Inequality

[A Red]

On 31/03/2021 at 19:48, Colonel Kurtz said:

This must be an old reference but did somebody really suggest that voting in a way they didn't like (I'm guessing Tory) should exclude you from welfare and hence you should starve ? 

Its ok it was just artistic licence, you know, the type of quip that if I, you or others had said would have been completely accepted as such.

 

To be fair to @Section_31 he does post rather a lot and my memory is not the best so i'm sure he can point out that i've got it wrong.

[Bobby Hundreds]

It's a first world problem but where my missus works her bonus pay they are all on different grades, at the top the bosses get a bonus of 65 percent of their annual salary, the next tier 40 percent the next tier 20 percent, 10 percent and 5 percent providing targets are hit and all that shit. I find it astounding some people get 65 percent of their salary on an already big salary. Those on a smaller wage get a smaller percentage of a smaller wage to me those on the least money should get the 65 percent, the next 40 percent and so on, then everyone is getting a good wedge. To the person on the bottom 65 percent could be huge to their year, at the top 10 percent of a big wage is still a nice chunk of change. Who would of thought that those who make the decisions with the money put it all in their own pockets.

 

Regardless of all that I think its a fucked up bonus system. At the very least you'd make everyone's percentage the same.

 

[Section_31]

I basically said I have no sympathy for anyone who votes Tory and then suffers as a consequence of their policies, why would I? Just like I've got no sympathy for someone who baits a rabid dog then gets bitten.

 

At least I'm honest, unlike A Red who drives for a foodbank so he can tell people he does it, yet takes the piss out of their gardens and sits slightly to the right of General Franco. 

 

This is what you get though with these types, and Kurtz too. They back parties who dole out human misery over a period of decades but then throw up the faux outrage when someone says people are dickheads for voting for it.

 

Also, don't know if the "he posts rather a lot" is supposed to be some sort of veiled jibe, but I'd ask who's the saddest bastard, someone who spends a lot of time on a forum having genuine discussions with people about different subjects, or a grown man who goes on there mainly to "wind up the lefties". 

[Kepler-186]

Might have been posted before but it’s a telling read, especially as it is written “as others see us”. Dated 2018. 
 

Mentions Prescot and L5. 
 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/28/world/europe/uk-austerity-poverty.amp.html

[Mudface]

14 minutes ago, Bobby Hundreds said:

It's a first world problem but where my missus works her bonus pay they are all on different grades, at the top the bosses get a bonus of 65 percent of their annual salary, the next tier 40 percent the next tier 20 percent, 10 percent and 5 percent providing targets are hit and all that shit. I find it astounding some people get 65 percent of their salary on an already big salary. Those on a smaller wage get a smaller percentage of a smaller wage to me those on the least money should get the 65 percent, the next 40 percent and so on, then everyone is getting a good wedge. To the person on the bottom 65 percent could be huge to their year, at the top 10 percent of a big wage is still a nice chunk of change. Who would of thought that those who make the decisions with the money put it all in their own pockets.

 

Regardless of all that I think its a fucked up bonus system. At the very least you'd make everyone's percentage the same.

We had a rigged bonus system where I used to work too. Grades 1-7- which included the lab staff, factory workers, cleaners etc- all got a fixed sum as a bonus. Nice, it showed that everyone was valued no matter what you did and the bonus meant more to the lower paid staff.

 

However, everyone grade 8 and above- from departmental managers to the CEO- got a percentage of their salary. So in a typical good year, us research chemists would get £250, while our immediate manager, who'd be in charge of maybe 3-4 people, would get 5% of his salary, probably about £2000. So a system which could have kept everyone happy caused a huge amount of resentment.

[A Red]

7 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

I basically said I have no sympathy for anyone who votes Tory and then suffers as a consequence of their policies, why would I? Just like I've got no sympathy for someone who baits a rabid dog then gets bitten.

 

At least I'm honest, unlike A Red who drives for a foodbank so he can tell people he does it, yet takes the piss out of their gardens and sits slightly to the right of General Franco. 

