The deserving rich
Robert Henderson
protagonist was a poor man who went around saying how the rich deserved
everything they had and that they should be given more, seemingly
unaware of the link between their riches and his poverty. It is that
mentality which the laissez faire advocates wish to inculcate.
For forty years or more they have attempted to justify free market
solutions on the grounds of “trickle down”, the idea that if the
economically successful are provided with the right laissez faire
conditions they will make massive amounts of money which will enrich
society in general including the poor because the creation of wealth
will filter down through society to the very bottom of the economic
pyramid. It simply has not happened. American blue-collar wages today
are much as they were in 1970 and if anything are declining. The picture
in Britain is not dissimilar.
But wealth is much more than money or property. It is also about free
time, a sense of long term security of employment, the ability to
comfortably raise a family and a sense that their homeland was just
that, a homeland. Fifty years ago most people had a short trip to work.
Their work was secure. They could raise a family on a single full time
wage and obtain decent housing. The country had not as yet been
seriously affected by mass immigration.
Today anyone under the age of 30 in normal social circumstances will
struggle to provide the wherewithal to start a family and will probably
have to live a long way from their work, that is, if they have a job.
Their sense of a homeland in which they are privileged has gone. The
fact that we have more technological toys does not make us richer.
Indeed, for most people it merely adds unnecessary complication and
frustration to their lives.
The part of society which has suffered most in Britain is the white
working class. Their natural employments, especially in the heavy and
extractive industries, have been wilfully destroyed. New council
estates destroyed long established working class communities with their
informal social support systems, while massive immigration provided
ever more intense competition for jobs, especially unskilled and
semi-skilled jobs, and social goods such as NHS services, council
housing and schools. In addition, the ever more frenzied privatisation,
whole or piecemeal, of the past 30 years reduced the quality and scope
of public provision, most notably in council housing, the NHS, the vital
utilities (energy and water) and public transport. This of course
affects everyone to a degree, but it disproportionately disadvantages
the less well off because they are the
people most in need of public services.
To illustrate how perilous the position is of many Britons wanting
work today I will quote this paean of despair by a middle-aged
working-class Briton which I took from the uk.politics.misc newsgroup:
“Yesterday I saw my husband with tears in eyes again, because he
cannot get full-time work to support us. When I met him ten years ago,
he was working 12 hour shifts, and even now, he refuses to go on the
dole. I don't understand why you refuse to believe that he and others
like him simply cannot find work any longer. He is 50, and the agency
books are full of 20-something Poles - what do you think? And don't say
he's aiming too high - he has always earned minimum wage and still does.
He is already hanging his head in shame, and not because he is lying,
but because there is simply no work for him, and when there is, he is
ignored. He has worked all his life in menial jobs - he cannot deal with
not working. What shall I tell him?
“Many of them [Jobs] are advertised in Poland and employees are
recruited directly from Poland - see above. This happens because it
seems that British employers do not want British workers. Perhaps you
can explain to me why there is not one factory or warehouse
job advertised here, when the place is full of factories and warehouses,
and every person that you pass in the street along these roads where the
factories and warehouses are located, are Eastern European, when 5
years ago they would have been British? There is less work now than
then, so what is the reason?”
But even if the “trickle down” had occurred and the poor had got
richer in absolute terms compared with what they had in 1979, that
would not be the end of the story. Wealth is not merely about who has
what but about the power relationship between the rich and the poor.
Money is power and the larger the disparity in wealth and incomes, the
greater the power of those who have the most.
If I am rich I can afford to go to law to harass and intimidate someone
who cannot afford such costs. I can protect myself with servants. I can
buy influence in government. I can give a poor man employment or take it
away from him. I can do any number of things to exert my will directly
and indirectly over anyone who is not rich.
