8 June

[Loz]

Lordship 516 Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I used the word abject poverty on purpose - going

> to bed hungry may be a 'relative' measure to you

> but it is reality to the hungry person.

But 'abject' is a meaningless, undefined phrase, especially as you then used the stats for relative poverty. And 'relative' does not necessarily indicate someone is "going to bed hungry". That would be 'absolute poverty'.

But I suspect you well know that using 'absolute' would disprove your initial argument that "it is not true to say that they have delivered a decline in hunger", since absolute poverty in the UK has roughly halved over the past 20 years.

[Lordship 516]

Loz Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Lordship 516 Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > I used the word abject poverty on purpose -

> going

> > to bed hungry may be a 'relative' measure to

> you

> > but it is reality to the hungry person.

>

> But 'abject' is a meaningless, undefined phrase,

> especially as you then used the stats for relative

> poverty. And 'relative' does not necessarily

> indicate someone is "going to bed hungry". That

> would be 'absolute poverty'.

Abject: utterly hopeless, miserable, humiliating, or wretched

I was writing as a human being - not as an economist. You are too comfortable in your little corner, ready to argue the toss about every little nuance. I used a published statistic to illustrate the level of poverty being experienced by children in the UK - 4 million is that statistic - the children are real sufferers & not a statistic. They represent our failure as a society.

> But I suspect you well know that using 'absolute'

> would disprove your initial argument that "it is

> not true to say that they have delivered a decline

> in hunger", since absolute poverty in the UK has

> roughly halved over the past 20 years.

You are the one who has used the term absolute - absolute poverty is very subjective term and is little used [see Townsend]. I am careful about using semantics and the hungry children cannot find any comfort in any of our words - they need strong & stable food & shelter not boll@#ology from the Mayniacs about how they are going to tackle their poverty; they need the food & shelter tonight & every night not some vague promise in the dim & distant future.

[TE44]

No social housing, children being separated from there mothers because they have refused a place 200 miles from where they were born, leaving there

families who help support them. Food banks now accepted as a way for the hungry. It's disgusting

anyone who would rather argue over a word to describe someones hunger.I agree Lordship 515 it's

about being human. Maybe people haven't been affected by the horror that has been and continues. I can only imagine where its going,

I have never voted any of the main parties, but

wished that Corbyn had asked the tories in his party to leave, allowing new people maybe even without experience to be elected who were passionate about fairness and ready to make real changes.

[jaywalker]

Lordship 516 Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I used the word abject poverty on purpose - going

> to bed hungry may be a 'relative' measure to you

> but it is reality to the hungry person. 'Relative

> poverty' is a term that has relevance to

> statisticians; hunger is very relevant to the 4

> million poverty stricken children in the UK today

> & tomorrow and....... We are obliged to do more

> than just wring our hands & keen at their plight.

>

> And yes, if things improved & there is no

> reasonable trickle down of the gains then these

> children would still be hungry. This is why

> society needs to step in and assist these people &

> their families to escape their poverty. The

> neo-liberal solution is to let them die and then

> there is no longer a problem - it's the market,

> stupid!.

>

> Nietszhe - "?There is nothing more terrible, than

> a class of barbaric slaves who have learned to

> regard their existence as an injustice, and now

> prepare to avenge, not only themselves, but all

> generations.? .

>

> His contemporary, Carl Menger who is regarded as

> the father of the Austrian school that gave us

> Friedrich von Wieser & Eugen von B?hm-Bawerk who

> in turn educated Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and

> Joseph Schumpeter . B?hm-Bawerk and Wieser

> promoted Menger?s work and their students Mises

> and Hayek extended the Austrian school

> neo-liberalism to the whole world. Unfettered by

> ethic or decency it has given us a ruinous system

> whereby the vast majority of humanity has been

> made slave to the oligarchy of financial

> overlords.

>

> The neo-liberals separate economics from ethics

> and philosophy - capital & land have more value &

> power than labour and labour must be subservient

> to that capital god - the market. We are not

> allowed to have a free market for labour - htis

> would debase their insistence that it is money &

> money alone that controls our existance.

Well. There are two things that might be said here.

