Comments by "" (@charliemoore2551) on "Richard J Murphy" channel.

  1.  @suburbanyobbo9412  "Experts" decide who is Fascist? No, pal. Ye cannae hide behind that one!
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  2. Yes. Why can't we have pie In the sky like they used to have in the 1950s when everybody was poor and happy. I've seen a Peter and Jane book so I know it's true.
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  3.  @petermach8635  Funny - cos I remember it as a time of poverty, racism and rising debt. We didn't get our first family holiday until well into the 1960s. Our first refrigerator in 1967, telly in 68. What were your experiences of it, then?
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  4.  @petermach8635  It happened because both political parties were influenced by Keynes and Galbraith in preference to Hayek and Von Mises. Had the "wisdom" of the Mont Pelerin crew been followed, the 50s and 60s would not have very different to the 20s and 30s. It remains the case, that I wouldn't wish the period on my children or grandchildren.
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  5. It's quite simple: There is a spectrum which runs from Anarchists, Trotskyites etc on the far-left through to neoliberals and Fascists on the far right. The vast majority of us are somewhere in between those two. What's so difficult?
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  6. If you are spending then you are not economically inactive. Remember, a pension is earned income.
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  7. You've put your finger on the main reason Corbyn had to be replaced by Starmer. There's not a chance in Hell that this corrupt and degraded Labour government will interfere with this most sacred of the privileges of the ruling class.
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  8.  @Luckiestmanalive-bb1mi  He is actually saying what generations of smart economists (Smith, Marx, JS Mill, Keynes, Galbraith) have been saying for the last 200 years or so. Keynes (the man whose advice to governments led to the fastest and biggest ever rise in living standards) famously said that putting your savings in a jar and burying it in the garden is better for the economy than buying shares or putting it in the bank. The "smart" economists you're talking about are the ones who've graduated since economics departments have been taken over by neoliberals and know less than nothing about economics. They're the ones whose ideas have led to the fastest and deepest fall in living standards in history!
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  9.  @Luckiestmanalive-bb1mi  Nice try, but no coconut. Keynes's policies were successful and led to unprecedented increases in standards of living for working people. Friedman's have been utter failures and generally only possible to administer at gunpoint (Chile, Iran, Russia, Argentina), resulting in unprecedented falls in living standards for working people. So no, there aren't arguments on both sides. One was a success. The other was an outright failure with nightmarish consequences. Period.
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  10.  @Foxtrottangoabc  " But council houses were sold off because the govt had no money to maintain them ." 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣. They sold them off because the government forced them to. And it prevented them from spending the proceeds on new ones. The reason was ideological, not economic. The net result has been an increase in private landlords and a reduction in disposable income (which powers the economy)because people are spending all their money on rent (which bleeds the economy).
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  11.  @jeremykille4689  It's the opposite. It is Thatcherism that has proved to be the slippery slope.
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  12.  @jeremykille4689 Not true. The wealthiest European countries also have the highest taxes. The countries declining the most quickly (eg, the UK) are those with the lowest taxes.
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  13.  @jeremykille4689  Look at Sweden, Germany, The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway. They all have higher and, more importantly, more progressive taxes. Rich people aren't fleeing them. They've got the good sense to understand that less inequality means more wealth.
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  14.  @kevinsyd2012  The UK has one of the most regressive tax systems in the world. Work and pensions are taxed at a higher rate than rent and arbitrage which is economically ruinous as well as being unfair. The poorest pay a much higher proportion of their income in tax than the freeloading rich who evade tax by hiding their money offshore or who avoid it with a myriad of dodgy tricks and schemes. In any case, their wealth was created by the working class and a progressive tax system is a fair way of re-distributing it.
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  15. Crypto is a scam: A cruel ponzi scheme which can leave people holding nothing with no recourse to law. It is beloved by libertarians because it undermines democracy.
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  16. PR is even more beneficial at local level. Why do English people have a problem with it?
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  17. He's not a "master" of anything. He's an awful businessman who was saved from ruin by a TV company.
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  18. I've recently noticed the trolls here suggesting that you are on the far left, Richard. Two things to notice: Firstly, he vast majority of such comments are posted in office hours. Secondly, the wording is very similar - suggesting one person with sock puppet IDs pretending to be several. Tufton Street houses the nastiest examples of the Far Right. Indeed, it's very existence is part of a project to make the lack of humanity and decency inherent in classic liberalism normal. You should consider it a badge of honour to be targeted by them. They clearly think you're a danger.
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  19. They didn't cause inflation. "As we have already seen" my eye!
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  20. THis is pure spam
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  21. Yes. All the law you can afford to buy.
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  22.  @clivewilliams3661  Gordon Brown removed democratically accountable control of the Bank of England because he doesn't like democracy. Period. The crash in 2008 was entirely due to the action (or rather lack of it) on the part of central banks (including BoE) who trusted the market to correct itself.
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  23.  @clivewilliams3661  Brown's not the only one who hates democracy, I see.
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  24.  @clivewilliams3661  And it's been Sooo stable under the bankers....
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  25. England loses out from the so-called union too. It deserves to be able to proudly embrace its own culture and traditions and interests without having to be constantly reminded that they often conflict with those of the rest of us. In fact, I often wonder if advocating English independence is the key to a mutually beneficial future for all the UK countries.
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  26. The shops were empty of consumer goods. But no one was hungry or homeless.
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  27.  @andyinsuffolk  Um indeed. The Chileans elected a Communist government and the US backed a coup against it and imposed a constitution which imposed "freedom" from government. It was locked in by a voting system designed to make it impossible to reverse. It was so unpopular that even the impossible conditions it imposed were overcome and it was finally returned to democracy recently.
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  28. RMT and ASLEF? Why? Rail workers' pay has fallen behind just like everyone else.
