Getting closer to minimum wage

[mazzer2]

Rjan:

albion:

Rjan:
But if you want someone to stand up to big business and do what’s best for all, what is wrong with John McDonnell? Even if you don’t like Corbyn’s mildness of manner, McDonnell is passionate without the mildness.

Because I think he would do the country untold harm from an economic pov. And I don’t trust him, he’s been howling Marxist rubbish for year and now he’s speaking silkily to big business. I don’t believe he’s changed. And speaking as a small business owner, I think things would get more complicated, so I’d be bringing my retirement forward ( though hopefully I’ll be finished if May hangs on long enough to do a full term).

But it seems to me that the issue for you is not “trust” but a simple judgment on his policy - it’s not that you don’t trust him, it’s that you’re opposed to him. Most Tories are not seriously concerned that John McDonnell will go further than he has said. They are concerned that he might simply go as far as the declared Labour manifesto - he might actually find money to build 100k homes a year when for decades centre-right governments have been saying they cannot find the money and that there must be austerity, he might actually nationalise the railways and consolidate utilities and thereby break the centre-right consensus that the incompetent private sector is the best possible manager you can have, and he might actually charge an extra 5% on the slice of earned income above £80k a year without the ceiling caving in on the economy when centre-right governments have for so long said that we cannot tax the rich.

And that more broadly, they are concerned that he will deprive the rich of their votes in the marketplace and return power to the working class electorate, or even that there may be a showdown between the rich and the democratic will of working class people.

So for example, if bosses decide that profits are being attacked and they can get a better deal for themselves outside the country and there is a sudden flight of commercial capital, nobody expects John McDonnell to say “oh well, the markets have spoken and passed judgment on our government, we must reverse our democratic policy”. Instead, people expect him to say “you’re not going anywhere with that money and machinery” - it’s staying right here, to be worked subject to the taxation and regulations determined by a democratically elected government.

So Tories don’t fear that John McDonnell will do something other than what he says. They fear he will do exactly what he says, and that he’ll react harshly to any attempt by the rich to circumvent or undermine the manifesto on which Labour is elected, rather than New Labour which constantly insisted that they couldn’t do anything for working class people lest the rich pass an adverse vote on their policies in the marketplace.

And how does McDonnell propose to stop a company moving outside of the country, the company belongs to them not the government. There is nothing to stop Albion upping sticks to Bulgaria and operating from there, as a fair proportion of her work is Euro work or the owner of a factory moving the operation to somewhere else and then exporting the goods back into the UK and charging a higher price for it not exactly a top deal for the British public.
To prevent a flight of capital you have to put quite draconian measures in place which usually results in the collapse of your currency and inflation, Venezuela was held up as how to do socialism and market controls yet despite being one of the worlds biggest oil producers it’s people are now suffering with a massive shortage of goods and sky high inflation a country that not long ago Corbyn and Mcdonnell held up as a shining example.
To fund their spending Mcdonnell acknowledges that he will have to borrow who will lend to the UK in the knowledge that should the government not like how you do business they will put in place restrictive measures

[rjan]

Beetlejuice:

Rjan:
Far from long-winded, I thought it was one of my more snappier posts. Some people simply don’t like being confronted with facts - the simple fact being that no government is (or ever has been) engaged in any sort of residency-for-votes pact with illegal immigrants.

Most immigration in the UK is not illegal - it is legal migration, with 630,000 fresh faces coming to Britain each year under the current Tory government, the highest ever on record, over half of which are not from the EU and who are admitted into the UK under rules controlled entirely by the British national government.

Sorry but we will never agree .You are so far left you cannot except any other view points .
Plenty of voting gets rigged by immigrants …

Thats me out

It’s not that I can’t accept any other views, I just want to hear a coherent and factual argument that supports the arguments put.

Immigrants cannot vote unless they become naturalised British citizens, and they cannot become British citizens without, at minimum, several years of settlement and a thousand pounds per application.

The Labour government - and I mean the Attlee, Wilson, and Callaghan governments - also have no history of being particularly generous to immigrants (certainly not in comparison to the mass increases in immigration that have occurred under every Tory government except that of Heath).

Illegal immigrants cannot vote and cannot become naturalised.

