Comments by "Michael RCH" (@michaelrch) on "Channel 4 News"
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@f2m185
I don't trust AOC. I trust the scientific community that is crystal clear on the causes and threat of climate change, and has been for decades.
I don't care if you are on the right or the left. I care if you support the action that will avoid the climate crisis getting worse. What you might be failing to appreciate is that the climate crisis is not in the same ball park as people flying less or having to change their diets. It's existential. The planet could be 4C warmer by the end of the century. That will kill not millions but hundreds of millions. It will end the way we currently live. It will spark the biggest food shortages, water shortages and population migration in history. All completely irreversible and likely to get worse as the decades and centuries roll on. I didn't hear this from politicians. It's the findings of a mass of peer reviewed science.
As for not having alternatives, this is just not true is it. We have alternatives for energy. We have alternatives for ground transportation. We have alternatives for climate friendly agriculture and major industrial processes. We have ways of saving huge amounts of energy. Etc Sure we will have to fly less until we have clean forms of flight, but for gods sake, we have only been flying at anything like these levels for about 20 years. It's not exactly going back to the dark ages. We can live without flying to the other side of the world twice a year. We can't live without food, water and shelter though.
The problem with this conversation is that you are not paying attention to the massive downside risks and you assume that I am coming at this from an ideological perspective. But that is actually wrong. I am well off and run a business and I was firmly centre right until I grasped the seriousness of the climate crisis. I spent a lot of time trying to understand how it was that humanity was knowingly driving itself off a cliff. The answer turns out to be an economic system that cannot care about people and cannot care about the future. Instead, it's designed to care about profits and power right now. That is how it works. That is how it always worked and that is why, 30 years after the world was warned that we had to get off fossil fuels, governments and businesses are still implementing policy to support their use even more (despite the rampant greenwashing that is now customary). Like Exxon saying it wants to comply with the Paris accords while planning a 25% increase in emissions in the next 5 years.
I don't think that you want to f the planet. Not for a second. I think that you don't realise how serious and urgent this crisis is and I think that you have believed a lot of very forceful propaganda that supports the status quo and the economic and political forces that benefit from it. We can have a much better world if we actually put people and nature first, rather than economic growth and profit, the benefit of which accrues to a tiny number of people.
In fact, my only hope comes from believing that people are actually fundamentally considerate and want to help eachother. The problem arises because so much elite power, as wielded by the likes of Exxon and their friends in politics, is so successfully arrayed against people expressing that considerate and pro-social nature.
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@Dave-gn4yt I left the UK a few years ago. I now pay higher tax than I would in the UK both from my work and from income from my company. And also from the value of my property. I pay income tax ON ALL MY INCOME at a rate of about 42% - no lower rate for dividends or capital gains. I pay for health insurance on top of that. I pay about 0.7% wealth tax every year.
And it's worth every single penny. The public services are excellent. The transportation system, both in my city and around the country, is world class. The public facilities like swimming pools and sports grounds are either free or cost next to nothing to use. And no one is on the streets. And I mean no one.
The reason for this is that rich people here, understand that they have a responsibility to their communities. They cannot just get rich and let the rest of their country go hungry. Paying taxes is still seen as a patriotic thing to do here.
So yeah, I'm a millionaire and I advocate for higher taxes on the rich. In the UK they would work wonders given how little tax the rich currently pay, and how much unearned wealth they have accumulated.
Just remember this. During COVID the government spent about £600 billion to keep the economy afloat. That is £10,000 per person. So if you arent £10,000 richer than before then someone else has your £10,000, and I can tell you who that it. It's the 1% who own your house, or who own your mortgage or who own the company that you work for, or the company your pay your energy and shopping bills to etc
That's why the number of billionaires shot up during COVID. It was an absolutely bonanza for the very rich.
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@crown9413
There is a lot of cobalt coming from Congo but only a fraction of it is "artisanal" - ie involves child labour.
Re the subsidies, that figure of $62 billion comes from a study in PNAS. It's correct.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fossilfuel-subsidies/u-s-drillers-miners-would-be-out-billions-if-paid-climate-health-costs-study-idUSKBN2BE2TS
And as I said, if you are so worried about cobalt, then you should not be buying petrol/gasoline. More than 50% of the worlds supply is used AND PERMANENTLY CONSUMED in the refining of petrol.
Did you ever give a toss about cobalt until you heard the oil companies using it in their propaganda?
As for batteries being replaced, again, you are misinformed. Batteries built now will be in service in one form of another for at least 30 years. After which they will be recycled.
When was the last time you bought a recycled litre of petrol?
Also you might want to ask yourself, why you are so attached to technology that is ancient, dirty, expensive and dominated by a few very powerful very corrupt global corporations, when you have the choice of choosing a new technology that is cleaner, safer, less polluting and uses energy that you can literally generate yourself?
Why the big love affair with oil? It's old and filthy.
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@crown9413
I think you just exposed yourself as not having an argument.
If you want to show that EVs and renewables are too costly (even if they are now cheaper than oil, gas and coal), go find the externalised costs of building EVs and solar panels and wind turbines and let's compare them against the $5 trillion ANNUALLY of subsidies and indirect subsidies for fossil fuels.
And the 18% figure is a cumulative loss of GDP every year at 2050. It isn't a running loss of 0.6% in one year. It is a cumulative drag on the economy that builds up every year to 18% cumulative loss of annual economic activity by 2050. In 2050 the economy will be 18% smaller that it would have been had we taken action. And as I said, the spending on action pays for itself! As per the CCC report
"This investment generates substantial fuel savings, as cleaner, more-efficient technologies replace their fossil-fuelled predecessors. In time, these savings cancel out the investment costs entirely "
And as I illustrated with the paper in Nature, it only gets worse from there.
As for carbon taxes, these are not costs to the economy! The economy is not 40% smaller because the government tax take is 4-% of GDP. Taxes redistribute money flows from one place to another. For example, in Canada the carbon tax is funds a monthly flat cash payment to households. It actually stimulates the economy because it is mostly the rich that pay it while the dividend goes to everyone equally, so the poorest get more money in their pocket, which they spend pretty much every penny of, driving economic activity.
Please just dial back your certainty on your opinions on this subject. There is a very powerful reason that the prevailing wisdom now says we have to act very fast on climate change. If you want to gainsay that, then get some evidence together for your arguments, because right now, all your arguments fail.
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@grahamt5924
I own and run a business. I know exactly what it's like. I wouldn't call it brutal. And corporation taxes are taxes on profits. They don't harm the viability of the business because you only pay them when you make a profit after all your expenses and payroll. If anything the government should increase corporation tax to 35% and reduce payroll taxes.
Instead, they aim to pay for an expand of social care by raising NI, which falls disproportionately on lower paid workers.
I don't expect the government to do everything for people, I expect it to correct for the disadvantages that people have by virtue of their birth and circumstances they can't change for themselves. I was born poor but was given a huge hand up by the state in the form of a state aided place to an independent school, as well as a set of benefits that allowed my family to live with some small dignity. That ladder out of poverty is gone now. And with it much of the social mobility that makes for a fair and dynamic society.
I have been successful in life but I experienced a period of severe debilitating disease that almost killed me and has me off work for months, and left me disabled for years afterwards. That taught me that it's very easy to underestimate the significance of people suffering in circumstances that they can't change. And it's very easy to blame people for their misfortune but very often, they inherited that misfortune or suffer it for reasons they didn't have any control over.
That has left me with a lot more empathy for people who are not as fortune as me, and a lot more resentment for people who inherited their success and then exploited people to get more and more wealth. And trust me, thanks to the university I went to, I know the kind of people who run the country and major corporations (hilariously, one of my ex friends from uni made front page news for a week a couple of weeks ago) and they are completely detached from the experience of normal people. They are just playing a game of acquiring power and money.
This isn't a good society. It's a recipe for widespread suffering, social breakdown and oligarchy.
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just ask No, I didn't say that and I don't think or act that way. I have given up plenty so far. Let's see if you have.
I gave up eating all animal products because they emit far larger amounts of CO2 and cause far more environmental destruction than plant-based foods. My family stopped flying in 2016 because it is terrible for emissions. We sold our second car and our last car was an EV. We try to buy everything we need second hand and have otherwise cut down on our consumption to just things we need.
I only mention this, not because I think it makes me look good - the fact that I eat a plant-based diet probably makes you think even less of me (though you might consider why that is) - but to make a point that I am more than willing to follow through with my own behaviour.
But I also know that my personal impact is tiny and the way that our economy works is, for a large part, not driven by personal choices, especially for people with limited means.
It is driven by what industrial corporations offer at the lowest prices. And that is not something that consumers control. It is what the structure of our markets controls, and those markets are created and regulated by governments.
So until governments take firm action to make the clean, sustainable choices the most attractive and the cheapest, then the dysfunctional market, in combination with profit-seeking corporations, will ensure that we fail to address this crisis, and we all lose, starting with the poorest and ending up with us. Which by the way, has been happening under our noses for the last 10-20 years.
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@dylanhoward7668
You haven't defined what you mean by capitalism. That might make for a more productive discussion.
Here are the top countries in the report you cited
Finland.
Iceland.
Denmark.
Switzerland.
Netherlands.
Sweden.
Germany.
Norway.
It's worth noting that these are hybrid economies with some of the highest levels of government intervention in the economy, strongest market regulation and with the most comprehensive welfare states and public services. These are all in opposition to capitalism. This is not an accident.
My definition of capitalism is that it defines the ownership structure of enterprises. It defines a system where one class owns the enterprise and a different class is employed by and works for the enterprise. This is the most unique thing about capitalism. Markets are not unique to capitalism by any means. There are secondary features of capitalism that are particular but not unique - things like methods of allocation capital - but the employer/employee relationship is the thing that capitalism invented as an alternative to feudalism and slavery. It's interesting to note that in it's early days, capitalist employment was known as "wage slavery" - even by people like Abraham Lincoln. That understanding that man is renting himself to get an income, rather than being the full beneficiary of the product of his labour was resisted as unjust and immoral for a long time.
You say capitalism is the best we have but that is like saying that the horse and cart was the best form of transportation while the automobile was in its infancy.
Not only is capitalism an inherently unjust system, but it's internal logic is quite literally destroying the planet. It has to exploit natural resources. It places no value on human well-being, a stable environment or long term sustainability. It can't. Any capitalist enterprise that doesn't take all the short term opportunities open to it is gobbled up by the ones that will. And because the owners are usually nowhere near the destruction their enterprise causes, there is no internal incentive to avoid destructive practices.
There are fairly simple improvements we could make to the system we have now. For example, in an enterprise, why is it that the workers have no control over what the enterprise does - ie what it makes, who it hires, where it operates, etc? If democracy is good enough for running our countries, states and cities, why do we expect private tyranny when we walk through the doors of our workplace?
Second, why is it that one class gets to live off the surplus value of the labour of another class? Why is it that people can literally do nothing except own assets and the more of people's labour and the more of the world's natural resources they can exploit, the richer and more powerful they become?
And because of this accumulative nature of capitalism which always tends towards monopoly or oligopoly, not only does it unerringly produce grotesque inequality, but it also concentrates so much power in so few hands, that the capitalist elite effectively control the political sphere as well. It's clear to see that the more capitalist a society, the less healthy it's democracy.
