Politics Thread!

[zip accident]

I know that, in practice, it's just one big pot of money and NI only nominally "pays for the Welfare State".

But the Tories' pledge to cut NI, and then cut it some more, then cut it year-on-year, then halve it by some date, with the "aspiration" to abolish it altogether...

...they're basically just stealth-announcing a policy to "de-fund the Welfare State", really.

This is the argument that the Americans keep falling for: "You want more money in your pay packet, right? You don't want the government taking taxes from your wage, yes?".

And the knee-jerk is, of course, "sure, I want more money and the government should keep its hands off my money! And we don't need no stinkin' 'socialised medicine' over here!".

But the end result is that they end up paying more than anyone else on planet Earth for medical care:

For only fairly average health outcomes as well.

Also, how the fuck does it cost $2,500 for one ambulance ride? Like, is the ambulance made of gold, and the engine running off unicorn tears?

Like, try and make a glorified cab ride as expensive as you possibly can - "Brewster's Millions" rules, where you're trying to waste the maximum amount of money you possibly can (though you're not allowed to just give it away) - and I bet you couldn't make it anywhere near that expensive.

Because, basically, if it's not the government taking taxes from your wage to pay for hospitals, then it's just greedy commercial companies taking MORE of that money from you later on, at the hospital itself.

Like, it's got to be paid for, one way or the other. And doing it as an amortised not-for-profit is always going to be cheaper than a "free market" middle-men-taking-their-cut for-profit orgy of gouging every last penny out of you.

If they were talking about raising VAT to compensate that might work, there's not much point to having half taxes raised one way, half the other, but they're not, are they?

[Orava]

Is it a good thing to have high taxes, in the Nordics up to 60% for high earners is not uncommon. It pays for free health care and decent schools. Is that socialism?

[KlaxonCow]

If they were talking about raising VAT to compensate that might work, there's not much point to having half taxes raised one way, half the other, but they're not, are they?

Sure, like there's some American states that only have "sales tax" and nothing else.

It is possible and it can work, because some places already do it.

But, like, come on, that's not what the Tories are planning. Sales tax / VAT is a proportional progressive tax - a percentage - and you can't tax avoid / evade it at the point of sale, so the rich elites absolutely don't want to remove NI to raise VAT instead. You can be very sure of that.

Indeed, even without speculation, this is just announced fact. The Tories have told us that they want to reduce NI - with Jeremy Hunt stating that its complete elimination was the ultimate goal - but we've heard not a single thing about raising VAT to compensate. That policy has never been announced. So, you know, go by what the Tories themselves have said. That is NOT the plan.

Yeah, this is just de-funding the NHS by the back door and tricking the plebs into voting for it, by appealing to the greed that's within all of us. You want more money in your pay cheque, right?

Just like they tricked all the beneficiaries of EU "Objective one" money for regeneration and growth - that the Tories have NOT properly replaced since Brexit - into voting for the economic self-harm of Brexit.

The plan is to de-fund the NHS until it collapses under its own weight... and then, to deal with this "emergency", we'll have to let all our American friends take over.

Note that now Farage doesn't have Brexit to talk about anymore, he's talking about needing to change the NHS and bring in insurance companies. Doing the bidding of his American friends - because it has already been confirmed that, come September, he's off to help Trump with his election campaign.

[zip accident]

Note that now Farage doesn't have Brexit to talk about anymore, he's talking about needing to change the NHS and bring in insurance companies. Doing the bidding of his American friends - because it has already been confirmed that, come September, he's off to help Trump with his election campaign.

That should help the Democrats. It may not be enough, but every little helps?

[Little stoned kiwi]

As I understand it, the American health system is fuelled by corporate insurance. Inflated prices can then be offered at discounted prices to insurance providers and the corporations providing/selling it to their employees. It wouldn't surprise me if corporations profit from charging their employees to use their insurance scheme while underpaying them because insurance is valuable part of the remuneration.
I'm speculating here: I think that's why they have 'networks' where it becomes more expensive to use hospitals and GPs outside of your insurance provider's network.