If you want me to take your argument at its highest, it is this. The New Labour government was pro-immigration, not because it bought votes from immigrants (since settled immigrants very rarely want to see new mass waves of fresh immigration that undermine their position in British society), but because it bought votes from the capitalist class who became intoxicated on cheap, pre-trained labour from abroad, and bought votes from the allies of the capitalist class in the privileged working classes, the latter of whom enjoy the benefits of cheap labour without suffering a cheapening of their own labour or the erosion of access to housing and so on. The “privileged working classes” I refer to are the kind who would describe themselves as “liberal Tories” or “centrists”. That is the real deal with the electorate that the Tory and New Labour governments have had and currently have.

It’s for this reason that New Labour is reviled by almost anyone on the left, because they’re really liberal Tories who have colonised the Labour party - that’s why Margaret Thatcher felt able to give Blair faint praise as being her best achievement.

Secondly, Labour has always been anti-racist and anti-dicriminatory, and is (supposed to be) the organised representative of the working class, and it is for this reason that ethnic minorities who were born here but whose parents or grandparents were immigrants (or who otherwise have physical or cultural trappings that place them in an out-group), are more inclined to vote Labour, because they are not only poor as workers but face additional discrimination that Labour has always been against. It is not because Labour is in favour of more mass immigration that “immigrants” have tended to support Labour. It is because it defends the interests of settled workers.

Thirdly, some British ethnic minority communities tend to have better organised religions and better attended churches, and better organised community groups, which contain left-wing leaders who tend to implicitly (or even explicitly) support Labour and persuade their communities to do so. This is no different from Catholic priests in poor areas in my experience - and it can be seen today both with the Pope and the Anglican leaders like Rowan Williams - but the difference is that today, most white people don’t attend churches or participate in organised community life. If you did, and you were helping the church for example to run a food bank and seeing squalor first-hand, you’d almost certainly be getting the message (as a white Christian) to vote Labour.

So that’s it as far as I’m concerned. There is no widespread fraud by illegal immigrants. There is no buying of votes by permitting new entrants. Unless you have some sort of material evidence to the contrary (even anecdotal evidence would be a start, if it reflects something directly observed or perceived, or an honest conversation with somebody, rather than hearsay), I’m going to declare these allegations as truthless right-wing slander.

[albion]

Rjan:

albion:

Rjan:
But if you want someone to stand up to big business and do what’s best for all, what is wrong with John McDonnell? Even if you don’t like Corbyn’s mildness of manner, McDonnell is passionate without the mildness.

Because I think he would do the country untold harm from an economic pov. And I don’t trust him, he’s been howling Marxist rubbish for year and now he’s speaking silkily to big business. I don’t believe he’s changed. And speaking as a small business owner, I think things would get more complicated, so I’d be bringing my retirement forward ( though hopefully I’ll be finished if May hangs on long enough to do a full term).

But it seems to me that the issue for you is not “trust” but a simple judgment on his policy - it’s not that you don’t trust him, it’s that you’re opposed to him. Most Tories are not seriously concerned that John McDonnell will go further than he has said. They are concerned that he might simply go as far as the declared Labour manifesto - he might actually find money to build 100k homes a year when for decades centre-right governments have been saying they cannot find the money and that there must be austerity, he might actually nationalise the railways and consolidate utilities and thereby break the centre-right consensus that the incompetent private sector is the best possible manager you can have, and he might actually charge an extra 5% on the slice of earned income above £80k a year without the ceiling caving in on the economy when centre-right governments have for so long said that we cannot tax the rich.

And that more broadly, they are concerned that he will deprive the rich of their votes in the marketplace and return power to the working class electorate, or even that there may be a showdown between the rich and the democratic will of working class people.

So for example, if bosses decide that profits are being attacked and they can get a better deal for themselves outside the country and there is a sudden flight of commercial capital, nobody expects John McDonnell to say “oh well, the markets have spoken and passed judgment on our government, we must reverse our democratic policy”. Instead, people expect him to say “you’re not going anywhere with that money and machinery” - it’s staying right here, to be worked subject to the taxation and regulations determined by a democratically elected government.