Nietzsche was an ironist who in Turin (in his final moment of sanity) threw himself on a horse who was being cruelly treated to protect it from its bastard human owner; who was no doubt inflicting on the horse what Nietzsche was to so clearly understand in his writings: ressentiment. The psychological moment (and here seen so clearly even at the beginning of his writing) is the identification of ressentiment as the product of the slave-mentality (the important resistance here is to the utopian dialectic of master-slave adumbrated by Hegel). The critique of ressentiment is NOT to justify the conditions which give rise to it. But we live very much under the shadow of this phenomenon (and have done for two centuries at least, probably since the enlightenment: it was Nietzsche's genius to articulate the problem). It was also Marx's great failure (with the misfortune of writing a generation earlier) to understand this. It is why we should be very afraid in a world that possesses nuclear weapons, of any government that seeks to represent 'the people' and also why we should realise the May phenomenon for what it is (and Trump etc etc).

Second, Hayek was an intelligent man. He knew that Friedman-esq justifications of the free-market economy were nonsense. He wrote (after personal and direct involvement in WW1 and with the experience of Leninism visible) in the hope that unregulated markets (and unregulated money-supplies! - i.e. privatised ones) were the best route to avoid the ressentiment arising from the serfdom that Nietzsche correctly berated. I fear the jury is still out on this solution (although Bitcoin etc). It is not my preferred outcome: but nation states and their calls to infantilism are sorely trusting my patience.

[TE44]

You don't have to live something to feel it, but the problem for me about scholars perception, not saying its not interesting to look at things things already looked at, how things worked or didn't but

this is a very different world. The whole view of people being comfortable or not, causing injustices or being on the other side of that has often been portayed by people who have been able to take the time philosophying while the people suffering the hardships are trying to survive. I'm not saying there view is not appreciated nor can't be learnt

from. I'd like to see room for people in goverment

who know what it's like to be turned away from a food bank cause your voucher has run out, because

You were to ill to walk there and didn't have the bus fair. Im fed up hearing all the intellectual conversations. I'd like to hear people not only get a chance to say what it's like for them but be part of the change.

Edit for spelling misrakes

[Lordship 516]

jaywalker Wrote:

> Second, Hayek was an intelligent man. He knew that

> Friedman-esq justifications of the free-market

> economy were nonsense.

This is very true. There is a great difference between what Hayek held & what Friedman & his bankster friends have spread around the world. Friedman used Hayek's ideas to his own purpose & he & his followers ignored Hayek's rejection of unqualified laissez-faire, and the fact that he reserved a useful, limited economic role for government in their mad dash for an extreme version of free markets and effective regulation of the shadow banking system . Friedman even promoted the abolition of the FDA. They also chose to ignore Hayek's willingness to consider a national health care program, and even a state-provided basic income for the poor.

However his exhorting Thatcher to cut the deficit in one year rather than five years showed his lack of understanding or empathy with those that would be affected - even Thatcher had to point out that the social impact of even faster adjustment would not be suitable in a democracy such as the UK.

Paul Samuelson [whom I had the pleasure to study under in MIT] was always Friedman's opponent. He advocated a more considered approach to economic theory & paractice - taking the best of all the ideas, whether they came from Keynes, Hayek or wherever & applying them appropriately. He along with Solow & others developed the concept of neoclassical synthesis which is basically the predominant thought behind modern economics notwithstanding the influences of the neoliberal lobby. Larry Summers [his nephew] was Obama's chief economic adviser & Samuelson wholeheartedly approved his advice to Obama to use massive amounts of government spending to escape from the recession which was largely successful. This was viciously opposed by the neoliberal lobby who continue to rail against it.

Samuelson stated "free markets do not stabilize themselves." Rational regulation serves society better than no regulation. In time [probably a short time] Friedman & his ideas will fade as governments around the world come to their senses and their influence will be regarded as a passing nightmare - the market will prevail & their value will recede to zero. Unfortunately the adjustment away from their harsh monetarism will take too long for many.

[JohnL]

Emily Thornberry absolutely demolished Michael Fallon on Marr today Brilliant. She even said B@ll**ks.

He was at a party with Assad but couldn't remember - she did :)

Reminds everyone that Fallon is not to be trusted https://politicalscrapbook.net/2015/09/camerons-comedy-cabinet-of-incompetents-michael-fallon/

[Duvaller]

JohnL Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Emily Thornberry absolutely demolished Michael

> Fallon on Marr today Brilliant. She even said

> B@ll**ks.

