- cross-posted to:
- europe@hexbear.net
- europe@lemmy.ml
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The political failure is all the greater because it is abundantly clear that the fiscal adjustment should start with pensions and the welfare budget. Britain spends about 6% of GDP supporting pensioners, up by over a third this century. Generous, automatic increases to the state pension have become unaffordable. So have benefits to the 15% of Britain’s working-age population who now claim jobless allowances, after a surge in disability claims since the pandemic. The scale of the increase is impossible to justify. The system has been gamed.
I’m really sick of this false narrative. Every capitalist state on the planet can relatively quickly correct budget woes if they cut subsidies to the ultrawealthy and megacorporations while also taxing them out of existence.
the problem is that it wouldn’t be a capitalist state if it could do that
Fair enough, but even reverting to US style 1950s tax rates, they could be capitalist and the ultrawealthy and megacorps could still be filthy rich.
Right, capitalists could still be rich, but the problem is that they have political capture of the government and lack the awareness to realize that robbing the country blind will not be in their own long term interest.
They may have awareness, but short term gains allows them to gain more power and outcompete those who think long term.
For sure, there are ultimately selection pressures at play here. Capitalism actively selects for ruthless psychopaths who are focused on short term competition.
I mean, I’m a rando on the internet, so please correct me if I’m wrong here, if they collapse all Western currencies, they would have to move to BRICS currencies, or develop their own, and I don’t see anyone doing business with them but each other and desperately poor, basically reinventing company script?
Basically, their wealth depends on a stable society, and the continued undermining of the social contract will eventually lead to the system collapsing. There could be civil unrest, or even revolutionary changes going forward. If the government that represents the rich ends up collapsing, then all bets are off because their assets could just be seized at that point. The smart ones will likely try to move money out of western countries and divest from their assets there before that happens.
They would have lots of options since a lot of countries would take their investments, but I imagine a lot of them aren’t aware enough to act in time. It’s worth remembering that these people are very much insulated from the problems regular people experience. And a lot of them are very complacent. Every time we’ve seen a revolution in the past, the ruling class was largely caught by surprise when it happened.
This exactly!
But this is what they have to say about taxing the rich, just compare the language used, no accusations of “gaming the system” here:
The party’s left flank wants heavier taxes on capital. That might deter investors, including those who buy Britain’s government debt. As well as risking economic damage, creating a concentrated group of big losers can be politically fraught. Some backbenchers fantasise about throwing fiscal caution to the wind.
They end by claiming, without any arguments, as if it’s simply self evident, that the closest historical parallel to the current Labour budget is that time Conservatives under Truss tanked the entire economy in a week:
A better parallel is the market panic that followed Liz Truss’s irresponsible “mini budget” in 2022. This caused violent moves in gilts, exposed vulnerabilities in the financial system and imposed a lasting risk premium on British debt. The difference between her cavalier leap and today’s cautious drift is a lot smaller than it looks. If Britain cannot budget responsibly by choice, then markets will force it to do so by necessity—thereby damaging the entire economy.
I just find it highly implausible that people who plain their families’ wealth in centuries, rather than decades, don’t know that destabilizing their own states’ currencies can lead to nothing good. But I’m equally sure those of us who plan survival on deposit to deposit are missing something that should be glaringly, and will become painfully obvious.
Every crisis under capitalism resulted in gigantic wealth transfer to the ultrawealthy. They get to scoop up devalued enterprises and properties for cheap while regular people lose their homes, small businesses, farms and whatnot. I actually think people who plan their wealth in centuries care very little about price fluctuations on their medieval palaces, multinational corporations, intellectual property, art collections and so on. They understand the value does not equal price. It’s the regular folks who pay mortgage on their only house who care about currency stability.
Woah. “A fool knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing,” just took on a whole new meaning.
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The empire that looted the world.
Nothing lasts forever.
britain confirmed gooner country??