There are so many fatal flaws in capitalism, it's honestly a challenge to bring up all the worst ones. And finally, to say that we can't do better, is tantamount to giving up the climate and the natural systems that we rely on to survive. The capitalist elites have known about the coming climate crisis since the late 1980s. Their response was to accelerate towards utter catastrophe. It's not the people - it's not personal failings. It's an unavoidable consequence of the internal logic of capitalism.
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@crown9413 You are incorrect about subsidies. Look at the paper.
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/14/e2011969118
"The direct benefit to fossil fuel producers across all four fuels is estimated at $62 billion per year"
There is a later section that talks about indirect subsidies, and then there is a section for Total Subsidies
"The results indicate a total subsidy across all four fuels of $592 billion in the most recent year, "
The total implicit and explicit subsidies were calculated for the industry globally at more that $5 trillion per year.
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/05/02/Global-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies-Remain-Large-An-Update-Based-on-Country-Level-Estimates-46509
And you can try to waive away implicit subsidies but they are very meaningful. They are the costs the fossil fuels cause that are not priced into the product. These costs have to be paid, they just aren't paid at the pump, so the technology has a massive artificial market advantage over other technologies that do not cause massive amounts of externalised costs. It represents a huge market failure - perhaps the biggest in history.
As for decarbonising "too fast", there is no science warning about this. ALL the warnings are about decarbonising far too slowly.
Due to the massive savings from switching to clean energy the amount of investment required to decarbonise fast enough to hit Paris targets is less than 1% of GDP.
https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/The-Sixth-Carbon-Budget-The-UKs-path-to-Net-Zero.pdf
"In time, these savings cancel out the investment costs entirely –a vital new insight that means our central estimate for costs is now below 1% of GDP throughout the next 30 years."
This compares with a LOSS of GDP of 18% of GDP by 2050 if we fail to act in time
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/world-could-lose-fifth-gdp-without-climate-action-study-2021-04-22/
Indeed, potential losses over the century are staggering.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15453-z
"If countries are even unable to implement their current NDCs, the whole world would lose more benefit, almost 149.78–791.98 trillion dollars until 2100."
Far from costing the poor more, acting rapidly on climate change, will save huge amounts of money. Not just because renewable infrastructure is cheaper
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-the-era-of-negative-subsidy-offshore-wind-power-has-almost-arrived
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/08/30/new-record-low-solar-price-bid-1-3%C2%A2-kwh/
but because it is the only way to avoid making where the world's poor mainly live uninhabitable!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2011/oct/26/climate-change-developing-country-impacts-risk
Also, I think you should really think twice about trying to defend fossil fuels, which is a technology that is used and benefits the rich countries far far more than the global south
https://www.worldometers.info/oil/oil-consumption-by-country/
by using the the suffering of the poorest people of the world as your excuse. These people hardly use them, they have had almost no role in causing the climate crisis and they have most to lose from it.
By all means say that you like driving petrol cars, say you don't like Elon Musk, say you are annoyed by Extinction Rebellion, whatever, but leave the world's poor out of this.
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@Dragrath1
I am not against nuclear on safety grounds. In general I am not against it. It's just insanely expensive and it takes a very long time to build, typically 10-15 years. We need to decarbonise yesterday. Any nuclear we start now won't be producing energy until the mid 2030s, by which time we will have already failed utterly to stop the climate catastrophe turning completely nightmarish.
As for cost, it's about 6x more expensive than renewables. If you want to make everyone pay a fortune to stop the climate crisis, focussing on nuclear is the way to do it.
Not to mention that renewables are still getting cheaper fast, while costs for nuclear have been on an upwards trend for a couple of decades.
I totally don't buy the argument about not having enough space for renewables. This article illustrates the point.
https://www.freeingenergy.com/how-much-solar-would-it-take-to-power-the-u-s/
Don't get me wrong - in absolute terms it's a huge area but - but relatively, it's a very small area, it's there if we want it.
As for wind power, I would like to see the evidence that it's messing up the weather. I am sceptical. The weather system embodies massive quantities of energy, of which we can only harvest a small fraction.
So renewables have to be the main focus. Fine, start a few nuclear projects as (very expensive) insurance against trouble decarbonising the last 10% of generation with renewables. But we have to transform the energy system very fast indeed. Nuclear definitely does NOT fit that bill.
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Christopher Jennings
I am not advocating that oil production stop tomorrow. I am advocating a rapid move away from using oil to using alternatives. For example, about half of the UK's energy comes from renewables right now and nearly all of that capacity was added in the last 9 years.
There are no shortage of alternatives. What is misting is policy.
Oil companies don't deserve public subsidies. They have been massively profitable for decades because they suck up public money and investment and they don't pay for the immense damage they do to health and to the environment.
The IMF study shows that oil companies get hundreds of billions in implicit and explicit subsidies every year. If they lost them, they would go out of business.
We also now know that alternatives to fossil fuels create more, safer, better paid jobs than fossil fuels. Switching away from oil will be a huge boon for jobs and investment.
As for nationalisation, you are missing the point I am making. I don't want the industry nationalised because I want the government to run it.
I want it nationalised because the government is going to be bailing it out and spending masses of public money either way. They nights as well drive a hard bargain and take ownership.
As I said, if the oil companies can get a better deal in the market, let them.
And if the industry is in public hands, it can't corrupt government as it has done to date because there will be no rich shareholders there to bribe the government. It will be entirely a matter of public policy what happens to the industry. And if we want a habitable planet going forward, then that has to be a swift but managed decline.
As I said, the government is going to bailing them out anyway. We might as well neuter them and take control rather than just propping up a dangerous, corrupt and toxic industry in the hands of the wealthiest people and corporations on the world.
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The Grumpy Englishman
Out of interest, how many jobs would you happy to see go as the cost for a complete break with the EU?
You can see most large manufacturers crapping themselves that their supply chains will grind to a halt, so many will leave, plus all the service jobs that service those manufacturers will go. So the total number of jobs at stake could be very high. How many is too high?
100,000? 200,000? 500,000? 1,000,000?
All those people laid off will go on the dole, which will cost billions, and they will stop paying taxes. Plus the government will lose all the business taxes from the businesses that leave.
Then you have the financial services companies that pay 24% of all corporation tax. They will have to move all their European trading and operations to Europe. So there will be a fortune lost in corporation tax and lost income tax from wealthy bankers. This could easily be in the 10s of billions of pounds as well.
Net, the U.K. pays the EU about £10 Billion a year. That saving will be washed away in a flood of loses of GDP, jobs and taxes. The lost GDP growth will never be made up. It will probably take a decade at least for the U.K. to even get back on its feet in terms of renegotiating the 50+ trade deals that the EU has with the countries around the world. If you think the USA is coming to the rescue, you will be disappointed. Have you noticed how aggressively Trump is in trade? He will only accept a deal if it scalps Britain. And every other deal will be inferior to the EU deal because the EU negotiates on behalf of 500 consumers, vs 60 million that the U.K. will have to offer to potential trading partners.
There is simply no way that this is not going to be ruinous to the British economy. That will be ruinous to the public finances, to the NHS the armed forces, the education system and everybody’s standards of living.
What precisely are the upsides again? What are the terrible laws that the U.K. has had to accept against its will? Given it has a veto on any significant legislation, I can’t think of anything that warrants tanking the economy and everyone’s livings standards over.
Sorry, but you were a fool to believe the promises of Farage and the rest of the shower of turds that sold Brexit. There was no plan because no plan can work. The only option is to drive the car off the cliff, condemn the country to ruin and spend the next few decades picking up the pieces.
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@davidrobertsemail
> I think you are virtue signaling.
Buddy, you were asking. I answered. But as I said, personal action is only a small part of the solution here.
> EVs are bad for the planet.
They are much less bad than the alternative. If I coudl only use public transport, I would but it is not practical for me and my family.
> As are renewables. Renewables are all completely unreliable snd imported from coal powered China.
No industry is "good" for the planet. The question is whether it is sustainable. The research shows that renewables pay back the amount of carbon they require in their manufacture in about 2 years vs fossil fuels like coal, oil or gas. And that is getting better as the renewables get better and the processes to produce them get cleaner and themselves use low-carbon energy.
> Those politicians and celebrities that you agree with all fly everywhere and drive fancy cars and have massive homes.
I dont care what celebrities do or think. I care what the science shows. The scientists who work on climate science and and are generally unknown. If you actaully do hear them speak honestly, they are genuinely terrified of what they know is happening.
> If they believed in manbearpig they wouldn’t do any of those things.
Bad example dont you think. South Park effectively admitted they were totally wrong with Manbearpig and made a follow-up where Manbearpig exists and slaughters half the town.
> The whole climate change summit in Scotland could have been done on zoom. Instead 800 private jets flew there.
And it was a giganatic waste of time becuase the politicians in power are bought and paid for by the oil industry. I know. The whole thing sucked completely. But even the carbon from those flights is a drop in the ocean compared to what we are doing elsewhere. We have already but over 2,000,000,000,000 tonnes of carbon in the atmosphere and we add another 40,000,000,000 tonnes every year.
> If it’s the end of the world why are they behaving like that?
Because they are corrupt, sociopathic f*ckheads who don't care if you or I live or die.
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@CmdrTobs
> 1) Wealth equality isn't an end goal;
I didn't say it was. I said less inequality is.
> the developing world is really equal and they have comparatively bad living standards compared to the west.
Wrong. Developing countries have the highest gini coefficients in the world. The only big developed country outliers are the US and Russia, which have their isn reasons for being so unequal. Basically runaway capitalism.
> 2)It's OK that money goes to the rich (successful), what else would you expect?
Money going to the rich and it going to the successful are two different things. Under capitalism, money does indeed flow to the rich - not because they are doing anything useful but because they have the capital - they own the resources required to put labour to work. That gives them the right to extract profits from the surplus value created by their workers. The end result is that money constantly flows to those, not who work, but to those who already own everything.
This is unjust and exploitative. It doesn't reward hard work. It rewards the will to exploit others.
I know how capitalist businesses work because I own one employing dozens of people in several countries.
> Do you think the correlation between ability & productivity and income & wealth are weak in the UK? This isn't Africa where people get appointed to things on tribal loyality.
Ugh, this is incredibly racist, and wrong. UK wealth distribution is dominated by who your parents were. Either you were born to a very wealthy family in which case you inherit wealth and power directly, or you are born to parents near the top who can give you the opportunity to get into the system of capitalist exploitation that will propel you to wealth.
And let me let you into a secret. This is me. Kinda.
I went to Oxford and have a Meng. Because of the sport I did, I was surrounded by public schoolboys who were groomed from birth to run the country. And my god they were foul. And not especially clever. I was headhunted by a consultant but ended up taking a completely different job because I could see where a career at a city consultancy would go and I wanted a life outside work.
I have met the people who run banks, law firms and consultancies. I was at college with them. By marriage, I am related to a bunch more of them. And I have very little respect for any of them. Their primary quality is moral apathy about the work they do. My best friend from school is one of the top 3 lawyers in London financing fossil fuel projects in Africa. I have no idea how he sleeps at night.