>

What's that got to do with the intellectual discussion we were having about Hayek and Friedman?

[JoeLeg]

.

[JohnL]

Duvaller Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> JohnL Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > Emily Thornberry absolutely demolished Michael

> > Fallon on Marr today Brilliant. She even said

> > B@ll**ks.

> >

> What's that got to do with the intellectual

> discussion we were having about Hayek and

> Friedman?

I wanted to bring the level back down.

Although I remember the Federation of Conservative

Students (I was a bit right wing in my youth) discussing

it ad infinitum and getting nowhere.

They got disbanded .... by Norman Tebbit I think ;)

[miga]

???? Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Nope - society is what it is with some of it's

> flaws which will right themselves over time to be

> replaced by other imperfections - it's not rigged

> by vested interests.

Yes, sure, life expectancy is on the whole rising, hunger etc. are diminishing, But this was the case in Soviet Union too - from 1917 medieval life expectancy levels to 1970s when it was on par with the States. Not that I care for a Soviet style system, merely pointing out that the supposed exemplar of the system you decry delivered in the same way on the criteria of your choice.

But, that sidetrack aside, I'm sure you don't need me to point out the obvious about wealth inequality, the massive influence parents' wealth plays on outcomes for kids, how proportionally fewer and fewer kids will be richer than their parents compared to previous generations, decline of membership at golf clubs because of less leisure time among professional classes etc. I'm glad I was born when I was and previous generations, especially my grandparents' and beyond, had it much tougher, but so much indicates that more and more your background determines your future. After what feels like a late 20th century blip of large scale mobility.

.

In that sense, I feel society is rigged.

[jaywalker]

Lordship 516 Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> jaywalker Wrote:

>

>

> > Second, Hayek was an intelligent man. He knew

> that

> > Friedman-esq justifications of the free-market

> > economy were nonsense.

>

> This is very true. There is a great difference

> between what Hayek held & what Friedman & his

> bankster friends have spread around the world.

Hayek is (if at first sight paradoxically) quite close to Herbert Simon. For him, markets are the best we can hope for given the overwhelming information problem (for him deficit, for Simon surplus) involved in any 'rational' attempt to solve resource allocation problems. They satisfice (they do not optimise) to adopt Simon's language for Hayek against Friedman. This is obviously true in its own terms, but too limited in scope. The IT revolution (Moore's law particularly) has made state-sponsored resource allocation potentially rational (you can even, in the virtual reality that is imminent) get real-time updates on consumer preferences just by recording where they look in either the VR online store or in "meatspace" (Gibson)). Many of Hayek's arguments are then false simply because he did not anticipate the technology (in a way, the Soviets did: just rather too soon).

Friedman was a political-philosophical imbecile. He read his own financial and economic-theory success (the 1967 breakdown of the Phillips Curve article is a work of genius and one which had a disastrous effect on Thatcher) as a justification for his atomistic notion of 'freedom' - one that stands no scrutiny (Marx summarised this pretty well in his early writings over one hundred years beforehand).

Posters have said we should get back down to earth. But politicians read these things (Thatcher underlined the works of Friedman in three different colours) and we all pay the consequences.

[Dogkennelhillbilly]

JohnL Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Emily Thornberry absolutely demolished Michael

> Fallon on Marr today Brilliant. She even said

> B@ll**ks.

>

> He was at a party with Assad but couldn't remember

> - she did :)

>

> Reminds everyone that Fallon is not to be trusted

> https://politicalscrapbook.net/2015/09/camerons-co

> medy-cabinet-of-incompetents-michael-fallon/

Emily Thornberry's old boss shut down the corruption investigation into BAE Systems to protect the Saudis. Emily Thornberry's old boss started an illegal war in Iraq that killed 100,000 people. Emily Thornberry's new boss believes any old piss from Hamas to the IRA. If Fallon weren't such a wet fish, that would not have been a very dramatic revaluation.

[JohnL]

And yet still Emily Thornberry's old boss is/was the cleverest political operator in the UK of the last 30 years. Doesn't say a lot for the current shambles on both sides.

At least Jeremy Hunt knew to keep his mouth shut this morning. Well Done :)

[JohnL]

jaywalker Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Posters have said we should get back down to

> earth. But politicians read these things (Thatcher

> underlined the works of Friedman in three

> different colours) and we all pay the

> consequences.

