Author Topic: My day has just been made.  (Read 1478 times)

Undercover Pensioner

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2900
My day has just been made.
« on: Apr 19, 2018, 03:43:46 PM »

Came back from a difficult morning to a garden full of sunshine and a nicely recorded Daily Politics.  Billy Bragg was guest of the day and listening to that intelligent and thoughtful man really did cheer me up (although I fast forwarded though Nigel Lawson's bit  ;) ).  He even sang the programme out with the diggers song (actually titled The World Turned Upside Down).  It made me want to hear the whole song again so nipped over to YouTube.  For anyone who remembers it it's here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwQwA_kFxoE  I took a serendipitous journey through some of his other songs while I was there - as you do :)
The vote for Brexit was a vote to take back what we hadn't lost in order to lose what we actually have.

crabbyob

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 24438
Re: My day has just been made.
« Reply #1 on: Apr 19, 2018, 07:08:11 PM »
thanks for that U.P. a guy we all should listen too
“Life may not be the party we hoped for, but as we are already here we may as well dance”

BazzerPontefract

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5025
Re: My day has just been made.
« Reply #2 on: Apr 19, 2018, 08:52:36 PM »
thanks for that U.P. a guy we all should listen too
CrabbyOB,
Well you could, should you care, listen to Billy Bragg, but you'll struggle to get any sense out of him.
Take the point of "Quantitative Easing" which he talked about but clearly did not understand.
Quantitative Easing is a Money Supply policy that has the effect of reducing the value of money.  If today we have a Billion pounds in circulation a pound is worth a pound but if tomorrow the BoE introduces another Billion pound the pound tomorrow is only worth 50p compared to its value yesterday.

The point about "Quantitative Easing" is it reduces the value of DEBT.  So if I'm a mortgagee with a mortgage of £100,000, Quantitative Easing reduces the worth of my DEBT which means as a struggling mortagee I have less chance of being evicted because in real terms my DEBT tomorrow is on half of what it is today.  And the same applies to firms or factories;  if they are struggling to meet their DEBT, "Quantitative Easing" keeps these businesses afloat where without QE they'd fail.  QE increases inflation which reduces the value of DEBT

Billy Bragg seemed to think this QE money is being given to Bankers, whereas he thinks it should be given directly to Real People. 
What the dim-wit Billy Bragg fails to grasp is the money is going to real people with Mortgages and to real Businesses that are over-leveraged in the current economic circumstances. 
Stopping QE means Mortgagees will be evicted from their homes, and firms and businesses will go broke because of their debt burden relative to what they can sell.

Five years following what Billy Bragg proposes will reduce the UK to the economic condition of Cuba, which might be what you want.

crabbyob

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 24438
Re: My day has just been made.
« Reply #3 on: Apr 19, 2018, 09:50:59 PM »
do you know bazzer i think you must find great difficulty reading anything you didnt write... only my opinion
“Life may not be the party we hoped for, but as we are already here we may as well dance”

Phil

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 11902
Re: My day has just been made.
« Reply #4 on: Apr 19, 2018, 09:56:11 PM »
My day has just been made by knowing that I missed listening to Billy Bragg.

It got even better when I realised I couldn't name or recall a single one of his offerings.

"I've stopped arguing with idiots. They will only bring me down to their level and beat me with experience.”

Paraphrased from George Carlin

BazzerPontefract

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5025
Re: My day has just been made.
« Reply #5 on: Apr 20, 2018, 08:24:17 AM »
do you know bazzer i think you must find great difficulty reading anything you didnt write... only my opinion
CrabbyOB,
The point Billy Bragg was trying to make was a piece of incoherent economic policy that is widely supported in the Labour Party.  From Billy's and the Labour Party's point of view, money should be printed and distributed to people (directly or indirectly, via welfare) who don't have much of it.
The idea is they'll spend it as soon as they get it, thereby increasing the GDP because factories will produce stuff, to sell, to be consumed by those that have been given Free Money - we all get richer simply by buying things with printed money.  The idea is a National Pyramid Selling or a National Ponzi Scheme,  it is nothing to do with QE.
A free ticket to Havana, I'm thinking.

Undercover Pensioner

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2900
Re: My day has just been made.
« Reply #6 on: Apr 20, 2018, 10:23:25 AM »
BazzerPontefract I don't agree with your personal view of economics - nor do many economists.  Of course you have every right to hold the view you do but I do wish you would find it possible to be more polite about other people's views.  As you are aware, I don't usually bother to answer your posts as you don't want a discussion, you just want to tell people that you are right so no point, but Crabbyob does not deserve the tirade; if it has to be directed at anyone, it was me who brought Billy Bragg up.

