I assume, then, that you were educated in a private school, that you've never been treated under the auspices of the NHS, that you drive your car solely on private roads, that your person, your home and your office are not protected by the police force, that you take your own bins to a private tip, that you've never used an utilities supplied by distribution networks built with public money...

You may have worked hard, but the tax-payers in this country have supported you in a thousand different ways as you did so.

No man is an island, however much you may wish otherwise.

Again, you have deliberately misinterpreted what I said. I have no problem being taxed to pay for those services, including the education of those who won't be educated. If I was only taxed to pay for those services I'd be keeping a big chunk more of my salary every month. Unfortunately, I have to pay for a lot of other people to use those services as they don't contribute and also a "living wage" for them to sit in a free-to-them home and do nothing for a living.

But you benefited from those things as well. If you'd ever found yourself unemployed then benefits would have been available to you, if you'd parked your car upside down in a tree and been paralysed for life then you'd have got disability allowance.

Just because you never fell into the safety net doesn't mean that it wasn't there for you.

So from what i'm reading - Brewster's parents managed to start with little, worked hard, showed their offspring that hard work pays off, Brewster recognised this and aimed at life with a similar effort.

Brewster (I'm not picking on you here, I just think it is interesting and related to the topic), if your parents had not had the ethic to work hard and desire to have something to show for it do you believe you would have viewed life, and what you wished to gain from it, in a different way?

This is the nature vs. nurture argument that we started with.

I doubt I would. I don't know for definite. There are, of course, exceptions to rules. I'm sure there are kids who come from good backgrounds and do nothing and vice versa. On the whole though you are what you're borne into. The opportunity exists for everyone in this country to better themselves. It's just some people are too lazy to take it and a few others blame society for the fact these "unfortunates" are where they are.

It's never exclusively nature or nurture, but both. How do you make useless people better parents? You need to give them an incentive to do so and while we have the system we do, rewarding people for nothing, then the situation will prevail.

Couldn't agree more.

It's sad that you say things this way, Brewster, it really is.

One of the people I interviewed last week was living in London on £14k PA - do you think their income support was going on holiday's abroad?

Another one, who had a masters degree (for which she received a full-tution scholarship, i.e. she's neither lazy nor stupid) was working for minimum wage as a cleaner, and doing volunteer work for a homelessness charity (and I doubt she'd agree with your assessment that only those who chose to be homeless are poor). Do you resent your money going to her as well?

Do you even understand the modern realities of living on minimum wage, of swapping a six figure salary for six-fifty an hour? Somebody working a 40-hour week on minimum wage makes £247.60/week, before any deductions - a bit less than £13k/annum. Do you really imagine those people are laughing as they pocket your money and decide whether it's going to be the Seychelles or the Bahamas this year?

And you rely on them every day. They wouldn't notice for a minute if you vanished, but you need people to serve you coffee or lunch, to keep your offices clean, make sure the motorway service toilets are at least vaguely fresh-smelling, offer to pack your bags in Waitrose.

And that's what drives this "disgusting, jealous malaise", your deeply ingrained belief that, somehow, you've worked harder than them, that you deserve all of the cake.

This government is the epitome of this self, self, self attitude. It rewards the rich with tax cuts, while cutting services to help the poor. It blames immigrants, while pointedly ignoring domestic companies that have made themselves foreign to avoid tax-liability. It stereotypes the poor in the same way that you've done, but resists minimum wages increases (which is how you make sure that working is more attractive than benefits).

Maybe you honestly believe that things are as they should be, but nothing is for ever. The more selfishness there is then the more poor people there'll be and, as I said, they don't need you and won't miss you.

The problem with minimum wage increases - you are increasing the cost of all base products therefore making them more expensive and forcing another minimum wage increase. yes it's lovely for the people who suddenly see an extra 25p / hour but when these raises are factored into product prices, + employer NICS, pensions, VAT etc etc suddenly that 25p / hour doesn't make any difference. The way to truely get value is to manage your costs, keep the ones low you can and everyone will benefit.

Of course inflation should always been taken into account to make things fair.

