Inequality

[Numero Veinticinco]

But why is something as - let's be honest - trivial as elite sport given so much more tolerance as a field for high pay than the multinational companies that are so important to our economy? I just find it weird. People clearly don't value the contribution made by the latter.

You're making an equivalence that shouldn't be made. The proceeds of the business are going to the workers - the players - who make the business the money. The workers are not exploited in order to make the owners and the board wealthy. In the businesses we're talking about here (I can list many, many, examples if required), those making the money through their labour and knowledge are used to create wealth for the owners and board. Now, that's not entirely wrong. The CEO has special knowledge, might have more training, makes big decisions, and in a lot of cases just had an idea of value; the issue is the level of disparity.

 

But anyway, like I said, using these extreme examples is never really going to give a clear picture. Football and other sports and entertainment is a strange thing. I'd also say that there's little support for the amount of money in football. You say fans celebrate pay rises, but they don't. They celebrate keeping a player. Whether he makes 100k or 150k is of no concern. You wouldn't very well see a fan celebrating somebody staying for the same amount of time - or less - on more money.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

But why is something as - let's be honest - trivial as elite sport given so much more tolerance as a field for high pay than the multinational companies that are so important to our economy? I just find it weird. People clearly don't value the contribution made by the latter.

There's an argument that, at the highest level, there's a correlation between the talent and hard work of individual players and the revenue generated by the club, in which case the player deserves a share of the revenue he has directly earned for the club. (It's a theory that only goes so far; it doesn't jusify all the mediocrities taking twice the annual average salary every fucking week.)

 

There is no correlation between CEO pay and performance.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

In fact, I see pay rises for ours celebrated on here. It's an interesting double standard.

It's only a double standard when one individual celebrates excess pay for footballers while criticising excess pay for CEOs. If anyone does that, I'll agree, it's hypocrisy.

[Hades]

[AngryOfTuebrook]

[AngryOfTuebrook]

When you need someone to talk more sense on taxation than half the party of Government, you don't even have to look any further than a camp chat-show host (and occasional caravan Riverdancer).

 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

When plebs like me say that giving tax cuts to the richest is a racket (and bad economics) it can be dismissed as "the politics of envy".

 

I'm not sure what you call it when a Disney heiress says the same.

 

https://twitter.com/EVRYBODYvsTRUMP/status/1050454547318104066

[Jairzinho]

Self hating millionaires.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Imagine looking at a refugee camp and thinking "KERCHINNNG!"

 

Apparently, these places aren't a terrible blight on humanity and a damning indictment of the failure of the ruling classes: they're an investment opportunity.

 

https://www.ft.com/content/e2d6588a-5042-11e8-b3ee-41e0209208ec

 

I get the idea that it's not good for people to have no recourse but to live on handouts, but to say that "the only way to do this is by partnering with the private sector" shows a depressing lack of vision and imagination.

 

 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Figures taken from the Sunday Times Rich List (tweeted by CounterHegemony).

 

ore

The combined wealth of the UK's richest 1,000:

2009 - £256bn

2010 - £333bn

2011 - £396bn

2012 - £414bn

2013 - £450bn

2014 - £519bn

2015 - £547bn

2016 - £576bn

2017 - £658bn

2018 - £724bn (Over a third of UK GDP!)

 

This is a 183% increase. Socialism for the rich; austerity for us.

[Strontium]

What was it before 2009? You know, before there was a financial crash.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

13 minutes ago, Strontium Dog said:

What was it before 2009? You know, before there was a financial crash.

Don't know about 2008, but it was £360 bn in 2007 and (by my maths) £300 bn in 2006.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6603893.stm

 

[Edit]  £413 bn in 2008

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/5220243/Sunday-Times-Rich-List-2009-Analysis.html

 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Children In Need raised a record-breaking £50 million last night.

 

Now we just need to do that about another 70-odd times to make up for the Inheritance Tax that the Duke of Westminster dodged.

[Jairzinho]

 

[SasaS]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47169549

"Giving jobless people in Finland a basic income for two years did not lead them to find work, researchers said.From January 2017 until December 2018, 2,000 unemployed Finns got a monthly flat payment of €560 (£490; $685).

The aim was to see if a guaranteed safety net would help people find jobs, and support them if they had to take insecure gig economy work.

While employment levels did not improve, participants said they felt happier and less stressed."
 

Don't quite understand why would the UBI help them find jobs regular unemployment benefit couldn't. Surely the point would be to see what did they do with free time, did they volunteer, go back to school, join the circus etc.

