General Election 2019

Things that have happened under a Conservative government
You forgot support for the Apartheid governments, Pinochet and Khmer Rouge

No, I didn't. I didn't want to shape the list. I just wanted to start it....

This will be my only comment online on the GE.

I will vote Labour simply to try and get rid of my odious local MP and for the same reason that I voted remain; being part of something larger (the EU, 'the many') is better than being out on your own or acting in self-interest.

Perhaps we need a list and a scoring system?
And a time frame. Let's go with post second world war
How about:
The UK since 1945
Things that have happened under a Labour government
Mismanaging the marshall plan money
Union power
The NHS
Criminalisation of Young People
Dismantling of the legal system
Increase of erroneous state power/civil liberties

Things that have happened under a Conservative government
Hillsboro
The Miners Strikes
Unemployment
The EU
Moar dismantling of the legal system
Pron database
GCHQ spying

and not to leave the lib dems out
Things that have happened under a coalition government
Tuition fees

I think every claim needs a source link.

every billionaire is a policy failure, sorry emma
https://twitter.com/bbc5live/status/1189857638160293888

What a fucking moron. "The top 1% contribute 27% of tax". Yes. That's because they've got all the money! You can't tax people who don't have any money to spare.

other than the New Labour government, all others, have been fuckwhits who's mismanagement has damaged the economy?

maybe I'm misremembering this, but didn't the Blair/Brown epoch end in a giant financial crash?

A global financial crash?

Which the UK weathered better than the majority of the G20 economies

A little /s was intended.

Although I think it's fair to lay a portion of the blame at Brown's feet - both the failure of the various bodies overseeing the sector and the deregulation.

a global financial crash precipitated by the exactly the kind of loose regulatory approach & stoking of a housing bubble that was the basis of the Blair/Brown economic model. Just because it was a global phenomenon doesn't mean that individual governments can't cop some responsibility for it.

But...
If you had 200k, and paid it all to one person for doing their job they would contribute more taxes than 10 people being paid 20K to do their job.
More tax money is a good thing no? So surely its not as simple as people with money = bad?

True.

TBH it's a bit hard to argue this, as the points are so convoluted, what is the discussion even about? How shit another Labour MP sounds on the radio? Will JC ban billionaires? #notallbillionaires?

Firstly, top 1% ≠ billionaire. So a best it's a flawed point not worth making.

Secondly, bar the most extreme outliers we tax everyone in some form, and the majority of society of working age/ability do have sufficient money to be taxed.

Thirdly, given how few people in the UK are billionaires it seems like a pointless argument to get into that detracts from an attempt to make a point about increasing everyone's quality of living to a reasonable level.

But even though you got no tax from that 200K, you (as a govt) would likely be net positive as you wouldn't have to support nine unemployed people.

I think people would benefit from knowing who exactly we're talking about with higher tax thresholds. Someone (Corbyn) should be in a position to say that 'the 1%' refers explicitly to people to 250K (or whatever) and we're otherwise not actually going to tax you any more. It's not even taxing peoples aspirations, as so few will ever reach there.

Not quite that simple though. If it costs £11k to house and feed a person for a year and you have 1 person on £200k and 9 unemployed people, then you have to tax that person £100k in order for your population to not to die off, and that person will probably spend £50k on "stuff" and lock the rest away. If they're all paid £20k instead, they each pay for their own living costs with a nice £9k each to spend, and you don't actually need to collect any tax.

Clearly this is beyond useless as an economic model but the point is that it's complicated.

Exactly.

Reminds me of this oldie: @2.55 on
https://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM?t=145

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Yes, but it would also negate the need for as much distribution to the worse off, and it would probably improve general feelings of wellbeing for all but the one no-longer-billionaire (although arguably they might actually be more content with less).

Pre-distribution is how I think the Nordic countries refer to it.

Bear in mind that we're talking about billionaires here, so your example is hardly relevant. A CEO being paid roughly 10x their lowest-paid employee is not outside what most people would consider reasonable. You're also missing the fact that tax is not the only thing that matters. 10 people with 20k will spend all of that on normal living expenses, so that cash goes back into the economy. A large chunk of that 200k might just be saved or invested in assets, so that income doesn't recirculate.

When it comes to actual billionaires, there's a few things that can be said in response to that radio presenters comments. Firstly, we should look very cautiously at anyone who actually aspires to be a billionaire. Lots of people manage to be very entrepreneurial and do positive things in the market and society by being motivated to be merely very rich (i.e., in the 10s of millions), rather than obscenely wealthy. When you get to be a billionaire you start being able to buy things that money simply shouldn't be able to buy, such as elections or substantial policy realignments to benefit you or your company. If someone aspires to this, rather than just being able to live a luxurious lifestyle, we should be asking why.

It's also the case that the excessively wealthy pay proportionally less tax than the rest of us. This is partly because often those billions come from appreciation in the value of assets. Where those assets are naturally limited (like land or property) that leads to rentier capitalism, which is hugely unjust and corrosive, but more generally we should maximally tax the money that is easiest to make (i.e., assets appreciating) and minimally tax money that is hard to make (i.e., through labour). The fact that we fail to do this and therefore have billionaires is, as @cozey said, a policy failure.

Finally, to paraphrase Nick Hannauer, there is something fundamentally toxic about there being a small group of people in a society with essentially unlimited power. What that radio presenter made glaringly obvious is that when you have people with that much money your whole worldview can become skewed to making them happy so they don't take their money overseas, rather than actually working to make most people's lives better. You cannot run a society if it panders to the whims of a small number of people and you can't run a society-enhancing capitalist economy that way. A robust economy cannot be designed to survive on the decision of a few people to buy, say, a second mega-yacht, it should be a broad based system which thrives on the possibility of everyone having a fair chance of accruing capital.

So, yes, people with (that much) money = bad.

Brilliantly explained! And all the others too... thats what I came here for.

Here it is

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Yep - good post.

Someone thought getting Trump phoning Farage on LBC was a good idea.

According to New Statesman Dom Cummings is definitely not running the campaign and is taking time out for what sounds like a serious surgery and may not be back to Downing St at all.

Can you access his medical records?

labour should put his intervention in their ads

only day 1 - I'm optimistic about this