Jeremy Corbyn

Wealth inequality is much greater than income inequality and that includes ownership of property which, for most people, is not a tradable commodity but rather a long-term consumer durable. So wealth inequality is much greater than the figures suggest.

You've never had it so good, eh?

Its actually quite moving, isn't it Bravissimo? In its shear heartfelt humanity.

*bursts into tears*

[quote=jambalaya ]Look back 30, 50 or 100 years ago, the poor where much worse off than they are today. More people own their own homes, have access to one or more cars, foreign holidays, superior medical care etc than ever before

I'm interested to see that the poor now own their own homes, have cars, foreign holidays etc. Society really has advanced more than I thought.

@binners I think Jezza is proving so popular for a variety of reasons like

1) Some people want to see what a UK version of Syriza might do
2) union support and encouragement of their members to register and vote
3) Support from non Labour voters from both the left and the right who want to alternatively to infiltrate / destroy the current Labour Party
4) opinion poll companies get paid / hired more if they produce "shocking" results

@dead apologies if you where offended by my past characterisation of Ireland but upon joining the EU they qualified for large amounts of financial support due to their economic weakness. The EU paid for the Dublin City to airport motorway.

Guys you cannot have a welfare state if the country is bust, that's the biggest legacy the Labour Party left. Their economic ineptitude hurt the poorest the most as they are most reliant on a healthy state. BTW JY I think the vast majority of people vote on the economy and their view of how much better/worse off they will be.

If Corbyn is such a big lover of the left and the EU perhaps he should bring in VAT on food like they have in Germany, France, Spain, Italy etc. that will raise plenty to spend.

Anyway I digress, I hope he wins

Corbyn is no lover of the EU, in fact he originally said he wanted out, then moderated that to he wants reform.

you cannot have a welfare state if the country is bust, that's the biggest legacy the Labour Party left.

Ah yes, the financial crisis that was the fault of the Labour government, despite happening pretty much all over the world, regardless of who was in charge, and definitely would of happened here even if the Tories had been running the place.

If Corbyn is such a big lover of the left and the EU perhaps he should bring in VAT on food like they have in Germany, France, Spain, Italy etc. that will raise plenty to spend.

I'm not sure increasing regressive taxes are a particularly left wing trait.

I was about to search for regressive taxes introduced by the last Labour government, but... do your own research 😛

Guys you cannot have a welfare state if the country is bust, that's the biggest legacy the Labour Party left.

*sigh*

[img] [/img]

[img] [/img]

Are you just trolling again?

I was about to search for regressive taxes introduced by the last Labour government, but... do your own research

For that to be relevant we would need to have had a left wing government.

For that to be relevant we would need to have had a left wing government.

Whether you like Blair or not the bulk of the original Labour policies definitely sit more within the left wing camp than the right (if we are to use those terms). It's some weird revisionism that the Labour party that gained power in 1997 were some nasty Tory splinter group wearing red.

Yet another straw man. I never claimed they were right wing, but I wouldn't say they were particularly left wing either.

Hi folks

Voting for Jeremy Corbyn as leader is a gut reaction to Labour’s electoral defeat.

No it's not! He's popular for the same reason the SNP are popular in Scotland. People want something different. People want someone who actually wants to improve the lives of the poor and the average; not someone who looks like they are pretending to want that but really don't give a shit or have no idea.

Much as people like yourself like to suggest that he wants to turn Britain into British Leyland circa 1976, thats just not the case.

What would be so wrong if he did ? Is society a better place for working people now that we have weak unions ? Most people on low wages ( that's just most people really ) would say no, as would people on zero hour contracts or part time hours. Oh, don't forget everyone one else walking the two year tightrope where they can be fired for no reason when starting a new job.

The greatest victory of the neo-liberal revolution surely has to be instilling the un-questionable narrative that union power had to be subdued for the good of society.
I think we all know who it was really good for.

What would be so wrong if he did?

Indeed what would be so wrong with producing goods that people don't want? Ill have an allegro in fawn please. The history of UK car manufacturing in the golden era. What's not to like?