So Tories don’t fear that John McDonnell will do something other than what he says. They fear he will do exactly what he says, and that he’ll react harshly to any attempt by the rich to circumvent or undermine the manifesto on which Labour is elected, rather than New Labour which constantly insisted that they couldn’t do anything for working class people lest the rich pass an adverse vote on their policies in the marketplace.

No it’s trust. Hes been saying the same thing for years, now he’s watering his comments down. I don’t believe him, therefore I don’t trust him. So when I say trust, I do know what I mean about my thoughts.

After that what most Tories think is irrelevant. I might vote Conservative generally, but it’s because it’s the least worst option.

[carryfast]

Mazzer2:
And how does McDonnell propose to stop a company moving outside of the country, the company belongs to them not the government. There is nothing to stop Albion upping sticks to Bulgaria and operating from there, as a fair proportion of her work is Euro work or the owner of a factory moving the operation to somewhere else and then exporting the goods back into the UK and charging a higher price for it not exactly a top deal for the British public.
To prevent a flight of capital you have to put quite draconian measures in place which usually results in the collapse of your currency and inflation, Venezuela was held up as how to do socialism and market controls yet despite being one of the worlds biggest oil producers it’s people are now suffering with a massive shortage of goods and sky high inflation a country that not long ago Corbyn and Mcdonnell held up as a shining example.
To fund their spending Mcdonnell acknowledges that he will have to borrow who will lend to the UK in the knowledge that should the government not like how you do business they will put in place restrictive measures

Surely what’s needed is for the government to impose the type of trade barriers,which will stop ‘Albion’ upping sticks to a low wage and other low cost base operating area and using that advantage to trade here.Also to stop such competition if Albion stays.On that note the government certainly does have those powers the problem being that no government has chosen to use them.

Which in this case would be the very simple method of using transport quota permits which make sure that UK reg vehicles have to carry at least 50% of all import and export freight movements and removal of all cabotage allowances and third country operations.But obviously being a closet selective free markets Socialist when it suits Rjan would actually be opposed to that just as Callaghan let alone Blair was.While if the Labour rabble reviles the Blairites as much as they make out then they’d obviously either chuck them out of the Party or form a new Labour Party.Oh wait they have in the form of the SLP.No surprise no calls from them for such protectionist ( Nationalist ) economic policies either.

With all factions of so called ‘Labour’ being anti Nation state Globalist regarding everything from immigration to European and Global free market economics.Which is why Blair and the Blairites found and continue to find such a welcome within ‘Labour’.To the point of preferring people like Starmer than Hoey in positions of power.

At least so far.

[newmercman]

Rjan, you make well constructed arguments for and against, but you are naive if you think anything will change without a complete upheaval in the way government works. The system is broken, it’s not the elected officials that make policies, it’s the money men, all the politicians do is carry out there wishes and spew rhetoric to fool the masses that it’s all in their best interests.

Sent from my SM-G950W using Tapatalk

[rjan]

Mazzer2:

Rjan:
So Tories don’t fear that John McDonnell will do something other than what he says. They fear he will do exactly what he says, and that he’ll react harshly to any attempt by the rich to circumvent or undermine the manifesto on which Labour is elected, rather than New Labour which constantly insisted that they couldn’t do anything for working class people lest the rich pass an adverse vote on their policies in the marketplace.

And how does McDonnell propose to stop a company moving outside of the country, the company belongs to them not the government. There is nothing to stop Albion upping sticks to Bulgaria and operating from there, as a fair proportion of her work is Euro work or the owner of a factory moving the operation to somewhere else and then exporting the goods back into the UK and charging a higher price for it not exactly a top deal for the British public.

There are in fact several things that a state can do to stop a company moving outside the country. Firstly, capital and exchange controls. Secondly, export controls and tariffs on moving machinery and physical goods. Thirdly, tariffs and import restrictions on goods from outside the UK.

So if a boss does move to Bulgaria, even if he does take his money and machinery, the fact is that nothing he does in Bulgaria comes back into Britain (and Bulgaria already has it’s own hauliers anyway), and that then creates a gap for a new domestic producer who can take over from those who have left.

It’s like I say, it’s a question of who decides on economic matters. Workers at the ballot box, or bosses in the marketplace. The reality anyway is that Albion is not going to up sticks and move to Bulgaria simply because those on £80k a year are expected to pay an extra 5% on their last slice of earnings. But if significant numbers did, the message would be simple: go, and don’t expect your business to have any market in the UK.

