Comments by "Tony L" (@tlangdon12) on "Richard J Murphy" channel.

  1. I'm happy to accept the power of the state so long as this is wielded fairly. There has to be the opportunity to protest and the opportunity to appeal decisions. The previous Tory government was against both of these essential safeguards.
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  2. The employees, customers, shareholders and suppliers will pay any increase in Employer tax. There is no-one else who could pay this tax as the employer gets it's money from customers, and spends it on employees and goods and services from its suppliers, distributing what is left (after Corporation Tax) to its shareholders. So an increase in Empoyment taxes is either going to create an immediate upward pressure on costs to consumers (if the cost is passed on to consumers) or a immediate downward pressure on the amount paid to shareholders (or the business owners if it's a private business). This will then get unwound as employees aren't given payrises and suppliers are told that they can't increase their prices.
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  3.  @manoo422  Every window I look out of, I see a climate that has and is changing.
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  4. I did this yesterday having witnessed Trump and Vance's attack on their ally.
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  5. I suspect there is a lot more bad news to come. But Labour wanted the job of fixing it all. Let's hope they can do so. If they fix a quarter of the problems that Richard Muphey talks about they will have made a big difference.
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  6. Complex systems tend to have complex ways in which they can fail.
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  7. Your experience is of Tenant Farmers; farmers who actually work the land. The land owners who have bought farmland to avoid inheritance tax wear much fancier clothes.
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  8. The problem is that not all the parents know enough to teach their children. Many people are confident about managing their money. The parents need the education as much as the children do!
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  9. There needs to be a mixture of measures, but ultimately tough sanctions on those who are not is the answer. Perhaps there should be a civil offence of failing in your duty as an MP?
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  10. The UK ISA regine is incedibly generous. Few other countires have such generous tax breaks on personal savings. A limit on the total amount of tax-exempt savings would seem a reasonable option, but people need to have some cash savings. The city is misguided in thinking that limiting how much can be put into ISA will increase the investment in stocks and share. People crave the certainty of cash. Cash in the bank should be safe.
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  11. Richard, your thoughts align with mine to a large degree. I have always said that firms need to have some spare capacity, and that managers need to take responsibility for and understand what they are delivering. Does the IT director need to know how to program a computer? No, but they need to understand the risks that are involved in software development, including the risk that if you outsource your software development to another company, you are beholden to them to decide if you can have access to their programmers when you need them, and that you are limited by your ability to specify in a contract what the service is that you need - in my experience most managers don't have the experience to specify what they need in a contract. Many need expert help to acurately specify what is needed, especially around flexibility. Once the flexibility that the business actually needs is priced into the contract, the true cost of outsourcing usually becomes clear - it's almost always cheaper to do the work in-house.
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  12. Richard has run a number of small businesses, and been a manager and an executive.
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  13. What scares you about Joe Biden? I’m genuinely curious.
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  14. Agreed. Thus it is clear that any such rule could not be set by a politician. If the bar is set by a politician, they will set it so low as to guarantee they can jump over it and claim they are successful. With a bar set to a high level, Labour might fail, but you could be sure that the Conservatives would fail to a much greater degree. Would the electorate give credit to a government that did it's best to follow the rule, but did not obey it fully?
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  15. That's a good point. If the majority of working age people cannot work because there are no jobs, then if the Universal Income that is paid to them is not enough to allow them to buy very much other than food, fuel and a few clothes, the economy will shrink.
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  16. So we are in a battle against the Far-Right. Democracy is but one tool we have available to us. We have our words and deeds. The Facists cannot win if we refuse to join the in-group even if we meet the critieria to be members. UK voters who are considering voting Reform need to remember that just because you are white and male and straight, you don't have to join the Facists. You can be strong and defend the weak by voting Labour, Liberal Democrate or Green or any number of other parties.
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  17. Having worked in large businesses for many years before retiring, I now volunteer and come into contact with a number of pulblic-sector organisations, who are incredibly efficient compared to the organisations I worked in. They acheive a great deal with relatively little. The problem we have is how Productivity is defined and measured. Richard is right; a GP who is looking at how their service can be improved is not judged to be productive, and yet that work could make all the GPs in the practise more productive.
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  18. Solar panels would be great if we had a way to store the energy for six months. Without large-scale grid storage that can do this, solar panels create more problems for the grid than they solve. Fortunately, old EV batteries make very good storage systems for homes and businesses.
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  19. I agree. One growth area is going to be in security response. AI can help spot problems, but it is not going to stop theives stealing copper from battery banks or wind turbines, or stop Trump turning up on your doorstep with his pocket army. Nor will it actually rehabilite offenders when they are caught. That is going to need real empathetic humans that can lead people in a better direction.
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  20. I think there should be some state support for those people with children. We need to ensure that children are cared for, educated and encouraged to meet their potential and take their place as citizens. Providing the number of children is not excessive, then I think some state support is desirable and necessary.
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  21. I think Richard's point still holds for public pensions - unless the public services of tomorrow are the services that the younger generations want, then there will be no funding to pay public pensions.
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  22. A 100% Capital Gains Tax would help - any increase in asset values goes to the government, so there is no point trying to sell any asset for more than you paid for it (or its value at the point the tax was brought in).
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  23.  @tarquin161234  No, I think it shows how transparent he is.
