It amazes how many people see things in minutiae, if only you stood back and re-calculated - you'd see a completely different picture. It'll become apparent soon enough This'll make you laugh Oil consumption (per capita) statistics - Countries compared - NationMaster Yeah Right!! Environmental degradation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Stock Market Crashes - AskMen UK In the first case, lies, lies and damn statistics! In the 2nd, plenty to be going on with ... and in the third, not quite perhaps what you have thought but I see where you're going .... Purely for fun of course
BBC News - Power shortage risks by 2015, Ofgem warns Of course, this is wholly dependent on those awfully kind russians supplying us with said gas through the european pipeline, not that the bbc will tell you that. Fight Club
If anyone wants a CRT TV I have a Toshiba VCR combo in good working order....silver......just add the Freeview box.....going free. Oh, and before anyone compares the UK to other countries that 'are going to the dogs', most of their roads are better than the UK for starters. AL
The roads are an interesting one. My parents live in Spain where the roads are billiard table smooth, and the surface is very quiet. Thing is it makes perfect sense. The temperature in southern Spain ranges from 10 - 35c and it never freezes. In the UK it ranges from -10 - 30 degrees and has highly corrosive salt to deal with, and far worse, ice which breaks up the surface very aggressively. It's inevitable our surfaces will suffer more. Away from autopistas the speed limits are generally lower too, with 80 or 90 kmh regular speed limits
As a Global Warming sceptic, I was actually impressed by the quote: "Even if it's wrong, what's the problem with leaving the planet in a bit better state?" So regardless of whether you believe in Global Warming or not, looking after the planet and being careful with the resources is probably not a bad thing.
Resource depletion will centre around energy but strategically important minerals etc will also become more problematic Much is made of electric vehicles but a high proportion of the worlds Lithium is in Bolivia who is unsympathetic to the plight of the West. This is at a time when demand for resources is going up due to the emerging economies so we will have to compete with others for those resources. Environmental cost include pollution, loss of habitat and environmental disasters such as tsunamis and earthquakes. I think we are all seeing the effect of financial instability, the debt overhang has killed growth. For a much more detailed explanation Richard Heinberg
Newsnight was interesting last night where is seems apparent that the Chancellor - The Smug One - hasn't really got a clue. He is fiddling while London burns. The forecast growth hasn't happened and despite "austerity" borrowing has gone up. I am intrigued by two questions: 1. When it is widely known that the boom was fuelled by consumer credit, and that that credit got maxed out, why would anyone think that consumption can keep rising? There comes a time when you have no more credit, so you can't buy any more. There also comes a time when your wages stagnate and utility bills increase and you can't afford the credit you currently have. I just don't see where the increased consumption is supposed to spring from. Does anyone? 2. I don't understand the politics of austerity. You shrink spending and downsize. You make people poorer, nervous and worried about the future so that you can pay back debt (which your creditors aren't exactly clamouring for). But for some reason, you expect this to boost the economy, make everyone joyful and run to the shops. Eh?? Wouldn't it be more logical to pin everything on boosting the economy, business and jobs, even if you had to spend more short term, to create the revenue which you would then use to pay off the debt? Tell me how austerity is doing a great job in Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, France, the UK etc etc etc.? Massive unemployment in most of them, economies grinding to a halt, misery. Was this inevitable? I don't think so. As we have said, money is ethereal confidence-based stuff. I think the attitude to the PIGS has been very much bolting the door after the horse has bolted: we gave them money and they frittered it. Now we want it back, or we'll only give you any more if you impose draconian austerity (thus precluding being able to pay any of it back). No doubt this is some Keynesian view and I shall be clubbed by "economists" on here. But in the face of systemic failure in Europe over the past recent years, I'd just love to know how the current policy is supposed to work.
If the BBC has its way the country will go the dogs. Why does no one question this propaganda machine. Triple dip recession!!!!!!!! the financial indications of this are minimal yet they report it as major. Just look at the stupid graphics they provide and how exaggerated they are towards negative reporting. They play on the stupidity of the general public. As a society we suffer from an "Im all right Jack attitude". Kidding ourselves that we care about society by giving a few ££ when pudsey or red nose day comes round. The fact is that we only pull together when we are at war.