Grum - great charts, puts the austerity claim to bed doesn't it. Also interesting what happened and why to bring debt levels down (and how the UK underperformed globally as a result). Cold turkey is pretty unappetising. Good job state pensions are off balance sheet - imagine knowing that your pension was merely a Ponzi scheme.

mol - just for you, here is his conclusion

New Labour’s sheepishness in defending its record had allowed the Corbynistas to make all the running. The Corbyn economic plan doesn’t want any commitments to eliminating the current deficit. The hard won successes of the post 1997 period are to be reversed with increases in union power and public ownership. “Tax justice” is the answer to most problems – soaking the rich.

Voting for Corbyn is gesture politics. It makes many on the left feel good about themselves and avoids the painful task of re-thinking policies and reconnecting beyond the base to the rest of the electorate.

It is a howl for the past rather than a serious fight for the future.

We shall see! And that is from the LSE of all places...

So this neoliberalism that everyone talks about - what is it?

Olds wikki talks about laissez-faire economic liberalism which hardly matches history. Fatcher was a mile away from Hayek and the Austrians in reality. Does "L-F" include regulating pricing in so-called liberalised markets and cross-subsidisation of unprofitable routes etc.

Sloppy categorisation perhaps?

People want something different.

Recent polls on SNP performance suggest that when the reality is examined, people get sadly disappointed. Nothing new there. Gesture politics has to be backed up with real politics - look what that did for poor Cleggie (remember him, the last media inspired political bubble in Westminster?)

grum under the Tories our debt is far lower than it would have been under Labour, that's the important fact.

Dragon, interesting I didn't know that. Perhaps he'd like to make it clear he will be supporting an "out" vote in the referendum. That would be an important thing to declare his view on

whatnobeer, had Labour responded differently to the crises they might have won the 2010 general election ? Had they been more on the ball with regard to consumer credit perhaps the crises wouldn't have impacted us so badly ? They lost the election in part as they had no economic credibility which coincidently isn't something Corbyn is going to bring to the table is it ?

under the Tories our debt is far lower than it would have been under Labour, that's the important fact.

Indeed what would be so wrong with producing goods that people don't want? Ill have an allegro in fawn please. The history of UK car manufacturing in the golden era. What's not to like?

well done for drifting my point and laying the blame for british leyland's marketing strategy on the unions. but let's run with it anyway.................

so the choice is a fawn allegro and decent wages and conditions or an infinite choice of cars but your wages are so low that you'll need some deregulated credit in order to buy one.

after 35 years of the experiment - allegro please.

Ah yes, the financial crisis that was the fault of the Labour government, despite happening pretty much all over the world, regardless of who was in charge, and definitely would of happened here even if the Tories had been running the place.

[i]Speaking last month, the retired civil service chief said it was too difficult for civil servants to call for public spending to be reigned in until after the financial crisis hit.

The former cabinet secretary said that the Treasury was prone to “wishful thinking” and that “the politics” of the time had prevented civil servants from speaking more openly about the increasing level of debt.

He suggested that spending was too high because of “optimism bias” in the growth forecasts: “It was a forecast error, but also by a process of optimism bias, not enough people were saying: ‘Come on, do you really think we are able to expect 2.75 per cent growth indefinitely?’”

Questioned on whether he thinks civil servants should have come forward, Turnbull – who was permanent secretary at the Treasury from 1998 to 2002 – suggested that they were scared to. “Yes, maybe Whitehall should have,” he said. “But it’s quite difficult when your minister is proclaiming that we have transformed the propects of the UK economy.”

When asked directly what prevented civil servants from telling politicians that borrowing was too high, he said: “The politics was that we had put an end to boom and bust.”

Turnbull added: “We had a sense of overconfidence; it happened all around the world, but it was a rather extreme form of it in the UK.”

The problem, he argued, demonstrates a need for an organisation such as the Office of Budget Responsibility, which has been set up by the coalition government. “Having someone outside the process is helpful,” he said. “I think the OBR is something which is necessary, providing some degree of external constraint less prone to wishful thinking.”