Muzzie, that's only true if you're looking at putting up everybody's wages, so those on minimum wage get 50p/hour and the senior managers get £15k/annum.

The point of this is to reduce disparity, because that's what breeds resentment.

Also, more people having more money in their pockets is what gets us out of recession. A few rich people with a lot of money cannot stimulate the economy in the same way as a huge number of poor people with a little extra money.

Having worked quite extensively in Africa, I can agree with Brewster, extreme poverty does not exist in the UK. I can say that I have also been absolutely shocked by the squalour I observed in inner London high rise housing units, when I was required to enter to run some cockroach control experiments. However, a lot of this was down to how people chose to live, either that, or they were unable to imagine a different way of living on limited means.

Furthermore I would strenously agree that "austerity" of the extent needed to balance the UK books has not yet begun - we ain't seen nothing yet. Trouble is we can't take it, we will have civil unrest and burn the house down.

Regarding Maggie's household budget analogy, I think it is fatuous to suggest that this was her level of understanding of economics, it was however a brillient communications exercise to get over to the general population the simple basics of sound accounting.

So you'd take the same pay rise (value) as minimum wage for the rest of your life? Resentment is bred because people think they have a right to have 2 cars, 2 mobile phone contracts sky, smoke, drink and a holiday every year. If they can't they feel resentment against those that can. Values have changed since we last saw a economical dip like this, there are far more items that are actually disposable luxuries but are seen as necessities.


More money in your pocket wont break the recession only correct allocation of the money will, besides there isn't enough money in the economy for there to be extra money in your pocket. I don't disagree with you on £5 for everyone is better than £1,250 for 250,000, that is true.

Actually you should be paying significantly more tax than you do, I am not sure of your age but if we say that from the day you were born you have been supported by tax payers up until the age you started paying income tax, (Shall we say for arguments sake 16?) *, then apply compound interest to the amount you owe, then the tax you pay every year has probably not reduced your "debt" to the taxpayers before you by more than 50%

* by support, I mean by NHS, by Child Benefit, by Education, access to libraries, public roads etc.

It only happens for a second – but once every few months, Cameron's spin-mask slips, and his real assumptions about Britain and its class system seep out. You could see it when he said his multimillionaire aristocratic wife is "highly unconventional" because "she went to a day school". You could see it when he called himself part of "the sharp-elbowed middle class", as if being worth £30m and getting your first job by getting the Queen's equerry to call up and demand to know why they didn't let you past the interview stage is "the middle" of British society. And it was there in a recent factory visit, when he defended the trebling of university fees to the workers he met by asking: "Do you think it's right that your taxes are going to educate my children and your boss's children?"

Think about the assumptions behind that. So nobody in that factory would have kids who go to university – but irrespective of their abilities, Cameron's kids definitely will, and so will their boss's.

The median wage in Britain in 2009 was just £20,800 a year. Half of us earned more, and half of us earned less. Forget the clichés about eating polenta and holidaying in the Amazon. The real middle in Britain is a lot closer to the anxiety and insecurity of the poor than to the gilded pleasures of the rich – and it's about to get even tougher.

A working middle-class couple with kids is going to be £4,250 worse off this year as a result of the Government's policies, according to the Resolution Foundation. They'll lose £2,750 in public services and £1,500 in benefit cuts, wage rises, and inflation. Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England and nobody's idea of a Bennite, says this is "an unprecedented assault of their living standards" and "one has to go back to the 1920s" for comparisons. It's simply a fact that Cameron, Osborne and Nick Clegg have no idea what this feels like.

The "squeezed middle" is exactly the right term. It is part of a longer historical process that began with the rise of Thatcherism. In 1976, wages made up 65 per cent of Britain's GDP. Now it's down to 55 per cent. Where did it all go? To corporate profits, and people at the very top. Since that year, 22 pence in every extra pound has gone to the richest 1 per cent. Money has been explicitly redistributed from bus drivers and shopkeepers and teachers to multimillionaires.

