Is Labour Prepared for Government?

IronGiant

Gazberotten redefined poverty in 2013 ?  and finally cemented his troll status for ever

EarthRod

Nope - you've got me on that one

Ruperts slippers

Although despite my support for individuals being better able to help themselves. The reported universal credit fiasco is a disgrace. The government have made a serious mistake implementing the new system. Despite quite obvious dangerous hard ship the response from ministers has been appalling. On this situation Corbyn has a point.

Enki

There is no poverty in the UK because we are all symmetrical.

EarthRod

Symmetry: a high employment rate united with a with a high poverty rate.

Toko Black

Actually it is finite, both at any current time and indefinitely in absolute terms.
At any given time, there is a finite amount of resources available. That finite amount can change up or down depending on the ability to develop access to new areas of resources, new ways of increasing the yields from the current resources and the rate at which resources are used up.

For a long time, we have lived in societies and in population numbers that have not had the pressure or world view of finite resources because we have been within limits that made the actual finite amounts appear so great as to never be reached.
We also moved away from direct trading of time and effort for produce and items into using currency and especially fiat currency, so we have become further detached from seeing the direct corelation between resources, money and wealth.

As we developed as a nation, we expanded our areas of resource by capturing or trading with other countries, regions and contents.
Since many of those countries are still considerably less developed and less demanding of the resources we need (an indigenous tribe has less need for rare earth minerals than a technologically advanced nation), we have been able to increase our countries wealth.
However, that is by depriving those other nations of their resources that they will no longer have available at least in the amounts accessible when they attempt to reach the same level of technological advancement.

Someone somewhere has to put in the man hours to make, grow or dig up what ever it is we need.
Because currently we can use cheap labour in other countries where wages and living conditions are less than our own, the cost of those man hours is not directly linked to the wage/production costs of doing so at our living standards.
Essentially we are artificaly propping our own living standards in relation to the cost of living by taking advantage of other human beings forced to accept living standards we would not accept.
Taking their man hours at a lower rate to pay back our man hour deficit for the cost of our food, clothing, houses, entertainment and 'things'.

As other countries slowly catch up and demand greater living standards of their own, both the demands on resources increases and the advantage of using their man hour rates in contrast to our own diminishes.

The rich can only get richer without effecting those with less when we are well within below any resource limits and only in the direct present. In the longer term, those deficits will have knock on effects in the future for those with less as the additional use of resources by the rich becomes a reduction in the availability.
In simple terms, if we have a lake of water and some people take a lot more than others, as long as their are only a few of us and the lake is large, we won't really notice. However, as more of us demand that water and the lake starts to deplete, the extra amount of water taken out by the rich earlier means there is even less left for everyone later.
I know someone will think or say that the lake will get filled up when it rains .... but it doesn't rain copper, iron, gold etc and even if it did, at some point the demand will outstrip the ability of the rain to replenish it - there is a finite amount of water on the Earth.

mij

Statistics, graphs and the internet..You will make an excellent economist

Cliff

Once again, you are talking about resources like the pie.
Wealth is different. Individuals can be very wealthy because they work hard, have a special skill set or have a bright idea. That in no way stops others from getting wealthy.
We have seen that over the last century- we are all living better. As per video above, the developing worlds living standards are increasing dramatically. Just look at South Korea.

Ruperts slippers

I'm just sharing information that might prove useful in opening your mind to the possibility that the old traditional labour arguments are out-dated.

Toko Black

Nope - wealth is accumulation of resources, be it physical 'stuff' or the more symbolic IOU that is money, which is a representation of resources (based on the confidence in resources actually being available).
If someone becomes wealthier than those around them, they are accumulating resources from a finite pool - there are only so many man hours, materials etc available to accumulate a share of.

If you work hard, have a special skill set or a bright idea, but you live in a third world country, although you may increase your wealth relative to your local population, for the most part you are unlikely to match the wealth achieved by someone working equally as hard, with an identical skill set or the same bright idea in a first world country.
Someone in the UK doing the same job as someone in India will earn more in terms of wealth accumulation than the equivalent person in India. The money the UK person earns allows them to purchase more UK or Indian working man hours of effort than the Indian person does.
In particular, the UK person can purchase far more Indian working man hours than UK man hours and therefore gain resources at a greater rate for the same level of hard work/skill etc.
Since there is a finite amount of man hours available, taking them from India for example, reduces the amount of man hours available to the locals, increasing the overall cost.

A similar situation is seen in the housing market and the current issues we see facing the young.
There are only so many homes to go around which is the current finite level of availiblity.
As house prices have increased, the amount of money that it costs to get onto the bottom rung of the ladder has increased meaning less and less people can afford to actually get started in the property market.
People investing in homes in rural and coastal and commuter areas increases and over inflates the cost of housing in those areas, pricing out locals.
We can of course build more houses, but there is a finite amount of land, and a finite amount of space per plot. Those that had or have enough money and/or resources already either own or can then own the largest amounts of land while later generations starting out have to pay ever more for ever less.

Even potentially renewable resources are limited by how fast they can regenerate/refresh. Just look at fish stocks as a prime example. Turning to fish farms helps increase the finite limit of fish available, but even then, there are limits on how much land and space we can turn over to farming fish against other demands for land. It just becomes a new finite limit that we will be approaching, and those taking a bigger share are increasing the rate we do approach those limits.

Again, for too long we have been thinking locally and not globally. If there are limited resources here locally, well we can always get more from elsewhere ..... but never thinking about the fact that 'elsewhere' is the same planet and therefore still the same total finite limit.

It's like a cognitive dissonance, that we can't allow immigrants in because we have limited resources, but then we don't have limited resources if we start thinking of the rich and taxation