Financial Cataclysm

[Wight Flight]

40 minutes ago, Lightly Toasted said:

It depends on what happens to life expectancy, though. There are actuarial/resource issue as well as fairness ones.

It is automatically connected in Portugal.

Takes the decision out of politician's hands.

https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/2022-07-17/retirement-age-may-drop-again-in-2024/68712?src=newsletter-18/07/2022

[marceau]

46 minutes ago, tank said:

It's obvious that the UK government can't control the price of commodities because they are internationally produced and traded. 

However, welfare and house prices are domestic issues that they have almost complete control over.

For example, as long as the UK government continues to hand pick the Bank of England big wigs and can issue 1 million visas a year, they will continue to manipulate house prices upwards over the medium to longer term. While the housing market can't be perfectly controlled, it's clear that by having a consistent policy on house prices, the government can control the general trajectory of the market over time.

Nah. Credit, currency and capital markets are just as international as commods and goods. If what you're saying is true then no govt would ever lose control of these things. They have lost control many times during my lifetime, even with the gigantic supports, release valves and sinks that globalisation provided.

Benign global conditions have created the illusion that govts can defy gravity. They can't. Sure they can bring in 20 million more migrants if they choose, and set the price of the cheapest house to £2 million by law, perhaps they will try. But going forward the consequences of those things will become just a readily apparent as any other attempt to price fix or cook the books. 

Conditions are going to run against them for decades to come. People think they look like clueless chumps now, just wait.

[Axeman123]

Vaguely on topic:

[The Grey Man]

3 hours ago, Axeman123 said:

Vaguely on topic:

Noted. 

I have posted on Chinese banks and the "run".

I still do not have the poise to believe, wholly, anything that escapes the great internet CCP net firewall.

Mind. Last week saw a chap late 20's who left HK. Got the 5 year visa. Very basic English. IT chap. Fucked up. Said he had left due to persecution. No familiy in UK.

He appears to have left a financially cushy number.

 

[Red Debt Redemption]

10 hours ago, marceau said:

Everyone is prepared to accept that the govt can't control the price of oil, wheat, chinese tat etc, at least not without consequences. But apparently they can perfectly control welfare, social cohesion and house prices indefinitely, without any problem whatsoever.

It's a long lasting illusion, but an illusion nonetheless.

TOS says otherwise.

[Noallegiance]

4 hours ago, Axeman123 said:

Vaguely on topic:

Nooooooo! We said BANK run!

[wherebee]

On 19/07/2022 at 20:13, HousePriceMania said:

from Martin Lewis ( Sunak's media lap dog ) ....Financial Cataclysm.

As far as I can tell it's all about energy prices and mortgage rates rising

 

 

He must be putting the shitters up a few people.  Maybe it's to prepare the path for what Comrade Sunak has in mind.

 

fuck him and people like him.  Has he spoken out about the green scam?  Or has he supported it?

[Pinkpanther]

2 hours ago, The Grey Man said:

I still do not have the poise to believe, wholly, anything that escapes the great internet CCP net firewall.

Yep. Me too.

[Royston]

On 19/07/2022 at 16:53, nirvana said:

funny how all the posh cunts and the poor cunts are up for this nowadays eh?

 

It's all about extracting money from the most productive and often most prudent members of society and handing it over to the feckless "poor" cunts to spaff away on goods and services provided by the posh cunts.

[Frank Hovis]

3 hours ago, Royston said:

It's all about extracting money from the most productive and often most prudent members of society and handing it over to the feckless "poor" cunts to spaff away on goods and services provided by the posh cunts.

 

That's paraphrasing the basic definition of socialism / communism:

From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.

To which the logical, and actual, reaction is to downplay your abilities and stress your needs so that productivity crashes and everyone is poorer including the genuinely disabled.

People will work very hard if in doing that they are benefitting themselves and their families.

Nobody is going to work very hard in order to give the results of that effort to the state for redistribution.; though I have encountered some in the public sector who would claim this.  Before going home at 4pm every day.

I won't repeat the detail of it but in my peak productivity / pay job I would have done maybe a third to a quarter of the work I actually did if the state was taking most of it. 

Then if you start extrapolating that across the economy you can see why communism / socialism is not a viable way to run a country.

[Lightly Toasted]

2 hours ago, Frank Hovis said:

That's paraphrasing the basic definition of socialism / communism:

From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.

To which the logical, and actual, reaction is to downplay your abilities and stress your needs so that productivity crashes and everyone is poorer including the genuinely disabled.

