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

  1.  @seiwarriors  Yes. We knew that they were capable and we also knew that despite that, recruitment in the UK is appallingly bad and they could very easily be shut out. Until the recruitment process gets a major overhaul, nothing much is going to change. In fact one of the universities used to put in a lot of time and effort into interviewing and assessing graduates applying for limited places on their PhD course, but were disappointed by the outcomes. They therefore decided to switch to a random selection and found that the outcomes were no worse than their careful assessments. They saved a lot of time and effort by themselves and applicants in the process. Maybe it was also a fairer basis of selection.
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  2. Starmer has made it clear that he wants growth but is silent on our surging wealth inequality. Biden managed to give the US growth but wealth inequality still surged and the public turned to Trump in desperation. Is Starmer driving the UK public towards Farage?
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  3. Linked to this is the long term illness levels in the UK. Interestingly from 2000 to 2019 this declined from 2.4 million to 2 million but since then has surged to around 2.8 million. A link perhaps to improved and then degraded healthcare of which mental health is a part. Of course, the IEA has a different take on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fs0gkyPpI3o.
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  4. Agreed. But the question is does the UK have scope for it and should it be used? I have assumed that if it was to be used sensibly then it would largely be focused on investment. Labour did want to invest £28bn on its net zero target but has now retracted that proposal. Presumably they don't see MMT as an option.
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  5.  @metallitech  Misleading in what way? He is after all merely stating a fact.
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  6.  @MrAlb3rtazzo  I don't think that anyone is denying that but if they leave, the assets such as property that they own will remain. Across the country, the volume of assets owned by the wealthy is colossal.
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  7. I agree. We certainly don't want a Trump, neither become Trump's poodle, which is where we are heading.
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  8. Small modular reactors and carbon capture are certainly in their infancy but will need time to develop. The UK is in near the start but as usual will sell out to US private equity as soon as it shows promise. Wind power took many years to become viable as does technology in general whether it is driverless cars or even the common smart phone. Unfortunately time is running out and there is a real danger that global warming will become unstoppable if we don't act and at least try.
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  9. So what is?
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  10.  @lindabastable3021  We desperately need PR but Starmer won't give it.
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  11. Agreed. Nice also if they applied some critical thinking to expand their time horizons, investment needed and the interplay between so many areas such as aging population, immigration, inadequate housing, growing wealth inequality, deteriorating public services etc. I don't even know what their vision is for these areas or the interplay between them.
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  12.  @edthompson9337  Yes of course. I was referring to relative production. France was close to 2 million in 2016 but is now 1.5 million but that is still 50% more than the UK whereas the UK was on course to overtake France.
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  13.  @musiqtee  Since the last century there has been a continuing migration of wealth into tax havens. The people may be offshore but their political influence remains onshore. It is estimated that currently there is about $500bn of corporation tax and $200bn of personal taxes are lost each year through the use of tax havens across western countries. This growing loss and increasing wealth inequality generally is having an impact on the extent to which public services can be provided. There must be a fracture point somewhere, I don't know where it is but I suspect we will continue to sleep walk towards it.
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  14.  @musiqtee  👍
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  15. I agree. Having said that, I am possibly one of the most unluckiest people in the UK when making telephone calls. I nearly always get a message stating that "we are experiencing exceptionally high call volumes". I can easily get 5 or more of these in succession. I would regard exceptional as once in a hundred, but let's say five times in a hundred, yet 5 successive times at 5% is about 1 chance in 30 million! Am I really that unlucky or are they just lying to me?
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  16. This is another aspect of why national leadership by an individual just doesn't work. It might have been relevant in the medieval era but is now damaging and often dangerous.
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  17.  @louisehogg8472  We certainly don't want leadership to be influenced by the wealthy. My point is that national leadership by any individual doesn't work. Far too often we see that leaders mislead once in power, push the boundaries and the public never really know what they are getting. In the modern era this unpredictability creates risk and is dangerous. Any semblance of stability in the world today is precarious and at some point our luck will run out. The only solution that I can see is for leadership to be in the hands of a small cross party group of MPs (in the case of the UK). They may appoint a chairman and spokesperson to represent the leadership group but the group would have control. They would be appointed by means of some form of PR election, preferably annually and largely electronically (much like the submission of Tax Returns). Having it annually would reduce short terms and enable better long term planning. The above is just a broad outline but in reality is unlikely to ever be implemented. There is no discussion of anything along these lines. The powerful and wealthy influencers wouldn't like it and would interfere. Even if something like this was established in one country it is unlikely to be replicated elsewhere. As you can probably gather, I am not optimistic about the ability of our species to survive. At some point I think that our luck will run out. I wish that I could do something about it but can't. I just accept that. Apart from adding comments like this, I just get on with life.