The objective facts say that it is wealth which primarily determines
life outcomes. It allows privileged access to all the goods of life and
these then become threaded into the structures of individual lives. To
be born to educated parents is a boon which stems in all probability
from those parents having been born to educated parents. To be free of
the worries of having enough money for the necessities of life frees the
person to do other things. To live in comfortable and uncrowded
circumstances creates a sense of calm and security. Does anyone believe
in their heart of hearts that the behaviour of the poorest, least
well-socialised sections of society would not change radically for the
better if they were all suddenly given middle class incomes? Of course
they would because suddenly they would be removed from the stresses they
experience being at the bottom of the material heap.
As income and wealth inequality in Britain is substantially wider now
than it was in the 1970s, the poor in Britain today have less power in
their relationships with those better off than they had thirty years
ago. Add in the emasculation of unions, the destruction of the natural
employments of the working class such as heavy and extractive
industries, the use of mass immigration to lower wages and increase
competition for jobs and the position of the poorer sections of society
is dramatically weaker than it was when Thatcher came to office. RH
--
Robert Henderson
Personal website: http://www.anywhere.demon.co.uk
Werner
wrote:
> Guy de Maupassant wrote a short story entitled The deserving rich. Its
> protagonist was a poor man who went around saying how the rich deserved
> everything they had and that they should be given more, seemingly
> unaware of the link between their riches and his poverty. It is that
> mentality which the laissez faire advocates wish to inculcate.
>
> For forty years or more they have attempted to justify free market
> solutions on the grounds of “trickle down”, the idea that if the
> economically successful are provided with the right laissez faire
> conditions they will make massive amounts of money which will enrich
> society in general including the poor because the creation of wealth
> will filter down through society to the very bottom of the economic
> pyramid. It simply has not happened. American blue-collar wages today
> are much as they were in 1970 and if anything are declining. The picture
> in Britain is not dissimilar.
>
Evidently trickle up doesn't work. The American Great Society
illustrates that.
http://capitaldistrict-lp.org/Poverty.shtml
> As income and wealth inequality in Britain is substantially wider now
> than it was in the 1970s, the poor in Britain today have less power in
> their relationships with those better off than they had thirty years
> ago. Add in the emasculation of unions, the destruction of the natural
> employments of the working class such as heavy and extractive
> industries, the use of mass immigration to lower wages and increase
> competition for jobs and the position of the poorer sections of society
> is dramatically weaker than it was when Thatcher came to office. RH
>
> --
>
“The idea that you can fix a period of excess borrowing and excess
consumption by more borrowing and more consumption to me is just
ludicrous,”
Jim Rogers, an American
investment guru
"...government
and the banking system have deliberately created
financial bubbles to
shore up the economy, engender profits, and
maintain tax revenues."
http://www.rense.com/general85/chall.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h2x7R8pxUs&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt4VLX96VLM
The same people who complained about the widening wealth gap now
think
the new money printing and borrowing is such a wonderful and
necessary
policy forget it helps the rich the most. The policies are
intended
to
avoid depressing asset prices which has the effect of
shrinking the
wealth gap. Who owns most of the assets if not the
wealthy? How do
you
stop asset price deflation? By inflation. Who
suffers most from
inflation? Poor people. Who benefits most from
inflation? Rich people
who own assets.
Evidently change we can
believe in is no change. The rich get richer
and the poor get poorer
by government policy, just like always.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nU3fNh-PRk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfoToPyae0s&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSqhrHIfJV0&NR=1&feature=fvwp
abelard
the health implication are probably more relevant...
and they relate to status...not to relative income/wealth...
http://www.abelard.org/news/review2005.php#stress_status_091005
what else is to be expected after 15 years of socialism....
as usual you are talking innumerate bigoted socialist bollox
1996 isbn 0255363664 uk figures, p59
sample size 5565...missing data 1230
%ages
%age by father's arriving 33 years later at
class of origin...class 1/2......3........4/5
1/2 63 31 7
3 37 49 14
4/5 28 49 23
ie, only 23% of people whose parents were in classes 4/5 were
themselves still there 33 years later
from the cover
'by far the most important factors shaping individual success or
failure in britain are academic ability and personal ambition. his
evidence shows that if you are bright and you work hard, you
will almost certainly succeed irrespective of where you start out
from.'
regards...and long may you continue to enjoy your uninformed rants
--
web site at www.abelard.org - news comment service, logic, economics
energy, education, politics, etc over 1 million document calls in year past
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
all that is necessary for [] walk quietly and carry
the triumph of evil is that [] a big stick.
good people do nothing [] trust actions not words
only when it's funny -- roger rabbit
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
jo...@jjdesigns.fsnet.co.uk
Good words.