 

This is what you get though with these types, and Kurtz too. They back parties who dole out human misery over a period of decades but then throw up the faux outrage when someone says people are dickheads for voting for it.

 

Also, don't know if the "he posts rather a lot" is supposed to be some sort of veiled jibe, but I'd ask who's the saddest bastard, someone who spends a lot of time on a forum having genuine discussions with people about different subjects, or a grown man who goes on there mainly to "wind up the lefties". 

You can quote me, it doesnt make you dirty and makes you look less hissy.

 

If you think I drive for a foodbank or do any other of the things I do to just in order to be able to tell other people how marvellous I am, you are being plain silly. But hey ho.

 

The "he posts rather a lot" was actually meaning that me, not having the best search skills, would have to trawl through your posts to find what you had said. No need to be touchy about it, I do actually enjoy a lot of your posts. I've told you that before.

 

Dont say you "basically said" you actually said, you wouldnt give them benefits because they voted tory. Am I right? 

[Section_31]

I suggest you just put me on ignore mate. I put you on ages ago, I only know you've posted because your avatar pops up on the home screen. I think if Covid has taught us anything, it's that life's too short to be arguing over the Internet.

[A Red]

16 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

I suggest you just put me on ignore mate. I put you on ages ago, I only know you've posted because your avatar pops up on the home screen. I think if Covid has taught us anything, it's that life's too short to be arguing over the Internet.

You brought me up and started the insults, now its not going your way you're hiding behind the ignore function.

 

Well done.

[Captain Howdy]

18 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

I suggest you just put me on ignore mate. I put you on ages ago, I only know you've posted because your avatar pops up on the home screen. I think if Covid has taught us anything, it's that life's too short to be arguing over the Internet.

True enough. I find the older I get (and boy I’m getting old) the less arsed I am about just about everything. I don’t agree with loads on here but it doesn’t bother me one jot. I think the only person who can still truly wind me up is Owen Jones, honourable mention to Toby Young. Other than that, meh

[A Red]

7 minutes ago, Captain Howdy said:

True enough. I find the older I get (and boy I’m getting old) the less arsed I am about just about everything. I don’t agree with loads on here but it doesn’t bother me one jot. I think the only person who can still truly wind me up is Owen Jones, honourable mention to Toby Young. Other than that, meh

Yeah, I get you.

 

Thing is, probably best not to dig at someone unprovoked then play the "life is too short" card when they question their disgusting views.

[Kepler-186]

Good thread on 40 odd years of neoliberalism and the rise of corporate lobbying and its influence on the wider world. 
 

It’s your fault if you’re poor and can’t buy influence or move your money around the global markets: Conservative ideology since 1979. 
 

 

[Kepler-186]

Same guy, same topic. 
 

 

[Section_31]

1 hour ago, Kepler-186 said:

Same guy, same topic. 
 

 

 

The bit I don't agree with with this kind of stuff is the idea that these people genuinely believe your suffering is your fault or the result of you not working hard enough, they may say that but I think they're smart enough to know it's not that simple.

 

It's more a case of that they just don't care. They exist in a system that affords them the ability to achieve success and they exploit it, it's pure self interest. They know it impacts on wider society when other people can't afford things or don't have decent jobs, but they're too short sighted to give a toss. 

[Kepler-186]

12 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

 

The bit I don't agree with with this kind of stuff is the idea that these people genuinely believe your suffering is your fault or the result of you not working hard enough, they may say that but I think they're smart enough to know it's not that simple.

 

It's more a case of that they just don't care. They exist in a system that affords them the ability to achieve success and they exploit it, it's pure self interest. They know it impacts on wider society when other people can't afford things or don't have decent jobs, but they're too short sighted to give a toss. 

“Support the Queen, the troops and the flag you leftie scrounger.”

 

”Ok, and how about we invest in people’s future health, education and well being as well so we live in an well balanced country that we can also be proud of?”

 

”Not that sort of patriotism, you Marxist commie loving scum.” 

 

Rinse and repeat. 
 