> It's cope if you think the kids at Goldman Sachs, Medical school, Chelsea FC etc.. are randomers or ungifted.
Ok, lets take those separately.
Goldman Sachs is a bank. Again, I know senior people at Golmans and they are the worst shysters I have ever come across. That aside, here's their job. They create money to make loans to giant corporations that cannot fail, then they collect interest on those loans and take most if it as profit. Neither they nor most of their loans are ever at risk because the government backstops their entire operation first free.
Not talent. Corruption and greed.
Doctors do indeed study hard. But in most countries they make nothing like bankers and other financiers. The US is an exception because of its for-profit healthcare system. In the UK, I don't begrudge NHS doctors any penny that they earn. Their job has very high social utility and it should be rewarded.
Bankers and hedge fund managers by contrast are leeches.
> Outside the entertainment industry the west is generally meritocratic (and this is likely where the problem painfully lies)
That is a GIANT fantasy on your part I'm afraid. I have colleagues earning a tony fraction of what city bankers do whose jobs are harder, require more intelligence and do not reward sociopathy.
> 3) When some people, particularly able people have money it doesn't follow others become poor.
It does in the case we are discussing though. It's like this. The economy contains 10 apples and nothing else. Everyone has £10 so each apple is worth £1. Then the government prints another £10 and gives it to one person. Now the apples are worth £2. And the rich person with £11 can now buy 5 apples from the other people. That is a ELI5 version of growth in wealth inequality. Those with all the new money buy up the assets of those without new money. Money is a system of wealth distribution.
> Pensions, banked savings and businesses are paying wages and buying capital equipment.
Pensions are relevant here because they own assets on behalf of other people. They somewhat offset the redistribution of wealth upwards. Businesses are owned by people. It's the rich people getting richer. Allowing them to buy up more businesses. Which js why there has been a wave of business consolidation recently. A bunch of the new money is going into M&A.
Wages are not keeping up with inflation. Real wages have fallen very significantly since 2010.
> - but more importantly, delivering goods that people want to buy
Hmm, delivering services that are profitable for capitalists. And the fact that people want them is largely a product of the billions spent on marketing and advertising.
> thus improving their lives.
That's a highly contestable statement. Sure, some products and services are important first quality of life but as capitalism demands ever more economic activity and profits, the myth that happiness comes from owning ever more stuff is starting to wear very thin. Especially when this mode of consumption is destroying the ability of the Earth to provide us with the basics of life, like food, clean water and secure shelter.
> So, your zero-sum game point doesn't follow.
I didn't say the economy is a zero sum game. But when it comes to inequality, the extreme wealth inequality is worse than a zero sum game. Not only is wealth being redistributed upwards, the power that that concentration of wealth puts in the hands of a tiny elite is corroding our entire society.
When I say redistribution of wealth upwards, I mean for example the $40 trillion that has been redistributed from the bottom 90% to the top 1% in the US in the last 45 years (see Rand Corporation).
And when I say corrosion to our society, I mean the fact that there is no longer any choice in our so-called democracy between neoliberal capitalism and anything else. The post-war social democratic policy that is extremely popular among voters on the left and centre right is no longer available via the major centre left parties. This is because the rich own the political system and the media that is meant to scrutinise the politicians. The Labour Party in the UK, the SPD in Germany, the Democrats in the US, the ALP in Australia (and many more) are all the same. They have been co-opted by capital. There is no alternative, to coin a phrase. This is a direct result of extreme wealth inequality.
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@chrisj9700 Wow, you sound like a fully paid up propagandist for the oil industry. I daresay you won't actually accept anything I say but I have to respond to the copious hogwash in what you wrote.
> You have mentioned only electricity alternatives, and not the countless other products oil is responsible for producing that forms the backbone of our standard of living.
You mean all the gigantic amounts of plastic that we are producing and contaminating the environment with? This is just another part of the unsustainable linear economy that the oil industry is fueling. We need to scale it back.
And you well know that plastic and petrochemicals are responsible for a small fraction of the consumption of oil worldwide. In 2012, plastic production accounted for 4% of oil consumption.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/How-Much-Crude-Oil-Does-Plastic-Production-Really-Consume.html
> Oil won’t be going anywhere for a very long time.
That very much depends on whether we want a rational, sustainable energy economy or not.
> Saying there is no policy is a blatant untruth.
And I didnt say there was no policy. I said that the future of oil should be driven by democratically elected government policy, not by the vast power and wealth of the oil industry to buy influence and corrupt the duty of the government to protect its people. There clearly is policy at work, but it goes in both directions. The UK government is still pumping about £10 billion into the fossil fuels industry every year, at the same time as it says there is a climate emergency and we have to decarbonise the economy.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/23/uk-has-biggest-fossil-fuel-subsidies-in-the-eu-finds-commission
> If it wasn’t for government policy (including subsidies for wind energy) then renewable energy would’ve taken even longer to get off the ground.
I am well aware of that. Indeed, the timing I mentioned re the recent growth in renewables was indeed spurred by the LibDem Energy Secretary, Ed Davy, taking strong action in the early 2010s. And this is precisely what government is supposed to do - spur innovation and speed the development of new, beneficial technology.
So why is it still providing massive taxpayer-funded subsidies to a mature, profitable industry that is also the biggest threat to the future habitability of the planet?
And why have they actually scaled back support for renewables etc since 2015 by making onshore wind effectively impossible, by raising taxes on solar panels, by removing solar subsidies pretty much altogether, by funding and giving support to fracking etc etc?
> Believe it or not, the fossil fuel companies are also involved in producing renewable energy so they are vital whether you like it or not.
Wow, yes, "Beyond Petroleum" and all that huh? Fossil fuel companies, especially the oil majors, have done nothing but pay lip service to renewables. The spend about 25 times (or more) as much on oil exploration and development than they spend on renewables.
https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/oil-companies-renewable-energy/
"Despite the growth in renewables, “big oil” only spent 1% of its combined budget on green energy schemes in 2018."
> Saying oil companies have been massively profitable is another untruth. The make profits and losses at a variable rate just like any other normal company.
Wrong. the oil majors and supermajors are effectively printing money. They make profits in the 10s of billions every year, and issue massive dividends, which is why institutional investors love them. e.g. Royal Dutch Shell
https://www.ukvalueinvestor.com/2014/08/why-ive-sold-royal-dutch-shell-plc.html/
And they have one of the most lax and generous tax regimes of any industry, which is why Shell paid no corporation tax in the UK in 2018.
https://www.cityam.com/shell-paid-no-corporate-income-tax-in-the-uk-in-2018/
> What’s wrong when a company makes a profit? That profit is taxable which benefits everyone, including employees and the taxman.
Profit isn't the issue per se. It's how that profit is derived. And, as above, oil companies are almost uniquely capable of avoiding taxes.
> They create jobs and wealth which benefits society.
The alternatives create more, safer, healthier better paid jobs, and they don't create massive externalised costs to the economy, the environment and to people in general.
> How much money will that require to nationalise the oil industry just to get rid of it? How irresponsible a waste of money is that at a time when our economy is already struggling with a pandemic?
Again, I am pointing out that government is already being called to bailout the oil industry and it will do so on soft terms, because it always does. That taxpayer money should not be given away cheaply to prop up the profits of this industry - it should be used to buy equity and let the investors lose their shirts as capitalism would dictate. Again, if the oil industry thinks it can get a better deal on the open market, then let them. But they won't. They will come crying to the government. With oil, like banking, its always a case of "heads we win, tails you lose". That's not capitalism. It's crony capitalism.
> Calling the oil industry corrupt without evidence is not ideal
My heart bleeds. This is an industry that spent $1 billion spreading misinformation and propaganda to stop action on climate change just SINCE the Paris Accords were signed. Its an industry that pumps billions into lobby groups and foundations that get it befeficial treatement by government and undermine public policy on energy and climate action.
https://www.ucsusa.org/climate/disinformation
http://priceofoil.org/2018/07/20/fossil-fuel-industry-has-spent-nearly-2-billion-on-lobbying-to-kill-climate-laws/
https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/03/22/paris-oil-exxon-chevron-bp-total-shell-billion-climate-lobbying-advertising-influencemap
> and their shareholders are ordinary people who have their life savings and pensions (yours included) invested in these companies.
No, only a small fraction of investors in any stocks are retail investors. The vast majority of shares are owned by sophisticated investors like asset managers and pension funds. These guys are wll aware of the risks thay are taking holding fossil fuel assets in their portfolio.
And the assumption in what you say is that other assets will not be available to take over as fossil fuel stocks fall, but of course they will, because there is a whole new energy industry growing that has massive opportunities to create value, but without destroying the planet along the way.
All the academic work on this shows that asset managers should be investing in alterntives to carbon fuels if they are worried about long term value.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0071-9
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13961-1
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15453-z
> Hurt the oil companies too far, you’ll hurt ordinary people too
If we don't stop using oil, pronto, it will be hundreds of millions of ordinary people around the world who are displaced and forced to abandon their homes who will be hurt first.
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/03/19/climate-change-could-force-over-140-million-to-migrate-within-countries-by-2050-world-bank-report
And developed countries are not immune. We already know that climate-fueled disasters are causing tens or hundreds of billions in damage annually. And this will get much much worse. If we compare the cost of doing nothing vs the cost of rapid action to decarbonise and close down indusries like oil, the savings by 2100 are in the hundreds of trillions. That is not a typo.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15453-z
"Results show that following the current emissions reduction efforts, the whole world would experience a washout of benefit, amounting to almost 126.68–616.12 trillion dollars until 2100 compared to 1.5°C or well below 2°C commensurate action."
The people you are defending by defending the oil industry are a tiny fraction of the population who have consistently lied to the public, corrupted politics, taken hundreds of billions in subsidies to fatten their wallets, and deliberately obstructed action to save the future habitability of the planet. They don't deserve your support. They deserve your scorn.
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@サンゴ礁Scleractinian
Yes.
Those companies are run for profit. Their mission is to keep selling their fossil fuel assets for as long as possible. And they will do anything to make that happen. Their owners want one thing out of them. Profit.
Meanwhile, Equinor (it was renamed from Statoil a few years ago) ultimately answers to the democratic will of the Norwegian people. It's already a leader in decarbonisation
https://www.equinor.com/en/news/20201102-emissions.html
And if a government was elected that had a policy to end fossil fuel production then that is what Equinor would do.
No matter what the voters of the US or U.K. or Netherlands want, they have no direct control over the actions of Exxon, Chevron, BP or Shell. Indeed, thanks to the rampant corruption, those oil companies actually exercise control over the respective governments.
Governments could impose laws to force oil companies to end production but that is a bad way to solve the problem because the purpose of the company would remain to make profits for its fossil fuels and they would surely find ways to either avoid those laws or to get them repealed. And all the profits would continue to go to shareholders.
Nationalisation would mean the the company would no longer exist to make profits for shareholders. It would exist only to fund the transition of the economy away from fossil fuels to clean, safe and sustainable energy.