And once bosses realise that is the score, that it’s not just a case of stepping over the border and carrying on as before, but of being outlawed from the British market and that some other businessman will then take over the share of the market that they previously catered for, then there isn’t going to be a showdown between McDonnell and the rich, they’ll just pay their extra tax as determined democratically by the British people. This is not a crazy new experiment - it’s how it was in the post-war period.

To prevent a flight of capital you have to put quite draconian measures in place which usually results in the collapse of your currency and inflation, Venezuela was held up as how to do socialism and market controls yet despite being one of the worlds biggest oil producers it’s people are now suffering with a massive shortage of goods and sky high inflation a country that not long ago Corbyn and Mcdonnell held up as a shining example.

You say it causes collapse, but of course these controls were all in place in the post-war period.

I don’t know about Venezuela, but McDonnell’s economic agenda is to the right of the Tories’ before Thatcher.

McDonnell has promised 100k more homes a year - the Tories built 300k homes a year in the 1950s.

McDonnell has promised an extra 5% income tax for earnings above £80k (to bring the top rate to 50%) - in the 1950s, the top rate of income tax under the Tories was 90%.

McDonnell has proposed nationalising utilities - in the 1950s, the Tories built most of the power infrastructure in the country under the British Electricity Authority (later the CEGB, Central Electricity Generating Board).

To fund their spending Mcdonnell acknowledges that he will have to borrow who will lend to the UK in the knowledge that should the government not like how you do business they will put in place restrictive measures

The idea that businessmen have to follow rules and be socially responsible shouldn’t be any cause for concern. The idea that business can only be done irresponsibly is laughable. Also, if the British government itself is the borrower and determines the restrictive measures for itself, then where is the risk for the lender in terms of business regulation?

A final point, what exactly do you think happens when a government borrows? The government can, in the extreme, borrow directly from the people - who agree to create and work the means of production, but defer taking their full wages. That’s why pensions are considered “deferred wages”, because it’s a way of getting workers to save (on the condition that they later receive a long-term income). You can bootstrap an economy from nothing in this fashion, there doesn’t have to be a pot of money already in existence - the “borrowing” is the borrowing of labour that is rendered but not immediately and fully remunerated.

The pot of money that the capitalist holds is not a physical resource, but a way of accounting for the fact that they have previously been given an entitlement to make a claim either on the existing physical resources of the economy (if they “spend” the money), or upon the labour power of the economy (if they “invest” the money, which in practice means spending the money on labour, in the hope that it creates something more valuable than the wages paid). Governments can take those claims away, and can create them out of thin air. The latter is basically what “quantitative easing” is - printing money, in this case so that banks have enough money on their balance sheets to lend, when that money isn’t otherwise available from deposits and trading income (because they have suffered grievous losses from speculation that would, but for the QE, have bankrupted the banking system and would have expropriated the claims of depositors and investors).

That is why the banking crash was fatal for the ideology of free markets, because compared to the £4billion loan that the British state took from the IMF in 1976 to shore up it’s foreign exchange position, and repaid quickly within a couple of years, the write-off losses from the banking crash are estimated at £3tn worldwide, and the British state extended a £500billion loan to the banking sector (to allow the system to continue working whilst they work out how to modify its future operation).

Not only has it shown how poorly free capitalist management of the economy fares, but it has revealed the true scale of the economic power that the state possesses and the degree of overwhelming control that politics has over the capitalist economy. The same was true of the second world war, that it showed the true extent of what the state can do when it takes the gloves off.

[rjan]

albion:

Rjan:
[…]
So Tories don’t fear that John McDonnell will do something other than what he says. They fear he will do exactly what he says, and that he’ll react harshly to any attempt by the rich to circumvent or undermine the manifesto on which Labour is elected, rather than New Labour which constantly insisted that they couldn’t do anything for working class people lest the rich pass an adverse vote on their policies in the marketplace.

No it’s trust. Hes been saying the same thing for years, now he’s watering his comments down. I don’t believe him, therefore I don’t trust him. So when I say trust, I do know what I mean about my thoughts.

