[nucklepunche]

This is a bit off topic but I have been saying for a long time that the whole trend toward automation is nothing to fear. You are starting to see a gradual fall in working hours and we are undergoing this adjustment. The problem is a lot of people are still working full time which is defined as 40 hours a week or more but there are just not many full time jobs available, however because the majority of the population works full time prices of goods and rents reflect that reality.

People think this means we need more government intervention but we need less, much less. The simple reality is that what is defined as "full time" is adjusting downward and that is a good thing in the long run, it is a good thing if the average person works 30 hours instead of 40. I could see it go down to 20 hours in 50 years. Again this is all good but it is going to be painful for those at the brunt of the adjustment. Perhaps government can do something to bolster the incomes of these people in the meanwhile but that is neither here nor there. The simple reality is that through law we have carved out a cultural expectation that a work week should be 40 hours, there is no reason for this.

Much less advanced nations see people working much more than 40 hours, often 60 or more. The work is more labor intensive while our work is starting to be less so. The marketplace will decide how many working hours people need, the problem is when you turn employers into the welfare state it just makes the problem all the worse for the unemployed or underemployed. This is what Americans love to do, we hate the idea of paying taxes but we love welfare so we just pass it all onto employers in order to keep it off the books but in turn it leads to a stagnant job market and those not employed are out of luck.

I think what America (and Britain) needs is a sort of Thatcher-like figure to come along and radically restructure the paradigm. This really all does connect back to her because when she came in the paradigm was a socialist one, she changed that. Currently we have a certain paradigm where people are expected to work 40 hours a week and employers are sort of welfare providers, if you have no job (even when less employment is an end result of these burdens) or work for a small business or part time you are out of luck. The fact is that those who are fortunate to have full time jobs are the real welfare queens of society, in essence the poor and working poor are subsidizing the upper middle class and wealthy.

Think about it. Poor people die younger so they get less Social Security which goes to all the people who can afford to extend their lives, poor people pay more taxes so businesses can get tax breaks to provide health care that they are not eligible for, a poor person looking to work their way out of poverty has a hard time finding jobs due to government restrictions and it is too costly to start an entrepreneurial enterprise (again due to government restrictions). The simple truth is that the whole welfare state, regulatory state paradism is hurting the poor more than anybody. The rich complain but it is just an added expense for them, it will not make them less wealthy.

[spodi]

You've got valid points nuckle but we're stuck in our ingrained ways and we fear change deep down. Evoloution is smoother than revolution.

[nucklepunche]

When I say "radically restructure" I mean as a matter of changing the political rhetoric and using legislative means to make changes.

[spodi]

When I say "radically restructure" I mean as a matter of changing the political rhetoric and using legislative means to make changes.

We gotta find a happy medium though between reforming a notoriously slow legislative process and a rapidly changing world. We're both idealists here.

[OllytheBrit]

Thatcher was a vindictive cunt. Her failings were moral as well as political. I agree that the unions needed dealt with; but she flooded the mines in an act of economic sabbotage/mindless vandalism.

Can you substantiate that wild claim by supplying a link please, because I can't find one.

The community charge meant that the multi-millionaire duke paid the same as the road sweeper.

I seriously doubt that a road sweeper would own a band H house.

Fairness would have been a land tax; not a tax on living.

A 'land tax' would have raised zero revenue, relatively speaking.

She gave birth to casino economics and destroyed our manufacturing industry.

As I said - our manufacturing base was destroyed by foreign competition.

She deliberately forced millions on to the dole in a bid to lower wages.

No, they were forced onto the dole because our manufacturing base was destroyed by foreign competition, so they became unemployed in those industries.

You forgot to accuse her of stopping school milk - which, incidentally was because a) children don't necessarily like milk and b) they certainly don't like it if it has become warm owing to it standing in ambient temperatures for 4 or 5 hours since being delivered by the milkman (I mean, who does like warm milk?), so 95% of it was thrown down the nearest drain.

[Cartertonian]

Thatcher would have looked much better in Bangs.

Oh, she did...

[blackjack21]

This is a bit off topic but I have been saying for a long time that the whole trend toward automation is nothing to fear.

I disagree to some extent. Here's why: our entire political and banking system at this time assumes a population at gainful employment, and our welfare system assumes gains via mass production. Our tax system, and therefore a critical component of our monetary system is so based.

Automation--and a low tax on capital--is what drives the gap between rich and poor now. The love of welfare is in effect driving down the value of a worker while driving up the cost of a worker. By comparison, capital is cheaper whether it is taxed as such or not. States cannot easily increase the tax of capital, because it can just move to the lowest tax jurisdiction.

People are easy to lie to. For example, the FICA tax in the United States isn't 15%. It's closer to 30%, because the employer is required to pay the other half. That's just FICA Social Security. Then, there's unemployment, worker's compensation and disability. When you add ObamaCare on top of that, it's increasingly clear why people are working less ours. It's too expensive to employ them. So in effect we are creating, by design, a society of haves and have nots. The irony is that we are doing it ostensibly in the pursuit of greater equality.

Much less advanced nations see people working much more than 40 hours, often 60 or more. The work is more labor intensive while our work is starting to be less so.

The most labor-intensive work has always been farming. It is heavily mechanized in the United States--more than anywhere else in the world. Yet, we still have a need for manual farm labor; hence, the mass immigration from Central America.