Robert Henderson
<abel...@abelard.org> writes
>
>%age by father's arriving 33 years later at
>class of origin...class 1/2......3........4/5
>1/2 63 31 7
>3 37 49 14
>4/5 28 49 23
>
>ie, only 23% of people whose parents were in classes 4/5 were
> themselves still there 33 years later
>
That merely gives relative status not the absolute status of the
individual. For example, mass immigration bring large numbers who end up
even poorer than many of the existing poor who move up a notch. In
addition, these type of class measurements are not standardised over
time. Hence, comparison between generations is meaningless. RH
John Bennett
abelard
<phi...@anywhere.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In message <tg2eg5t8k3bsth4h1...@4ax.com>, abelard
><abel...@abelard.org> writes
>>
>>%age by father's arriving 33 years later at
>>class of origin...class 1/2......3........4/5
>>1/2 63 31 7
>>3 37 49 14
>>4/5 28 49 23
>>
>>ie, only 23% of people whose parents were in classes 4/5 were
>> themselves still there 33 years later
>>
>
>That merely gives relative status not the absolute status of the
>individual.
that is why i also linked references to that problem
> For example, mass immigration bring large numbers who end up
>even poorer than many of the existing poor who move up a notch. In
>addition, these type of class measurements are not standardised over
>time. Hence, comparison between generations is meaningless. RH
don't be silly hatstand....
you made a foolhardy comment about thatcher....
i have given you figures relevant to that time...
they show considerable class mobility....
that has now fallen considerably since we were cursed
by socialist governments....
if you wanted details concerned to magnitude of that
retreat, doubtless you can obtain it as this particular
socialist 'new' labour's failure is much in the news lately
but then socialist intrusion and interference always damages
the poor disproportionately
regards
Robert Henderson
<abel...@abelard.org> writes
>
>> For example, mass immigration bring large numbers who end up
>>even poorer than many of the existing poor who move up a notch. In
>>addition, these type of class measurements are not standardised over
>>time. Hence, comparison between generations is meaningless. RH
>
>don't be silly hatstand....
>you made a foolhardy comment about thatcher....
>
>i have given you figures relevant to that time... they show
>considerable class mobility....
Translation: It's memory has failed again... RH
Saracene
wrote:
> Guy de Maupassant wrote a short story entitled The deserving rich. Its
> protagonist was a poor man who went around saying how the rich deserved
> everything they had and that they should be given more, seemingly
> unaware of the link between their riches and his poverty. It is that
> mentality which the laissez faire advocates wish to inculcate.
>
> For forty years or more they have attempted to justify free market
> solutions on the grounds of “trickle down”, the idea that if the
> economically successful are provided with the right laissez faire
> conditions they will make massive amounts of money which will enrich
> society in general including the poor because the creation of wealth
> will filter down through society to the very bottom of the economic
> pyramid. It simply has not happened. American blue-collar wages today
> are much as they were in 1970 and if anything are declining. The picture
> in Britain is not dissimilar.
>
> But wealth is much more than money or property. It is also about free
> time, a sense of long term security of employment, the ability to
> comfortably raise a family and a sense that their homeland was just
> that, a homeland. Fifty years ago most people had a short trip to work.
> Their work was secure. They could raise a family on a single full time
> wage and obtain decent housing. The country had not as yet been
> seriously affected by mass immigration.
>
> --
> Robert Henderson
> Personal website:http://www.anywhere.demon.co.uk
It's a touchng story with some truth, if a little sentimental. but who
really wants to be working class, let alone a 1950s factory worker?