It's increasingly clear that, on the part of the rich, this has been a conscious process. In an internal memo in 2006, the bankers at Citigroup boasted that government actions had "allowed the rich... [to] take an increasing share of income and wealth over the past 20 years". They proudly called this system "plutonomy" – rule by a plutocratic group of rich people – and said it would only accelerate. They were right, so far. Even though these bankers are now almost universally reviled, Cameron's policies have been to take huge amounts of money from them in "donations", and then bolster their bonuses and hand them get-out-of-tax-free cards.

Middle classes don't emerge and survive and thrive by accident. For most of human history, there has been no middle class. There was a small rich ruling elite, and an anxious mass far below them. As recently as 150 years ago, all land in Britain was owned by the richest 4.5 per cent – and the rest of us owned no property. This didn't change by accident, or coincidence, or inevitability. It happened as a direct result of government policy.

As the American writer Thom Hartmann puts it: "A middle class is only created and maintained by direct intervention in the marketplace by a democratic government." The government has to progressively tax the rich, significantly invest in the broader population's education and health, and tightly regulate big business. If you stop doing this – as we have, gradually, over the past 30 years – the middle class begins to haemorrhage.

Reversing this trend is essential for the economy's health. We can only grow if we have a large and growing middle. As David Madland, a researcher at the Center for American Progress, explained in his must-read essay "Growth and the Middle Class": "Politicians typically see the middle class as something to create with the gains of economic growth. The opposite is the case: the middle class is the source of economic growth."

The reason is simple. A strong, confident middle class provides a stable consumer base – and that in turn drives productive investment. The wealthy, by contrast, don't consume enough to drive a modern economy. They save and speculate far more and consume far less. Only the middle class can drive the economy forward – and to do that, they need a rising income.

Think about it through an example, and it becomes clear. If I give £10,000 to Mr and Mrs Diamond living on a middle income in the Wirral, they will almost certainly spend it – on their home, their kids, or a pension plan. If I give it to Bob Diamond, head of Barclays, he won't even notice. It will become another sum in a bank account, or – more likely – it will be spent on financial speculation, which does almost nothing for the productive economy (except periodically endanger it). As a country, en masse, for 30 years, we have been giving money to the Bob Diamonds instead of Mr and Mrs Diamond, and it has badly hurt our economy. The Thatcherites (including Tony Blair) claimed to be helping the middle class, but they were, in fact, ruining them.

A big middle class is vital for democracy. In 2007, the economists Alberto Chang and Mark Gradstein found that societies with a large middle class have much better governance and much more democracy – but when the middle class begins to implode, as in Britain and the US today, the rich begin to hijack the political system and make it serve only their interests.

And a big middle class is vital for entrepreneurism. Middle class parents raise their kids to value education because they know they will have to get their income from work, not from capital. Paris Hilton can be an idiot and have a great life; Paris Bloggs has to be smart to have a good life. That’s why middle class people are far more likely to be entrepreneurs – Kaufman Foundation report found 72 per cent of entrepreneurs from middle class families, even though they make up only 44 per cent of the population.

The most crucial component is to reverse the trend towards giving more and more to the top one per cent – and instead make the rich pay more for the running of our society. Let's look at the most glaring symbol. Today, under both Labour and the Conservatives, if the middle class or small businesses try to wriggle out of tax, they go to prison. But the rich avoid and evade £120bn in taxes a year with impunity. Indeed, Cameron is firing a quarter of the tax inspectors employed to chase them down – even though they bring in £1.5m for every £50,000 they cost us.

To name just one, Philip Green, the sixth richest man in Britain, earned £1.5bn from British shops on British streets in 2009, and paid £0 in tax on it. A waitress paid more income tax than him. Why? If people like him want to operate here, they have to pay the membership fee for our society. However much he squeals, he can hardly physically relocate his branches of Top Shop and BHS to Bangladesh, without shutting down his own business and bankrupting himself. If Green can't afford to contribute to the running of this country, who can?

