The Politics Thread

[Montreal Wanderer]

Personally i hate capitalism as a system, i think it very unfair, but i would certainly also describe myself as being against any idea of a class based society. There is evidence that suggests in America, the one great inequality that is accepted is inequality of wealth. There is less economic mobility in America now than there has been for a long time, possibly ever.

Except poverty, especially urban poverty, seems to a large extent to be based on race, so I would suggest colour might be another great inequality.

[Prufrock]

Personally i hate capitalism as a system, i think it very unfair, but i would certainly also describe myself as being against any idea of a class based society. There is evidence that suggests in America, the one great inequality that is accepted is inequality of wealth. There is less economic mobility in America now than there has been for a long time, possibly ever.

Except poverty, especially urban poverty, seems to a large extent to be based on race, so I would suggest colour might be another great inequality.

By accepted i mean it is deemed morally OK.

[Montreal Wanderer]

Personally i hate capitalism as a system, i think it very unfair, but i would certainly also describe myself as being against any idea of a class based society. There is evidence that suggests in America, the one great inequality that is accepted is inequality of wealth. There is less economic mobility in America now than there has been for a long time, possibly ever.

Except poverty, especially urban poverty, seems to a large extent to be based on race, so I would suggest colour might be another great inequality.

By accepted i mean it is deemed morally OK.

Okay - Gotcha.

[jmjhb]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj5eWRzDhNI

You can vote however you like!

[Prufrock]

Personally i hate capitalism as a system, i think it very unfair, but i would certainly also describe myself as being against any idea of a class based society. There is evidence that suggests in America, the one great inequality that is accepted is inequality of wealth. There is less economic mobility in America now than there has been for a long time, possibly ever.

Except poverty, especially urban poverty, seems to a large extent to be based on race, so I would suggest colour might be another great inequality.

By accepted i mean it is deemed morally OK.

Okay - Gotcha.

No worries, surprised you were confused by my continually clear, concise and never ambiguous way of phrasing myself

[Lord Kangana]

Mark Steel, as usual, tells it like it is:

Thirty years we've had, of unfathomably wealthy bankers and dealers being justified as part of the free market.

So they boasted: "I've just got my summer bonus and spent part of it on a small African nation which I burnt down for a laugh," or went to restaurants that charged a thousand pounds for meals such as "asparagus boiled in panda's tears" or bought cars that ran on liquified diamonds, and it was all proof we lived in a free society in which we were paid what we were worth and couldn't rely on state handouts. Then the minute their scam falls apart, they're straight on to the Government squealing "Can we have a free state handout please, our bank's gone bust." They're like spoilt students who go back to their Dad for more money because they've blown a year's allowance in one week. But this soppy government will go "You already had fifty billion quid, what have you done with that? Well alright, here's another fifty billion we were saving for kidney machines, but this time be careful."

Nothing so funny as the truth an all that

[lovethesmellofnapalm]

£2,000 per taxpayer. Or they could just seize all the bonuses paid over the last 10 years to banking executives (not including the more junior staff) and pay the £37bn that way as, gobsmackingly, that would apparently be enough too.

Alternatively, we could set up workhouses and make them work off their debts by making t-shirts for Nike at 50p an hour.

[Lord Kangana]

£12.6bn given out in bonuses last year in the city. More than is spent on transport every year. They should be made to re-pay it under an attachment of earnings order for criminal negligence.

[InsaneApache]

Not wanting to defend the bankers so I won't. However all this talk of the government deciding who should get paid what is ridiculous. The last Labour government tried that in the 70s. It was called a pricing and incomes policy. It was a total unmitigated disaster.

[Lord Kangana]

That wouldn't sound so absurd if we hadn't just just bailed out the very institutions who massively rewarded failure because of a lack of 'red tape'. I'm just awaiting the day someone on the right suggests we put criminals in charge of the police and judiciary system in the name of 'self regulation'. This system hasn't worked.

[BWFC_Insane]

That wouldn't sound so absurd if we hadn't just just bailed out the very institutions who massively rewarded failure because of a lack of 'red tape'. I'm just awaiting the day someone on the right suggests we put criminals in charge of the police and judiciary system in the name of 'self regulation'. This system hasn't worked.

Some might argue they already are LK!