The fossil fuel industry has committed the most dangerous, harmful and consequential fraud on humanity in history. Through its greed, corruption and dishonesty, it has knowingly caused our society to miss its chance to avert catastrophic climate change. It deserves to die and it needs to to die for our survival. We have to call time on its social license to operate and see that it's last years in operation actually achieve something positive before it goes.
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Anthony Bydon
I agree that most MPs are the elite. I mean, having said that, it's hard to describe Dennis Skinner and Laura Pidcock as the "elite".
The question is, who does their politics serve. More than ever, I am convinced that the Tories have gone fully to a Republican style of divide-and-rule in service of the rich and corporations. They are liars and chancers and their policies reek of elitism and entrenched privilege.
When I was young, no kidding, I almost became a Conservative Parliamentary candidate.
Now I despise what they have become.
The UK has gone way too far to the right and needs to come back.
After the 2008 crash, we should have learned our lesson that neoliberal economics is poisonous. Instead, we saved and enriched the very people who wrecked the economy and everyone else had to suffer austerity.
The 1% got richer and richer after 2008, while everyone else got shafted.
That's the Tories for you.
I am not a fan of Corbyn by any means but the people of Britain need a government that believes that everyone matters, not one that hides its elitism and oligarchy behind a pretence of democratic values.
Democracy should mean that everyone matters and everyone should have an equal say. Do you think that's what the Tories believe? I don't.
And just a reflection on the "drain the swamp" line.
Trump coined it then went on to create the richest and most openly corrupted government in US history. So that line is tainted now.
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Hugh Slooskant
Higher taxes do eventually reduce investment if they go high enough, but UK corporate taxes are below the EU and OECD average right now. They could go up significantly without impacting investment.
If you want to see a perfect example of where cutting taxes completely failed to increase investment, just look at the Trump tax cuts of 2017 in the USA. They gave over a trillion dollars back to businesses, but investment actually fell in many of those businesses. Investment that big companies made was completely unrelated to the tax cuts they got. Some companies got big tax cuts at invested but just as many didn't invest a penny.
And wages didn't rise either, except for executives of course.
The companies pocketed the savings as dividends and stock buy-backs.
And why? Because it became even cheaper to take out profits. If you make something cheap, people will do it more.
As I said, in practice higher taxes (up to a point) incentivise investment because it reduces tax liability while keeping profits in the business. The value of the business increases, the business itself grows and can then hire more people.
Plus as has been mentioned above, when companies make giant profits, that money is not going into the real economy- into the pockets of workers who can spend it in their local economy.
Money in the hands of workers drives the economy much more effectively than money in the hands of the rich because workers tend to spend everything they earn. Meanwhile the rich either park the money overseas or the invest in big assets like property. All that does is drive up prices without driving the economy at all.
So yes, as a business owner I might selfishly want lower corporate taxes, but I am also a citizen of the country and I understand my responsibilities to everyone else. So I would prefer that the whole country does well, not just me. That makes for a good environment for my staff, means that if my staff are sick they get good NHS care, that their kids get a good education, means that when I hire I get well educated people, transport works well, etc. And it avoids the political chaos we are in right now.
And if I want to keep more of my profits in the business then I can invest them in people and equipment and avoid the tax on that profit.
It's only greedy bosses who want low corporate tax rates to maximise short term returns. Bosses who want long term returns invest and prefer to see the country invest as well.
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suroj
First, no other countries are thinking of leaving, indeed support for the EU across Europe shot up after the Brexit vote because people realised what a mess it is. All EU countries enjoy majority popular support for remaining in the EU, including the U.K.!
Second, French and Italian farmers don't get to set trade policy for the whole if the EU just as German carmakers don't. Moreover, they know well the amazing deal they have within the EU. Many see the U.K. as competition as much as they see it as a market. And it's the EU that the U.K. is negotiating with, not the French or the Germans or Italians. Whose head is about to roll and how? This is a Brexiteer lie that has been shown to be very wrong over the last 2 years. The EU are sticking to their principles and their rules. If you think that they will blink then you aren't paying attention. Remember EVERY EU27 must OK any deal with the U.K. The EU compromising the SM or CU for us is a fantasy.
Third, about the UKs trading relationships with the rest of the world, the fact that we send 60% of our exports to the rest of the world is a sign of how good the deals that the EU has with the rest of the world are. The EU negotiates on the world stage as by far the biggest trading bloc in the world so everyone has to give it a good deal to get reciprocal access. When the U.K. goes it alone it will lose 60+ trading deals that it gets via the EU and has zero trade deals to replace that. Zero. Nil. Nada. It will go onto WTO tariffs on whatever basis it can negotiate. Literally no other country in the world has zero trade deals with another country. Mauritania and Western Sahara have at least one superior trade deal with another country vs WTO rules. We will have none. Literally every nation in the world will have better trading relationships than the U.K. for several years after we leave, and the deals we get will not be as good for us as our EU deals are. Yes, the U.K. is a large economy but it's a minor player vs the whole EU.
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@proselytizingorthodoxpente8304
Which socialists have colonised other countries? You must still be misunderstanding the point of worker-owned enterprises. I haven't seen examples of hoards of colonising workers invading other countries to set up new workplaces there. Have you? Else what is socialist colonialism? Tell workers in other countries to take ownership of their local means of production? I think you can see that the idea of socialist colonialism is absurd.
If you think that Soviet invasion of other countries counts as socialist colonialism then again, you fail to understand that the soviet union was not socialist. Lenin ended worker ownership of the factories almost immediately after the revolution. It turned into state capitalism very rapidly thereafter.
You also again miss the point as to why socialist enterprises would care about the environmental impact of their enterprises. It's really obvious - it's their own back yard they would be shitting in! The one they, their children and their neighbours all share. As opposed to capitalists who make damned sure that they are a million miles from where they are causing their destruction.
I am not a big fan of state socialism for much of the economy but it is preferable to capitalism for basics of life that capitalism rations and commodifies. That is why the U.K. has a state run healthcare system. Which, yes is obviously a socialist enterprise. It's not a "social program". It's a massive publicly owned, publicly run enterprise providing hundred of billions of pounds of healthcare services free at the point of care. And the U.K. has Long ago socialised some or all education, firefighting, policing, transport and other services. In fact, it's clear that the state needs to take over parts of the economy such as social care which are dysfunctional when run as capitalist profit-seeking enterprises.
Your idea that socialist enterprises can't exist in parallel with capitalism is just a categorical error. Of course they can, and they do. Just like early capitalist enterprises existed in a largely feudal economy. It's not an either or.
You have a view of socialism that is very old fashioned and repeats all the discredited tropes of red-baiting and market fundamentalism of the 20th century. You also fail to acknowledge the obviously self destructive fundamentals of a capitalist economy. It's built on the exploitation of workers and the environment. The winner in a capitalist economy is the capitalist that can exploit its workers and the environment the most effectively. No matter the cost to everyone and everything else. Which is why it has inevitably caused a climate and environmental catastrophe and has done nothing to address these conditions even as they learned, decades ago, that this path would lead to planetary disaster. Capitalism has no other gear - its destruction of self, and us with it, is built into the system.
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Ah but that's the beauty of renewables. They are impossible to monopolise because the barrier to entry is so low.
In the past, if your town (say), wanted to set up its own energy supply, that was flat out impossible. The supply chains required to operate a fossil fuel plant are massive and global and dominated by a small number of huge companies. Think mines, processing, plant construction, maintenance, machinery, etc etc
No community can do all this do you are reliant on those big greedy corporations, as you say, and you're permanently screwed.
But with renewables, all you need to do is buy some solar panels, a wind turbines or two, probably a battery and a connection to the local grid and that's 99% of the job done.
Renewables don't just clean up the energy system. They open the door to radically democratising it as well. 😀
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Remember folks, when it comes to cutting our emissions from farming, the biggest positive change we can make as individuals to reduce emissions, deforestation and destruction of natural habitat is to dramatically reduce or stop eating meat and animal products,
This was the clear conclusion of the largest study ever carried out, surveying 34,000 farms around the world, to assess when carbon emissions are coming from in our food system.
https://josephpoore.com/Science%20360%206392%20987%20-%20Accepted%20Manuscript.pdf
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/15060
https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions
You don't have to go vegan but, for the planet, that is the best option.
#GoVegan for the planet
#GoVegan for the animals
#GoVegan for your health
#GoVegan to stop the next pandemic
This is a step that has direct consequences. Buying meat and dairy directly creates demand for more destruction and cruelty. Stop buying these products and your contribution ends there and then. 👍 Bit if you want to change slowly, remember that if you halve you're consumption, you still halve your contribution halve, and that's much better than doing nothing.
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Jerry V
Regardless of what your sister has, 80,000,000 are either uninsured or underinsured in America. Underinsured means that even though you are paying premiums, you can't afford your deductibles or copays so you go without treatment.
30,000 die every year in the richest country in history because they can't afford to see a doctor.
500,000 people go bankrupt every year as a result of not being able to pay their medical costs.
It's a completely broken and corrupt system.
Medicare for All would cost US citizens trillions of dollars LESS than the current system. Literally half a trillion less every year.
Bernie mainly wants to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations. You know, they guys who have seen their fortunes appreciate by 37% in the last 3 years while workers have had a real terms pay rise of 1-2%.
Currently, the largest and most profitable companies in the US regularly pay zero in federal taxes. And billionaires pay a lower rate of tax than workers.
With M4A, Regular workers will only see a very modest rise in tax but they will see a huge saving on healthcare. If you earn the median wage of $60k then you will pay an extra $1200 a year in tax but save, typically, $6000-12000 in healthcare costs (if you include premiums, deductibles, copays and drug costs).
So stop trying to scare people talking about "50%" tax rates. Almost no one will pay anything even approaching that. The only people who might are the people who have acquired more money and power than god thanks to a completely corrupted system.
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@brAmbedkarvadheemusalmaan ok I don't know how to tell you this but you have been made to fear Muslims by your government for political and ideological purposes.
When you are scared and angry at vulnerable and needy people (it could be Muslims, gay people, black people, immigrants in general, the poor, really anyone), then you are distracted from the abuses of power my the people who actually have power in your society.
It's a political strategy called "divide and rule". It's very very old, it's very ugly and it often ends in terrible tragedies like the holocaust.
Just imagine how Germans in the 1930s were made to think of Jews. They were so scared of them that that went along with a campaign of mass murder.
This can only happen when people are made to ignore the humanity of another group of people.
Unfortunately this is how you are thinking of Muslims.
You no longer recognise them as real people who may be in desperate need of help. You are seeing them as "other", as scary, as Muslim BEFORE they are human.
This is a very dark place to be.
I recommend you stop listening to the fear mongering and hate and remember that everyone is human first - just like me, just like you.
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@dulls8475 oh boy.
Sorry to break it to you but that Laffer curve nonsense about lowering tax rates increasing tax receipts was debunked literally 30 years ago. It does not work. At all.
Trickle down is a lie. Its a fairy story that rich people and their pet economists tell the media and the people to justify endlessly cutting their own taxes.
Lowe tax neoliberal economics has delivered the highest inequality and the lowest trend growth in G7 countries in history.
Lets look at trend growth in the US for example. In the 50s-70s, top tax rates where between 75 and 90%. The inequality was low and stable. Bosses earned on average 20 times their median worker. Growth was 4-6&5 over that period.