I think you’re right, and those types are also the first to complain about no police, poor road surfaces, and councils spending money on arts projects for less well off areas. 
 

I saw the documentary on Harrow school

yesterday on Sky docs. One kid per term

probably has as much spent on him as a kid from a challenging area gets over half his schooling, not to mention the amazing facilities, access to arts and music. 
 

Same as it ever was I guess.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Stickman]

2 hours ago, Kepler-186 said:

Good thread on 40 odd years of neoliberalism and the rise of corporate lobbying and its influence on the wider world. 
 

It’s your fault if you’re poor and can’t buy influence or move your money around the global markets: Conservative ideology since 1979. 
 

 

 

 

Looks like creating massive inequality, poverty and sleaze pays dividends 

 

[Kepler-186]

12 minutes ago, Stickman said:

 

 

Looks like creating massive inequality, poverty and sleaze pays dividends 

 

Depressing, but no surprise. As many posters have pointed out vast parts of England are now both socially and economically right wing, united behind the flag to the detriment of all else. The media have been complicit in making Labour (and EU) the source of all the country’s ills to the point our politics now resembles the US. 
 

There’s no magic bullet, or someone riding in to save the day, and it seems Labour can’t even stand up for basic workers’ rights now. Tories have got it stitched up, as your post proves. 
 

 

 

[Bruce Spanner]

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorises it and a moral code that glorifies it." - Frédéric Bastiat

[Bruce Spanner]

Really interesting take on the way inequality manifests itself, sometimes subtly...

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/05/millennial-grandparents-unequal-generation/618859/

 

'A few weeks ago, I met my first Millennial grandparent. I was interviewing a woman in her late 30s about President Joe Biden’s new child-tax-credit proposal, and she mentioned that it would benefit not just her two young kids but her older son’s kid too.

 

The incidental meeting was a reminder both that Millennials are getting older and that they are doing so without growing up, at least not in the way that many of them might wish. The woman I interviewed does not own a home, nor is she anywhere close to affording one. She has nothing in the way of savings. Nevertheless, she is a grandmother, catapulting into middle age.

 

Millennials, as just about everyone knows at this point, are a generation delayed. The pandemic recession has led not-so-young adults to put off having kids, buying a house, getting married, or investing in a car—yet again. But today’s economic conditions are not just holding Millennials back. They are stratifying them, leading to unequal experiences within the generation as well as between it and other cohorts.

 

Marriage is a prime example. Millennials are getting hitched later in life than people in prior generations did. The average age at first marriage has steadily climbed over the past half century, from 23 to 30 for men and from 21 to 28 for women. As a result, Millennials are less likely to be married than Gen Xers or Baby Boomers were when they were the same age; the marriage rate among young adults has fallen 14 percentage points since 1990.

 

But the rising average masks some growing variation in the Millennial experience. Millennials, in particular women, who have completed college are tending to get married older; Millennials who did not attend or complete college are often opting not to marry at all. Three decades ago, the marriage rate was above 60 percent for all adults older than 25. Now, it is roughly 65 percent for those with a college degree and 50 percent for those who finished only high school.

 

The same kind of trend is affecting childbearing. Data compiled by the economist Caitlin Myers and published in The New York Times shows a sharp parenthood bell curve in the 20th century: Women would start becoming mothers in their late teens and stop becoming mothers in their early 30s. Now that curve is flatter and wider, with two spikes: one around 20 and one around 30. Many more women are choosing to become parents in their late 30s and early 40s.

 

Location and educational attainment seem to be factors; many college-educated women in cities such as San Francisco are putting childbearing off, whereas many women who did not go to college and live in rural areas are still having kids in their early 20s. The generational gap will only widen as more Millennials have their first grandkids. Some are already grandparents; others are looking at a half-century wait. Overall, the average age at which people are becoming grandparents continues to rise.

 

In terms of income and, especially, wealth, Millennials as a class have fallen behind, accumulating billions and billions of dollars less in net worth than Gen Xers and Baby Boomers did at the same point in their lives. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis suggest that older Millennials have roughly 11 percent less wealth than expected, given rates of inflation, and may well be the first generation in modern life to end up poorer than their parents.