[superjohnmcginlay]

That wouldn't sound so absurd if we hadn't just just bailed out the very institutions who massively rewarded failure because of a lack of 'red tape'. I'm just awaiting the day someone on the right suggests we put criminals in charge of the police and judiciary system in the name of 'self regulation'. This system hasn't worked.

Sounds more like a touchy feely lefty policy to me.

[InsaneApache]

Oh I dunno, capitalism has worked pretty well for the last 200 years or so. Until someone can come up with a better economic system we're stuck with it. There is no plan 'B'.

There are some who think that the seeds of this crises was sown in the Clinton era, when the federal government coerced the banks to lend to the poorer sections of society.

As an example. When I bought my first house 28 years ago I had to gather a deposit of 15% and was allowed by the building society to borrow 2 1/2 my annual salary. When my eldest lad bought his house earlier this decade he was allowed 125% of the value of his house, with no deposit and IIRC 5 times his annual salary. How someone from the various governments across the west thought that this was sustainable, never mind desirable is baffling.

So yes, the bankers must take the majority of the blame for the mess that we're in but so must we, the consumers. Credit has been way to easy to get, easier than ever before. Everyone joined in this beano and now we have to pay the price.

[Lord Kangana]

But when you say we must take the blame, ask yourself who benefits the most from 125% mortgages being available. If(and I wish this on no-one) your son defaults on his mortgage payments, he'll have his house repossessed and still be in hock to the bank. I'm not advocating a stalinist system, but the absurd notion of letting the market decide in an unrestrained fashion has proved to have been the most lame excuse for profiteering and cash raking the world has ever seen. We elect a government to govern, when they start to use the excuse that "its out of their hands, the markets dictate" they have failed.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

When I bought my first house 28 years ago I had to gather a deposit of 15% and was allowed by the building society to borrow 2 1/2 my annual salary. When my eldest lad bought his house earlier this decade he was allowed 125% of the value of his house, with no deposit and IIRC 5 times his annual salary. How someone from the various governments across the west thought that this was sustainable, never mind desirable is baffling.

And there it is, in microcosm. You seem a sensible chap, IA, and I've no doubt Apache Jr is too. But he's been told by his (self-regulating) money-lender that he can borrow more money than the worth of the thing he's borrowing it against, and he's agreed.

Part of me says well, why shouldn't he trust them? They're the experts, and they're handing out money. But now it all seems so painfully stupid. I'm just glad that when some of our friends were convinced they should buy flats off-plan in high-rise blocks in shit-holes in Liverpool and Birmingham, they listened when we talked them out of it.

Many laughed at Leeds United's short-sightedness when they bet their own farm on future earnings. 125% mortgages were, I'm afraid, more of the same - entirely dependent on future growth to make any sort of fiscal sense whatsoever. And as you say, the "multiples" of annual salary have also gone up, which inevitably means that prices shoot up too. As you can imagine, it's terrible down here. I've heard of singletons being given seven times their income, and of couples being given something approaching ten times their joint income; two years later they think about having a kid, do the maths and discover that they can't afford it, that they've signed away their right to become parents.

And that's just the honest (if easily-led) white-collar workers who've gone to college, pursued their profession, work 50-hour weeks and still can't afford to procreate. There are stories with which it's much harder to empathise, of self-certification mortgages handed out without proof of income, or the sounds-like-a-comedy-sketch NINJA mortgages - No Income, No Job or Assets. Like this, off the BBC:

We had to pay interest at 9.8%, which I was advised was the best I could get at the time because of credit problems, as neither my wife nor I were working.

See, in your generation and mine, IA, you got a job before you bought a house. You didn't bet your balls on it. Maybe that's why I'm in rented accommodation, with an unofficial lodger.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

We elect a government to govern, when they start to use the excuse that "its out of their hands, the markets dictate" they have failed.

But they're not letting the market dictate. They're propping it up. It's a losing battle, like the one against inflation.

[Lord Kangana]

Syntax error on my part DSB - what I meant was that that attitude had lead us down the garden path, to the extent they have no choice but to intervene when its far too late.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Furry muff. They'll now fight like hell to keep inflation artificially low - which should be easy, unless your basket of goods includes food, fuel or accommodation.

[Lord Kangana]

I can't remember whether this is true or not (maybe I'll dust the books off and have a look), but I'm sure theres a correlation between poor income/unemployment rising as and when inflation is kept artificially low? Any ideas?

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

I'll ask an MA (Econ)