Since 1981, when Reagan brought in low-tax low regulation policy with real force, trend rate growth fell and fell and fell. It is not about 2%. Meanwhile, inequality has skyrocketed. the average big corporate boss earns 400x his media worker. There has been a transfer of over $40 TRILLION in wealth to the top 1% and workers real wages have stagnated.
In the UK, since 2010, real wages have fallen faster than at any time in the last 200 years. Yes, 200 centuries. This is the worse fall in living standards in the UK since records began. What caused this? Lower taxes on the rich starved the government coffers. The government instituted austerity which literally killed over 130,00 people, took about a million off the payrolls because they were too sick to work and left millions highly vulnerable and unable to pay for the basics, let alone go out and enjoy their lives. That has a massive impact on the economy because poor people can't buy the stuff that makes the economy run.
So yeah, lowering taxes on the rich does nothing for the economy. It actually reduces investment, it incentivises profit taking, it drives share buybacks and dividends. It allows companies to keep making money without improving productivity.
And it starves public services which makes peoples lives worse and the whole economy more precarious. Which is precisely what we are seeing now.
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@stephen2975 I am not suggesting that we leave everything to government. Nor am I suggesting that we should treat people not doing something productive as a good state for most people.
I am saying that there are systemic issues as to why people aren't productive, and that we will not make those people productive by just yelling at them.
As I said, nearly everyone is personally better of with a sense of purpose and a sense of satisfaction from the work they do. Even people who have been in work and know this can often get left behind and end up losing the opportunity and confidence to work.
Add to that that many people's only a choice of work is poorly paid, hard, stressful and insecure work that leaves them poor anyway.
And of the about 1 million people who left the U.K. labour market in the last 10 years, half of them did so because a failing NHS is leaving them chronically ill or injured. So they not only don't work but they live with pain and disability.
You have to try to get past the habit of ascribing personal failing to things that are actually caused by systemic flaws. It is unfair to the people concerned but it's also guaranteed to NOT fix the problem because you are simply not dealing with the flaws which cause the problems in the first place.
Lastly, and this is perhaps the most important point, you say we could live in a society of plenty.
The tragedy is that we ALREADY DO. The reason it doesn't seem like that is because an obscene amount of the wealth and income in the country going to a tiny fraction of people. If you give 90% of wealth to 1% of people, is it any wonder that the other 99% don't feel very well off?
And btw I say that as someone in the 1%. I should pay higher taxes on the dividends I get. I should pay higher taxes on the capital gains I get, and on the top end of my salary. Tbh what people at my level of wealth would contribute is not where the real action is. It's actually with the top 0.1% and 0.01%. When you are into hundreds of millions and billions, those guys are paying next to nothing in tax so they just get richer and richer and richer.
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@stephen2975
> That is a stupid analysis.
It is literally mainstream classical economic analysis. It is not vaguely controversial.
> People in business want to make profit and if they see a way to improve they invest!
They don't invest when there is no market for their products though.
> A disinterested workforce is no incentive.
What about higher pay makes workers "disinterested"? On the contrary, the research on this shows that better paid workers are more productive all other things being equal. Why would that be? Well it's because the feel more vaklued, more personally invested in the company and they are not stressed about paying their bills.
> The idea that pressure drives investment is nonsensical!
If you are in a competitive landscape and you have to do more with less, then you HAVE to invest to stay competitive. If labour becomes a more expensive commodity then you will find ways to do more with lees labour. Again, this is economics 101. Not even vaguely controversial, and its borne out by decades of research.
> Confidence drives investment, and Confidence in the workforce plays a huge part!
Yes, confidence that you have a market to sell your goods and confidence that you have stable regulatory regime, and confidence that you will have access to goo infrastructure and well educated workers.
> You have got it wrong, no, real improvement must come from the bottom up!
That is literally what I am arguing. Give workers a larger share of the economic pie and not only will the vast majority of people live better, but the entire economy will function better.
> The Chinese economy has grown exponentially, and partly because of the people's attitude to work, yes there are many other factors but without this component it would have failed!
China has a heavily state-directed economy and that drives massive investment in new infrastructure and technology. This is partly what the US did in the 1950s-1970s. Which is why during that period they had the highest sustained growth in the country's history. Once Regan got in and slashed taxes and regulation, trend rates for growth and productivity declined. And worker pay actually stagnated for 45 years while the top 1% got $40 trillion richer. Yes, 40 trillion.
> Years ago, in the 80s I encountered working with the Japanese, and I soon realised why they were more successful than ourselves! It was mainly their attitude to work!
Traditional Japanese working practices also lead to high levels of social alienation, depression and suicide. And it isn't necessary. France has much higher productivity than the UK. The lazy, idle French with their long lunch breaks and long vacations. Why? Because government economic policy drives higher wages, higher investment in public sector infrastructure and higher investment in private sector plant and machinery.
UK economic policy is a smash-and-grab. It constantly incentivises short term profits without any view to the long term. Which is why UK productivity and growth are in the toilet.
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@stephen2975
> Of course the rich buy off government, they always have! but it takes corrupted officials to oblige them! We need a generation that will truly work for the public good: that will take a moral revolution!
I would love that but that isn't how power works unfortunately. Greed always seeks its own ends. In our economic system, money is power. It is power over people's jobs. It's power over the companies that operate a large part of the economy. It is the power to control the media and the stories and narratives that people hear everyday about why the world is as it is.
We must create a countervailing power against that.
The only way to stop the powerful concentrating ever more money and power in their own hands is to democratise that power - to share it out among more people, and to create systems that enforce accountability.
Our current system of low taxes and low regulation does the opposite. It allows mosey and power to pile up with a tiny elite of people who are so powerful that if politicians don't do as they are told, they rich destroy them. The solution will not come from politicians who are part of this system.
As you said before, the solution comes from the bottom up. It comes when ordinary people refuse to accept this system anymore, when they refuse to play along with this rampant inequality, and the unfairness, and the corruption, and the betrayal of the people by the political class.
We have to make it so that the political class cannot afford to ignore the people as they currently do. The elite have concentrated power and wealth. But we have massive numbers. And we operate their companies. Without the workers, shareholders of companies have nothing. They don't work. They cannot operate their profit machines without workers.
We need a mass movement of solidarity - a mass movement of the people against the wealthy and corrupt elites. That is how you get the moral revival you want - when people stand up for each other in the face of oppression. That is the greatest expression of our humanity.
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@guenthermichaels5303
I live in Switzerland, the country in Europe that has warmed most already - 2C above preindustrial temperatures. Switzerland has warmed at a rate of around 0.4C per decade since 2000.
I am not overwhelmed by this issue. I do know plenty about it. Not everything, but who could.
I read the science, directly in the academic papers and have been doing so for about 4 years now.
I read the studies about direct impacts of GHGs. I read the studies about the feedback mechanisms like ice melt, permafrost melt, water evaporation, wild fires, marine methane hydrate release, etc
I read the studies about the acceleration of warming that is currently ongoing. I read the studies about the huge costs to economies globally expected over the next 80 years, and thereafter.
I read the studies that model where we will be in the coming decades based on various emissions trajectories from RCP2.5 up to RCP8.5. I read the reviews of the accuracy of past projections that demonstrate them to have been remarkably accurate.
I read the studies that show how fast we have to reduce emissions if we want to limit warming to anything like 1.5C, and how far away we are from that kind of action.
I am not short of knowledge on the science.
And then I read the endless accounts of how the fossil fuel industry itself made similar projections about warming in the 1970s and 1980s, and rather than plan a future that would avoid predictable global catastrophe, they hired the same misinformation machines that delayed action on tobacco and lead and got to work ensuring that any action to reduce emissions was delayed indefinitely. They spent billions creating propaganda and misinformation, a fake narrative that the science was in doubt, they funded politicians to do the same, they interfered in every single international effort to reverse the growth in emissions since Kyoto.
And now we are probably too late to limit warming to even 2C, let alone 1.5C. And the consequences on warming beyond 2C are so vast and widespread, it's very hard to actually take them in. The projections for damage to the economy (which to some extent illustrate the damage in terms of human suffering) are between $127 trillion and $792 trillion by the end of this century depending on how much we miss the Paris 1.5C target by. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15453-z
So, while I am not overwhelmed by the issue, I think that there is plenty to be overwhelmed by. I suspect that you have not really looked hard enough at how bad the damage will be, and how hard it will be to stop and that might be causing your somewhat cool assessment of the situation. Climate scientists have been fairly terrified about the situation for at least a decade, and they should really know.
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MD85 AUS
The opposition to nuclear isn't mainly to do with the waste, although that is part of it. It's because nuclear is spectacularly expensive and very slow to build. Personally I think shutting down existing plants is a bad idea but when you look, you see that most closures are due to the extreme old age of nuclear power stations and its simply not safe to run them any more.
Meanwhile, renewables are cheap and can be built very rapidly. To cut emissions today, we need renewables. To keep cutting emissions in 10 years we might need nuclear but it's plausible that renewables + storage + smart grids will be a better solution.
As for carbon capture on fossil fuel plants, I don't know any one who is against it in principle. The problem is that it doesn't work. A ton of money has been poured into it over about 20 years and it's still not even close to being deployed commercially at scale.
So it's a mirage - it's a distraction. And again, based on current development, even if you could get it working, it would be horribly expensive.
Given the predicament that we are in, we have to develop carbon capture from the atmosphere- DAC - if we are to stop climate change. It's part of the assumptions in the IPCC projections even though it's only in its infancy. But it does have a lot of support and it's making progress.
So we don't have CCS now. Nuclear is very expensive now. Both of these will take many years to make cost effective and scalable if they ever can be.
so what do we do today?
We have to build out a new energy system with what we have today. Every new KWh of energy we produce from wind or solar (or hydro etc) is a KWh that we didn't produce with fossil fuels and that means we are avoiding emissions. So we should be taking advantage of the opportunity to cheaply and rapidly build out renewables and storage today. Sure, work on other options in the background but we absolutely cannot wait another day doing next to nothing. We will blow past our carbon budgets in the next 6-8 years and then catastrophe is guaranteed.
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@sandman8993
Ok, so firstly, most beef is not produced the way you describe. It's mostly produced in intensive factory farms because they are more efficient and profitable. These are horrible facilities that produce massive amounts of pollution and are horrific for the animals. They also consume massive amounts of feed which is often grown on deforested land (much of it in the Amazon). They also consume huge amounts of antibiotics - 80% of antibiotics that we produce are actually fed to animals not humans. This is the biggest risk to the modern healthcare system because these facilities are the breeding ground for antibiotic resistant bacteria which kill millions.
Also note that 75% of new diseases in humans come from animals and they come from both farmed animals and wild animals where we destroy their habitat. For reference, note that the Spanish Flu and COVID are both diseases that came from the animal agriculture industry.
Anyway, that's a digression.
So factory farming causes local pollution through massive amounts of animal waste. Cows also drink about 150 litres of freshwater per day. And the average carbon emissions associated with the production of a beef cow (taking global figures) is about 12 tonnes, about twice as much as the production of a car. And that figure does not go down when you farm organically or "extensively" - ie on big farms of fields as you are describing.