Turnbull said that that excessive borrowing started to be a problem from 2005. “It kind of crept up on us in 2005, 2006, 2007, and we were still expanding public spending at 4.5 percent a year,” he said, arguing that the Treasury should have been putting more money aside. “You might have thought that we should have been giving priority to getting borrowing under better control, putting money aside in the good years – and it didn’t happen,” he commented.

Turnbull said that “there were some other places that had begun to accumulate surpluses for a rainy day; places like Australia.”
While Turnbull argued that the primary reason Britain is “in the mess that we’re in” is because “public spending got too big relative to the productive resources of the economy, by error” he added that a loss of output caused by the financial crisis has also contributed to the budget deficit.
[/i]

Joshua Chambers 2010i nterview for civil service life with Lord Turnbull, former head of the Civil Service and Cabinet Secretary for Blair from 2002-2005

[quote=trailmonkey said]
after 35 years of the experiment - allegro please.

Sorry mate, you'll have to wait. We're on strike.

😀

well done for drifting my point and laying the blame for british leyland's marketing strategy on the unions. but let's run with it anyway.................

Unions? Who mentioned unions? Oh it was Harold Wilson complaining about them earlier on the thread. I forgot. Another red bloody Tory. They get everywhere.

Sorry mate, you'll have to wait. We're on strike.

Good. Hope you get what you want.

Look back 30, 50 or 100 years ago, the poor where much worse off than they are today. More people own their own homes, have access to one or more cars, foreign holidays, superior medical care etc than ever before

The rich are just as fantastically wealthy, entrenched and powerful as they were 4 centuries ago.
That is the real problem.
We have progressed form the bottom 50% having 0.1 % of income to 1 %and you want us to cheer for capitalism for raising the poor out of poverty.

As always your views are a joy to read as incisive as they are compassionate and informed

Hold the bus...Support for Labour in Scotland is now putting them in third place...behind "them"

We have progressed form the bottom 50% having 0.1 % of income to 1 %

and you want us to cheer for capitalism for raising the poor out of poverty.

The rich are just as fantastically wealthy, entrenched and powerful as they were 4 centuries ago.

We've been through this a million times - but more equal societies are happier, better societies - and the better off are happier and healthier in more equal societies too. Loads of evidence to back this up which I have posted numerous times on previous threads and can't be arsed googling again.

grum under the Tories our debt is far lower than it would have been under Labour, that's the important fact.

Laugahble use of the word 'fact' there.

the report last year showed that the top 1% owned 41% of all the personal wealth in the world; the top 10% owned 86% and the bottom 50% of owned less than 1% of all the wealth.

Whether we want to argue over whether it has [marginally]raised the income of the very poorest [ it has] the spread of the wealth is so iniquitous that it is impossible to justify morally or argue that capitalism is about wealth distribution or helping the poor.
The very rich remain very rich and many of us would like the pie cutting up considerably fairer than it is currently under whatever you wish to term this model.

It is very unwise, and makes one look silly, to state an opinion on something utterly untestable and then claim its a fact.

thanks aracer it works great

Just to be totally clear here - I don't want more money for myself, I'm fine. I do think that as pointed out above the fact that people who work full time still need assistance from the state is completely messed up. The idea that we can't possibly take a little bit more money off people who have far, far more than they will ever need to rectify this situation is ridiculous.

And the justification of 'well these people are so greedy that they will just leave if they have to pay the amount of tax they are supposed to' as if that's a reasonable position is particularly sick-making. The passive acceptance of this kind of sociopathy is amazing.

By the way, most of these people didn't really earn their wealth, they inherited it, or were provided with enough privilege to make it very easy for them.

http://inequality.org/selfmade-myth-hallucinating-rich/

The rich are just as fantastically wealthy, entrenched and powerful as they were 4 centuries ago

Really?