I can see that you find it difficult and "struggle" to make any sense of a belief in "capital" - the engine of an economy but not in "excessive wealth" when it becomes the storing up of unused capital and a way to avoid your reasonable contribution society.  Views of capitalism spread from those of the far right to the far left.  There is not only one view.  Most economists will explain to you - should you care to listen, that "churn" is essential to capitalism.  We are ceasing to produce it as more and more wealth remains in the hands of fewer and fewer people.  You tend to imply that everyone who doesn't agree with your view of capitalism is a communist - why else mention Cuba - and that those who make intelligent and interesting points like Billy Bragg are talking about an "incoherent economic policy".  Incoherent to you perhaps but that is not BB's issue but yours surely?

The song Billy Bragg sang and I pointed to was about our history - the past that we should remember - not about today, but I doubt you even bothered to listen you are so sure he is "wrong" and you are "right" so you don't even bother with finding out do you?
The vote for Brexit was a vote to take back what we hadn't lost in order to lose what we actually have.

BazzerPontefract

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5025
Re: My day has just been made.
« Reply #7 on: Apr 21, 2018, 10:35:11 AM »
BazzerPontefract I don't agree with your personal view of economics - nor do many economists.  Of course you have every right to hold the view you do but I do wish you would find it possible to be more polite about other people's views.  As you are aware, I don't usually bother to answer your posts as you don't want a discussion, you just want to tell people that you are right so no point, but Crabbyob does not deserve the tirade; if it has to be directed at anyone, it was me who brought Billy Bragg up.
I can see that you find it difficult and "struggle" to make any sense of a belief in "capital" - the engine of an economy but not in "excessive wealth" when it becomes the storing up of unused capital and a way to avoid your reasonable contribution society.  Views of capitalism spread from those of the far right to the far left.  There is not only one view.  Most economists will explain to you - should you care to listen, that "churn" is essential to capitalism.  We are ceasing to produce it as more and more wealth remains in the hands of fewer and fewer people.  You tend to imply that everyone who doesn't agree with your view of capitalism is a communist - why else mention Cuba - and that those who make intelligent and interesting points like Billy Bragg are talking about an "incoherent economic policy".  Incoherent to you perhaps but that is not BB's issue but yours surely?
The song Billy Bragg sang and I pointed to was about our history - the past that we should remember - not about today, but I doubt you even bothered to listen you are so sure he is "wrong" and you are "right" so you don't even bother with finding out do you?
UP,
The point you make isn't the point that the Dim-Wit Billy Bragg was trying to make. 
The point you make is straight out of Thomas Piketty's book.  Thomas, and you, argue that we should transfer the money held in banks by savers to those that don't have money in banks.  That's fair enough - a pound taken from my bank account and transferred to a beggar doesn't increase the money supply so doesn't affect inflation (it is nothing to do with QE). 
So the beggar spends his newly acquired pound - it doesn't really matter what he spends it on - so the argument goes, he's buying something so someone has to produce something that he wants to buy, hence increasing the "churn" so increasing GDP.  So increases in GDP is funded by sequestering the saving and assets of savers.
But the thing you and Thomas fail to grasp is eventually the money I've saved runs out and there's no more money in my account to transfer to the poor to fund increases in GDP.  Then we have what we have in Cuba, the country's economy collapses, because I've stopped working and saving because there's no point if you and Thomas are going to take it off me to give to the poor to buy something - it matters little what that something is, but even if it is food the poor person binges out in the immediate term and gets fat, only to finish up eventually without anything to eat at all, and starving as they do in Cuba.  The positive impact of your and Thomas's idea is the poor and the once-rich go very hungry together.
Governments can take my, or anyone else's assets, but the message it sends to younger versions of me is there is no point in working and saving if the Government is going to take the proceeds.  Cuba again.

Ashy

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 32147
Re: My day has just been made.
« Reply #8 on: Apr 21, 2018, 10:45:06 AM »
Simply increasing demand does not on its own increase supply. Increasing demand leads to an increase in price which may lead to an increase in supply. The effect is always inflationary. It would be better if all the foreigners went home and freed up supplies for us who belong here.

xetog

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 11227
Re: My day has just been made.
« Reply #9 on: Apr 21, 2018, 12:46:41 PM »
Will I join in with this thread, or won’t I?  It seems that some are already getting pretty hot under the collar so anything I have to say will probably only stoke the fires.  Considering that the world debt at £114 trillion is more than the entire GDP of all nations added together, It is very likely that we are about to tip into another deep recession. Debt is given life by printed money and assumed, often inflated, ideas of the worth of shares.  It is just one of the unacceptable practices of capitalism that most takeovers are funded by debt repaid by hiving off assets making only a few chancers rich whilst loading the company taken over with impossible repayments and often collapse.  As an example, I would cite the dire position of elderly care providers in the UK where financiers have taken over the care homes with borrowed money, sold off the properties to line their pockets leaving the care provider to push up prices to pay off the debt that has been loaded onto their backs. Is this an acceptable face of capitalism?  I think not.