There are other inequalities that can be remedied in favour of the real middle. Today, 0.6 per cent of the British population owns 69 per cent of the land – and they are mostly the same families who owned it in the 19th century. Just 103 people own 30 per cent of the country. As Adam Smith argued when he proposed a land tax, this isn't productive wealth: it's overwhelmingly unearned and useless, so there is no reduction in economic activity if we go after it. And it can't be moved abroad. Let the Duke of Everywheresville try to relocate his acres to Jersey and see how far he gets. Let Cameron defend the talentless land-owning class he knows so well, if he dared.

The super-rich are few, but they control our means of talking to each other – the media – and the likes of Rupert Murdoch are very skillful at presenting anybody who opposes his interests as ridiculous.

And there's no contradiction between championing the real middle and championing Britain's poor. They are much closer to each other – in income and interests – than they are to Roman Abramovich, Murdoch or Green, and all through history, the middle class has supported stronger protections for the poor when it doesn't feel under siege and under attack itself. To serve both groups, Britain needs a better economic strategy – and there is one being scripted for us by arguably the most distinguished economist in the world.

But there is a much better option than austerity– one that offers real hope, rather than a gentler bleed – and it hasn't yet been put to the British people. To understand it, you have to turn to the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman. He is one of the few economists who has consistently been proven right, before and after the crash, in both his warnings and his predictions. He is part of a much wider school, with a remarkable history of getting economics right. Until the 1930s, the view Cameron is pushing was regarded as common sense. If the economy goes into recession, the government has to cut back its spending, batten down its hatches and wait for the economic bad weather to pass. But then John Maynard Keynes showed that this causes unnecessary suffering – and there is in fact a way to drastically shorten recessions.

Barack Obama explained how in 2008, in simple English: "Economists on both the left and right agree that the last thing a government should do in the middle of a recession is to cut back on spending. You see, when this recession began, many families sat around their kitchen table and tried to figure out where they could cut back. That is a completely responsible and understandable reaction. But if every family in America cuts back, then no one is spending any money, which means there are more layoffs and the economy gets even worse. That's why the government has to step in and temporarily boost spending in order to stimulate demand."

This isn't hard to grasp. Keynes called it "the paradox of thrift" – when the people spend less, the government has to spend more. It works. In the Great Depression, every year President Roosevelt unleashed a big stimulus, the economy grew and unemployment fell. In 1936, when he turned off the stimulus and started cutting, they came back with a vengeance. It was only the massive debt-funded spending of the Second World War that finally finished the Depression off.

Similarly, in this recession, the countries with the biggest stimulus packages – like South Korea – have recovered fastest, while the countries with the biggest cuts, like Ireland, have suffered the worst collapses. Krugman said that by adopting the Irish medicine, Cameron would see the same withering here – and so it came to pass. He warns Cameron's strategy won't even actually achieve its goal of cutting the deficit: any savings achieved by cuts will be offset by lower economic growth.

So what do Krugman and other Nobel Prize-winning economists, like Joseph Stiglitz, argue we should do now? He makes the case we should have a fiscal stimulus – instead of cutting, we should spend more to get the economy moving. We can afford to do it: our national debt has been higher for 200 of the past 250 years, it is around the middle of developed international league tables, and we can borrow at very low rates – so we can run a deficit for several years if it gets us out of this hole.

How would it do that? Imagine, for example, the Government launches a big program to construct the new homes we desperately need. That unleashes a great ripple of energy and activity all through the economy – it employs huge numbers of people who then spend their money, employing huge numbers more people, and on and on. It's called "the multiplier effect". Instead of squandering money keeping people on the dole sinking into despair, we spend money reviving the economy by building up assets we'll value for generations. You then pay off the debt in the good times, when we are growing again – just as the US painlessly paid down a far bigger build-up than ours in the post-stimulus boom of the 1950s.

This one word – stimulus – transforms the political debate. The Keynesian metaphor is of a driver whose car has stuttered to a halt – so you need to take out the jump leads to get it moving again. The question becomes: why is Cameron so callously leaving the jump leads in Britain's boot?


I would like to say that I wrote the above, but i didn't it's all plagiarised but does it not make sense?