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  29. eh?
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  30.  @knobfieldfox  Yes. That's the point entirely. Currently, one of the two parties captures government which then imposes the will of whatever faction or faction has in turn captured it. Under PR, the two factions of the parties would form into parties in their own right and get representation according to the wishes of the population. This would mostly mean coalition government in which a broad spectrum of views would be represented. Thatcherism would be dead.
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  31.  @perkinscrane  " The UK’s demographics since the 1950s have under FPTP favoured Labour." Um no. A quick look at the electoral results since 1950 will show you the opposite. Your prognosis assumes that the same parties would fight elections under PR as under FPTP. This would not be the case. The Labour Party came into existence precisely because its constituent parts - Marxists, Fabians, Co-op Movement, trades unionists, Syndicalists etc could not achieve the critical mass to break through in FPTP. It's a party which has always been dominated by its right wing and the Left components would be able to break off and fight elections in their own right under PR. The Tory Party is not homogenous either. It has always been a mix of the Disraeli one-nation tendency and right-wing liberals. In recent years it has suffered increased entryism from extreme right liberals - mostly encapsulated in the ERG. Again, PR would afford them the facility to fight elections in their own right. I have not suggested that PR would be a panacea. The Left would certainly not dominate as I would like. But it would be represented. Likewise the Right. But most importantly, the Right-wing extremism which has wrecked the UK economy, separated it from Europe and brought it to the brink of dissolution (now inevitable) would not be able to continue to prevail.
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  32.  @gerhard7323  I'd put it differently. The majority didn't want a referendum so with a more democratic and representative PR system, we wouldn't have had one and the UK economy wouldn't be imploding.
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  33.  @gerhard7323  Yes. The UK economy has been destroyed by Brexit and Brexit happened because a very small number of voters were able to manipulate FPTP. This wouldn't have happened in EU countries because PR means government more closely represents the will of the people.
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  34.  @darkarts59  Could well be but I suspect the proportion of ordinary people's savings that goes to start-ups is too small to be even measured let alone be significant.
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  35.  @adenwellsmith6908  I'm emphatically NOT blaming the staff. I'm blaming underfunding - along with the marketisation introduced by Kenneth Clark, of course. The creation of the trusts and "internal competition" has led to a top heavy system stuffed with accountants and administrative managers with financial targets taking precedence over medical care.
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  36. Why remove trade union funding? What's wrong with democratic institutions?
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  37. Spot on, Richard. There was not only the advantage of being able to spot the rogues but also accountability for staff. I worked in a PAYE tax district in the 1970s. We each had an allocation of taxpayers - from a few hundred to several thousand depending on complexity. We established relationships with taxpayers and employers and, believe it or not, this makes even something as banal as taxation less unpleasant and impersonal. And everything was much more manageable: Everyone got a tax return when they started work and then at least once 6 years after that. If their affairs were complex they would get an annual return. The point being to avoid build-ups of underpayment or overpayment. The only hitch was the system of files and control cards which had to be transferred between offices when there was a change of employment. Sometimes, if someone had several jobs over a period, it could take weeks to get all the informaiton together and make repayments or allocate tax codes. But all that information is now on computer and it can be transferred in literally minutes. Computerisation could have been used to make the system more effective. Instead, it was used to make spurious staff "efficiencies" so that ministers could present a reduced payroll as evidence of their success. As you point out, this often meant that the amount of saving was actually less than the tax lost through the very real inefficiencies which resulted.
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  38. The measures imposed by Nixon/Thatcher/Reagan etc were not what tamed the inflation of the 1970s - which was then, as now, caused by external issues. It was going to come down anyway - because it does! The other similarity to that period, of course, is that the inflation was falsely blamed on wage rises rather than the other way around. The interest rate policy was (and is) simply a scam to aid the rich.
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  39. Aristotle was a slave-owning aristocrat.
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  40.  @bregawn  Yes. You're right about that. But it is a means of accounting for it - taking the appropriate amount out of circulation to prevent inflation - and for re-distribution.
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  41.  @robertovary9736  What does that mean?
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  42.  @honkytears  You haven't yet seen the impact of tariffs and it will be interesting to see how you grow food without immigrants. One thing you've got right though is using the word "reign". He does think he's a monarch and it's doubtful that you'll ever have another election that is free and fair in any meaningful sense.
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  43. You'll find that most of the trolls tend to keep working hours and simply shill out Tufton Street propaganda. Not difficult to join up the pieces!
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  44.  @edwardmclaughlin7935  Indeed. A senior moment, perhaps. Thank you for pointing that out.
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  45.  @fylbike  My apologies!
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  46.  @grolfe3210  On the contrary. The state is very good at running things. It was the total failure of the private sector to run procurement in the Crimean War which led to the establishment of the UK's Civil Service - which supercharged the running of the British Empire and, in due course, the welfare state. It was the state which resued the railways from chaos and inefficiency - which has since been returned by privatisation, gave us clean water and effective sewage disposal (ditto), standardised electricity and gas production, gave us a universal postal service, telephone coverage, universal schooling and so on. Public Transport was much better when it was municipally run. The NHS, before it was "reformed" by Kenneth Clark and his successors was one of the world's most efficient and effective health care providers. Compare it with the top heavy US system. Private sector efficiency is largely myth based on ideology.
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  47. An excellent explanation marred by the careless mistake about UDI - even though it doesn't really impact on the argument.
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  48. Yeah! Cos' who needs schools, hospitals, roads, pensions, emergency services, defence etc? Such a waste!
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  49. I'd go for that. It's clear to anyone that thinks that migrants a net benefit. The figure to prove it to the gammon would be welcome.
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  50. Of course it is. The far left has every right to worry.
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