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  18. My responses to replies get deleted so aren't appearing.
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  19. Eases the burden on what? Richard is talking about the economy not the government so that stopping winter fuel payments cuts back the amount of money going into the economy. His printed statement for the audio says " it prevents the government creating the money required to deliver what the economy is capable of". How is that propaganda?
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  20.  @grahamkelsey8687  My question was why is it propaganda?
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  21.  @maria8809ttt  This seems to have moved off topic but I agree with you. I think that the UK should be using MMT for investment purposes. I would have liked to have seen HS2 completed using it and would rather it be used instead of PFI contracts etc.
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  22.  @maria8809ttt  Thanks Maria. That is certainly something to think about and absorb. Just a pity that there is little mainstream discussion along these lines. The UK certainly needs tools of this nature. Much of what is needed whether healthcare, education, housing, industry etc needs to be transformative but Labour seem to be just along for the ride and shows few indications of any intent to do something. In some ways we are almost back to 1945 again or at least should be.
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  23.  @garethwilliams4467  Why is that? Is the IMF wrong?
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  24. We are starting to see what Reform will mean. We know that they want tons of money to flood the UK with propaganda and big business in the US want to plunder the NHS. Rupert Lowe of Reform recently gave an insight into how they might do this. There is a YouTube video on the Maximilien Robespierre channel.
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  25. We may be able to produce more better and more detailed information but the story that gets out to the public may not follow suit. Semi Badenoch has been appointed the new leader of the Conservative Party and is already talking about having lower taxes and a smaller state but she doesn't elaborate further. The Daily Mail today has a headline of "A leader who knows how to get Britain's economy booming" but doesn't seem to clarify how.  Of course a smaller state means less money from government, but where? Is it a cut back nn the Health Service so that our health deteriorates or we become reactive to events like covid again rather than being prepared? Will we reduce our armed forces size and wait for conflict to arise before reacting? Will we cut back on our preparations against climate change? Will we ...? There are so many and yet all we get is a superficial statement that there will be a smaller state. Perhaps Badenoch expects that a reduction in tax will create a surge in business profits and boost the economy but where will the tax cuts be directed? George Osborn slashed corporation tax which came down from 32% to 19% to show that "Britain was open for business", but the result was pitiful. If Badenoch cuts taxes for the wealthy, who already have a surplus each year of income over expenditure, then that won't boost the economy. All it will do is feed more money out of the active economy of business, jobs and services into asset purchases such as property, shares etc. Perhaps our politicians and media need to pay far more attention to the detail and the public need to demand more than just the superficial.
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  26.  @adenwellsmith6908  Perhaps then you can enlighten us.
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  27.  @adenwellsmith6908  This doesn't make sense. There is no debt bondage as you put it.
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  28.  @adenwellsmith6908  Firstly, 30% of that represents money that the government owes still itself as a result of QE. The rest is then split in two between savings within the UK as government bonds and government bonds held by foreign businesses and countries as part of their trading. Added to this, the UK has its own sovereign currency and if it really wanted to could create enough money overnight to pay everything off. It would do that of course because it would destabilise the currency.
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  29.  @adenwellsmith6908  Surely all of UK tax is used to clear down UK debt.
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  30.  @adenwellsmith6908  State pension debts are unfunded and work on the basis that the current generation will pay for the future pension costs of the elderly. You could also ask what will be the future NHS costs for all UK citizens or what will be the future educational costs for all UK children currently living?
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  31.  @adenwellsmith6908  And what about the debt for future NHS costs of everyone who is currently a UK citizen and educational costs for all UK children?
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  32.  @adenwellsmith6908  What is true debt and how did you calculate that?
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  33.  @rfrisbee1  That certainly happens to a degree but a lot just end up with awful teeth missing teeth. I haven't seen any evidence that it costs the NHS more.
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  34.  @garyb455  I think that says it all. Very unfortunate = scrounger. Really?
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  35.  @rfrisbee1  I can agree with your first two sentences. In your penultimate one you state that there was "a limited supply of practitioners with virtually unlimited demand for their services". This brings us back to the point that I made in my original posting. Rather than invest in a better service for all, the preference seems to be to use price to effectively exclude a proportion of the public.