Except (and without taking any particular side here) you *don't* owe a debt at all. The social contract is that while you can pay, you pay into a common fund and that fund is used to pay social benefits (whether they be direct cash, other benefits such as the road, rail, and health infrastructure, or intangibles such as 'being British'). When you can't pay - and in some non-means-tested cases whether you can or not - you receive from the fund.

It's called taxation.

There is no debt, and no need, expectation, or requirement to repay any monies previously received.

Whether this is a good idea or not, I don't know: I can certainly see issues with it and there are other countries which for example don't pay out things like unemployment or health benefits (I may have the details wrong) until you have contributed for several years.

I don't think we need extreme austerity that could lead to this happening.
If a relatively few large companies paid the 'correct' tax due on their income generated in this country a huge chunk of the annual shortfall would be wiped out.

e.g. Vodafone are possibly avoiding around £1 billion of tax on UK generated income by moving the profits offshore yet the latest round of welfare cuts - that have an effect on a lot of working people as well as those on the dole - are aiming to save £1 billion.
If you take £1 billion away from Vodafone the people/organisations it effects are those that own shares - hardly likely to be the same people yet another welfare cut hits - but unfortunately these are the organisations and individuals that have an unhealthy influence on the decision making politicians - of all colours, not just the current lot.

Is that the standard that we set ourselves as a developed nation? Unless people are living at the lowest standard observed in the 3rd world they're not in poverty.

It's not only rubbish, but you should be ashamed of yourself for even suggesting it.

In a developed nation, with a GDP of over £1tn we're now witnessing a growth in food-banks as a means of keeping people fed.

It's shameful that we, as a nation, voted in a government that has allowed that to happen. It's unforgivable that people defend it.


We don't need to balance the books - that's a fallacy because...



Maggie's analogy wasn't brilliant communication, it was deliberate and calculated wrong-headedness. Finance at a government level is fundamentally different to household accounting, and the austerity measures are a prime example of this stupid, over-simplified Conservative mantra.

We need to stimulate the economy, which means that the government should be spending, because only by spending can they stop unemployment becoming a domino effect, where a drop in spending power causes more businesses to fail and further drops spending.

Government borrowing is cheap, certainly a lot cheaper than letting sector after sector fall into recession and uncertainty. The length of the current recession is because of Thatcherites, in all of the political parties, trying to keep alive a dogma that was DOA 30 years ago.

It did, but the right-wingers won't accept it. They have to believe that the poor are scroungers and the middle are the rich-in-waiting.

If they couldn't rely on the bedrock of those catechisms then they'd have to look at what they really are.

This thread covers pretty much every factor of events and circumstances so I’ll mention some of realities we tend to swerve due to our difference opinions.

I can happily spend time with a tramp or fatcat, to me it makes no difference but I can tell you I do notice certain shared trends at both ends of the scale.

If I spend time with someone or a group of people they happily show me their working ways and belief in moral right and wrongs. These differ at both ends of course but because they don’t see me (or others) as part of their culture/upbringing they are most likely to show me ways that will benefit themselves or their way of life. This to me is a natural way of life which I find perfectly acceptable. I find things fall apart if I wont or don’t do it their way when I am showing/ pointing out the differences which to me is only doing the same for them in return for showing me.

When it comes to the subject of earnings I had this conversation this morning. My friend did not accept at all that most people wouldn’t work harder for more money. If I didn’t know any better I would agree, more pay to a work force would make them work harder makes perfect sense.
I have seen this done three times now in my working life and it just doesn’t work out at all. Don’t take my word for it, let someone try it again.
Naturally me and my friend gave each other the finger on this matter but you’ll be pleased to hear we’ll still be having a coffee or a beer some time soon.

Most us need or want more money; it’s our way of life unfortunately. I’m not really into clicks of society but we all have to spend time with groups which have common interests and circumstances instead of frowning at each other.

Not sure if there is any point I am trying prove by writing these facts but I do feel embarrassed to think the ‘tolerance’ word sneaks in. I say embarrassed because I, like most people are pretty much on the limit on plenty of subjects (this one included).

