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.

That exact same post is in another thread

Get a new story, that one was boring the first time i read it

Its not getting any better with repartition

Ooooh i would like one with dinosaurs in it, get a made up bullshit analogy with dinosaurs in it...that would work

Bill I don't often agree with what you say but the following is an excellent observation:
until our culture moves back to one which emphasises our responsibilities to the welfare state rather than our entitlement

Hello everyone, thanks for the reports. We've good reason to believe the OP is a previously banned poster, so this thread will go shortly.

Terrible analogy. How does raising corporate tax rates to a level they were at a few years ago = averaging grades.

beckymumsnet

Wait...what about my dinosaur story

Hey dinosaur...................

Ankleswingers

You won't get nowhere here OP.

It's a massively left wing site and so you're opinions and comments will be shot down.

That's how the lefties work. They can say it, but you can't.

You'll be accused of being a troll, TM in disguise etc as from the posts above.

😂😂😂 how embarrassing.

I've seen this post several times now over the past six years. It actually started in the United States, as you can probably tell from the language (e.g. 'professor' instead of 'lecturer') and at first it looks quite convincing as an allegory if not a genuine anecdote. However, there are three flaws in the logic:

1. It assumes socialism is always about everyone having exactly the same income when in reality no such socialist system has ever existed and the real aim of socialism is the alleviation of extreme poverty and a decent life for all rather than absolute equality;
2. It assumes that the alternative to socialism is a perfect meritocracy, which is obviously not the case and I will get back to later;
3. It ignores the main reason we have economics in the first place, to determine the best allocation of scarce goods;
4. It assumes that every single person in a country is motivated only by profit.

In reality, I'm afraid this allegory rather highlights the gullibility of right wing voters rather than the dangers of socialism. First of all, an economics professor is clearly not going to run such a basic experiment. Economics professors will know every single practical example of socialism is more complex than the scenario they are creating to the point that the exercise is an utterly meaningless experiment. Most decent economists will also realise that there are quite a few people in a society who have come by wealth by means other than work that should impose the same challenges as socialism.

Let's tackle points 1 and 4 first. If Labour was seeking absolute equality then why would they have policies based on taxing high earners more and council houses for the poor? Wouldn't these needs cease to exist? This is another reason why a real economics professor wouldn't set this exercise; they'd know it was academically dishonest to misrepresent a set of ideas in such a crass way. As to point 4, are police officers and nurses (especially those forced to use food banks in the south east) really motivated by profit?

Now, let's tackle the alternative to socialism. If I awarded my marks on the basis of the status quo rather than socialism, what would I do? I would suggest:

• Students whose parents got an A also got an A irrespective of whether they did any work. One hard working student picked at random from the B grade students got an A* too, to motivate the others and give them hope in the system.

• Students whose parents got an A were provided extra tuition, newer copies of the text book and a sneak peak at the exam. Inevitably they made up most of the A-grade students.

• Students whose parents got a B still had access to the tuition and text books. Many of them got Bs and the smarter amongst them got As.

• For the other 90% of students whose parents got a C or lower were asked to pay £30k upfront in order to get access to tuition or the text books and the highest grade they were likely to achieve was a C. A* and A grades were scarce and parents planned to leave them to their own children rather than expose them to a meritocracy.

As an A was on offer for one lucky student from a less academic background, people stayed hungry to study but at the same time the A students could ensure they could do no work whilst very little reward trickled down. The system stayed in tact.

See, this is the reality. Socialism is rarely about absolute equality. Normally it is about opportunity that more often than not is denied to the vast majority of people in our country. Potential is wasted because of huge disparity in the quality of education and the barrier of tuition fees and at the end of it even if you do come out with good grades the chances of building wealth for an ambitious millennial are minimal. In the end, we all keep working for an elite that rewards itself more and more of the fruits of our labour.

The allegory of the economics class to me has far more to do with the status quo and the grinding to a halt of social mobility than it does with a brand of socialism that seeks to abolish the abuse of zero hour contracts, guarantees a minimum wage that can be lived on, ensures a fair go in education and tackles the housing crisis head on. I would never want to see absolute equality for exactly the same reason that I cannot stand the status quo - both reward people who don't lift a finger.