After that what most Tories think is irrelevant. I might vote Conservative generally, but it’s because it’s the least worst option.

But are you saying that you would enthusiastically vote Labour if you did expect it merely to implement it’s manifesto?

In other words, you wholeheartedly support the current Labour manifesto, but you do not trust McDonnell not to go futher - and in fact, not just go further, but to go so radically further that it would basically prove the manifesto to have been a tissue of lies?

After all, McDonnell has held positions of actual political power before (such as in Ken Livingstone’s wildly popular GLC in the 80s - and Livingstone too was later elected as Mayor of London on his own personal standing and credibility, against the candidate officially endorsed by New Labour), and I’m not really sure what previous comments by McDonnell have been “watered down”.

[albion]

To save quoting reams from Rjan, my dislike of Mc Donnell isn’t based on an extra 5% tax for the wealthy. As I keep saying, last year I moved from sixth best paid, to third best paid after paying myself a bonus. It still put me nowhere near 80 k p.a.

And I’d be finishing the business not moving anywhere, just in case it becomes a fact following so much repetition!

[big_truck]

Down to the “nitty gritty” and in layman’s terms:

If you can’t lead a half decent life bringing £600week into the house and Wifey maybe working PT and bringing in £200week,
You need your arse kicked up/down the street!!![emoji848]

Sent from my SM-J500FN using Tapatalk

[rjan]

albion:
To save quoting reams from Rjan, my dislike of Mc Donnell isn’t based on an extra 5% tax for the wealthy. As I keep saying, last year I moved from sixth best paid, to third best paid after paying myself a bonus. It still put me nowhere near 80 k p.a.

And I’d be finishing the business not moving anywhere, just in case it becomes a fact following so much repetition!

I can’t really see how you’d be affected by the Labour government. Even if wages go up, for example - since Labour has argued for a £10 minimum wage - if they go up across the market then prices simply have to go up for customers, and nobody doing business loses any relative competitive advantage. If anything, better bosses gain a competitive advatange, because they can no longer be undercut by the worst.

[carryfast]

Rjan:
The government can, in the extreme, borrow directly from the people - who agree to create and work the means of production, but defer taking their full wages. That’s why pensions are considered “deferred wages”, because it’s a way of getting workers to save (on the condition that they later receive a long-term income). You can bootstrap an economy from nothing in this fashion, there doesn’t have to be a pot of money already in existence - the “borrowing” is the borrowing of labour that is rendered but not immediately and fully remunerated.

You’re showing your commy Callaghanite type of economic illiteracy again.There’s no way that the workers can meet your borrowing requirement because in that case their financial security and living standards are compromised unless they can pass the resulting wage shortfall directly back on to their employers.IE you can’t live on the basis of having to wait 20 years for your wages unless all of your outgoings are prepared to wait for their payments.Yeah right.There’s also no way that you can even guarantee the return of their cash in full without an equal guarantee regarding the fortunes of the economy which you just ain’t going to be able to do.

Which is why we’re in the situation now of workers not being able to make the figures balance between the wage shortfall created by their ‘pensions’ premiums state or private and their living expenses.One or the other has to be compromised and cutting consumer spending to do it will just stagnate if not crash the economy meaning they get even less,if any,of their money back.Nothing new there with same old half baked scatter brained Socialist economics.Let alone any guarantee of seeing all the ‘deferred’ wages back as opposed to being effectively thieved by the employers and ruling elites in a rigged system in which they know that more people will die before all the money is paid back than won’t,that’s even if they have any intention of paying all the money back rather than keeping it all for themselves.So that’s the deferred wage/unpaid labour and with it your cheap borrowing scam stuffed.While we can see your economic ideas in action in the case of any exploited under paid Chinese worker living the Socialist dream while his masters and western importers enjoy the use of his ‘deferred’ wages.

The fact is it’s clear that what we need is the right type of Capitalism not yet more failed unfit for purpose exploitative Socialist zb.

[albion]

Rjan:

albion:
To save quoting reams from Rjan, my dislike of Mc Donnell isn’t based on an extra 5% tax for the wealthy. As I keep saying, last year I moved from sixth best paid, to third best paid after paying myself a bonus. It still put me nowhere near 80 k p.a.