I don't mind highbrow political discussion but I'm not that

good at it :)

I like to look at connections between people. Thatcher's

mentor was Sir Keith Joseph IIRC. The men Thatcher surrounded

herself with were rather strange.

[rendelharris]

JohnL Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I like to look at connections between people.

> Thatcher's

> mentor was Sir Keith Joseph IIRC. The men

> Thatcher surrounded

> herself with were rather strange.

My dad worked in and around Downing Street and the Cabinet Office in the '80s and '90s (as a civil servant, he's not a Tory!). At one time he found himself sat near Joseph at a formal dinner. Joseph waved away the offered dishes and said, "What I'd really like is a piece of cake, you know the sort wrapped in cellophane you get on train buffets?" The waiter said fine, we've got cake on the menu, I'll bring you some. "No, I want some of that cake wrapped in cellophane you get on train buffets." In the end they sent a porter out to the nearest station to get him some, and while everyone else tucked into the pheasant and what have you he sat there nibbling his British Rail buffet cake. Strange doesn't begin to cover it.

[Jules-and-Boo]

can you judge a man on what he eats?

[rendelharris]

Jules-and-Boo Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> can you judge a man on what he eats?

If his behaviour at the dining table is completely hatstand, I think yes!

[TE44]

rendelharris Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> JohnL Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

>

> > I like to look at connections between people.

> > Thatcher's

> > mentor was Sir Keith Joseph IIRC. The men

> > Thatcher surrounded

> > herself with were rather strange.

>

> My dad worked in and around Downing Street and the

> Cabinet Office in the '80s and '90s (as a civil

> servant, he's not a Tory!). At one time he found

> himself sat near Joseph at a formal dinner.

> Joseph waved away the offered dishes and said,

> "What I'd really like is a piece of cake, you know

> the sort wrapped in cellophane you get on train

> buffets?" The waiter said fine, we've got cake on

> the menu, I'll bring you some. "No, I want some

> of that cake wrapped in cellophane you get on

> train buffets." In the end they sent a porter out

> to the nearest station to get him some, and while

> everyone else tucked into the pheasant and what

> have you he sat there nibbling his British Rail

> buffet cake. Strange doesn't begin to cover it

Ha ha. That's great and nice of them to accomnodate.

Shame now they can ignore post

mortems of people with almost empty stomachs bar a few spoonful of beans and the only food in the house being the remainder of the tin in a cupboard.

[jaywalker]

Sir Keith used to eat babies for breakfast (as it were). He was the one who thought social classes too low in the alphabet should be 'dissuaded' from having children. Very bright man discursively (fellow of All Souls) meets real life outside the academy: train crash. Yet Thatcher gave him almost as much credence as Enoch.

[Earl Aelfheah]

BBC's Ian Watson's analysis of Labour's manifesto:

"At its core are three interlinked arguments: First that austerity holds back - rather than helps - economic growth, so Labour would borrow billions for investment.

Second, that the better off - not necessarily the fabulously wealthy - along with many businesses should pay more in tax to meet the day to day cost of providing public services.

And third, that more regulation - and in some cases re-nationalisation - would ensure businesses operated in the interests both of consumers and the wider economy.

Those close to Jeremy Corbyn believe this programme places Labour not on the far left of politics but in the mainstream of northern European social democratic thinking.

But the Labour manifesto will break with what's often known as the Anglo-Saxon economic model of lower taxation and flexible labour markets and in doing so, the party is distancing itself not just from the Conservatives but from its New Labour predecessor too."

Sounds about right.

[Earl Aelfheah]

...although 'the better off' means the wealthiest 5% to be precise.

[????]

The failed economics of the 70s or more recently France but still people fall for the free lunch guff

[????]

PS Norway has a pretty homogeneous population readily identified as Noreweigan of just 5 million and is the biggest producer of natural gas and oil outside of OPEC be fore we get any of the 'but look at the Scandies' cries, it's about as comparable as the equally stupid 'but look at Singapore' that the Free marketers over use.

[Jeremy]

Norway.. a sparsely populated country with vast natural resources, and an investment portfolio bigger than many countries national debts.

But yeah, borrow a few hundred billion to renationalise everything, introduce an 80K tax band, and we'll be just like them!