It's fucked, user pays would actually be fairer.

[KlaxonCow]

[tufty]

So, over here in Frenchstan, following the conventional parties getting pretty much massacred by the extreme right, openly fascist Rassemblement National / Front National in the Euro elections, Macron dissolved the Assemblée Nationale, and called snap elections. Obviously, this doesn't put *his* job at stake, but it's a total throw of the dice as to whether his party will end up with any seats at all, and it seems almost inevitable there will be a coalition featuring some very unlikely bedfellows, quite possibly with the extreme right holding the keys.

As a result, the left, from the foaming mouth "France Insoumise" and Communist Party to the far more moderate socialists and greens, are forming a coalition. It seems unlikely to last, as there is far too much hatred (of each other) on the left, what they're best at is fracturing. Splitters!

On the other side, the normally "moderate" right wing party "Les Republicains" are imploding. Pretty much every party grandee instantly said they would not be involved in a coalition with the extreme right. Except for the president pf the party, who, on his own, ran off and made a deal with them. This was somewhat badly received, with calls for his resignation - he refused to resign, and ended up physically locking himself in his office, the door was forced, he was pretty much dragged out kicking and screaming, and has been sacked from the party. Which he is taking to the courts. Meanwhile some on the right wing of the party have said they would vote for the extreme right rather than allow the left to take a seat.

And Macron's party are refusing to take the blame for any of this, although it is very much their fault. And they're still playing the equivalence game between the extremists on the left and those on the right.

Bad times.

[KlaxonCow]

Anyone see Reform UK's party political broadcast?

It was just a black screen, with white writing saying "Britain is broken. Britain needs Reform".

And they just showed that still image silently for 5 minutes.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m ... k-14062024

They couldn't even be arsed to get someone to film Nigel dog-whistling on their iPhone and send that into the BBC, even.

What?

[snaff]

Reform overtake the Tories in the polls.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/ar ... -68vsdp8qg

Reform in opposition. Prime Minister Nigel 2029.

[Harlequin]

Anyone see Reform UK's party political broadcast?

It was just a black screen, with white writing saying "Britain is broken. Britain needs Reform".

And they just showed that still image silently for 5 minutes.

As a televised broadcast that sounds potentially very effective.

[Orava]

Anyone see Reform UK's party political broadcast?

It was just a black screen, with white writing saying "Britain is broken. Britain needs Reform".

And they just showed that still image silently for 5 minutes.

As a televised broadcast that sounds potentially very effective.

Better than Farage speaking...

[snaff]

I know that, in practice, it's just one big pot of money and NI only nominally "pays for the Welfare State".

But the Tories' pledge to cut NI, and then cut it some more, then cut it year-on-year, then halve it by some date, with the "aspiration" to abolish it altogether...

...they're basically just stealth-announcing a policy to "de-fund the Welfare State", really.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/20 ... le-choice/

Some 54pc of UK households (36 million people) already receive more in benefits, including the imputed value of health and education, than they pay in tax.

This is Gordon Brown's deliberate policy of getting the majority of voters on welfare, guaranteeing they will always vote left. This is why the Conservatives were forced to become identical to New Labour. They just raised taxes to pay for above-inflation benefit and public sector raises. Working pays less and less, and increasingly people just give it up and go on the sick.

[KlaxonCow]

Some 54pc of UK households (36 million people) already receive more in benefits, including the imputed value of health and education, than they pay in tax.

Yes, that's how the welfare system works.

Think about it. If 100% of UK households received exactly what they paid in taxes back through benefits... then what would be the point of the exercise?

Those on welfare are supposed to receive more money than they paid in taxes, otherwise they would not be receiving any "benefit" from doing this, right? And, therefore, we wouldn't call this system "benefits", would we? We'd call it "the pointless-exercise-that-does-nothing system" instead.

You're really not understanding the concept, are you?

