was attributed to Bernie Sanders last year btw.
Perfect example of obvious fake news: unnamed mystery "professor" at a mystery college that conveniently teaches a lesson to ignorant youth in bullet pointed steps.

For you OP you need to remember that famous quote from Abraham Lincoln "don't believe everything you read on the internet

This is clearly an American post with Corbyn's name inserted.

Because that really happened

Ah should have RTFT instead of scanning it. I see someone's already linked to the Snopes article on it where it was a Texas class.

For you OP, Labour 2017 manifesto economic strategy

Once upon a time, something was unconvincingly copied and pasted on the internet. Blah blah blah.

Yawn.

0/10.

It's getting tedious now. Astroturfers from both sides have taken over Mumsnet. I've hidden so many threads this past week but still they pop up. It's like Herpes. Just when you think they've fucked off another irritating cunt pops up.

Whilst your analogy makes more sense, it's still flawed and over simplistic. Benefit fraud, which you appear to be alluding to, makes up less than 1% of the total benefit bill, equivalent to 1.6 billion. Tax fraud costs us 20 billion.

It wasn't necessarily fraud under the previous Labour government though was it? Lots of people were claiming benefits who were perfectly capable of working and our levels of 'sickness' were completely and utterly out of kilter with comparable companies and it was very clear that the way we were assessing people's eligibility was not working.

That seems to be part of the reason why a lot of the public seem to be able to accept current cuts to sickness/disability benefits is because they saw them abused so much (possibly more by that government than the people claiming them) that they think all the cuts must be necessary.

I just wish we had a party which offered something in between the two extremes but we don't. And I don't think we'll ever get it until our culture moves back to one which emphasises our responsibilities to the welfare state rather than our entitlement. At the moment everybody seems to want to emphasise their entitlement but nobody wants to pay for it. Neither individuals nor companies.