And I’d be finishing the business not moving anywhere, just in case it becomes a fact following so much repetition!

I can’t really see how you’d be affected by the Labour government. Even if wages go up, for example - since Labour has argued for a £10 minimum wage - if they go up across the market then prices simply have to go up for customers, and nobody doing business loses any relative competitive advantage. If anything, better bosses gain a competitive advatange, because they can no longer be undercut by the worst.

Rjan, your problem, possibly because I can’t be bothered to write long posts in Rjan/carryfast style, is that you then seize on some random idea that I haven’t mentioned as a reason why I’d have no problem with Labour.

Oddly, I have made the same and other arguments about increased costs to a business. You can make wages £20 an hour and stick a £1000 a day lorry tax on trucks and it makes no odds as long as it applies to everyone.

However that isn’t why I don’t want to vote for Labour in their current guise, and McDonnell. And you can continue to dissect every word and poke about for answers, free world and all that; likewise I don’t have engage in endless nit picking. Carryfast loves you, he wants to have circular debates ad nauseam, I just want to write a paragraph like McDonnells a lying toad and I don’t trust him, without it turning into a ten page epic.

Any chance if I ask politely, you can just leave me alone? Look carryfast has come out to play…

[biggriffin]

What a load of useless waffle, for 1 whole page, but plenty of hot air to cook a waffle.

[rjan]

Carryfast:

Rjan:
The government can, in the extreme, borrow directly from the people - who agree to create and work the means of production, but defer taking their full wages. That’s why pensions are considered “deferred wages”, because it’s a way of getting workers to save (on the condition that they later receive a long-term income). You can bootstrap an economy from nothing in this fashion, there doesn’t have to be a pot of money already in existence - the “borrowing” is the borrowing of labour that is rendered but not immediately and fully remunerated.

You’re showing your commy Callaghanite type of economic illiteracy again.There’s no way that the workers can meet your borrowing requirement because in that case their financial security and living standards are compromised unless they can pass the resulting wage shortfall directly back on to their employers.IE you can’t live on the basis of having to wait 20 years for your wages unless all of your outgoings are prepared to wait for their payments.Yeah right.There’s also no way that you can even guarantee the return of their cash in full without an equal guarantee regarding the fortunes of the economy which you just ain’t going to be able to do.

Well I should make it clear that this theoretical discussion has no relevance to a Labour government, but you’re right workers can’t (for example) wait 20 years to put food in their mouths. But you’re wrong that workers have to pass wage shortfalls onto their employers - in practice, most workers receive only a fraction of the value they actually create in wages, the rest is either reinvested (particularly by corporations, who spend money on machinery and automation) or siphoned off as profit and unearned income. The state is capable of re-determining how that non-wage surplus should be used, and it can do so without affecting the living standards of waged workers.

If the state decides that it needs even more money to invest than the entire pot that is current set aside, then it can indeed go to the people, and ask them to put even more money aside for investment in the short-term - the quid pro quo being that the people in due course reap the fruits of that investment and become wealthier in the long-term.

As I say, that is basically what corporations did with workers’ pensions in the post-war period. It offered generous pension schemes, on the condition that workers deferred taking some of their earnings until later in their lives, which meant that companies had more money available to invest than they would have had if workers had demanded all their wages up-front. Workers had to do this, because they were attacking the profits of the capitalist class, and if the capitalists aren’t able to save and invest as much as they previously did, then workers have to save and invest more (albeit, the benefit of this move is that the long-term investment returns then go into the pockets of workers, rather than capitalists).

Which is why we’re in the situation now of workers not being able to make the figures balance between the wage shortfall created by their ‘pensions’ premiums state or private and their living expenses.One or the other has to be compromised and cutting consumer spending to do it will just stagnate if not crash the economy meaning they get even less,if any,of their money back.Nothing new there with same old half baked scatter brained Socialist economics.Let alone any guarantee of seeing all the ‘deferred’ wages back as opposed to being effectively thieved by the employers and ruling elites in a rigged system in which they know that more people will die before all the money is paid back than won’t,that’s even if they have any intention of paying all the money back rather than keeping it all for themselves.So that’s the deferred wage/unpaid labour and with it your cheap borrowing scam stuffed.While we can see your economic ideas in action in the case of any exploited under paid Chinese worker living the Socialist dream while his masters and western importers enjoy the use of his ‘deferred’ wages.