... which is why they resort to central planning: an enterprise's (and thus its workers') abilities are set by output quota; the capital equipment and resources the enterprise needs use to meet its quotas are set by further input quotas; workers' personal/family needs are capped by rationing/shortage.

If you receive poor quality input materials or a duff bit of machinery then tough, the plan shows you've received everything you were allocated so where is your output? You end up producing crappy outputs in turn, and so it goes...

[Frank Hovis]

6 minutes ago, Lightly Toasted said:

... which is why they resort to central planning: an enterprise's (and thus its workers') abilities are set by output quota; the capital equipment and resources the enterprise needs use to meet its quotas are set by further input quotas; workers' personal/family needs are capped by rationing/shortage.

If you receive poor quality input materials or a duff bit of machinery then tough, the plan shows you've received everything you were allocated so where is your output? You end up producing crappy outputs in turn, and so it goes...

 

Yup.

It is simply a matter of time before it fails; and the USSR had vast natural resources, especially energy reserves, and this still wasn't sufficient to prop up a system that serves to stifle individual effort.

Whenever I hear this sort of central planning I am reminded of the 1975 Ryder Report which Tony Benn commissioned for British Leyland.

It required an eye-watering amount of public money to be invested but it promised a 33% share of the UK market and profits of 11% on sales by 1981.

The money was pumped in.

The results didn't happen.

https://www.aronline.co.uk/history/ryder-report/

 

[snaga]

8 hours ago, Lightly Toasted said:

... which is why they resort to central planning: an enterprise's (and thus its workers') abilities are set by output quota; the capital equipment and resources the enterprise needs use to meet its quotas are set by further input quotas; workers' personal/family needs are capped by rationing/shortage.

If you receive poor quality input materials or a duff bit of machinery then tough, the plan shows you've received everything you were allocated so where is your output? You end up producing crappy outputs in turn, and so it goes...

it's why they resort to killing millions, at first by directly killing those that do not agree, then indirectly by starvation.

Then history will label it right wing.

[tank]

4 hours ago, snaga said:

it's why they resort to killing millions, at first by directly killing those that do not agree, then indirectly by starvation.

Then history will label it right wing.

The UK, unlike the US, has actually had socialist governments. Post war PM Clem Attlee, for example, never resorted to killing millions of his own. Infact quite the opposite. He didn't become a murderous tin pot dictator. Why? He had a huge democratic mandate to deliver reform.

There is a big difference between democratic socialism and totalitarian communism.

Attlee improved the lives of millions with universal healthcare, social housing and welfare, whereas Stalin and his ilk were obviously murderous despots intent on total control and power at all costs. 

[snaga]

6 hours ago, tank said:

The UK, unlike the US, has actually had socialist governments. Post war PM Clem Attlee, for example, never resorted to killing millions of his own. Infact quite the opposite. He didn't become a murderous tin pot dictator. Why? He had a huge democratic mandate to deliver reform.

There is a big difference between democratic socialism and totalitarian communism.

Attlee improved the lives of millions with universal healthcare, social housing and welfare, whereas Stalin and his ilk were obviously murderous despots intent on total control and power at all costs. 

we just need a world war first to focus attentions?

Capitalism never went away under Attlee, as they say -

Capitalism without Socialism is Fascism

Socialism without Capitalism is Communism

Generally Western democracies are a balance between Socialism and Capitalism, even in the US, but with the scales tilted in different ways.

[Harley]

2 hours ago, snaga said:

we just need a world war first to focus attentions?

We're pretty much in one and like all major wars it's not often like the last one.

[Bus Stop Boxer]

14 hours ago, tank said:

The UK, unlike the US, has actually had socialist governments. Post war PM Clem Attlee, for example, never resorted to killing millions of his own. Infact quite the opposite. He didn't become a murderous tin pot dictator. Why? He had a huge democratic mandate to deliver reform.

There is a big difference between democratic socialism and totalitarian communism.

Attlee improved the lives of millions with universal healthcare, social housing and welfare, whereas Stalin and his ilk were obviously murderous despots intent on total control and power at all costs. 

I want a quiet unassuming competent bank clerk running the place. I am allowing myself the belief that Truss is so forgettable as a human being that she will fit the bill. And that she will furnish her cabinet with one or two semi competents. Im done with personalities and good presenters. It will not do.

Zahawis quotes are not encouraging re house pumping though.

However he may have more pressing matters to attend to soon.

Only PM that i dont actively despise in my lifetime is Major, who ended up being an arsehole too.

But at least he didnt stand in the way of me buying an affordable house in 1994 after he let it crash.

So my fave PM is one who actually did nothing.