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

@downshift4503 Why is that?
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@12theotherandrew Unfortunately it seems as though they can rarely be trusted.
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@downshift4503 I can understand that it might have been human nature during medieval times but in the modern age we should have wised up. We still have a chance to change although it is a very slim one. Difficult to see how our species can survive if we don't but I doubt that I will still be here by then.
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Labour has clearly lost touch with its own purpose and instead just dances to the populist tune, and that has a far right agenda. They don't know where they actually stand on anything and consequently are not able to articulate the logic behind their decisions, let alone try and educate the media and public on their decisions.
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Good for you. Your posting seems to have flooded this space with off topic noise. Was that deliberate?
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Most politicians seem to understand very little as does nearly all of the media. Any attempt to discuss reality would soon be corrupted into gibberish. The wealthy media owners deliberately need to keep the public in the dark.
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@mypointofview1111 I am not that hopeful about what their priorities will be but I do agree with you about what they should be. As well as introducing PR, I would be inclined to do something about the Wild West letting market and perhaps introduce a rent cap on property letting and then buy up houses at keen prices as landlords start to sell up for use then in social letting. In reality though, that won't happen.
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@stephfoxwell4620 I was referring to the period when he was PM.
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@GhostOnTheHalfShell My understanding is that Singapore is still regarded as a tax haven with minimal public services.
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@GhostOnTheHalfShell I am not convinced about Singapore. Low taxes and decent public services don't go together.
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@GhostOnTheHalfShell I accept that Singapore may have an extensive public housing sector, although I am surprised. If taxes are low and government is providing a good level of public services then Singapore is either creating lots of new money or Singapore debt is increasing. If money is being printed then interest rates will almost certainly be rising but they aren't. I can see however that Singapore debt is increasing. Since 2022 Singapore debt has increased from 143% of GDP to 174% now.
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@GhostOnTheHalfShell Thanks but this isn't going anywhere so I will finish.
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Sadly I have to agree with most of this. We live in increasingly dangerous times and there are no signs that the widespread danger is being abated. If anything it is the opposite particularly with surging extremes of wealth, advancing neoliberalism, global warming, advances in AI and nuclear proliferation etc. We have even had some close calls in the past but at some point our luck will run out.
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@annesaunders3851 I don't know what Labour represents any more than you do. My question to @imbonkers3629 was to ask what the solution was to our economic woes.
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@imbonkers3629 Communism doesn't really exist and probably never did. The real split is between autocracy and democracy. The autocracies are the likes of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, perhaps soon the USA. Europe is becoming a dwindling last refuge for democracy.
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The fiction that Richard refers to is so embedded with the public that probably most politicians and Bank of England staff just accept it. Many may well believe the fiction, it probably never crosses their mind and those who are aware of reality are not brave enough to stick their head above the parapet. Their own job security is more important for them.
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I would like to see in depth analysis and recommendations on what is happening in politics and economics. Taxation is a bit of a mess and full of anomalies. Your book "The of Joy of Tax" was great. That in itself could be brought up to date and form the basis of a whole stream of videos. I would also like to have more on economic topics such as MMT, wealth inequality, universal basic income etc. Your thoughts on current trends would also be interesting. Take basic income for example. We live in a world with increasing automation and robotics. Is there a tipping point at which universal basic income has to be adopted or will that only happen when there is a break down in society? If there is a tipping point then why aren't we planning for it or adopting it now? Again on the subject of robotics, why do robots not pay national insurance? The likes of Amazon are hugely automated and many businesses are going that way. Why do high streets shops for example that use people have to pay employer's national insurance but those businesses that have automated don't? The state has to pick up the cost of benefits for those people displaced by automation but not for those who are working. With full employment this might not be an issue but employment may become harder to obtain. Then there are the anomalies. Education and the NHS are two of the largest expense areas for government. A couple of decades ago the cost of tertiary education started to be passed onto the students. But why pick on education and not the NHS. We have an increasingly aging population with increasingly costly treatments particularly for the elderly. Does it make sense to have student loans for the young instead of say NHS operation loans for the over 60s repayable from their estate upon death or written off at that stage? Why one over the other? And then Jeremy Hunt says that IHT is double taxation. Is there an argument that IHT merely takes the place of the repayment of healthcare loans for the over 60s?
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@edthompson9337 What are you on about? I was discussing relative car production. France has been equally affected by covid and the move to EVs.
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@christinavuyk2026 Money controls the media and what the public think.
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@ That's the problem. Government is often too worried about short term public opinion and tends to suffer from tunnel vision. The problems that we are faced with at present are so significant that a much broader mindset is needed.
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@andrewwelsh6638 I have lost track of the number of times I have seen enforcement regulations roll out only to find that they are toothless and remain ineffective.
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The EU is going to be needed as a counterweight to an increasingly dominant US. Brexit didn't help and so much of the UK is now owned or controlled by US corporates that the likes of Musk feel the need to meddle in UK politics. What happened to "Take Back Control"?
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@MaRi-Br1984 I agree. There is a growing and economically damaging wealth inequality in the UK and I doubt that the IHT and other measures will make much of a dent in. I don't know the extent to which assets in the UK are owned by people who either can't be identified or are resident in a tax haven. I think that those assets should be taxed.
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Torsten Bell perhaps.