The fact is it’s clear that what we need is the right type of Capitalism not yet more failed unfit for purpose exploitative Socialist zb.

I’m not arguing for any “socialist economics”. I’m exploring some underlying truths about how the capitalist system works, in which the state never truly struggles to borrow money from its own economy, because so long as it retains political legitimacy amongst the majority, then it has total management control over the entire economy, including every resource within it. It is never beholden to the capitalist class - it is the other way around, that the capitalist class is dependent upon the state for their property rights.

It used to be argued that the state was dependent on the capitalist class for their skill - that is, skill in organising production and in financial management - and that this was the source of the capitalists’ collective veto power upon the policies pursued by the state. It was said that the state (even if it was acting democratically) must obey the judgment of markets, and it’s system of one-pound-one-vote, because this market judgment represented the judgment of the “invisible hand” and the collective wisdom of the capitalist class.

It was said that if private capitalists went on strike due to the economic policies of the state, then that would mean calamity for all, because even if the state could appropriate their wealth and give it to someone else to manage, the state cannot appropriate the capitalists’ skill and experience in managing that wealth or emulate their entrepreneurial judgments. Even if the capitalists went on strike for foul rather than fair means, to simply shaft us and grab a larger slice of the pie, then the simple fact, it was said, was that they had us over a barrel and that we have to give in to their demands, because only they are capable of running the economy successfully.

But as the banking crash shows, they are not particularly competent in those economic management skills, and it is the state that has had to step in to rescue the capitalist class itself from their own mismanagement and from the colossal misjudgments and mispricing of investment assets in the free market!

That is why democracy is back in fashion, and why people are increasingly insisting that markets should do as the people say at the ballot box, rather than the democratic state being beholden to what the rich say in the marketplace.

[rjan]

albion:
Rjan, your problem, possibly because I can’t be bothered to write long posts in Rjan/carryfast style, is that you then seize on some random idea that I haven’t mentioned as a reason why I’d have no problem with Labour.

Oddly, I have made the same and other arguments about increased costs to a business. You can make wages £20 an hour and stick a £1000 a day lorry tax on trucks and it makes no odds as long as it applies to everyone.

Indeed. I have noted that in the past.

However that isn’t why I don’t want to vote for Labour in their current guise, and McDonnell. And you can continue to dissect every word and poke about for answers, free world and all that; likewise I don’t have engage in endless nit picking. Carryfast loves you, he wants to have circular debates ad nauseam, I just want to write a paragraph like McDonnells a lying toad and I don’t trust him, without it turning into a ten page epic.

Any chance if I ask politely, you can just leave me alone? Look carryfast has come out to play…

Fair enough. I guess at the end of the day, a person is perfectly entitled to say “as a matter of feeling or intuitive judgment, I simply don’t trust John McDonnell not to go even further than his manifesto which I support, and I will therefore vote for a party whose manifesto I don’t support, or will not vote at all”.

For my part, the sense that John McDonnell is not stretching himself with the Labour manifesto, is probably a good indication that Labour will actually do what they say, and will not water their policies down or undercut them with other adverse changes.

[colin_scottish]

Can see Rjam and curryfart have spoken utter pish a ■■■■■■■■ again.

[albion]

Colin_scottish:
Can see Rjam and curryfart have spoken utter pish a [zb] again.

I tell you if I get promoted to head mod, I’m going to create a board just for them!

[beetlejuice]

Hang on im just scrolling through all the waffle

Still scrolling

I give up .

[colin_scottish]

albion:

Colin_scottish:
Can see Rjam and curryfart have spoken utter pish a [zb] again.

I tell you if I get promoted to head mod, I’m going to create a board just for them!

You get my vote they seem to waffle some mince no wonder i dont post often.

[albion]

Colin_scottish:

albion:

Colin_scottish:
Can see Rjam and curryfart have spoken utter pish a [zb] again.

I tell you if I get promoted to head mod, I’m going to create a board just for them!

You get my vote they seem to waffle some mince no wonder i dont post often.

Then vote for me Colin, not only will I give them their own board, I’ll lock them in there and not let them out