Wow... just got into this thread about 3 hours ago and now got to the end.

There has to be a middle ground. We cannot afford everything we would like (I only have 3 Coupes and no jeans without holes in them), but I have two teenagers at home who would like nothing more than to get a job. I'm sure that with a little more wisdom and experience they could set up small businesses on their own - I reckon I could earn a few quid walking dogs around here - but when they want to leave home where are they going to live? Countrywide the average house price is 9 times the average annual salary, and here in the South-East it is considerably worse. I'm no UKIP-ian, but immigration has to be controlled somehow and there must be some serious financial stimulus given to house building. Although we live on a relatively crowded island there is still lots of room for development, and also possibility for redistribution of the available housing. A boom in house-building ought to control prices, create many thousands of jobs, generate more tax revenue, take people off the benefits helter-skelter, slow down the destruction of our town centres and be a generally good thing!

My curry needs a stir

For those lovers of "common sense" there is sensible middle ground.

If you want to help others:

a) whilst you can happily denounce those you perceive as not being in genuine need;
b) that need not detract from your efforts in seeking out those who are.

If someone's energies are directed towards the former at the sacrifice of the latter, then I suspect a "lack of deserving causes" is not really the issue.

Spending time with the homeless or those with mental health issues may be enlightening for such people - but being prepared to challenge our defensive preconceptions and the comfort we derive from those takes courage.

As my life has got cosier, that courage has tended to dwindle as my ability to self-defend my lack of compassion has grown.

Hey Big_Muzzie

Excellent response to your thread for a one liner.

You really have thrown the sherbert in the goldfish bowl

Blimey - away from this thread for a while and it's gone off at a huge tangent. What happened to the thick kids bit?

The bit I can add to that part of the conversation is that private education isn't the (sole) key to good results. My kids have been entirely state educated and will do every bit as well as both my brothers' kids who have been privately educated, if not better.

I know politics and social equality and all I was thinking was "I wonder if other people see it like ofstead or if it really is hidden".
I'm actually quite enjoying reading some of this and am glad to see most of the debate hasn't get too personal. These are big issues, that are sadly managed by morons who are not attached to the real world as they have never worked in it, instead people who do work in it, at different levels with different views have to debate it but can't make a change because no one in power would ever listen to normal folk. There should be rules for PMs and chancellors, let's have them educated in the real world, work in a business, work up to senior management / partner or fee earner then maybe they'll understand how a profitable business works and the needs of the stakeholders in that business - then and only then will Cameron and his circus be respected and beable to drag us out of the mire.

The problem is that anyone that has worked their way to the top in "proper" business would never dream of getting involved in politics or running the country because a) they would be earning relative peanuts and b) like being a football manager, 99% of people will end up hating you.

Very few people with common sense would ever get involved in politics, and therefore we get what we have. When some sub-human footballer can earn more in a week than the prime minister and chancellor earn together in a year we get what we deserve.

It's not the fee from being in power is the potential after, look at Blair he's a prime example of why it pays to be a PM easy money!

Good point Muzz (as ever)! At least everyone now seems to realise that he was one of the worst PMs ever, but he is still able to coin it in..........

Yep, but slightly better than Brown. And what a total clown he was! How could he ever be chancellor?? And to top it off we're in more debt than ever. These jokers have no clue, if it we're a business it'd be bust if it were a bank, well itd be an international scandal!

Andrew, I am not seeking to make any political points. I am talking about the reality that you can't live on the "never never" beyond your means forever, it is a simple as that. Our National debt is out of control. Personally, as a scientist, I view the world as a Petri dish. In such a closed system you cannot have the endless growth that the capitalist system seems to require, we must be happy with reaching a form of stasis. Alas, it will never be, so I am resigned to humans exterminating themselves (good riddance as we are like locusts).

I am not ashamed of anything I have said, we need to wake up to realize how far we can fall. We have real hardship in the UK and some big cushions to help, and I for one am very grateful for these, even though I am lucky enough not to have had to use them yet.

Charlie, that must be close to one of the biggest posts on the Forum