"the state will not step in to help them when it all goes to s**t"
That's exactly what the State has just done for the last two years.
Not for the people who own the businesses, only for employees. And you're right, that's not capitalism, but I wasn't trying to make a wider political point. In the pandemic, people who are not on a payroll have not had much support, and in some cases, none at all.
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
I've no objection to anyone making money at all. And my friend's example was simply to show that it's not just hard work that is the be all and end all. Never has been. I worked with him at times, but never directly for him - but he seemed to be a reasonable employer and his staff seemed happy.
I can only speak for myself as to why people go into business. I never wanted to earn vast fortunes (although I wouldn't have sniffed at it) - I just wanted to have more control (and found out I swapped my boss's/manager's control for my customers').
I think people take what is allowed - so if earning 1000 times your poorest paid worker is allowed, some people will do it. So ethical companies that work to a factor would seems sensible. So if the boss wants a pay rise, the lowest paid worker does as well. But really it's not about what's earnt that bugs me, it's then avoiding the responsibility to others that goes with it. I'd like to think if I did ever earn £12m, I'd pay the tax on that - but people change with wealth and power, and I'd probably be no different to any one else and would protect my wealth - '...the working class can kiss my ar**, I've got the foreman's job at last...' and all that.
I just wonder what sort of social care short fall we would have now, if everyone stopped trying to avoid paying tax on what they actually get as income.
I know I bang on about AI - but how that will affect this type of issue is alarming. Capitalism relies on the circulation of wealth. We've seen, since the 60's, a major change in labour and the accumulation of more wealth by fewer and fewer people. What is the responsibility then when a company is largely automated and set up by Mr Tech - how is that wealth distributed? Is it all his? - and what then happens to social care (and society in general) when the vast majority aren't earning to pay tax, and the richest hide their wealth? No more chasing cheap labour round the globe. Cheap power is what will be needed more. So the big tech companies will no longer need to open a factory in Ulan Bator - and everything is tech.
I think it was Joex saying about giving up freedoms on a different thread, but we've been doing it for decades - and how you slow the progress (or stop it) loses me. It seems to be a runaway train hurtling down the track to me - I just hope there's one of those cartoon Acme rail switches around so it can be diverted at the last minute. And you can't ignore AI - it's like Covid. Once it's really developed and in use, then you have to use it to compete (much like trying to ignore computing) - it's out of the bottle and the only way to contain it is to contain it everywhere - and as you compete by reducing human costs, it's in the interest of business (and govs) to develop it. That's why autonomous vehicles are so attractive - and are also such a good weather vane as to where were at.
Maybe my predictions are barking, but I would go as far as to say that by the time we resolve how social care under the current system should be funded (how long has it been spoken about so far - decades? And does Boris' solution even scratch the surface?), AI will have changed the playing field completely anyway . There are vastly too many articles out there from vastly better brains than mine on this to quote any in particular. Worry about a voting card infringing my freedom? Worry about paying an extra 1% in tax to fund social care? What odds when you are 'known' and don't need to carry a bit of paper - and you don't have a job to pay taxes.
There two different ideologies, but the term Communist is very often used as an insult to Socialists by those (usually) of a right wing disposition when trying to win votes or an argument.
"socialism is based on the idea that people will be compensated based on their level of individual contribution to the economy.
Unlike in communism, a socialist economic system rewards individual effort and innovation. Social democracy, the most common form of modern socialism, focuses on achieving social reforms and redistribution of wealth through democratic processes, and can co-exist alongside a free-market capitalist economy."
When my parents were raising me, my father worked, Mum raised the kids, until school age then had part time work. This was sufficient to run a family with no state benefit other than child allowance. When I was the age that we would have liked to have children, I saw myself as not having that option as every job i and my husband had, only ever paid enough to live and not comfortably either, no holidays, never able to get a deposit for a mortgage, not able to learn to drive until I was 40 due to rent and bills being so high I could never afford it. So we decided it would be irresponsible to have children. Shame considering some of the parenting I've witnessed. Still live in rented accommodation . He is 52 with sickle cell, I'm 45. So no holidays, so never own a house when others have multiple houses. Still work hard on rubbish income, very much in love and happy. I pity those that lose perspective on what's important in life. So no, I have no idea what our future holds, no pension other than state but we have always paid our tax. The plan is that we will have an old age commune with our other friends that have not had good fortune in life, pool resources . After all I can't see us fitting in at golden days retirement home!
