Greed of the Super Rich, Lizzie in Trouble.

[Flanker7]

......and all that awareness has changed what exactly.

 

The world is still turning. Life is pretty much exactly the same as before the "2008 crash". People are still driving round in cars. The lights are still on. The internet is still running. The shops are stocked. Consumerism is still rife. We still have shiploads of cheap foreign made tat from exloitative developing nations flooding our discount stores with an equal level of enthused hordes of people lapping up basketfulls of it. Nobody seems to give a toss about the exploitation of how it was made. .............................

 

..................................................Wake me up when something is happening will you. In the interim I am going to do what the majority of the population does. Live my life. Make the best of my life and spend what I can afford when I want, how I want and on whatever I want.

 

Oh dear they really have got you beaten into submission haven't they.

 

The grain of truth in your rant is that Politics rarely influence our lives in cataclysmic ways. But it does influence the majority in small ways. Lets say 5-10%

 

The better off will go to extreme lengths to keep themselves on the up and they will consider 5-10% well worth the effort. Engaging the internet to locate the best rates and fuel prices.

The worse off will go to extreme lengths to get that little bit more. Wetherspoons and Pound shops are thriving.

 

IMO its only long sightedness that keeps the rich on top. It would be better for everyone if society was shaped by a drive for the common good.

 

You/We have two choices

1. Fight the good fight and resist the greedy, selfish and cynical that keep dragging us into the gutter.

2. Join the 'dog eat dog' and 'the fittest survive and the weak go to the wall' type who only care about themselves.

Edited November 12, 2017 by Flanker7

[ANGELFIRE1]

......and all that awareness has changed what exactly.

 

The world is still turning. Life is pretty much exactly the same as before the "2008 crash". People are still driving round in cars. The lights are still on. The internet is still running. The shops are stocked. Consumerism is still rife. We still have shiploads of cheap foreign made tat from exloitative developing nations flooding our discount stores with an equal level of enthused hordes of people lapping up basketfulls of it. Nobody seems to give a toss about the exploitation of how it was made.

 

We still have reasonably cheap standards of living compared to other countries and despite the best efforts of Corbyn, biased media outlets, shock-tactic documentaries and pipedream idealists on internet forums such as this, MOST people (even those at the lowest income levels of society) have at the very least a roof over their heads, a basic income handout from the government and ability to have a basic standard of living.

 

Even our most desprate and destitute of society who may even be on the streets have access to help and services that unfortunate people in the REAL third world could only dream of.

 

Occupy et al achieved nothing.

 

The massive scandals of Apple, Amazon, Barclays, HSBC, Google. The fake tent cities. The violent protests. The smashing of shop windows. The morons ramrading Debenhams and Tesco to get their trainers and cheap flatscrens... We all saw it. We assumed it was supposed to have some kind of point. God only knows what it was though. Free trainers for all?? Justice for those without flatscreen televisions?? Consumerism is wrong init.

 

Anyway, I digress. Even if those so called protestors did have a point, how did they get on.

 

11 months into 2017 and here is just a tiny handful of samples:

 

Amazon - prime subscriptions up to over 80million

Apple - iphoneX release and thousands queue round the block for it

Google - parent company profits increase by 29%

HSBC - profits in one single quarter reach £3.5billion

Barclays - profits rise 40%

 

We all want consumerism. People want things. People want money. People go to work to earn money. People want to spend it.

 

Fairness is not a human nature. We are all cavemen inside.

 

Do we think the Paradise Papers will really shake up the world? I dont. I am still waiting for that revolution that allegedly was supposed to come with the Panama Papers leak. That was over a year ago now.

 

As for recent developments, well you have to laugh dont you....

 

BBC Panorma had the gall to broadcast their finger pointing and person shaming documentary whilst having an employee pension scheme investing multi-millions in the very same "tax avoiding" companies.

 

Chief Corbyn demanding the queen apologise for her links with such disgraceful almost treasonous behaviour whilst having their own party councils using such schemes to offset liabilities on properties and avoiding stamp duties.