 

Less recognized is that Millennials are also experiencing great wealth stratification. The very wealthiest Millennials are doing better than people at the same age decades ago; Mark Zuckerberg is far richer than Bill Gates was when he was 36, for instance. The Millennial top 10 percent—who grew up in relatively wealthy families and went to selective colleges—are doing just fine. But poorer Millennials—particularly those without a college degree—remain far, far behind. The St. Louis Fed researchers found that the typical Millennial without a college degree has nearly 20 percent less wealth than would be expected.

 

The skew becomes even larger when comparing white Millennials with Black Millennials: This is a generation committed to racial equality, but not one manifesting it. Younger white families are roughly as wealthy now as young white families were a few decades ago. But Black Millennials are poorer, on average, their collective net worths trailing by half. Student-loan debt is a central reason: Black college attendees are more likely to take out loans than white attendees. They end up borrowing more money. And many struggle to pay it back, even with the earnings premium that comes with a college diploma.

 

In terms of homeownership, the same dynamics apply: Millennials lucky enough to have their Boomer parents’ help to go to college and scrape together a down payment have benefited from the dramatic run-up in housing prices. Millennials without that help, in many cases, remain shut out, pushing down the generation’s overall rate of homeownership.

 

Millennials are not just a generation delayed, but a generation for which the whole idea of a milestone, or a marker of adulthood, has become weirder and less exact. And the pandemic has only made things more tenuous and more stratified.'

[Paulie Dangerously]

Had a row with MrsD yesterday. There was something on telly about a lad who built his own house at 21 and was now independent. My working class alarm went off when it turns out he built his house on his family's land with money his parents gave him. "FROM HUMBLE BEGINNINGS." She was made up for him but I pointed out his privilege. Almost every time there's a story about a young person who's bought their own home, or started their own business theres an asterisk of their parents giving them seed money, or not having to pay rent in their home, or something similar. 

 

Working in schools has opened my eyes to poverty on my own doorstep. I routinely buy snacks and food from my own pocket for kids.who come to school hungry so excuse me if I'm not applauding a rich lad set on the path to being rich for the rest of his like because of a step ladder from his rich parents. 

[VladimirIlyich]

On 16/04/2021 at 09:49, Kepler-186 said:

Depressing, but no surprise. As many posters have pointed out vast parts of England are now both socially and economically right wing, united behind the flag to the detriment of all else. The media have been complicit in making Labour (and EU) the source of all the country’s ills to the point our politics now resembles the US. 
 

There’s no magic bullet, or someone riding in to save the day, and it seems Labour can’t even stand up for basic workers’ rights now. Tories have got it stitched up, as your post proves. 
 

 

 

YouGov is owned by Tories. Even if they are correct,the problem is that just printing polls like this stops any kind of opposition as people think their vote is pointless. It's all propaganda and we fall for it en masse.

[Section_31]

38 minutes ago, Paulie Dangerously said:

Had a row with MrsD yesterday. There was something on telly about a lad who built his own house at 21 and was now independent. My working class alarm went off when it turns out he built his house on his family's land with money his parents gave him. "FROM HUMBLE BEGINNINGS." She was made up for him but I pointed out his privilege. Almost every time there's a story about a young person who's bought their own home, or started their own business theres an asterisk of their parents giving them seed money, or not having to pay rent in their home, or something similar. 

 

Working in schools has opened my eyes to poverty on my own doorstep. I routinely buy snacks and food from my own pocket for kids.who come to school hungry so excuse me if I'm not applauding a rich lad set on the path to being rich for the rest of his like because of a step ladder from his rich parents. 

Yeah it's all bollocks. I'm pretty sure Branson and Gates had money when they built their companies, Bezos was a hedge fund manager. Fair play, I mean fucking hell you can't take away from what they've achieved but dig deeper and it's very, very rare that someone is truly 'self made.'

 

Mrs was talking about how her mate's kid has just bought a house. Because "while her mates were going out, she was saving for a deposit".

