Inequality in Britain

[Colin Ampleton]

semi-agree. I am new to the area and I wondered if anyone had any recommendations for nearby outlets for homewares. Thanks, Col.

[Odyssey]

Absolutely correct LadyMuck. Legal aid helped the poor to access the legal system.

But what i think is more unfair to the poor is the increase in VAT which will have much more of a negative effect on them than the wealthy. What the government should have done is increase income taxes.

[????]

They did. NI goes up shortly and the top rate has gone up for higher eraners and didn't they freeze allowances?

[Huguenot]

Allowances are now reduced and income tax has been increased to 50% for high earners.

[Odyssey]

All well and good but the VAT increase still hits those that can least afford it much more.

Those that should have been hit till their eyeballs bulged out of their sockets are bankers, financial traders, stockbrokers, fund managers, hedge fund traders etc. This lot should have been hit the heaviest. They are the cause of this misery. If it was left to me I would have a specific tax for these leeches. This lot produce relatively little for the good of society and are overvalued. Let them escape to different countries if they want to. Good riddance.

[DJKillaQueen]

Let them escape to different countries if they want to. Good riddance.

Yep...it's not like we are short of unemployed to fill their boots is it? No one person is so valuable they can't be replaced by an equally effective employee. I have always found the excuse (and it is an excuse) that we have to pay to keep profiteers here ludicrous. We are after all, not talking about rocket science.....finance is not something beyond the realms of many people.

[????]

Yawn - they are not all and certainly not solely the cause of the misery, and without them we're fooked but I'm so bored of this tedious scapegoating and Socialist Workers crap.

[????]

Clueless - if trading for example is so easy why doesn't let's say UNITE set up the unemployed as traders with its bank account? Ludicrous.

[DJKillaQueen]

Not clueless at all.....there are plenty of unemployed traders. My point is simply that no one person is irreplaceable... which IS the srgument that keeps getting tossed at us for such ridiculously high bonuses and payoffs EVEN AS THE BANKS WERE FAILING.

Any other business would have been left to go to the wall (as indeed Lehman were) and yes I know we can't let the banking system implode and why etc (blah blah) but it doesn't change the fact that these people we keep getting told should be highly paid or they'll flee were resposible (some of them) for the worst business failure of the past 80 years....and they got away with it. The rest of us meanwhile are paying for it and have every right to criticise.

[Loz]

Yeah, lets drive the bankers out. I mean, its not like it's a key industry in the UK economy or anything...

[DJKillaQueen]

Who said anything about driving bankers out? I'm simply arguing that they don't need to be cherished and lavished in the way they are and for the reasons they give.

[????]

Unemplyed traders - you can trade at home with as little as ?10...the unemployed ones just must be sh1ite ones or they'd be doing it themselves.

[SeanMacGabhann]

Really?

so the traders at Investment Banks get paid a lot of money because it's that money they trade with?

Oh wait no, they get paid to play with the much larger pools of capital available to them courtesy of their employers

So that analogy doesn't work does it ?

[Ridgley]

I have to say yet again I agree with DJKG and SMG on this one

[????]

Wtf are you on about Sean. That's not what I said at all but I give up if you can't see my point. Ironic your bank hating, I OFTEN think hiw the f*ck do you go in everyday?. Whereas most others posters it is just myopic idiocy.

IF YOU CAN MAKE MONEY AT TRADING YOU CAN EITHER GET A JOB AT A BANK AND GET LOTS OF MONEY OR AT LEAST DO IT AT HOME FOR FAR MORE THAN YOU GET ON JSA. IF YOU CAN'T MAKE MONEY AT IT, THEN YOU'RE NOT REALLY AN ADEQUATE REPLACEMENT FOR THE LAZY FECLESS BANKERS DOING IT AS DJKQ TRIED TO CLAIM EARLIER. IF YOU'RE AN UNEMPLOYED TRADER YOU'RE NO GOOD AT IT OR DON'T WANT TO DO IT.

Spelt out enough for you?

[SeanMacGabhann]

Damn boy ? why you get so cross

I know that you keep telling me that I ?hate? banks but I really don?t. I agree with you that they will play a critical role in any recovery and long thereafter. It?s a challenging and interesting environment in which to work and yes there are some real pains to work with, many people are just regular joes and fine human beings

But every time I suggest that banks have moved into an elevated position above and beyond their useful place in a democracy and should be subject to criticism you have a real go at me about it ? I don?t know why

[DJKillaQueen]

And how many traders were laid off after the banking crash Quids?....yes they are all perfectly qualified and unemployed. You do talk some utter tosh sometimes.

[Loz]

It's not the individuals you will lose, it is the institutions themselves. If they move elsewhere bang goes the UK banking sector, no matter how many qualified traders you have.