Because a look at the houses and estates owned by the National Trust tells me thats really quite questionable - even if you look at the ones like Woburn Abbey that still are owned by their historical families, they hardly function as they once did, as the private playgrounds and fiefdoms of a super rich elite, do they?

some very poor trolling on here ninfan and jambalaya, you must not have much better things to do ...

Stately home occupancy as a measure of income distribution. Now I've seen everything. Have you checked this conclusion against horse carriage ownership?

We've been through this a million times - but more equal societies are happier, better societies

You say that but the poor folk in IDS benefits leaflets seem perfectly happy with their unequal shares!

Things today are just a bit different ninfan. You know the amount of money it cost to build a huge ostentatious stately pile with enormous ornate grounds? Well that now buys you a 2 bedroom former council flat in a just-about-bearable part of North London 😀

Its the the various acts that allowed ordinary folk to vote Zulu 11,slowly but steadily the erosion of their right of exploitation of the working population stopped them being able to afford their stately piles.

Well Blemheim Palace had an initial grant of £240k for the build and it went over budget, and that was almost exactly 300 years ago.

[quote=dragon ]Well Blemheim Palace had an initial grant of £240k for the build and it went over budget, and that was almost exactly 300 years ago.

Have they finished yet?

In case anyone's still confused as to why Corbyn's doing so well, [url= http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/18/jeremy-corbyn-rivals-chase-impossible-dream ]Monbiot hit the nail on the head[/url]. To be honest it's so damn obvious that I'm surprised some people are struggling with it.

And can I just say, that using the number of stately homes owned by the National Trust as an indicator of the power of the rich is one of the funniest things I've ever read on here. 😀

Oh boy.
http://m.heraldscotland.com/politics/13611699.Corbyn__Britain_needs_a_national_maximum_wage/

@rudeboy I'm not trolling just revelling in Labour's self destructive lurch to the left whilst they pillory the person who delivered 13 years of Labour governments. Labour / Unions picked Ed as David wasn't left enough, the electorate rejected Ed as too left wing and the Labour solution is to lurch much further left. Really you couldn't make this up.

“Why is it that bankers on massive salaries require bonuses to work while street-cleaners require threats to make them work? It’s a kind philosophical question really. There ought to be a maximum wage. The levels of inequality in Britain are getting worse.”

I'm starting to like Corbyn even more, he does regularly hit the nail on the head. And despite all the claims made the blairites and other assorted right-wingers he does seem to be in tune with the British electorate.

[url= http://www.theguardian.com/business/2010/feb/21/bank-bonuses-outrage-opinion-poll ]New poll reveals depth of outrage at bankers' bonuses[/url]

[i]Public outrage at bankers' bonuses is revealed in a poll that finds wide support for a cap on payouts[/i]

Really you couldn't make this up.

Nonsense, you make stuff up on here all the time

On the maximum wage, you'll notice he's not suggesting an absolute maximum, but a relative maximum. The two are quite different. Seems to me a valid point that if a chief executive earns 183 times the salary of the lowest paid worker in their organisation, then they should justify that somehow. Can they quantitatively show that, for argument's sake, they are 83 times more valuable than if they were paid 100 times more than the lowest paid employee?

@dazh how about the fact that most large houses in central London once occupied by single families are now flats ? I haven't had the time to research this "GENI" ratio quoted earlier but it's got "smoke and mirrors" written all over it.

@stoner, Wow. I struggle to believe that's even true but I fear it is. Best to leave comment upon it until after Corbyn has won.

EDIT: dash - maximum relative wage. First thing companies will do is outsource ALL the lower paid jobs to agencies. Anyone who thinks that's a good policy should look for a country in the world which has such a policy, if Yu can't find one its telling you something about whether it's a good idea and/or workable.

they pillory the person who delivered 13 years of Labour governments.

The man who knows how to win elections is backing Liz Kendall to lead Labour into the next general election and become the next Labour prime minister!!!! 😆

Blair's "success" jambalaya was down to the fact that the Tories, the party which you support, were so awful, so useless, that they were unelectable. People felt that they no choice but to vote New Labour if they wanted to keep the Tories out. Blair knew that and exploited it to his fullest advantage.