Do you think you can be a socialist and

[Swedes]

1. Pay for your child to be independently educated?
2. Buy a house in right catchment for the right school?
3. Feign religion to get your child into a faith school?
4. Object to a lottery system for school places with urban areas (ignoring all convenient environmental issues)?
5. Vote Tory? (because some people seem particularly confused)

I think you mean Xenia's dystopia harpsichord.

It's a bleak and brutal vision.

Quattro, do you really not see that some of us find the workings of 'simple market economics' morally obscene?

We're not doubting that that's how it works

We're objecting to the consequences

I think it is utterly revolting that you can earn 15x what your cleaner does. Dunno if you have any wish to ally yourself with Xenia, but she said below: 'Some people are worth 1000 times someone else'.

Now, you can both row backwards and say you mean 'worth' in a special, nuanced way, but in a society in which wealth rules, I'm afraid I think that 'worth' in this context really does just mean 'worth'. And that's what is so unbelievably repulsive about it - for me at least.

Thank god you've turned up Policy.

You are right of course.

Hello IB - I got rather too, erm, involved at the beginning of this thread and ended up hectoring people so have been trying to leave it alone...

welcome back then policy - you're talking a lot of sense

And policy, I totally echo what you say. It really annoys me too when certain people pop up on here and lecture us about economics as if the rest of us are slightly inferior and don't understand how it works. Yes, we do understand how it works, (I am actually an intelligent person, I have been to University and worked in law and education despite going to a comprehensive school, shock horror!!). What we are questioning is whether it's the best way for society to function.

I think it's perfectly right and proper some people earn more than others. if that were not the case lots of people wouldn't bother to work harder and pass exams etc. When they tried in China paying the doctors what the road sweepers earned they had huge problems with making that work.

I certainly never said people don't know how it works. If you want it changed - change it. Enter parliament or take direct action.

I know it doesnt work to pay everyone exactly the same. People need incentives to work hard, achieve well and use their skills. But it's not a simple choice between what we have now and a communist regime with everyone on a fixed wage is it?
There are all kinds of stages inbetween. And I don't believe society functions particularly well at the moment. The fact that some people get paid (I wont say earn!) huge incomes out of all proportion to their ability and integrity is not an incentive to the majority of the population. We're not daft - we know that often the people who are highly skilled and useful are not the ones on huge incomes. I said on another post somewhere, I know plenty of people who are in very high paid jobs - doesnt necessarily make them interesting, happy, good at relationships or great contributors to society.

Policywonk said "Quattro, do you really not see that some of us find the workings of 'simple market economics' morally obscene?
WELL YES OKAY BUT THAT'S YOUR PROBLEM ISN'T IT? I MEAN YOU EITHER ADJUST TO THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN OR YOU GO AND BECOME A HERMIT OR SOMETHING.

We're not doubting that that's how it works

We're objecting to the consequences

I think it is utterly revolting that you can earn 15x what your cleaner does. BUT I HONESTLY DON'T SEE WHY. WE TELL OUR CHILDREN TO WORK. WORK BRINGS REWARDS. I HAVE WORKED (SLOGGED MY GUTS OUT IN FACT FOR YEARS AND YEARS ON END) THEREFORE I DESERVE TO BE REWARDED. THE REASON THAT I DESERVE TO BE REWARDED IS THAT I HAVE SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE. I COULD CHUCK IT ALL AWAY AND GO AND CLEAN FOR £7 AN HOUR MYSELF OF COURSE. WE ALL HAVE CHOICES. Dunno if you have any wish to ally yourself with Xenia, but she said below: 'Some people are worth 1000 times someone else'. WORTH IS NOT MEASURED BY SHEKELS IN MY BOOK

Now, you can both row backwards and say you mean 'worth' in a special, nuanced way, but in a society in which wealth rules, I'm afraid I think that 'worth' in this context really does just mean 'worth'. DON'T BE SILLY. THAT'S ABSURD. FINANCIALLY A CORPORATE LAWYER IS WORTH ANYWHERE BETWEEN 3-10 TEACHERS. SOCIALLY AND FOR THE BENEFIT OF SOCIETY. THE REVERSE IS TRUE. yOU ARE MAD IF YOU MEASURE WORTH IN PURELY MONETARY TERMS. DOES THAT MAKE EVERY SAHM WORTHLESS? IN YOUR BOOK? And that's what is so unbelievably repulsive about it - for me at least."

whatever else you do, you can't vote tory, that is just plain wrong

If everyone adjusted to the world there would be no hope and no dreams. Is this system really the best that we can do? I hope people who see the light don't become hermits but keep trying to change things.
Where would we be if rebels who disagreeed with the system- people as varied as Bob Marley, Che Guevera, Bill Hicks -just became hermits instead of enriching our lives and expanding our minds?

Well I think you've rather answered your own point there haven't you? If people really were paid in proportion to how hard they worked, how much effort they put in, I wouldn't be complaining. I work hard (am a SAHM) but receive no monetary reward for it. Cleaners work hard but are paid shit. I frankly don't believe that you work harder than the average intensive care nurse or teacher or social worker, but your rewards are far higher. There are people in private equity firms - surely one of the most morally objectionable ways of making a living - whose wage packets outstrip the average teacher by a factor of hundreds. This is, quite simply, wrong at a very basic level.