Also, I don't agree with this "they got all the money and the little guy is now paying it all back", you hear a lot, either. The UK rode the boom on the back of the financial sector. All the improvements of the past years have been funded by that. Now that the boom is gone the money is no longer there. No one is 'paying' for the crash - just that the money that was there is now not there and cutbacks have to be made.

[DJKillaQueen]

It could also be argued that a lot of the money was never there anyway...as it was borrowed. I think your point on entire institutions moving is a sensible one.

Something that I think would also help to aid recovery is a change to the consequences of bankruptcy. To lock potential entrepreneurs out of business for seven years has always struck me as self defeating, esp. in cases where bankruptcy comes from a crash in the economy as opposed to personal wrecklessness. In the States it's only a year or thereabouts and there are many examples including that of Ford who was bankrupted three times before he turned to car manufacturing. In the UK he'd never have got there.

Failure should not have the stigma to it that it has and of course (to come back on topic) the poor only get to fail once, whereas those with other means of finance (outside of banking) can fail as many times as they like.

[Odyssey]

> It's not the individuals you will lose, it is the

> institutions themselves. If they move elsewhere

> bang goes the UK banking sector, no matter how

> many qualified traders you have.

>

> Also, I don't agree with this "they got all the

> money and the little guy is now paying it all

> back", you hear a lot, either. The UK rode the

> boom on the back of the financial sector. All the

> improvements of the past years have been funded by

> that. Now that the boom is gone the money is no

> longer there. No one is 'paying' for the crash -

> just that the money that was there is now not

> there and cutbacks have to be made.

I think that the banks should be split up: into the traditional banks (i.e. those that do loans and savings); this is the useful part of banking and such banks should not be allowed to trade. The financial trading arm of banks should be totally separate and not part of the traditional banking system. As mentioned above, this lot are overvalued, overpaid, and, quite frankly, produce relatively little for society.

To say that no one is paying for the crash is wrong. We are all paying heavily for bailing out the banks. As was put very well: it's a case of privatising the profits and making the debts public. So we are all paying for the mistakes of the banks and we will be paying for a very long time.

And as for the traders escaping the shores of Britain, I think we should all wave them goodbye. It's about time that Britain moves back to producing something of tangible value as opposed to shuffling money around. If we could retrain these traders into widget manufacturers, plumbers, electricians, designers, inventors and other such people that Britain really needs, we would have a far more balanced economy.

[Odyssey]

Add to my list:

builders

engineers

designers

developers

these are the skills and talents that Britain needs and not an overbubbled, oversized, puffed up and glorified financial sector.

[Ladymuck]

A revolt LOL! Don't mind if this peasant jumps in...

I accept that investment banks have, in the past, created - not insignificant amounts of - income for the Treasury's coffers in addition to jobs aplenty. However, I wholeheartedly agree with those of you who believe that such banks have, for too long, been given far more importance than they rightly deserve. This placing of them on a pedestal is completely disproportionate to their role and overall contribution to the economy.

But what really triggers off my injustice button is the fact that all the while investment bankers continue to receive big bonuses and/or ridiculously high pay increases, the rest of us have to sit back and accept that, the major banks will not be permitted to collapse. As I understand the situation (I am happy to stand corrected on this as I am unsure as to whether I have actually grasped the situation correctly) this guarantee is, effectively, to be funded by the State.

So, in 2011 at least, many hardworking UK citizens will watch the value of their wages shrink once again. More may lose their jobs. Those fortunate enough to remain in employment may have to accept freezes or cuts in wages, whilst the "really lucky" ones to actually secure a pay rise will, in all likelihood, receive something well below inflation. Simultaneously, some banking sector employees will continue to receive fat cat bonuses/increments in remuneration (as high as 40%). Those employed by the larger banking institutions may even enjoy a job security denied to the rest of us - at our expense, it would seem.

Meanwhile, the gap between middle income and high income earners is growing even wider. Funny, when this thread first started, it was primarily concerned with the income gap between those at the bottom of the socio-economic scale and middle income earners.

How many more destructive inequalities can our society endure I wonder?

[DJKillaQueen]

How many more destructive inequalities can our society endure I wonder?

It's a very good question.

Of course the other aspect to the banking discussion is that government levy the criticism that banks need to start lending again if the economy is to recover....well would that be starting the merry-go-round of cheap debt again until the next finacial crisis in another ten years time?

Is that really the only way we can build an economy?

[Huguenot]

Do you have a better idea DJKQ?

[HAL9000]

DJKillaQueen Wrote:

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

> Is that really the only way we can build an economy?

There are many other types of economic system but we are stuck with this one (based on capitalism, fiat currencies and the creation of money through debt via fractional reserve banking) until it self-destructs (a built-in feature given a closed system with finite resources, by the way) or a popular revolution wipes the slate clean and adopts an alternative such as communism, barter, hunter-gatherer, anarchy or natural selection - amongst others.