There is definitley a sense of entitlement in many, certainly not all, younger people. They expect to have everything NOW, not have to wait until they can actually afford whatever it is they want.
How long do you think they can wait until they can afford a deposit on a house of their own? When I bought my first flat it was double joint incomes or 3 times a single income. How far would that get anyone now? If you're earning £20k a year, that's only get you a mortgage of £60K , which even here in cheap Devon wouldn't buy half a flat.
I was meaning more the sense that they can spend thousands on a wedding, more thousands on the honeymoon but still expect to have all the latest devices in the home from day 1. I certainly wouldn't want to have to buy a house these days. When we bought our first home we were limited to 2.5 times joint income, and I wasn't even willing to stretch that far as I believed the repayments were too high to manage and still be able to live rather than exist.
When we bought our first home we were limited to 2.5 times joint income, and I wasn't even willing to stretch that far as I believed the repayments were too high to manage and still be able to live rather than exist.
I think that Hosta's point is that 2.5 times the average salary today would be just under £75k. There are no houses, flats or even garages on the market for that price in this part of the country (or, indeed, much of the rest of it). Your restraint is commendable but the average house price in the UK is currently x10 the average salary. So even if there are two of you, you'd need a deposit of about £15k (which is half of the average annual earnings for one person) plus a mortgage of nearly x5 joint salary.
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
I could never have afforded to buy a house by myself when I was starting out. No one that I know could. When we got engaged in 1980 we saved up our 10% deposit of £1200 in two years out of our c.£5000 combined earnings while still living at home with our respective parents. It was what you did then. Half our wages were still tipped up for board and lodging and we rarely went out. We bought a tiny doer upper 2 bed cottage and everything single thing we had apart from wedding presents was second hand. The wedding cost around £200, Mum made the dress, reception in village hall, no honeymoon. We had no 'spending' money for two years because of those pesky interest rates and had to put the immersion heater on for an hour on a Saturday for a shared bath, otherwise it was boiling a kettle for hot water until we managed to get an electric shower installed. It was 15 years before we felt secure enough financially to think about having children despite both having relatively good (PAYE) jobs. My son (an only child) and his girlfriend have combined earnings of just over £50k. OK a bit more than minimum wage, but not that much and it's 10x our earnings when we started saving. Two bed terraced houses now cost between £120 and £140k in our village - 10x what they were in 1982 (see where I am going with this?) and if they saved up like we did for a 10% deposit (their rent, utilities and food bills are nothing like half their wages) and borrowed 2.5x their earnings, they could easily buy a house far better than the one we had, with a mortgage that costs less per month than their rent. They could actually borrow 4x their earnings and buy a brand new build 3 bed but they don't need to, in the same way they don't need holidays, nights out, takeaways etc. The parameters and priorities appear to have changed. The affordability and financial position is almost exactly the same if you compare like with like. You simply can't compare a couple with two wages, which is what the vast majority of us 'baby boomers' were, to a single person on one wage, unless they are very well paid. Young people in full time work today in most areas of the country are not priced out of the property market any more than I would have been if I had wanted to buy a house by myself 40 years ago and they have as much if not more disposable income than we ever did, in the same way we were so much better off than our parents (mine grew up in real grinding poverty, not today's definition of it).