The main reason why that is so destructive is the massive massive amount of land it uses. 80% of global deforestation is directly caused by animal agriculture. 91% of deforestation in the Amazon in the 1970s to 1997 was directly caused by cattle ranching. This deforestation causes huge carbon emissions and actually reduces the ability of the planet to soak up the carbon that we emit through fossil fuels etc.
There is a good chart here that shows just how bad beef is for carbon emissions compared to other foods, especially plant based foods.
https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
Bottom line. We don't have the land to raise a billion cows a year. We don't have the water to do it. We certainly cannot afford the carbon emissions that they cause if we want a liveable climate.
Right now, the science is saying that we have to dramatically reduce animal agriculture to stabilise the climate. Current food system emissions ALONE would cause catastrophic climate change by 2070.
https://sci-hub.do/downloads/2020-11-05/54/10.1126@science.aba7357.pdf
I watched a good sum up of the main issues given by an ex farm vet here. It's not long. I really recommend a watch.
https://youtu.be/mGYOlmYQwps
By the way, it's irrelevant to talk about what was sustainable for a population of a few million people thousands of years ago. We now have 7 billion people living in this planet. And in rich countries, we are eating massively more meat per person than we ever did. A hundred years ago, the idea of eating meat every day was unthinkable for most people. Now we have a couple of billions people who think that's normal. The average meat intake of rich countries like the USA is about 100Kg per year when the science says a sustainable consumption is less than 16Kg. And most of that must be poultry, not beef of lamb.
I could go on. Please just read the articles I cited. There is a ton of science on this now. It's not a matter of opinion now. Its settled science.
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@charliedavis8894
I am not being inconsistent but it is a complex picture for sure.
First, yes, top line, fossil fuels are the biggest problem. No argument there.
Second, land. farming animals uses over 80% of farmland but only produces 20% of our food. So you have an idea of the numbers, we could totally free up an area the size of Russia, Europe and the US combined if we stopped eating animals (76% of 50 million sq km currently used).
With that amount of land available, questions about land for solar and wind are entirely irrelevant.
When it comes to sustainable food, we have to be mainly concerned about 3 things. Land use, carbon emissions and water. Having a plant-based food system wins on all three hands down.
If you do want to farm animals, like cattle, then you have to make sure that their emissions are counterbalanced by the sequestration of the land that they are on. Cattle produce huge amount of methane which is 80x more powerful as a greenhouse gas. So you need a lot of sequestration to counter that. The land that cattle live on will sequester some carbon from their dung but not much, and it maxes out after about 30 years. So to be carbon neutral you need a lot of land per cow and even then, the ability of the land to soak up carbon runs out after 30 years.
To make the land available for cattle you might be using otherwise unused land which cannot be used for richer ecosystems, in which case, sustainable farming is possible for a period, but not for more than 30 years.
There are no other comparable animals compared to cattle in terms of methane production. Not only do animals not generally produce methane like cows do, but no other large herbivores like cows exist at anything like the numbers that we farm cattle.
As for the human population, yes, we produce CO2 but its a fraction of the warming potential of the methane produced by cows.
The point is to get the carbon in and carbon out in balance and there are many ways to do that before worrying about CO2 directly produced by humans.
Stop burning fossil fuels.
Stop destroying natural carbon sinks to make space for farming animals and start rebuilding them instead.
Replace carbon-intensive industrial processes (steel, cement, etc) with carbon free processes, etc.
In terms of new carbon-free energy, this is very easy. Wind and solar are the cheapest forms of electricity ever generated, and they keep getting cheaper. They can replace at least 80% of existing fossil-energy with existing technology (according to the UCS and the US DoE). We will need to build some nuclear and better/cheaper storage but we have 10-15 years for that to happen - we can do a huge amount of very affordable decarbonisation now using existing tech.
What we cannot do is hope to keep the wheels on our civilization when the global temperature has risen by 3C or more. That will halve food production, cause about a third of currently inhabited land to become uninhabitable and cause more deadly wars over resources than anything the world has ever seen. I see no sign that God is coming to the rescue.
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@Ozdascreamer
Human Rights Watch say this in the introduction to their report
About 6.8 million Jewish Israelis and 6.8 million Palestinians live today between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River, an area encompassing Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), the latter made up of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Throughout most of this area, Israel is the sole governing power; in the remainder, it exercises primary authority alongside limited Palestinian self-rule. Across these areas and in most aspects of life, Israeli authorities methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians. Laws, policies, and statements by leading Israeli officials make plain that the objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power, and land has long guided government policy. In pursuit of this goal, authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity. In certain areas, as described in this report, these deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.
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@proselytizingorthodoxpente8304
This is very frustrating because so many people think they have a killer critique of socialism when they know little about it. That is normal though as our political and economic culture is kept very hostile to the critique of capitalism that is at the heart of socialism. If I even mention Marx you will think "nutcase" even though Marx's critique of capitalism is devastating and pretty much irrefutable.
To your first point, there is a very big difference between a worker owned coop and a capitalist corporation when it comes to the environment. The workers in a coop have to live in the conditions that their own business produces. They and their families have to drink the water and breath the air. In a capitalist corporation, the owners live in a different city of a different country. They have no stake whatsoever in the conditions that their corporation produces. This is played out across the world as capitalists colonise developing countries, exploit the workers, trash the environment making it uninhabitable in many cases, and then once the place is exhausted, they just pack up and move on. The examples of this are too countless to mention. It goes on within borders and across them.
As for successful socialist governments, there are many who are making efforts in that direction. Places like Bolivia for example have made huge strides in raising their poorest communities out of poverty in very difficult circumstances. Usually those circumstances are created by the US which is on public record as having a deliberate strategy to destroy any popular socialist movements that seek to hold out against US domination. The US has made a habit of launching military, paramilitary and economic wars against countries trying this from Vietnam to Guatemala, to the above mentioned Bolivia where they instigated a coup against a democratically elected President. It always get a wry chuckle when the US complains about its elections being interferes with by Russia when the US itself actually brings down governments after elections have taken place.
Anyway, I digress.
Fundamentally there is a vitally important difference between capitalism and socialism.
Capitalism is based on exploitation. The only way a capitalist makes money is by paying his workers less than their work is worth. The more he can exploit his workers, the richer he gets. And likewise, it's based on short term exploitation of resources. The more a capitalist exploits and consumes resources, the faster he can get rich. And it doesn't matter if he exhausts the resources in one place. Thanks the almost total freedoms of movement of his capital, he can take his money and go exploit the resources somewhere else. It does not matter to him one jot how much destruction he leaves behind. Indeed the market would punish him if he did.
Capitalism is sociopathic and ecocidal to its core. It's as if we took our worst tendencies and inclinations and then built a political economy around them.
With predictable consequences for the conditions of workers and our dying planet.
Socialism is the opposite in pretty much all ways because it centres workers and communities. It not only means that the workers aren't exploited, it democratises those work places. It means that the stakeholders in the business are the community that they live in. It stops the workplace being a private tyranny and turns it into a joint enterprise with mutual respect for all stakeholders.
And worker coops or worker owned enterprises work really well. Published research shows they are more productive that capitalist corporations. They have higher wages. They have less inequality. They have better working conditions and they have better job retention. Which all makes perfect sense because the workers are all making decisions so the workplace works for them whilst also making the business viable. Look up the Mondragon coop in Spain. It's huge - 10s of 1000s of workers and it has been going decades.
You will only ever hear negative propaganda about socialism and worker coops. But of course that's the case because the media is privately owned by capitalist billionaires who want to perpetuate the rotten system that got them where they are.
Btw to your point about authoritarian state socialism, if the government is democratic, how is government-controlled production "authoritarian?". What you have now with a tiny elite owning most of the means of production and with almost no accountability seems far more authoritarian to me.
Who would you prefer to run a giant globally significant operation like Google or Facebook? A completely unaccountable billionaire whose only motive is profit and power, and will happily subvert democracy to achieve that, or a democratically elected government that can be voted out if it abuses its power?
And you presumably accept the "authoritarian socialist" provision of healthcare services by the NHS? Or is that a disastrous authoritarian nightmare?
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@Corey_Otis when countries are signed up to the refugee convention, that necessarily puts the obligation to abide by that convention into their own national laws.
That is how international law works.
In the case of the US, this principle is actually in the constitution. Note the reference to "all Treaties" as the supreme law of the land.
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."
So I am correct.
It's an interesting clause actually because it means that the UN charter (which is a treaty signed by the US) had the same force in US law as the contents of the constitution itself. No law passed in the US can have the effect of violating the terms of the UN Charter.
Not that you would know of course, given how many US actions, and even laws, flagrantly violate the UN charter.
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Don't look here> corrupt, corporatist elitism, grotesque inequality, useless expensive healthcare, useless underfunded education, etc etc
Racism is tool for the right. They use it to divide and conquer the poor and working class.
When whites voted in the GOP in states like North Carolina, they prevented 130,000 poor blacks getting healthcare. What they didn't seem to care about was that they prevented 360,000 whites from getting healthcare.
Life expectancy among white Americans has fallen 3 years in a row for the first time in history. But many poor whites keep voting for them anyway, thanks to cynical exploitation of race.
Don't be surprised that the GOP keep using racism, even as brazenly as this.
It got Trump elected..
It's not a bug. It's the feature.
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M Hynds
Well we agree about capitalism 👍
I ate meat etc for years, like most people who chose to be vegan did. In fact I grew up doing a lot of sea fishing. So I also learned to kill animals at a young age.
I think that is part of the problem to be honest. I was effectively taught to ignore the suffering of the animals I was catching, and to ignore their desire to live, just like we have that desire.
In fact I didn't stopped eating animals because of the ethics. I did it gradually because I was horrified by the sheer scale of destruction that their production causes. And this really is staggering. I had no idea that 80% of our farmland is used to produce animal products but that produces less than 20% of our food. Animal ag produces over 60% of the carbon emissions in the food system. It causes 80% of deforestation and natural habitat destruction globally. It's a nightmare.
The more I learned about cooking without animal products the easier it was to eat less. Then my daughter suggested we try Veganuary and it stuck. The awareness about the ethics actually came after we were already plant-based.
I think that's a sign of how we humans think. We will always try to find excuses to do the harmful things we do, especially excuses to ourselves, even if there is actually no good defence.
In any case, eating meat 2-3 times a week is not as bad as some. But I would encourage you to read up on the effectiveness of dairy for calcium deficiency. It can actually make it worse and there are many plant-based foods that are a much better source.
As for the wider health issues, remember, dairy, eggs and meat cause chronic health conditions before they kill you. It's no fun living with diabetes, or heart disease or cancer... 😞
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To Err is Huma
So you are still citing costs of non-EU immigrants for some reason in a discussion about migration of *EU citizens*. I still don't understand why. Perhaps you can enlighten me.
