Tsupernami
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Post by Tsupernami on Jun 4, 2017 17:50:32 GMT
Not gonna lie, we all might have different opinions in this thread about the state of British politics in this thread, but glad to see we all agree when it comes to terrorism and other topics in that other thread.
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Banter
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Post by Banter on Jun 5, 2017 0:34:53 GMT
Not gonna lie, we all might have different opinions in this thread about the state of British politics in this thread, but glad to see we all agree when it comes to terrorism and other topics in that other thread. There's another thread? o no
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Post by endersai on Jun 5, 2017 0:55:31 GMT
Not gonna lie, we all might have different opinions in this thread about the state of British politics in this thread, but glad to see we all agree when it comes to terrorism and other topics in that other thread. There's another thread? o noYes and, without a trace of irony, is pandering to the exact sentiments adherents to Qutbist radicalism want in order to further entrench a cultural divide.
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Post by endersai on Jun 5, 2017 1:02:44 GMT
That's so biased. "Basically no change in GDP" £76bn increase in GDP with inflation. Oh and for the deficit. You neglected the fact that it went down by £140bn accounting for inflation Minimum wage went up by 50p an you with inflation. Unemployment was halved. But yeah, people only see what they want. Your choice is to overspend massively and have better services but then not solve the debt issue, basically burying your head in the sand from the real problem. Or continue austerity to solve the debt issue. FYI, if we choose the former, then the 7 years of Austerity endured will have been for nothing as it would put us back to where we were before. Where the fuck are you getting that 76 billion figure from? it's risen by .1 trillion by the BoE's maths, hardly significant. 50p, again, is insignificant when minimum wage is still £2.25 under the living wage. The debt issue has not been solved, and the tory manifesto is basically uncosted. The Office for Budget Responsibility indicated last year that cutting immigration to below 100,000 by 2020 would cost the government around £8.7bn a year by 2022. Hardly the economically sensible choice. Why do you think May refuses to debate? Because she knows her choices won't hold up to public scrutiny. Seven years of austerity has brought nothing but hardship and misery, and hasn't solved the debt issue. Fuck the Conservatives, I wish the Lib Dems weren't so fucking useless and give me back New Labour. To your earlier points; I didn't ignore the Tory transgressions, they're indefensible so why would I defend them? To this post - the issue broadly with a near 25% increase in the mandated minimum wage, given people in the UK are elligible for on-work benefits otherwise, is that the cost is transferred to the private sector from the public sector. Big firms can absorb this, small firms cannot. And Jezza's "solution" of tax breaks is actually hugely inefficient unless it involves a real time tax rate change for companies with less than X employees or $Y turnover. The impact, too, to charities and not-for-profits is significant. Small businesses generally need to spend their revenue on capex, not opex, to grow and employ people. This move is one done by people who have, their entire lives, lived in bubbles and never had earnings capped to productivity. People who've always been paid with Other People's Money, like say lifelong Labour politicians. Living wages are, in a time of inflation and wage stagnation (thanks to people like Barack Obama and Gordon Brown) more important than ever which means it's more important than ever to get it right. Labour has not done this.
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Tsupernami
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Post by Tsupernami on Jun 5, 2017 5:12:49 GMT
There currently a think called apprenticeship levy where all businesses pay a rate when their paybill is over £3m. I expect something similar can be done so that smaller businesses can afford to pay for employees. Maybe a scaled corporation tax that works like income tax that is based on gross profit rather than net profit? This forces businesses to invest their profits back into the company, rather than line shareholders pockets.
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Post by endersai on Jun 5, 2017 5:55:15 GMT
Well you realise that shareholders are the company owners, right? So compensating them for lending the companies money for capex, or for maintaining the market value of the company, they pay out dividends.
And I'm pretty sure shareholders in the UK are a lot of middle class people, and pension funds.
In any event, though, that approach would only work once you submit your tax position annually to HMRC, and have money refunded. It doesn't help you manage cash flow, in other words.