One of the reasons I don't have a great deal of patience for the "We are a nation of immigrants" bullshit is that we are fundamentally fragmenting as a nation. Capital and automation will make it into the future. America as a nation might not. Eventually, automation will be able to harvest lettuce and ripe strawberries, leaving the unripe unpicked for a later harvest. When we achieve that, we will have perhaps 50M unemployable illiterates who do not speak the national language.

Poor people die younger so they get less Social Security which goes to all the people who can afford to extend their lives, poor people pay more taxes so businesses can get tax breaks to provide health care that they are not eligible for, a poor person looking to work their way out of poverty has a hard time finding jobs due to government restrictions and it is too costly to start an entrepreneurial enterprise (again due to government restrictions).

The last half of that comment is the problem in a nutshell. When you externalize the cost of welfare to the private sector, it creates a huge barrier to entry to new firms--killing job growth and efficient allocation of capital.

That's why I think the jimjams of the world are totally wrong on supporting ObamaCare, because all they are doing is perpetuating the system just as long as they can get their goodies too. Ultimately, we need to break the cartel.

Can you substantiate that wild claim by supplying a link please, because I can't find one.

It's probably bullshit; however, keep in mind that the first use of steam engines was to pump water out of the s/minds/mines (funniest typo I've made in awhile). If they shut down the mines and thereby shut off the pumps, the s/minds/mines would flood of their own accord. However, left wing propagandists choose not to tell the whole truth to wind people up with false ideas.

[KlassWar]

Damn shame she died of old age: She shoulda been agonizingly tortured to death in the public square for her crimes agaisnt the working class.

[Cartertonian]

I'd draw the line at that, but she was undoubtedly a key contributory to the last twenty-five years' inexorable slide toward uber-commercialisation, in-duh-vidualism and the indiscriminate application of exploitative and reductionist business models to public service organisation.

[blackjack21]

I'd draw the line at that, but she was undoubtedly a key contributory to the last twenty-five years' inexorable slide toward uber-commercialisation, in-duh-vidualism and the indiscriminate application of exploitative and reductionist business models to public service organisation.

That is one of the better arguments against neo-liberalism that I've heard in some time. The fundamental problem is that the multi-national is underwritten/chartered by the nation-state, but doesn't have any allegiance to it. That system cannot be sustained. As I've steadily disabused myself from American jingoism and searched for something more meaningful, I don't eschew all of capitalism, because it works. However, we cannot realistically sustain system where our government allows 90M people out of work and then floods the country with illegal immigrants of little or no skill and no familiarity with the predominant language just to drive wages down further.

[KlassWar]

I'd draw the line at that, but she was undoubtedly a key contributory to the last twenty-five years' inexorable slide toward uber-commercialisation, in-duh-vidualism and the indiscriminate application of exploitative and reductionist business models to public service organisation.

I'm an demand-the-impossible, grab-the-available kinda guy. You start bargaining down from execution and the class enemy vermin end up getting away with a slap on the wrist like a GULAG sentence. Start bargainin' from let's go medieval on this motherfucker and we've moved the goalposts, thus making the public, festive shooting of the KR vermin seem like a compromise solution.

It's supposed to let y'all bleeding heart types feel good about yourselves and sleep well at night without actually compromising the non-negotiable liquidation of the rats.

[OllytheBrit]

Damn shame she died of old age: She shoulda been agonizingly tortured to death in the public square for her crimes agaisnt the working class.

And you spelled 'against' wrong.

[EuropeanConservative]

Margaret Thatcher was a great political leader with strong convictions. She was also intelligent and courageous. She managed to reform Britain in a very profound way and turn it from an economic basket case, which was hardly functioning anymore, into a highly performing economy. She did have an unhealthy tendency to centralize government (a very un-Conservative tendency) and to be very divisive. And not all of her economic and social measures were equally far-sighted.
Overall, she towers high above any of the other post-world war II British Prime Ministers (with perhaps only Tony Blair approaching her, but not quite).

[spodi]

Europeanconservative, your a true patriot and I salute you.

[Political Interest]

Thatcher was a disaster for the UK. She turned the UK from an industrial based economy into a services and financial one. Many people in northern Britain became unemployed due to her policies. Furthermore, she was too pro-American and was more like a US Republican than a British Tory. She would always express concepts of "freedom", "liberty" and "free enterprise" just like her counterpart in the United States.

It is true that the UK in the 1960s and 1970s was economically stagnant and needed reform, however there were other ways of doing this. I am not sure why the Conservatives embraced libertarian policies when they were so detrimental to many of the British working class.

[Drlee]

I am not sure why the Conservatives embraced libertarian policies when they were so detrimental to many of the British working class.

Could it be that they are not libertarian principles after all. And never have been. As the old saying goes....welcome to the rabbit hole. In political new-speak, liberals aren't. Libertarians and conservatives are corporatists/elitists who have coopted the term, and liberalism is what real conservatives, conserve.

If you can destroy the commonality of language you can confuse all except the few who spend the time to sit and think about it. Sit and think. What a concept. For most people the opposite of talking is waiting. For most people the opposite of thinking is talking.

So who speaks for the middle class? Old fashioned conservatives. You know. The people who Fox News calls "liberals".