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@col.hertford9855 Difficult to answer. I can understand Richard's comment regarding the practicalities of valuation and can't see an easy solution. Five OECD countries I understand do have a wealth tax and perhaps we need to learn something from them.
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Unfortunately power trumps everything. I suspect that this is now personal for Starmer and he will want to retain power. This is why national leadership doesn't work. As Richard says, there is a lot that Starmer could do that would be economically and socially sound and beneficial but he is reluctant to raise his head above the parapet set by the Tories. Over time I expect that he very cautiously will but if the likes of Dail Mail headlines constrains his policies then he will probably run out of time before much is done and he will have deservedly failed as many have before him.
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@adenwellsmith6908 I think you have the wrong idea. That isn't what has happened. Have a look at what happened with QE for example. Gary Stevenson has done some good coverage on this and it is available on YouTube.
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@downshift4503 The UK does have its own sovereign currency and within constraints can create money but that was not the point that I was making.
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@downshift4503 Really? Have you not looked at what's been happening around you and will continue to happen. The UK could create money but Rachel Reeves has stated that she has no intention of doing that and it would easily solve the problem anyway.
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@downshift4503 I agree with that but I prefer Maynard Keynes "we can afford whatever we can do".
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Agreed but have never understood this one. Education is a huge cost for government but so is the NHS. We know that there is a huge upsurge in health costs as people age. But why does government pick on the young rather than the older generation? Students have to take out a loan for tertiary education and that will eventually be written off if not fully repaid. Government could insist that all medical treatment for over 65s has to be paid for by means of a loan which is then settled from their estate when they die or is written off at that stage. Why the former over the later?
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@adenwellsmith6908 What, Rishi's government too socialist for you?
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@tfive24 I appreciate that. The starting point doesn't have to be lengthy or detailed, Just a word such as "nonsense" or "ridiculous" is a starting point to capture attention. They then need to be aware of how much time they are likely to have and be prepared. They seldom seem to be at all prepared.
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@physiocrat7143 Thanks for the tip. I was hoping that other people might point me towards something interesting. This one was first published in 1879 but is highly thought of. I have ordered a copy for my Kindle at £0.99!
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@physiocrat7143 Thanks for that. This was first published in 1879 but has been well received. Another book that I could have added is "Tanked" by Paul Wallace.
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@maria8809ttt Thanks. 😀
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When are people going to learn that having an individual as a national leader just doesn't work and is damaging and sometimes dangerous? This just doesn't apply to the US or Russia, China, North Korea, Iran etc etc but is just as relevant to the UK.
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At present we only have a pseudo democracy. I agree that we need PR. Personally, I dislike having leaders. We never know what we are getting with them or how far they will go. Across the World today and the past we can readily see that it doesn't work and is dangerous. The idea of leadership should have been left behind in the Middle Ages. I would rather have an executive more closely based on a cross party Select Committee style with a chairperson appointed by the committee.
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Unfortunately some of the powerful, non resident oligarchs who control our media will pump out the message of "tax and spend" and this is now embedded in society. Governments then tend to go along with it rather than take on this false narrative.
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@WarrenPeaceOG Investopedia states that a reserve currency is a large amount of currency held by central banks and major financial institutions to use for international transactions. The US dollar seems to account for about 58% of global reserves whereas sterling is about 5%. I appreciate that the UK may not have the scope that the US has. I understand that their inflation reduction act created hundreds of billions of dollars. On that basis, the UK must easily have scope to create say £20bn for investment.
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@abody499 My understanding is that its not printing more money that would reduce the exchange rate, it is whether printing more money is inflationary. With any signs of inflation, the Bank of England would increase interest rates. The US has done this on a massive scale without it being inflationary. I appreciate that they have far more scope.
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@PeterKoperdan If you haven't done so already, I would recommend Angus Hanton's book "Vassal State". It is a real eye opener.
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This is a test. I replied four times yesterday to a comment but none have appeared.
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My reply to physiocrat7143 in my earlier posting was as below. 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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I don't have an answer but I do recognise that we have an aging population in the future a reduced younger generation will have a huge burden of looking after an increased retired population. If it is avoidable, what are the solutions? Will we rely on more automation and robotics to help? If not then there is a problem. Then there only seem to be three options: 1. Care and support to the elderly will diminish so that they don't live as long, 2. we encourage young families to start a family but when ownership and stability of a home is a mirage and job security is poor, it is hardly conducive to that, or 3. we rely on immigration but the public are against that. What's going to give?
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There seems to be a mixture of lies and misinformation about the size of UK debt in the media and also from government, politicians and even economists who should know better. Richard is doing a great job in uncovering some of the nonsense. Keep it up. Question: If UK debt includes the future liability for public sector pensions such as for education, NHS etc, why aren't state pensions included? Why isn't the future costs of education of existing UK children included or future healthcare costs of all UK residents included etc etc? Surely the inconsistency is a nonsense and seems to indicate that public sector pensions should be removed from UK debt. Where is the political discussion over this?
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It is a paradigm shift. Trump is an autocrat and we saw an early indication of that on 6 January 2021 and I really wonder what will happen in 2028. Now I guess he will want to cosy up to other world autocrats starting with Putin.
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Couldn't agree more and yet we now have a new government that seems to be well on course to fail before it has even got started.
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