1. Exactly. 2. It is about matching spending with earnings. Downsizing is inevitable. Living within your means and reducing debt (and debt interest) after living on credit is inevitably going to be painful. It should be about rebalancing the economy away from government spending (reduce the deficit) and encouraging businesses to invest and those in work to spend by giving them an incentive to do so (cutting tax). But that takes us back to Question 1. I firmly believe the growth model has run its course and is broken almost beyond repair. Sure we are better off than ever before (or we were) but the spread of wealth in the world has polarised to the 1% owning 90%. This one persons debt is another persons asset idea only works when there is any chance of that debt being paid. The growth model just assumes it will continue to get bigger and be rolled over indefinitely, but interest payments will become the limiting factor. It worked when the developed nations ruled the earth and had access to cheap resources but those days are also over, we now have to compete on a global scale. It is like the old upstairs downstairs story where those upstairs keep borrowing of those downstairs until eventually those downstairs become the new owners of the house.
The basis of the the Keynsian theory, is: Pay somebody to dig a hole (whether you need the hole or not) and then pay another person to fill it in again........ ....somewhere along the line, it initially looks like wasted money; but the clever bit is that it gets two people with money in their pockets, which they spend and thus improve the economy..... ......the principle of call-centres in my opinion, however as the bosses pay the workers just over the minimum wage, the economy doesn't improve...it just makes the bosses richer.......the feudal system in other words. It is my belief that recent governments have been attempting to restore the feudal system so that the peasants are back in their place, certainly to the pre-Thatcher era, possiblty to the pre-Macmillan era. I'm glad to see that others on this forum acknowledge our economy and the UK as a whole (or is that 'hole'?) is being run by either by a bunch of d*ckheads or a bunch of crooks who think they know what they are doing.
The central idea of Keynesianism was that surplusses were saved during the boom years to spend during the bust years to even out the economic cycle. Keynes believed in 'sound money'. The idea that all we need is yet more government spending to stimulate growth and return the economy to good health is a misrepresentation of Keynes (I am not suggesting that this is what you are proposing Arquebus).
I suppose some things could be changed. It seems to me that the current economy is founded on consumer spending for cheap imported goods which are changed and thrown away every few years (or months). What would happen if people bought expensive British (or European) made goods which lasted? How would you do this? PR. Marketing. Incentives? Or, you might say that people might spend their money on things other than more goods: services of one sort or another, experiences. What would happen if instead of cheap and nasty flat-pack furniture, people bought locally-made real wood furniture which didn't fall to pieces? Maybe there needs to be a shift from lives lived vicariously with electronic goods to lives lived in the real world with real people doing real things. More "Face time" perhaps. I think the retreat into a virtual world is not a healthy one. Is it better to invest your time in learning a musical instrument, and play it for people in a live situation, or finish the umpteen levels of some computer game and wait for the next release? In the one, you have a skill that lasts for your lifetime, in the other you have a transient skill that isn't much use to anyone. Whilst more and more time is spent acquiring information technology skills, fewer and fewer people know how to cook. What is the real use of bathing in information every day? Surely the whole thing is self-serving?
I have some sympathy with this viewpoint but back in those days we had ineficient heavy industries that required labour to operate, we just don't have that anymore. What do the uneducated and unskilled do in a modern economy, other than draw benefit ?
Right, that's it, I'm off. Where did I leave that old Telecaster. Yes, but who really gains the most ?
The investors in people like Apple (well, until recently). Or indeed, the people who actually own the companies that own the machines who put people out of work through efficiencies. They are the people who reap those efficiencies. Less work is now required to produce more, but that's only of interest to those who benefit from those economies of scale. Your average Joe doesn't. He has to work as hard, or harder, than ever, trying to keep up with the speed of information flow: letters by boat, to letters by airmail, to telegrams, to teleprinters, to fax, to email, to SMS even. Everything goes faster and faster, reaction is immediate, but expectations are now of immediate reaction. You get more done in a shorter time, but that is compensated for by asking for more stuff to be done in the same time. Somewhere, more wealth is created in any given time, but that wealth goes to an ever smaller number of people. The mantra of "greed is good" and the "invisible hand" only works up to a point. When individuals can routinely shell out several hundred £ for a shot of an old Macallan, or squander millions on football teams, whilst most people struggle in their lemming-like existence, doesn't this mean that there is something that needs fixing? Do you really have to be a pinko socialist to think this, or isn't it just a question of reasonableness?
I pretty much agree with you on this and I would be very upset to be called a pinko socialist, I am very reasonable though and have oodles of common sense.
The UK political paradigm is never called into question. Mention proportional representation, even, and this raises hackles amongst those in power likely to lose from it. In this age of the internet, what is to stop a country using a Swiss-like system and having far more referenda on all sorts of topics, where the law really is decided by the people and those in government are only there as sages, to do the donkey work of drafting new legislation which is then put to the vote? Is sending one representative to parliament really the best anyone can do? Why shouldn't the system be tweaked? Times have changed. It's time for some new thinking.