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Tsupernami
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Post by Tsupernami on Jun 5, 2017 6:06:50 GMT
Well you realise that shareholders are the company owners, right? So compensating them for lending the companies money for capex, or for maintaining the market value of the company, they pay out dividends. And I'm pretty sure shareholders in the UK are a lot of middle class people, and pension funds. In any event, though, that approach would only work once you submit your tax position annually to HMRC, and have money refunded. It doesn't help you manage cash flow, in other words. I work for HMRC, so yes know a little bit 😊. We have a system called PAYE and online paying function called RTI, where companies deduct tax and social security from monthly salary to employees and pay this directly over to HMRC. If it at the end of the year this is too little or too much due to personal circumstances then it is corrected in next year's deductions. My suggestion wasn't fully thought out, just an idea. The reason I didn't say net profits is because huge companies try to get their profits as low as possible to reduce corporation tax where they can. As for the shareholders, they take dividends out of the company, which is their right to. However in recent decades, there's been a push by shareholders across all businesses worldwide to make cuts and savings in all areas just to make as much profit for themselves as possible. This hurts the economy. I'd like to see investment in people, infrastructure and technology. This would create social wealth and mean we all benefit, not just the rich getting richer while we just watch.
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Post by endersai on Jun 5, 2017 9:49:39 GMT
boo taxmen. I was going to give you an internet but now...
Oh, no, I can't be mean.
The issue I think with the approach of tax corrections is it's once a year, when for small businesses you need the cash flow to be sorted in real time.
And basically we agree on the last point. The neoliberal consensus is dead; we need to go back to liberalism with a hint of socialism to ensure people aren't left behind.
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Hystery
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Post by Hystery on Jun 5, 2017 9:54:21 GMT
And basically we agree on the last point. The neoliberal consensus is dead; we need to go back to liberalism with a hint of socialism to ensure people aren't left behind. Considering the course of events lately, my hopes of having a more fair society where poor people don't get poorer and rich people richer fade away a bit more every day. Wild neoliberalism is getting its way everywhere.
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Post by endersai on Jun 5, 2017 10:00:17 GMT
And basically we agree on the last point. The neoliberal consensus is dead; we need to go back to liberalism with a hint of socialism to ensure people aren't left behind. Considering the course of events lately, my hopes of having a more fair society where poor people don't get poorer and rich people richer fade away a bit more every day. Wild neoliberalism is getting its way everywhere. Such as?
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Hystery
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Post by Hystery on Jun 5, 2017 10:07:51 GMT
Considering the course of events lately, my hopes of having a more fair society where poor people don't get poorer and rich people richer fade away a bit more every day. Wild neoliberalism is getting its way everywhere. Such as? Well France, for example. Hollande was sold as a socialist, but deregulated everything regarding economics and labor during his time in office while removing plenty of social reforms that our grandparents fought hard to get, and now his buddy Macron plans to follow the same line. I could also put Germany in it and their idiotic model that, indeed reduces unemployment rates and allows them to avoid recession, but also puts 13 millions of german people beneath the poverty threshold, and reduces their retirement pension predictions to pretty much nothing due to their "mini-job" policy. I could also cite the way Germany forced neoliberal austerity measures over Greece which, not only screwed greek people over, but also didn't save them whatsoever because they now again were in recession for the last trimester (-0.1%). Then there's also Trump, at the head of the largest economy in the world. Etc, etc.
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Post by endersai on Jun 5, 2017 10:11:31 GMT
Yeah ok but the Greeks were basically workshy and tax avoidance was well regarded as a national pasttime there. Plus you could retire at, what, 50 from some public sector jobs, meaning 30-40 years of pension after that. So they had no plan to recover and could/would have dragged the entire EU down with them if they hadn't been forced to modernise.
And France's socialism is so good that they're on strike every other day, with Sarkozy being viewed as tyrant for wanting to increase the working week from 35 to 38 hours.
These aren't great examples of paradise lost...
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Tsupernami
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Post by Tsupernami on Jun 5, 2017 10:21:16 GMT
Yea Greeks, in a polite way of saying things, like to be let's say relaxed at the most difficult times.