[Jairzinho]

16 minutes ago, SasaS said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47169549

"Giving jobless people in Finland a basic income for two years did not lead them to find work, researchers said.From January 2017 until December 2018, 2,000 unemployed Finns got a monthly flat payment of €560 (£490; $685).

The aim was to see if a guaranteed safety net would help people find jobs, and support them if they had to take insecure gig economy work.

While employment levels did not improve, participants said they felt happier and less stressed."
 

Don't quite understand why would the UBI help them find jobs regular unemployment benefit couldn't. Surely the point would be to see what did they do with free time, did they volunteer, go back to school, join the circus etc.

 

 

Agreed. Seems and odd thing to expect.

[SasaS]

It may be that you don't lose the income if you get a job, and you lose the benefit, so they have proved losing the jobseeker's allowance is not a disincentive to getting a job, for most people. They didn't have to spend 26 million euros to learn that. Unless you are chronically unemployed and moonlighting in the grey economy, you'd almost always take the job over the benefit.

But that's like the least interesting thing about the UBI.

[Rico1304]

45 minutes ago, Content Providicus said:

Agreed. Seems and odd thing to expect.

I think the idea was it’d encourage people to get work they wanted rather than they needed.  

 

People ended up happier though.  

 

Has to be the way forward when we are all replaced by machines. 

[Bjornebye]

5 minutes ago, Rico1304 said:

I think the idea was it’d encourage people to get work they wanted rather than they needed.  

 

People ended up happier though.  

 

Has to be the way forward when we are all replaced by machines. 

I thought that. 

[SasaS]

Bump.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/11/scrap-tax-free-personal-allowance-and-pay-everyone-48-a-week

 

The tax-free personal allowance, which rises to £12,500 in April, should be scrapped and replaced with a flat payment of £48 a week for every adult, according to radical proposals welcomed by shadow chancellor John McDonnell.

 

The proposal, from the New Economics Foundation thinktank, is for a £48.08 “weekly national allowance,” amounting to £2,500.16 a year from the state, paid to every adult over the age of 18 earning less than £125,000 a year. The cash would not replace benefits and would not depend on employment.

 

Yes, no, a step towards a guranteed basic income? Discuss.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Segregated play areas - because it's never too early to teach poor kids that they are worth less than rich kids.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/mar/25/too-poor-to-play-children-in-social-housing-blocked-from-communal-playground?fbclid=IwAR0uk89XpkFvCHkwgHqDHnXKDOTyCB_SJXfJxiVswddafXOVFFBYTiU3rGY

 

[Creator Supreme]

1 hour ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

Segregated play areas - because it's never too early to teach poor kids that they are worth less than rich kids.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/mar/25/too-poor-to-play-children-in-social-housing-blocked-from-communal-playground?fbclid=IwAR0uk89XpkFvCHkwgHqDHnXKDOTyCB_SJXfJxiVswddafXOVFFBYTiU3rGY

 

I commented on the same story in another thread! If anybody out there thinks this is a good thing, please take a long walk off a short pier!

[Numero Veinticinco]

On 11/03/2019 at 14:23, SasaS said:

Bump.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/11/scrap-tax-free-personal-allowance-and-pay-everyone-48-a-week

 

The tax-free personal allowance, which rises to £12,500 in April, should be scrapped and replaced with a flat payment of £48 a week for every adult, according to radical proposals welcomed by shadow chancellor John McDonnell.

 

The proposal, from the New Economics Foundation thinktank, is for a £48.08 “weekly national allowance,” amounting to £2,500.16 a year from the state, paid to every adult over the age of 18 earning less than £125,000 a year. The cash would not replace benefits and would not depend on employment.

 

Yes, no, a step towards a guranteed basic income? Discuss.

Well, I mean... I'd have to see the mathematics behind it but, and I've always been sceptical of a UBI on the grounds of affordability, but if it's viable then it'd be one of the biggest redistributions of wealth we could reasonable see. I wonder how the 125k limit is worked out. Seems quite high and possibly unnecessary to pay those who earn 10k per month to give them another 200. 

[Numero Veinticinco]

18 minutes ago, Creator Supreme said:

I commented on the same story in another thread! If anybody out there thinks this is a good thing, please take a long walk off a short pier!

Maybe rather than asking people to kill themselves for disagreeing, you could make a rational argument against it in order to arm people with the same level of insight was you? 

 

Or nah?

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Some interesting stats in this article. 

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/education-48229037