Here's the trick muir.
Since I don't owe 1 bean and infact am in possession of many beans and getting nothing for my beans because the scroungers, bankers/wankers and the bureaucratic mess of the state and the work shy have spent spent it, its about time we repossessed their house on my behalf. Or just stopped taxing me to the hilt to pay for the excesses you espouse.
I don't care what the professor of economics from Glasgow says, he was a tunnel vision sensationalist moron when I visited one of his speeches when I was a student. Not much has changed in a few years except his advice has added to the debt figure you point at.
Your political viewpoints are contrary to your economic ones.
Well i don't owe a bean and i own my own beans as well so yay for us
I agree that we should deal with the scrounging bankers
I also...shock...believe we should deal with the welfare situation as well! But not by squeezing the poor even more as that will only make them less able to contribute something worthwhile to society.
It really doesn't matter whether you like Prof Philo or not, he is simply stating some facts and making a fair point.
I really don't understand why some people get so hung up on whether they like a speaker or not. To really learn we have to listen to many people some of which we might not like or agree with. If we just listen to the same perspective all the time, we will stunt our understanding.
Prof Philo has simply said the top 10% own most of the private wealth in the UK and he has said that if we taxed them a proportion of that wealth (this figure has changed since) we would be able to pay off the national debt that is upsetting people.
Its an important point to grasp. The wealth is there to solve the problem, the wealth is in a small number of hands and it is in the hands of the people who the government represents, which is why those people won't be taxed.....and that's the problem. It's a simple truth and it really doesn't matter whether or not you like Philo it still stands.
Concerning my politics and my economics i find myself in what appears after many online debates to be on a path less well travelled!
I share some ground with libertarians on the right because like them i believe in personal freedoms, but i am far on the left because i know that along with those freedoms must come a system that stops people being ground into the dirt.
You might be young and wealthy at the moment Jim but life can deal us any hand at any time. You might find that there is a bank holiday (as i've discussed elsewhere) where the value of everyones money is written down. then you might develop an illness or disability (maybe have an accident) and before you know it you could find yourself penniless and helpless and needing help.
In your: screw everyone else i'm alright Jack world, who's gonna help you?
Humans have always had community....ALWAYS. We have evolved that way and it brings advantages. If you ever have children you will realise how useful this is. No man is an island as they say and there are times when we all need help no matter how strong we think we are.
So i want an anarchist communist system where everyone has personal freedoms, is free to choose how they want to contribute to society and will always have the support of the community, whilst being free to carry out whatever activities they want as long as they are doing their bit for the collective.
However we are still far from this system which means that although i don't in principle believe in reformism i will support reforms that i think will go some way to re-addressing imbalances.
We currently have a form of state capitalism where the government protects the interests of the 1% also called 'crony capitalism' or 'corporate fascism'. It pays welfare to the poor (while making the middle classes pay for it) to stop them from bringing back the guillotine.
But this argument that we could have true 'free-market capitalism' or 'anarcho-capitalism' is i think a false one as it doesn't take into account the fact that the private concentrations of wealth will always seek ways to monopolise the power that they have ammassed. This means that if there isn't a powerful and interferring government then they would create one which would probably take the form of fascism (where there is a blurring of government and corporate power, like we have now)
We know that state-socialism doesn't work as we saw the problems it brought the USSR, we know that state capitalism doesn't work, we can be sure that anarcho-capitalism will inevitably lead us back to fascism, so that really only leaves anarcho-socialism, which gives us the best of both worlds by providing community whiilst not infringing on personal freedoms (like state socialism would)
Until enough people realise this i will continue to point out that the poor don't hold the wealth the rich do, so if we want to get our hands on wealth to pay off the debt (run up by the scrounging bankers) then we need to tax the rich; i know this is unlikely to happen however as the rich fund the politicians and the politicians are members of the rich (sitting on the boards of many corporations, getting jobs from them after their political careers and also owning shares in them), so what is likely to happen is the politicans/super rich people alliance will continue to squeeze the middle classes and the poor until they snap and we have some sort of revolution.
The politicians/super rich people alliance (power elites) know that there is going to be increased dissent from the public and that is why they are tightening up controls. They are passing new 'terror' laws in the UK and US (eg Patriot Act) they are permitting police to use rubber bullets, they are cracking down violently on peaceful protestors (worried support for them will grow) they are putting CCTV cameras everywhere they are passing laws such as the NDAA (in the US) to allow the detention of US citizens by the military, indefinately, without trial (and they can be tortured with water boarding) while in the UK the Parachute regiment (shock troops responsible for the Bloody Sunday Massacre that saw the slaughter of unarmed civilians) have been put on stand by to deal with the riots that the government know are coming. Its also why the power elites are seeking greater control over the internet with SOCA, PIPA and ACTA becaus they are concerned about how people are educating themselves, swapping ideas and organising (recent middle east revolutions were coordinated partly online)
The key indicator for revolution is food. Revolutions in the middle east have occured because food costs have hit 40% of income. These costs are rising closer to this magic number in the US and the UK. Revolutionaries in the past have chanted 'bread'. Its going to happen again and very close to home.