We have been able to retire early because we worked and saved so bl**dy hard since we were 16 and it irks slightly that somehow it seems we don't deserve it and are to blame for most of society's ills. I don't know the answer to the Social Care costs issue but it doesn't feel fair that somehow the burden appears to be proportionately higher on the less well off, unless I have misunderstood it. Also there appears to be no guarantees that the increased tax revenue wont be swallowed up, yet again by over inflated bureaucracy in the NHS. Fortunately for us, so far, we haven't needed social care or benefits and I feel for those who are having to battle to navigate it. It shouldn't be a battle but it seems it is, even for those already in the system. Hopefully our 'good fortune' will mean we will have sufficient funds to cover our own costs should we ever need them and we won't be too much of a burden on future generations🙄🙄 Phew might just go and do some soggy deadheading.😏
@Angelicant it's a very different story in other parts of the country. Down here in the "smoke" we paid 10.5K for a 1 bed maisonette in 1977. My father sometimes worked up North and his colleagues were appalled, they said you could get a 4 bed detached house for that money. We had to take special insurance to have a 90% mortgage, in spite of having a deposit. Even so we always say if we were starting now we couldn't possibly afford what we have now. Bizarrely it makes us a bit like the landed classes, property rich cash poor, except we we don't own a listed stately home, just a suburban detached house. A 2 bed flat round here costs £325- 400 k plus, depending exactly where it is. A 2 Bed house is £600k upwards. A 4 bed detached house in the posh area could fetch 1 million easily. None of them are worth that but that is the state of the market. I say again not our fault it's just how it is, but that doesn't help people like @WonkyWomble .
Posts
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
@Kili what does this mean?
@Fire
There two different ideologies, but the term Communist is very often used as an insult to Socialists by those (usually) of a right wing disposition when trying to win votes or an argument.
"socialism is based on the idea that people will be compensated based on their level of individual contribution to the economy.
Unlike in communism, a socialist economic system rewards individual effort and innovation. Social democracy, the most common form of modern socialism, focuses on achieving social reforms and redistribution of wealth through democratic processes, and can co-exist alongside a free-market capitalist economy."
Source: https://www.history.com/news/socialism-communism-differences
'The power of accurate observation .... is commonly called cynicism by those that have not got it.
George Bernard Shaw'
I was meaning more the sense that they can spend thousands on a wedding, more thousands on the honeymoon but still expect to have all the latest devices in the home from day 1. I certainly wouldn't want to have to buy a house these days. When we bought our first home we were limited to 2.5 times joint income, and I wasn't even willing to stretch that far as I believed the repayments were too high to manage and still be able to live rather than exist.
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
We had no 'spending' money for two years because of those pesky interest rates and had to put the immersion heater on for an hour on a Saturday for a shared bath, otherwise it was boiling a kettle for hot water until we managed to get an electric shower installed. It was 15 years before we felt secure enough financially to think about having children despite both having relatively good (PAYE) jobs.
My son (an only child) and his girlfriend have combined earnings of just over £50k. OK a bit more than minimum wage, but not that much and it's 10x our earnings when we started saving. Two bed terraced houses now cost between £120 and £140k in our village - 10x what they were in 1982 (see where I am going with this?) and if they saved up like we did for a 10% deposit (their rent, utilities and food bills are nothing like half their wages) and borrowed 2.5x their earnings, they could easily buy a house far better than the one we had, with a mortgage that costs less per month than their rent. They could actually borrow 4x their earnings and buy a brand new build 3 bed but they don't need to, in the same way they don't need holidays, nights out, takeaways etc.
The parameters and priorities appear to have changed. The affordability and financial position is almost exactly the same if you compare like with like. You simply can't compare a couple with two wages, which is what the vast majority of us 'baby boomers' were, to a single person on one wage, unless they are very well paid. Young people in full time work today in most areas of the country are not priced out of the property market any more than I would have been if I had wanted to buy a house by myself 40 years ago and they have as much if not more disposable income than we ever did, in the same way we were so much better off than our parents (mine grew up in real grinding poverty, not today's definition of it).
I don't know the answer to the Social Care costs issue but it doesn't feel fair that somehow the burden appears to be proportionately higher on the less well off, unless I have misunderstood it. Also there appears to be no guarantees that the increased tax revenue wont be swallowed up, yet again by over inflated bureaucracy in the NHS.
Fortunately for us, so far, we haven't needed social care or benefits and I feel for those who are having to battle to navigate it. It shouldn't be a battle but it seems it is, even for those already in the system.
Hopefully our 'good fortune' will mean we will have sufficient funds to cover our own costs should we ever need them and we won't be too much of a burden on future generations🙄🙄
Phew might just go and do some soggy deadheading.😏
I say again not our fault it's just how it is, but that doesn't help people like @WonkyWomble .