Re wages, I said that EU migration does not negatively affect wages. I nowhere said that is has no effect on any individual. Taken as a whole, it has no effect on wages overall. Even for the lowest paid 5% where an effect is detectable, it's overwhelmed by other factors that increase their wages. And yes, I do care about low wages - I am the son of an immigrant who grew up with a mother on low pay and drawing benefits - but I don't see stopping immigration as the most effect way to remedy low pay. I see setting an appropriate minimum wage and proper investment in skills training. This would actually address the underlying problem of low pay in the UK which is actually chronic low productivity. Employers that must pay higher minimum wages and have ready access to skills training will use it. Shutting off immigration simply starves the economy of the workers it needs, not least in the public sector its worth adding.
Generally, there is nothing elitist or scummy about considering the plight of all people in the economy. Yes, the lowest paid need proper consideration but I have spelled out how they will most effectively be helped onto higher incomes. Sacrificing the prosperity of the middle class on the altar of claiming to be helping the lowest earners is irrational and a false choice, especially when economic disruption from Brexit will hurt the least well off the most - both in employment prospects and the capacity of the state to care for them with lower revenues.
Also, why even bring up the self employed when you have no data? Is there a reason to presume that they have been hurt by EU immigration or is that just speculation?
The problem is that I am not the one making up or misrepresenting data to make my point. The data is on my side. Yes, you can raise other issues related to immigration - for example the picture on crime is pretty mixed - but when it comes to economic impact, EU workers are a net benefit or at worse neutral by every measure. If you don't like the country allowing in EU citizens to settle and work in the U.K. then find another reason to oppose it.
I can't help thinking your ire is misplaced in any case. It's non-EU immigrants that actually cost the country money, and they are the source of the most cultural friction in British communities. I have every sympathy with concerns about that. But EU free movement has no impact on non-EU immigration. The U.K. can set policy on that exactly as it pleases as a member of the EU.
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@californiadreamin8423
"A god"? What are you talking about? I literally just described how many votes he got in an election.
I am perfectly aware that Corbyn isn't perfect. But apparently if you aren't on the left, the only way to see Corbyn is a a wild, Stalinist antisemite who destroyed the party and it's electoral chances - none of which is empirically true.
Which highlights what is actually the terrible tragedy of Kier Starmer. He promised the very popular left policies of Corbyn but delivered in a more professional, more media-savvy, more middle-class friendly package. He said he would unite the party and take on the Tories. Instead, he has split the party wide open, he has ditched pretty much all the popular policies and he has completely flunked his attempts to hold the Tories accountable.
The Tory press usually demonise the Labour leader at every opportunity. But in Starmer's case, they barely mention him. You know why? Because he is absolutely no threat whatsoever to the Tories or the oligarchy they serve. If he ever becomes one, you will know because they will start devoting front pages to his every failing. Until then, you can be sure that they have rightly surmised that he is an asset to the Tories, not a threat.
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Left of Centre Brexit
Ok, I have listened to Gerrard Batten, UKIP leader talk about their Brexit plan and he it boils down to inheriting the EU laws and going onto WTO rules.
But that doesn’t touch any of the regulation which is huge.
And no, just because we mirror EU regulations, that does not mean that we don’t have to recertify with EU regulators to get access.
And it’s not 40% more customs checks - it’s much much more. Remember that a large amount of what is imported is parts in supply chains that then get worked on and re-exported, and vice versa. This doesn’t show up as the NET export value is much lower than the total value of goods going to and fro. You must have heard that some parts of the Minis made in Oxford cross the border 4 times before they end up in a finished care. All those shipments now get bogged down in customs making JIT manufacturing, a central principle in lean supply chains, impossible. These factories will simply grind to a halt.
And the idea of going over the cliff then making more deals later will be a disaster. Businesses take years to get going, to get customers, to get processes efficient and competitive. When the free movement of goods and services stop, all the businesses that depend on them will become untenable or have to dramatically scale back operations. Their customers in Europe will immediately have to switch to EU suppliers. When, years later, the U.K. does further deals and firms get the opportunity to re-enter the market it will take years to win back even a small part of the business that has been lost. I run a business. I know what this is like. The U.K. will NEVER recover it’s previous position.
As for the EU suffering as UKIP also like to say, yes, they will in some areas, but in others they will see huge gains. Trading in Euro denominated securities will all move to Paris and Frankfurt. The U.K. banks will lose their passporting rights so all the EU operations of U.K. financial institutions operating in Europe will have to move to EU countries. These are currently fantastically profitable and bring in huge amounts of tax, plus they contribute a huge amount to our balance of trade, but after Brexit, they will be gone forever.
I could go on and on. UKIP’s plan is not a plan. It’s a fantasy.
Neither Davis nor Johnson nor the ERG have set out a credible plan to leave the EU that won’t either be rejected by the EU or that won’t cripple the economy. So all they do is shoot down anything they don’t like.
And this is NOT what we voted for. 66% of people prioritised the Single Market over reducing immigration in 2016, including 42% of LEAVE voters. That’s a majority that was happy to stay on the single market and was happy to keep free movement ie be a member of the EEA. But the Hard Brexiteers got their hands around the throat of the PM and no we are facing a disaster. May should never have promised to leave the single market and customs union. It was idiotic, undemocratic, short sighted and cowardly. We are all paying for that now.
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@petercollins7848
You should not assume anything about me without asking. My life is a success story according to your story. I was born to a poor family. I grew up poor but got a good education paid for by the state. I went to an elite university and got a degree that I could have done pretty much anything with. My contemporaries at university are MDs at global banks, they run private equity companies, they are directors at top 5 consultancies and partners at international law firms. I know who these people are an I know what they are like.
I didn't take one of the high powered jobs that was available to me because I hated the corporate culture that went with them. I worked in small companies until I started my own with a couple of colleagues.
I now run my own firm. I employ 33 people who I know well, and I have enough money to not work again though I am in my 40s.
I also have have some horrible experiences with my health that I thought would kill me, or permanently disable me. I was effectively off work in pain for nearly 4 years.
I have seen pretty much every side of the coin. I have learned some pretty hard lessons along the way.
One of them is not to judge people too harshly when they aren't successful because, there but for the grace of god goes any of us. And no, I am not religious (though I used to be).
There is no worth in blaming people for their life circumstances. We are all the product of our genes, our upbringing and everything that happened to us in life. Those who do well are lucky. I am one of them, but, after some fairly terrible years that came out of nowhere, I have the grace to realise that my success is luck. I am lucky that was born intelligent to a mother who forced me to work hard at school. I am lucky that I was born in a country which still had opportunities for working class kids. I was lucky I could get a free place at an elite university. I was lucky that I met the right people who could guide me and give me the opportunities I have had. I was lucky that when it all went to sh*t I had a loving family around me and access to excellent healthcare.
Most people aren't 1% as lucky as me. I don't want to live in a society where luck determines whether you get to live a life in reasonable comfort and dignity.
We have the material resources to ensure that everyone does.
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Mason
First, my story is not a sob story. It's the opposite. It's a recognition of my very good luck. In global terms I am one of the luckiest people alive.
I grew up a conservative. I used to argue politics as a young person all the time. I was actually at school with the former shadow education secretary and used to argue with her constantly. Now, decades later, I have come over to her side!
The thing you are underestimating is how badly off the rails the country is right now. I am not a fully fledged socialist either but the country has strayed way to far to the right, not just in its politics, but in where power resides in the economy.
There is currently an insidious assumption that the wealthy are entitled to power and an unlimited opportunity to accumulate wealth. But this is new and it's very wrong. This didn't even exist under Thatcher.
I know what conservatism is about but the current Tory party is miles away from the best traditions of conservative ideology. It's a party of corrupt liars who have long ago lost any claim to integrity or trust. This is what is coupled with an attitude that says "pull yourself up by your bootstraps", which is now a deliberate deception.
I still hold that the underlying conception of conservatives that the worthy do well and those that fail deserve it is fundamentally wrong.
First, the system is completely rigged to give the most privileged an unassailable lead in life. I managed to get to an elite university by hard work and single minded dedication, and when I got there, the whole place was full of people who were born expecting to go there and coached and groomed to get in. I thought that this was meritocracy at work but actually it was oligarchy at work.
Second, and this is a philosophical point, I don't believe that people ever make free choices in their life (I am a determinist) so it's basically impossible to say who "deserves" a good life and who doesn't. A kid who grew up brought up by a drug addicted mother and who ends up a petty criminal "deserves" a good life just as much as I do. The only difference between us is luck. And zero Tories will put their hand on their heart and agree with that. But that's where I think a full sense of justice comes from.
What's particularly annoying is that those on the right are often the people who got lucky and of course, it's amazingly gratifying to them to believe that they truly "deserve" their success. They revel in this smug self satisfaction.
And they often go on to see that those who did badly in life "deserved" that too.
But it's all nonsense. They didn't make themselves. They weren't responsible for forming the person who was successful. They were just the beneficiary of a lot of good luck.
As, despite what looked like a bad start, I was.
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Forza223 Bowe
Labour will not tax anyone more except the top 5% of earners.
In the UK, half of working people earn LESS than £26,000. Labour are planning to tax only the richest 1 in 20 people - people earning more than 3 times the average wage.
And even then, it's only a tiny bit more. If you earn £90,000 you will pay about £10 more in tax per week. This is couch change for someone on £90,000 a year!
But they mean business when it comes to fixing the NHS, fixing schools and dealing with the climate crisis. 10 years of austerity has left the NHS in its worse condition since they started collecting most of the statistics. Worst A&E waiting times, worst vacancies for nurses and doctors, worst waiting lists for operations, worst performance on cancer treatments, etc.
Oh and the Tories said that they had no choice but to enforce austerity. because they needed to save money. But guess what? The top 1% got richer at an almost record rate after 2010! So while the government was starving public services of funds, the rich were laughing all the way to the bank... That's the Tories for you.
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@HS-fm9kv
Yes, there is a lot of unsustainable practice across arable farming as well, when it comes to fertiliser, pesticides and herbicides etc. And this is starting to be addressed.
Again, with less animal agriculture there is less pressure on land which means that farmers could adopt more sustainable practice with some loss of yields and these local pollution and biodiversity effects would be mitigated.
When it comes to looking at the whole world, yes, it will be a long time before most people are vegetarian or vegan (though if you look at the climate chaos coming our way, I think that is more likely than you might think).
The question is, what can you personally do to reduce your impact and (I have to say this as a vegan) the scale of the suffering that you cause sentient animals by your food choices?
There are people who do not understand the dire situation that we are in. They will be very resistant to change. And then there are those like you who understand. I think it is therefore incumbent on those who understand and who care to maximise their contribution to solving the problem, because when all is said and done, that is the only way that we can maximise our chance of success. It might seem like a curse of knowledge but it isn't. Plant-based diets are also healthier and cheaper and just as enjoyable after learning a few new recipes and dining habits.
One thing that is very rare is a vegan who regrets going vegan. It's almost always the opposite- they regret not doing it sooner.
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Kate Bolger
Sorry, no. I have been following him closely, since he started his campaign in 2015. It’s not MSM hype or spin or fake news. He is genuinely awful, personally and at his job. Here are some reasons why.
He has given the top 1% and big corporations a huge tax cut which they didn’t need. Now he wants to cut entitlements and healthcare for the poor and the sick to the bone to try to close the $1.9 Trillion hole in the deficit. Even if the GOP do that, it would still leave a $1 Trillion hole in the budget. So much for the fiscal conservative GOP, supposedly obsessed with the debt. No, they are obsessed with giving their donors and friends huge tax cuts.