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  36. These companies need to be taxed heavily on any increases in expected CO2 emissions over where they should be based on 2024 levels.
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  37. Unfortunately they will deliver very little. I agree with most of what was said. Government's focus on growth is an illusion and as Richard says, certain sectors of the public have already reached the limited of their expenditure. The problem with that is that they are alway left with a surplus that they cannot spend so invest instead in assets such as shares, property etc. What we then see are escalating assets prices, increasing landlord rents and an increasing drain on the active economy.
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  38. Agreed. It is time that we at least shifted our pseudo democracy towards PR. The other problem is that national leadership doesn't work and should have been consigned to the medieval era particularly when personal elevation to power nearly always seems to trump national responsibility.
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  39.  @danielg9418  Where did you get that from? I have tried to find out but the nearest that I got was to ascertain that the annual income is of the order of $1.2bn but after his financing of his $44bn debt financing for Twitter the annual interest costs are expected to be about £1.2bn. If that's the case then it will be making a loss.
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  40. The world is being increasingly taken over by billionaire oligarchs. They have the money to develop AI but do you really think that they are concerned about employment issues?
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  41.  @p8700-z5q  Really? The loss of $500bn per annum and growing has no effect on the level of public services that can be provided?
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  42.  @p8700-z5q  So the degradation of public services is down to poor management and is nothing to do with funding. Really? Presumably you are saying that if services are getting worse then so is management. Billions are spent on consultancy each year to improve management so presumably this is all a waste. Yet I read almost daily that public services are being squeezed, that there is a growing shortage of expertise in all sorts of fields. Even today on the BBC website GPs are reported to be at breaking point and that government has failed to meet the targeted number of doctors promised.
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  43.  @p8700-z5q  My replies to this keep disappearing!
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  44.  @physiocrat7143  I don't follow why that is a prerequisite. Would that be then be some sort of progressive tax and would it deal with our rising wealth inequality?
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  45.  @physiocrat7143  Land value taxes are almost certainly better than what we have at present, but they are a subset of current problems. I still don't see why you say they are a prerequisite and I still don't see how this would solve the massive wealth inequality problem that exists.
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  46.  @physiocrat7143  Back to basics: The problem with the wealthy is that they are unable to spend enough. Each year they always have a surplus that they are unable to spend and so they buy assets such as property, shares etc with the surplus. With the increasing number of wealthy there is more competition to buy assets and that in turn pushes up asset prices. More importantly, this leads to increasing amounts being transferred out of the active economy of jobs, business and services into asset prices and as a result, the active economy suffers. We are now in a position where this is acting as a drain on the active economy, it will not stop and is damaging. Any chances of growth then become much harder.
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  47. @physiocrat7143 Back to basics. The problem with the wealthy is that they are unable to spend enough. They always have a surplus that they invest in asset purchases such as property, shares etc. That in turn, through increased competition, pushes up prices. Furthermore, with increasing amounts being used to purchase assets, increasing amounts are being withdrawn from the active economy of jobs, business, services. Overtime with the increases in wealth inequality that we have, there is an increasing drain on the active economy as increasing amounts go into asset purchases. This is damaging to the economy and holds back growth.
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  48.  @physiocrat7143  Back to basics. The problem with the wealthy is that they are unable to spend enough. They always have a surplus that they invest in asset purchases such as property, shares etc. That in turn, through increased competition, pushes up prices. Furthermore, with increasing amounts being used to purchase assets, increasing amounts are being withdrawn from the active economy of jobs, business, services. Overtime with the increases in wealth inequality that we have, there is an increasing drain on the active economy as increasing amounts go into asset purchases. This is damaging to the economy and holds back growth.
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  49.  @physiocrat7143  I replied to this four times yesterday but none appear.
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  50.  @physiocrat7143  This is my fifth attempt at replying. Others have disappeared. The problem with the wealthy is that they are unable to spend enough. They always have a surplus that they invest in asset purchases such as property, shares etc. That in turn, through increased competition, pushes up prices. Furthermore, with increasing amounts being used to purchase assets, increasing amounts are being withdrawn from the active economy of jobs, business, services. Overtime with the increases in wealth inequality that we have, there is an increasing drain on the active economy as increasing amounts go into asset purchases. This is damaging to the economy and holds back growth.
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