The problem with 'worth' is that we live in an intensely materialistic society (materialistic because it is capitalist - capitalism cannot survive unless it convinces us to buy more, newer, different crap all the frickin' time). People have internalised the notion (again, a notion that is intrinsic to capitalism) that moral, personal 'worth' can be measured in cash: think of the number of posters on here who sneer at 'chavs', or people who are terrified of sending their children to schools in which they might come into contact with children from different socio-economic brackets. Wealth levels and earning potential play a big part in the way people identify themselves and each other.

You yourself say that you are 'worth' a large sum of money (your wages) because of your hard work, skills etc. You quite clearly equate positive characteristics such as diligence with earning potential. By your own logic, those whose earning potential is low must be less diligent or less skilled - they must be 'worth' less, not just in terms of cash but in terms of their moral capacity. Of course, they are not - but capitalism says that they are.

FWIW, one thing that really annoys me is how much pre-school/nursery staff are paid. Round here, they earn around £6 per hour whereas you can't find a cleaner for under £10 per hour. I know it's market forces, but with all the regulations, Ofsted requirements etc I do think the government should raise their minimum pay or introduce some sort of early teacher salary pay scale.

Some of us sometimes work 18 hour days or all night but you're right even allowing for all nighters and that kind of stuff on average some professions are paid more for work which is not as hard as say the lady on the factory production line in Wales who just won £17k for RSI which crippled her - she had to put 4,500 DVD kits together in a day.

I don't make a judgment about what I'm worth. I say I'm available for hire - what will you pay? Then the market decides. It seems to think I'm pretty valuable for a mixture of reasons. That doesn't bother me. You can never be too rich or too thin as they say.... urban myth.

By the way there is a redistributive thing going on though because most of my income is taxed at 41% and most of most people is taxed at 22% or whatever the basic rate now is so double is in effect stolen from me just because I work harder and am valuable. That is very unfair and very left wing and redistributes money to the poor obviously. I could choose to move to a flat tax country and if tax got too high I would move.

Quattro "I MEAN YOU EITHER ADJUST TO THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN OR YOU GO AND BECOME A HERMIT OR SOMETHING". I don't think that's true, and I'm not convinced that you do either. People do fight injustice, sometimes they fail, and sometimes they succeed, viz Nelson Mandela. (And yes, there is shedloads of work still to do in SA, but at least the evil of apartheid is gone).

I'd be really interested to hear any proper economists on MN go into this issue. I never got to the end of Joseph Stiglitz' book "Globalization and its discontents", but should go back to it, as he was really interesting on perfect and imperfect markets, and why they don't work the way hardcore freemarketeers think they do, or at least wish they did. Will go back to it...

'I don't make a judgment about what I'm worth' - this is something that I find really objectionable about free-market apologists; you're quite happy to accept the market's estimation of your value, and all the gross inequity and poverty that results, but will you take any sort of personal responsibility for it? No. Why not? Because 'the market' said so.

It wasn't me miss! It was the market!!

If you're going to justify this stuff, at least have the balls to say 'I believe myself to be one hundred times more precious than a cleaner, a student midwife, a coal miner'. Because anything else is hypocrisy.

Habbibu, quite agree. The whole history of human progress and advancement has been enhanced by those in posiions of power and advantage helping those in a less fortunate position.
William Wilberforce, MPs supportive of the suffragette movement or the Poor Law etc, authors such as Charles Dickens...a few randum examples but you know what I mean. You only have to look at those countries around the world that don't have this liberal social conscience tradition and see what happens to the women and the poor.

I'm not here to ensure everyone has equal looks, income, IQ. I live on a planet where God or chance means we are born very different from each other. Probably most free marketers are happy we look after our sick and weak but I don't think there's any moral need to ensure we are all pulled up to or down to the same level in terms of income or looks or IQ. There will always be differences between people.

Of course there are injustices that need to be fought. It was a hard fight to get women's rights in the UK for a start. The sexual orientation legislation was needed too. So I'm not saying don't interfere in the market. I think we could have managed fine without the minimum wage but I don't think it's caused huge damage so I can live with it.

Some are born cool I guess

PW, old friend, sorry for delay in replying, RL intervened.

See I think there are two forms of worth

(i) We are all equal (in the sight of God if you choose to believe in Him, which I don't)

(ii) We have an economic worth which is determined by our education, skills, competitor activity and the use to which we put them.

So I have no difficulty in accepting that I am paid around 15x what my cleaner is paid. To do her job would essentially not require anything in the form of education, or skills. There are many competitors for cleaning jobs, the barriers to entry are low after all. There are very few competitors for my job. Not many people could do it because they don't have the experience, and the experience takes years to accrue.

I don't know why this should offend you. It's how the world works. It's kind of the way I feel about icy cold weather. Personally I would rather have it sub-tropical, but I play the cards I am dealt.

Are these the only two forms of worth you can think of? Lack of imagination

Well it's double the number PW thought of

Quattro old thing I do understand your distinction.

My point (which you have neatly sidestepped) is that capitalism ellides the two.

This is one of the many things that I find offensive about it (or, at least, about the near-unbridled form of free-market capitalism we are currently enduring)

"We have an economic worth which is determined by our education, skills, competitor activity and the use to which we put them".

Apparently drug dealers have a very high value.