France, I just can't believe that their country comes to a standstill during certain celebrations. My partner and I went to Brittany a couple years ago and there was some sort of special occasion that we weren't aware of. We had no food in our gilet, so decided to go to a restaurant. Nope, not happening until at least 7pm. We hadn't eaten since 12pm. So we went to a supermarket, nope, not open til the next day.
Like come on guys, I know you're used to it but we were hungry!
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Hystery
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Post by Hystery on Jun 5, 2017 10:31:01 GMT
Yeah ok but the Greeks were basically workshy and tax avoidance was well regarded as a national pasttime there. Plus you could retire at, what, 50 from some public sector jobs, meaning 30-40 years of pension after that. So they had no plan to recover and could/would have dragged the entire EU down with them if they hadn't been forced to modernise. And France's socialism is so good that they're on strike every other day, with Sarkozy being viewed as tyrant for wanting to increase the working week from 35 to 38 hours. These aren't great examples of paradise lost... I don't mean to offend you, but I sense some stereotypes in those words. See, my family in law is greek. I visit them with my mate once or twice a year and talk to them regularly through FB and Skype, so I think I can say confidently enough that I know a bit of the situation there. Let's take the big one first: greeks weren't workshy and tax avoidance wasn't regarded as a national past time, I can assure you. Not more than in any other country really. Greek people are just people like you and me who go to work and pay their taxes. But like in every country, there is tax evasion (for example, in France, tax evasion represents a loss of 80 billions euros every year), and there are artisans like carpenters, painters and all that who don't declare some of their works in their taxes. But it had never been such a big deal as most medias and detractors are making it. Now that this is out of the way, the retirement age. The lowest legal retirement age Greece has ever known was 57. Not so long ago, France's legal retirement age was 60 (increased to 62 under Sarkozy, then 65 under Hollande). Since then it had been gradually increased to 65, and 67. So as you can see, it's not that different. It's actually one of the highest in Europe if I'm not wrong (please correct me if I am). The only special retirement regimes are similar to France, and concern the army and police only. Aka a minority of the population. What you call "modernizing", I call "butchering". When I visit Greece now, I almost see a third-world country. A majority of retired people who cannot even afford to pay their electricity/heating bills anymore because their retirement pensions have been cut with an axe by the EU forced austerity measures. I see young greeks who have to give up on their studies because they can't afford it anymore due to the dramatic cuts in public budgets that destroyed scholarships. I see middle-aged men and women who have to return living with their parents because the 23% unemployment rate can't allow them to keep their tiny apartment anymore. It's easy to talk about modernization, when you're not confronted to the reality of the events. It's not against you personally, but it's a common recurrence I see with people talking about Greece. As for your last sentence, well I'm not really talking about paradise lost. I'm just seeing a world that was already in a poor shape getting even worse thanks to this wild neoliberalism and all those austerity measures that are pretty much useless except for the rich part of the population that only gets richer by the minute, while poor people just get poorer. Inequalities haven't been that huge in a long time, and it's driving me crazy.
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Post by endersai on Jun 5, 2017 10:51:15 GMT
Greece is nearly at 30% GPD lost to tax avoidance; Germany is at about 15%. Just for comparison.
I think the only worse state in Europe was Estonia or Latvia from memory?
Anyway point remains that Greece was living excessively beyond its means and with no plan for fixing this deficit. So tell me what else is Europe meant to have done? Arguably not admit Greece in the first place, but mostly because the EU expanded for reasons that are suspect at best (sup, Turkey, you maniacs!)
If you're looking at a world in bad shape, though, point the ire at Gordon Brown, Barrack Obama, and John Maynard Keynes. The latter's thoughts prompted the former two to bail the economy out in 2008. Instead of a cleansing fire effect - what Schumpeter called "creative destruction" - they deferred the fall for a decade and a bit and compounded the interest on it. It's not liberal economics that are the issue - it's the mentality that anything, including a world order, is too big to fail.
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