This is Gordon Brown's deliberate policy of getting the majority of voters on welfare, guaranteeing they will always vote left.

Well, that didn't work, did it?

The Tories / Lib Dems won the election in 2010, so his great plan failed instantly and he did not, in fact, secure a left vote from the majority of voters whatsoever.

Which continued for 14 years thereafter.

Including, in 2019, the "Red Wall" almost totally collapsing, happily voting for Bojo the clown, in order to "get Brexit done".

Which seems to have been a far more pressing matter to the majority of voters (goodness knows why, as that was, in fact, poor people voting against receiving EU "objective one" and regeneration money for their communities - they voted AGAINST receiving the EU's "benefit money", in fact).

In favour of the Tories continuing to de-fund public services and reduce benefits, under their never-ending regime of "austerity" that didn't actually work. Because, like, it didn't work, did it? Over a decade of being "austere" and the British economy just got worse and worse, and did not get better, from pursuing an anti-Keysian policy of "austerity", rather than a Keysian "New Deal" to invest heavily in infrastructure to actually foster economic growth.

So if that was his "evil genius" masterplan, then it was a complete fucking miserable failure of a plan that was instantly undone and then continued not to work for 14 years.

What a conspiratorial genius!

This is why the Conservatives were forced to become identical to New Labour. They just raised taxes to pay for above-inflation benefit and public sector raises.

Yeah, exactly. So what the fuck is the point of an election anyway? If, when you vote Tory, they just continue Labour's policies. And if you vote Starmer in the coming election, he's promised to follow the Tories' spending plans to the letter as well.

Why, it's almost like the "red / blue" tribalism is a pointless distraction, as both parties will, in fact, govern the country identically and it makes no fucking difference.

So why you're obsessed with making "tribal" point-scoring here is anyone's guess, when you yourself confess that, actually, the Tories just "cosplay" as New Labour, and New Labour is just a "cosplay" of pretending to be Maggie.

Working pays less and less, and increasingly people just give it up and go on the sick.

Of course, the Tories, at this point, would contradict you to point out that unemployment is at the lowest rates it's ever been for decades.

But we all know this is a bullshit manipulation, as too many of those jobs are, in fact, "zero hours" and part-time "gig economy" bullshit that means we've got working families - both parents earning - who still have to claim housing benefits and tax credits and a ream of benefits that, in truth, is just "corporate welfare", so that these businesses are subsidised by the taxpayer.

(But this absolutely does undermine your notion that they're "all going on the sick" because they're demonstrably not doing so to record levels. The jobs they're doing are shit, so it doesn't really help much. But they're not "going on the sick", but are actually going to get shit jobs, receiving insufficient wage, that is then being topped up by the taxpayer through in-work benefits, which is really what the Welfare system is actually funding these days. Not "people on the sick", but businesses not actually paying proper wages and being subsidised by the taxpayer to (poorly) try to make up the difference.)

Much like how, in America, they don't pay waiters and waitresses minimum wage and then depend on the patrons of the restaurant paying a mandatory "tip", in order to barely scrape those workers up to minimum wage. A practice that, thankfully, is illegal in this part of the world.

But we've got policies that effectively do the same thing of subsidising tax-evading corporations from taxpayer money.

Work doesn't pay because, quite literally, work doesn't pay. And the taxpayer is funding this "corporate welfare" to subsidise businesses into not contributing their rightful share, so the economy is all just slowly falling apart.

And it really makes no difference whatsoever who you vote for, as all the parties will deliver more "corporate welfare" to their rich donors and not fix these problems, as they don't personally view the big bonuses and free jobs they will be rewarded with in political retirement, as being any kind of problem that needs solving.

Same old, same old. There's really zero point in you getting politically "tribal" - neither side will reward you for your loyalty.

[Dio]

You've wasted all that typing on snaff again.

[zip accident]

You've wasted all that typing on snaff again.

Yeah, and it wasn't even the interesting pile of dingo's kidneys he replied to.