However, I see no merit in printing money in an attempt to fill the insatiable black hole of nationalisation.  I can see why anyone born since Thatcher might consider the idea attractive, but memories must be short in our generation to discount the awful shortcomings of nationalised industries in the 6th and 7th decades of the last century when waste and strikes under Labour government that led to the era of Thatcherism.  BMC/British Leyland, their tea break strikes and rubbish cars, British Road Services that to keep drivers employed were not allowed to pick up return loads, British Coal that struggled on pumping cash into and an old-fashioned industry dying on its feet, British Rail with late, filthy old trains and constant strikes over rest days.  I could go on and on and on, but you will be getting bored by now.  We have two generations now that never heard of the “English disease” that pervaded the mid-20th century and fail to see the dangers of its return.
To consider that we can fund nationalised industries on assets taken from the rich are short sighted because most of those assets are already mostly funded by debt, but to continue funding private debt by simply adding to the pile of printed money and inflated share values is equally myopic.  When I left school, I could look forward to a job for life like my dad and grandad before me (hopefully not punctuated by two world wars like theirs), but in fact I have had to come to terms with change and have now lost count of the number of companies who have employed me over the years.  This does not faze the modern workforce who expect job and career changes at regular intervals as a normal state of a working life and are mentally equipped for it.  My point?  Times change and social and political outlooks must change with them.  Unfortunately, this is not the case with both left and right remaining glued do outdated ideologies.
 
Both sides must change.  Surely both political and social attitudes towards the status quo must be challenged, but based on a clear knowledge of the past, not rose-tinted vision of class jealousy that is currently holding us back.  Takeovers by spurious financial instruments must be stopped and overcome with real value by encouraging genuine entrepreneurs and inventors whilst social attitudes must be steered away from a free ride.  Our political organisations and attitudes also need to be reorganised, along with the disestablishment of reliance on an unelected upper house and commitment to a parliamentary democracy that fails to support the will of the majority, not just on Brexit, but in so many other ways.

There, I said I was doubtful over whether I should join this thread and by saying that I both believe and disbelieve you all at the same time, I guess I have done my best , at length,  to insult everyone at the same time, (a rare feat, I am sure you will agree), I could meander on, but I will stop and get prepared for my cruise in the Med.
 
If you want to control peoples thoughts, first control their words.

Phil

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 11902
Re: My day has just been made.
« Reply #10 on: Apr 21, 2018, 12:58:56 PM »

I guess I have done my best , at length,  to insult everyone at the same time, (a rare feat, I am sure you will agree), I could meander on, but I will stop and get prepared for my cruise in the Med.

You've not insulted me & a meander round the Med will be far better, so enjoy it.
"I've stopped arguing with idiots. They will only bring me down to their level and beat me with experience.”

Paraphrased from George Carlin

Johned

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4052
Re: My day has just been made.
« Reply #11 on: Apr 21, 2018, 02:37:48 PM »
Whether one agrees with the efficiency or no of the past nationalised industries, I am sorry but I do not see the morality of selling off any institution or utility by government, which "belongs" to the people in our nation state.

BazzerPontefract

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5025
Re: My day has just been made.
« Reply #12 on: Apr 21, 2018, 08:52:40 PM »
Whether one agrees with the efficiency or no of the past nationalised industries, I am sorry but I do not see the morality of selling off any institution or utility by government, which "belongs" to the people in our nation state.
Well most nationalised industries have gone well past their sell-by date, British Coal, British Steel, British Shipbuilding, the Post Office, British Telecom.
We should ask ourselves what might be better run if it were nationalised,  I can't think of a thing.   I'd like to hear a justification for nationalising Gas, Electricity, Water, Rail.
But now I mention Rail we have a good case study.  Only 5% of all travelled miles are done by Rail.  Only 4% of transport is done on the buses.  What might be the point of Nationalising Rail and the Buses - the service touches so very few people, the numbers of people using public transport are probably less than 2% of the whole population.  The real motivation for nationalising Rail is Political Control of the Core of our Economy.  The Rail Routes into London, which accounts for only 3% of all travelled miles is the pinch point of the UK economy.  If the Labour Party and the Rail Union got control of the Rail Network into London, they could strangle the economy for quicker the Scargill ever could do it with Coal.