 

Me: "wow that's impressive."

 

Her: "Yeah the only help her mum gave her was letting her live at home rent free while she saved."

 

Oh. 

 

I'm 100% behind anyone who gets a leg up, whether it's an apprenticeship from a dad's mate or cash for a deposit, but people can't then use what they've "achieved" to beat people who don't have anything, like it's all about "hard work". 

 

To quote the great Vic Mackey. "God made all men equal, but once they're out he starts playing favourites."

[Kepler-186]

5 minutes ago, VladimirIlyich said:

YouGov is owned by Tories. Even if they are correct,the problem is that just printing polls like this stops any kind of opposition as people think their vote is pointless. It's all propaganda and we fall for it en masse.

The Tories have done so much damage to the social fabric of the country since 2010 but have somehow reaped the rewards. Labour have lost Scotland, and now vast swathes of the North. The Tories dumped their “One Nation” wets for a load of Brexit zealots, and are handing out cash to their constituencies to shore up support. Just read a book on Reagan in the 80s in the States and the policies are remarkably similar, so it’s just a continuation of Thatcher. People don’t seem arsed anymore,

maybe they factored in a rise in apathy with the relentlessness of it all. 

[Kepler-186]

50 minutes ago, Paulie Dangerously said:

Had a row with MrsD yesterday. There was something on telly about a lad who built his own house at 21 and was now independent. My working class alarm went off when it turns out he built his house on his family's land with money his parents gave him. "FROM HUMBLE BEGINNINGS." She was made up for him but I pointed out his privilege. Almost every time there's a story about a young person who's bought their own home, or started their own business theres an asterisk of their parents giving them seed money, or not having to pay rent in their home, or something similar. 

 

Working in schools has opened my eyes to poverty on my own doorstep. I routinely buy snacks and food from my own pocket for kids.who come to school hungry so excuse me if I'm not applauding a rich lad set on the path to being rich for the rest of his like because of a step ladder from his rich parents. 

There was an Echo article on

these lads who’ve started a designer sportswear brand that the f^^tie players are all wearing. Made it sound they’d just made it all by themselves. Turns out one of the lads’ girlfriend’s Dad has loads of clothing companies and gave them a leg up to start with. 
 

It’s not just the physical manifestations of poverty like hunger, it’s the way it’s now entrenched in life expectations for so many kids. I’ve seen ads warning about gangs grooming kids for crime next to ones for Liverpool City College. 

[Section_31]

1 minute ago, Kepler-186 said:

The Tories have done so much damage to the social fabric of the country since 2010 but have somehow reaped the rewards. Labour have lost Scotland, and now vast swathes of the North. The Tories dumped their “One Nation” wets for a load of Brexit zealots, and are handing out cash to their constituencies to shore up support. Just read a book on Reagan in the 80s in the States and the policies are remarkably similar, so it’s just a continuation of Thatcher. People don’t seem arsed anymore,

maybe they factored in a rise in apathy with the relentlessness of it all. 

I don't think the English are especially political compared to the other parts of the UK and I think it's always been that way. If you look at stuff like Citizen Smith, I know it's only a show but it sort of symbolises how people who are into politics or any kind of activism in England are perceived as being weird and wacky. You could say the same for how the city of Liverpool is depicted to outsiders in England too.

 

The English I think feel they've benefited from imperialism, that the blue bloods are better than us, but that somehow their magic rubs off on us and makes us better than everyone else. 

 

I think the Tories are perceived as the middle layer of the cake. Blue bloods at the top, Tories administering the empire, and us lot looking up and being grateful for crumbs.

 

We only really stray from that when the administration is perceived to be broken  or has lost its way, such as under Major with civil war over Europe. Even then, non Tory governments are little more than a brief interlude. 

 

[Bruce Spanner]

Was watching BBC London a few years back and Gerry Francis was on for whatever reason.

 

Anyhows the host then glibly introduced a band called 'Lost Lady Luck'

 

 

 

It's fucking awful, but well worth a listen, by complete conicidence it's Gerry Francis' sons band, mad, eh?