He has pulled out of the Paris Accord (making the US the ONLY country in the world not in it) and his EPA Director has been busy ripping up environmental protections as fast as he can, including ripping up limits on emissions of methane from pipelines and CO2 from cars, and he has opened up the entire US seaboard - except Florida - for drilling for oil, despite the massive environmental risks, all as a personal favour friend over a phone call (that last part he literally admitted in a speech).
He has made over 4000 lying or misleading statements in the 18 months since he took office.
He doesn’t deliver on his promises because many were impossible in the first place. His #1 signature promise was to build the southern border wall AND have Mexico pay for it. 18 months on, there is no wall and the idea that Mexico will cough up a dime is hilarious.
He has consistently demonised the free press and called it the “enemy of the people” repeatedly, including 3 days before the attack at the Capitol Gazette in Annapolis where 5 journalists were shot dead by a Trump supporter.
He has consistently attacked and tried to delegitimise the FBI, the intelligence services and the DOJ - the very backbone of the rule of law in the US.
He has consistently sucked up to and downplayed the horrible things done by dictators the world over from Kim Jong Un to Duterte in The
Philippines (a man who has proudly admitted to throwing drug dealers out of a helicopter).
He is a huge philanderer who cheated on all his wives (including on Melania immediately after the birth of Baron with a porn star).
He is racist, he is ridiculously narcissistic and petty, he is a deal-wrecker, he is rude, insulting, unbelievably ignorant about pretty much everything while being supremely opinionated and delusional that he knows everything he needs to know.
So no, he has not done great things for his country, unless the only people you care about are the top 1% and his donors.
He is wrecking his country’s institutions, he is wrecking its international relations, he is making the country into an ugly laughing stock and he is taking the world down with him.
Personally, I can’t think of any character flaws that you couldn’t fairly apply to him except psychopathy, but given his statement about shooting someone on 5th Avenue and his supporters still loving him (which I believe is actually true, because they are basically unhinged at this point), he might actually fit that one as well. I am struggling to think of an individual with less integrity or less qualified to do his job.
I know nothing about you personally but random chance tells me that you would do a better job than him, literally.
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@sonofsomerset1695
No, I just read what NASA scientists write in their scientific studies.
This isn't hard stuff. The principles of atmospheric warming due to greenhouse gases like CO2 has been known about since the mid-19th century. In 1859, Tyndall showed that gases including carbon dioxide and water vapour can absorb heat. You can literally demonstrate this in a lab. You fill a chamber with CO2 and shine infrared radiation into it. The CO2 absorbs and scatters back the infrared and the gas heats up. This is precisely what is happening in our atmosphere.
Light comes from the sun in all wavelengths. When it hits the Earth, the surface absorbs much of that radiation and warms up, meaning it radiates back much more Infrared than other wavelengths. Warm objects look bright to an infrared camera for the same reason.
Then that IR is emitted off towards space from the surface. But some fraction of it is blocked by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (like CO2, methane, water vapour and others). The CO2 molecules absorb IR and scatter it, meaning much of that IR never makes it to space.
The more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the more IR gets absorbed in the lower atmosphere, which warms up as a consequence.
This also has the predictable result that the upper atmosphere does not receive as much IR (because it got absorbed lower down) so it cools down. And again, that is precisely what has been observed. As the lower atmosphere has warmed, the upper atmosphere has cooled.
Again, the consensus on this is no accident or conspiracy. It's not just solid theory. The theory has been verified in many many 1000s of studies over many decades by scientists all over the world, including those who work for the fossil fuel industry.
I don't accept the science on climate because I am smart. And I don't accept it because I want it to be true. I really desperately don't want it to be true.
I accept it because I owe it to myself and my kids to be honest with myself and not ignore such a terribly important fact of the world we live in.
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@nighttrain1236 I am not advocating for nationalising everything. Only major utilities that are natural monopolies.
On trains, the U.K. spends almost exactly the same im subsidies, £11bn in 22/23, but it gets an absolutely embarrassing railways network in return.
I am not against properly regulated markets - there is no such thing as a "free market" - but they have their limits, either due to the tendency of the market to favour natural monopolies (rail, water, energy, mail, etc) or where the services are too important to the running of a functional and civilised society (health, education, policing, fire brigades, etc).
The last 45 years have clearly demonstrated the limits of privatisation of the industries. That needs to be reversed. The social democratic consensus of the post war period led to faster and more fairly shared growth in the economy and overall prosperity than the failed neoliberal experiment that followed it. We need to learn that lesson and get back to a much more rational balance in the economy between what is run for profit by corporations and what is run for the public good by the public sector.
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@nighttrain1236 @nighttrain1236 Wrong on several counts there. I mean its a nice talking point, but its a lie (not your lie, the lie of right wing narratives generally)
Let's take the water industry as an example. Since privatisation, it has borrowed £53 billion. It has taken £72 billion in dividends.
20% of customers' are now paying to service debt that the industry took on to pay itself dividends.
And what was the outcome? The worst water system of any developed nation. Illegal spills of sewage across the entire system on a almost continual basis. Illegal water quality in almost every river in the country. AND rising costs for consumers.
Also you say that shareholders invest in creating productivity. No, they invest in creating profits. These can be very different things in practice, especially in poorly functioning markets.
You have to give up the idea that markets work in all industries. They simply don't. And where markets don't work, then any private, profit-drivem enterprise in that market is going to abuse the market for its own profits.
Things like water, rail, buses, the mail system, etc are natural monopolies. They do worse when privatised for everyone except for the shareholders who get to cream off profits rain or shine.
I run a business myself. I understand why market dynamics are helpful in the right industry, but you have to get off this ideological faith in markets and accept that they have their limits when it comes to overall utility and efficiency.
I will use the example of the Swiss transport system again. The Swiss public transport system is the best in Europe. It is probably one of the best in the world. And the reason is because it is meticulously planned and designed to be incredibly reliable and efficient. Does this server the bottom line of some shareholders somewhere. No. But it serves the Swiss people who use it incredibly well. Here is a video that demonstrates just how good it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muPcHs-E4qc
If this system was sold off and fragmented among multiple providers, the entire system would fall to bits in a sea of market bureaucracy, broken scheduling and interoperation, horribly complex ticketing and fee structures.
It works because it is a national monopoly that is centrally planned and well funded. And that makes it some thing that the Swiss are justifiably extremely proud off.
Unlike the UK train system which is an international embarrassment.
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@db-gr6fh
No, I'm not missing the point. My source wasn't a green website. If you read the first para of the article, you will see, as I said that the research was done by the US NREL, part of the Dept of Energy, in 2012. Here is the direct link
https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/re-futures.html
And that was 9 years ago, since when renewables and battery prices have collapsed. Yes storage is required, but, I'm good conditions, solar and storage is already cheaper than gas plants. And battery and storage tech is in the process of being revolutionised as money pours in for R&D.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Investment-In-Battery-Tech-Exploded-In-2020.html
If you read what I said, I said that fossil energy is not required. And it isn't. Not for batteries, not for steel which can be produced with hydrogen, rather than coming coal.
And if we don't switch off fossil fuels very rapidly, we will not be worried about cheap energy. We will be worrying about food, water and shelter.
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@spannerintheworks1190
That sounds very much like an argument that it's ok for some people to be left in misery with no resources or way to support themselves, so long as they don't live here.
Climate migration is already happening. It's going to grow hugely. If you choose to throw up walls against it, then that is akin to fend people off a lifeboat.
The solution cannot be to keep doing what we are doing and control the scale. What we are already doing at this scale is causing environmental calamity. The solution is to change what we are doing.
And no, there is no reason why we cannot power ourselves of renewables. That is just made up on your part. The abundance of renewable resources far outstrips our need of them. The question is how do we harness them (this is largely solved - it just needs scaling up - note that over Easter 60% of U.K. power was zero carbon) and second, how do we handle peaks and troughs in the availability of the power. That is a more challenging issue but one that the National Grid says is soluble using technology that we have now and that is in late phases of R&D.
The green belt is only under pressure because of the absurd amount of land we dedicate to farming animals in the U.K.. Cut that in half and the country would have vast swathes of available land for nature restoration and carbon sequestration.
On water, again, animal agriculture is a major culprit. It takes 17,000 litres of freshwater to produce 1Kg of beef. That's about 60 bathtubs.
It takes 1000 litres of water to produce 1 litre of milk. These are literally hundreds of times the amounts required for growing equivalent amounts of plant-based foods.
And a much lower intake of meat, dairy and eggs would dramatically improve the health of the population as well. Consumption of animal products, especially red meat and processed foods, is a major risk factor for pretty much every major killer in the west. Cut that back and people will live longer with far less chronic illness.
Again, the problems are soluble but not if we insist on carrying on with the hugely damaging practices that caused these problems in the first place.
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Google It
First, you just completely misrepresented what I said.
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman
Second, "the EU" doesn't have corporation tax policy. It has 28 different corporation tax policies because it has 28 members.
And the corporate tax policy in Hungary is completely different to that in Denmark.
Either way, the tax burden in the UK as a share of GDP is much lower than it was under, say, the Blair government, and the country was doing very well until the banks crashed the economy. The country can easily bear significantly more tax and especially on the rich and corporations, whose effective tax rates have fallen most.
Plus, government spending on infrastructure is extremely stimulative to the economy. Spending on things like transport, energy, communications and science can repay their investment 10x or more. The UK economy has pathetic productivity in many areas and underinvestment in national infrastructure is a major reason for that.
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@IndustrialBonecraft
Firstly clean energy supplies 40% of power in the U.K. and 50% in Germany. It is not delicate or fragile.
Second, and new investment in oil and gas will not be producing fuels for at least 3-5 years. That is the typical timescale to get easily accessible fields operating so it will have zero impact right now.
Meanwhile new onshore wind and solar can be up and running in a year. If the government had pushed renewables last autumn when fossil fuel prices started rising, along with energy efficiency measures like insulation and swapping out boilers for heat pumps, then by this winter, they could have added several GW of power and reduced demand significantly.
Even now they are artificially restricting the amount of wind power they will license. They actually held back 12GW of shovel-ready projects. Under this government the rate of growth in renewables has almost stopped even though it's the cheapest form of power to put on the grid, especially now fossil fuel prices are high. Indeed thanks to the contracts for difference on wind power where producers get a fixed price for production, the wind producers have actually been paying back billions into the sector, lowering bills, because the market price is well above their strike price.
The whole idea of pushing for more fossil fuels when the market has been proven to be so dysfunctional is crazy. Any new production from the North Sea would just go on the global market like the rest, and it would have no significant impact on price simply due to the low volume.
Meanwhile, investment in renewables which are cheaper and CANT be shipped around the world to the highest bidder is being kneecapped by the government due to investment support being specifically targeted at fossil fuels.
And that's before we even bring in the existential crisis of the climate emergency. The IEA and IPCC have both said and any new investment in fossil fuels is incompatible with a stable and liveable climate. The UN has called such investment "moral and economic madness". And for good reason. It is condemning us to an unliveable planet.
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