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  24. As one of the other commenters said, I think we have to separate 'farming' from 'agricultural land owning'. One is hard work and produces food and employment, the other is easy (if you are wealthy) and produces nothing.
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  25.  @superkang7448  One might even argue it isn't even an error. It's part of the designed behaviour of the system. It doesn't mean that the claimants are 200 years old. It just means a valid date isn't held on the system. You could stop their payment until you can obtain a valid date, but it doesn't indicate fraud, or 'swamp' or anything Musk says it does.
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  26. There are a whole load of financial issues that prevent people getting a home. Problems finding the first month's rent, the security deposit, guaranteeing the rent, lack of transport to get children to school, etc. All of these problems are solvable with money, but it needs some leadership to start fixing them.
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  27. Only Trump's hubris will allow him to imagine that this will not come out in the end and destroy his reputation.
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  28. I would reframe your statement - "If they are not on EVERYONE'S side then I am not on theirs." This is what we expect of a Labour government. They should not 'forget' people, or undervalue their roles. As a retired person who volunteers, I see an enormous amount of 'work' being done for free by people who have good pensions and who still want to contribute to society. My volunteering brings me into contact with the sick, the disabled, and the carers. Not all of these supply a service to the economy, but the carers certainly do. Mothers and Fathers aren't just caring when they spend time with their children, they are also educating. Many of the sick and disabled would want to do some work, but the benefits system doesn't always allow them to do what they can do. So much needs to be improved in the UK, and Labour cannot do this if their focus is too narrow.
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  29. Probably not, but there is certainly a case for the situation to be addressed to our MPs and councillors. Get writing people!
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  30. I wish Richard would do a video on what he considers might work as strategies to either prevent the crash or prevent the very wealthy from benefiting from it. Sadly, options will exist for foreign countries that do not exist for private individuals, especially those who live in the USA.
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  31. It would be great if everyone in the UK could afford to buy a warm winter coat that would last a long time for, say, £300. Sadly, they cannot. We need our society to be more equal in terms of wealth and while I don't like Inheritance Tax, until we are very much more equal, I think it is a necessary evil.
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  32. The Budget we have just had was one of the most honest we have had for many years.
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  33. I have long thought that children need to meet adults other than their teachers and parents. They need to learn to interact with adults in all sorts of roles. But fundamentally the parents are too scared to let them. What has scared them? The world has; which brings us back to Richard's point! The high-functioning adults need to change things so that everyone can be happier.
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  34.  @dna9838  You are right. By 'high-functioning adults' I meant any adult that can act with a purpose.
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  35. That is a great pity. I live with a teacher, my stepdaughter, and I see the effort she puts into teaching, caring for, and nurturing the children at her secondary school.
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  36. If there is a will, there's a way. It just needs someone to push for it and to take responsibility.
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  37. Wanting to provide a good life for your children is a very natural and human thing to want to do, but land owners have to accept that there can be no exceptions made for privilege.
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  38. To call the workers in the City that are superflous "middle management" is to completely misunderstand both "middle management" and these superflous roles in the city. Middle Management is a productive job - work needs to be organised and planned. Some of the superflous roles in the city will be middle management, but most will not be. Most will be ordinary workers who report to middle management.
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  39. It certainly adds cost and complexity to government. The extra complexity makes it harder to see where the accounability should lie.
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  40.  @danielg9418  Is that the goal for the USA government? That it becomes more profitable?
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  41. It falls to the investment managers to make sure that the money is invested wisely. Richard's point is that, while many try to do so, the world and local economies are likely to be changing so rapidly in the near future that even these experts cannot adjust their portfolios swiftly enough. They need to be able to sell asset A to buy asset B, and if they are late trying to sell asset A they will not realise enough money to buy asset B. Part of the answer is diversification. In reality, different economies will change at different rates, and different asset classes will become stale at different rates. This creates a real value to the work of the professional investment managers, something Richard seems to ascribe little value to, as well as providing hope that the transition can be managed well enough for the majority of pensioners to continue to receive income from their pension savings.
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  42. I disagree that most people can’t afford it. They can, if they get a loan, as can the landlords that own any rental properties that need upgrading.
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  43. I think that "Giving people purpose, pride, hope, and happiness" is a great phrase that should be taken up by all of us as a civil duty to our young, our old and ourselves.
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  44.  @lestrem11  Parents with Children at fee-paying schools are now paying VAT on those fees, and Farmers are no longer exempt from Inheritance Tax, that's a start.
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  45.  @Globaldave1970  Long disputed territory of Crimea? But Russia agreed in 1994 to respect and even protect the borders of Ukraine as they existed in 1994. Russia wants the oil, gas, minerals and industrial capacity in Ukraine, and it wants to expand, to recover its lost glories.
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  46. Richard is one of those people who likes to think about the future and help other people understand what is going on in the world. Trump and Musk are delivering change at an unprecedented and untested pace. The probable effects of this is interesting to many people, especially those like yourself who will be badly affected by it.
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  47. That is a good question. Labour's communications seems to have been woefully inadequate. I was hoping that there would be more communication from the Labour party as to why the government policies were a good idea.
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  48. In the UK, we have never valued the role of the Manager. Most managers are promoted with no support or training. It is unsurprising that large numbers of them make a mess of it?
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  49. We have a national education service in the UK. The question is whether the service is fit for purpose, if it is scaring children.
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  50.  @mbak7801  Business likes stability, Speculators like instability. Be careful what you wish for.
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