 

The swamp is a long way off from being drained. The revolution is a long way off coming despite what faux marxists and wannabe Che Guevaras try to make out.

 

Charlotte Church, Russell Brand, Michael Sheen, Shami Chakrabarti, Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Mick Cash and the rest of them are as see through as a freshly cleaned window on a bright day.

 

Capitalism is a failure they chant (....except when we can benefit from it...)

 

Wake me up when something is happening will you. In the interim I am going to do what the majority of the population does. Live my life. Make the best of my life and spend what I can afford when I want, how I want and on whatever I want.

 

I think much of this is on the money.

 

Angel1.

[phil752]

All wrong, of course.

HM The Queen has no 'private money' of the kind that you naiively describe.

She is the Tenant for Life of the Duchy of Lancaster. Trusts are held by trustees, not beneficiaries (whose entitlement is limited to income during lifetime only). It's the trustees who have management powers. To understand better how trusts are constituted, start with https://www.gov.uk/trusts-taxes

 

Are you saying the Queen has no private wealth?

 

---------- Post added 12-11-2017 at 20:38 ----------

 

There is so much wrong with your post, I hardly know where to start...

 

Let's be kind and just call it naive shall we?

 

How long have you been going around with your eyes and ears shut?

 

Do you not wonder why Corbyn's popularity has soared? Do you not wonder why Trump is in power in America? Or why there has been a rise in the far right all over the EU or why we have elected to leave the EU? Politics are all over the place.

 

Much of this is a result of the discontent following the crash and the rising awareness that all is not as it should be, and the awareness that the 'democracy' we have been fed is a sham. Never mind the riots and protests, (of which there have been many, but kept off the mainstream media - the Revolution will not be Televised...,) Politics in general are in turmoil as people cast about for representation and solutions, and it's not about to get any better any time soon. This revolution is a slow burn but will reach a tipping point as more and more people are sucked in, at the moment it has barely begun. I don't know what you do for a living, but no jobs, no incomes, are safe anymore, and that 'help and support' you happily mention is being withdrawn as we speak due to cuts.

 

If you really think life is carrying on just as it was before, then you really need to get out more, widen your circle of aquaintences, engage your brain and try to see beneath the surface.

 

Not often I agree with you, but yes the crash had a very big impact on many people and for many, the world did not keep turning. for a person to talk like that id like to know what ECCOnoob does to be so unaffected in 2008?

[Jeffrey Shaw]

Possible way forwards:

1. Make all tax avoidance unlawful (= count it as tax evasion) EXCEPT where legislation expressly specifies that an item is not taxable (e.g. interest on National Savings Certificates; ISAs; SIPPs/PEPs).

2. Abolish all tax reliefs.

3. Abolish Corporation Tax BUT make all distributions/dividends taxable at source no matter to whom they are paid.

[sgtkate]

Possible way forwards:

1. Make all tax avoidance unlawful (= count it as tax evasion) EXCEPT where legislation expressly specifies that an item is not taxable (e.g. interest on National Savings Certificates; ISAs; SIPPs/PEPs).

2. Abolish all tax reliefs.

3. Abolish Corporation Tax BUT make all distributions/dividends taxable at source no matter to whom they are paid.

 

Agree with all 3 of those.

[Staunton]

......and all that awareness has changed what exactly.

 

The world is still turning. Life is pretty much exactly the same as before the "2008 crash". People are still driving round in cars. The lights are still on. The internet is still running. The shops are stocked. Consumerism is still rife...

 

This sneering at people who are trapped in the consumerist habit is cynical and unwarranted. If ECCOnoob had been vocal in drawing attention to the mechanisms of neoliberalism and helping to highlight the connection between high returns for the already wealthy and the lack of income growth for ordinary people, and the link between tax abuse and public service cuts, then there may have been more awareness of these processes and more consumer resistance.

 

Instead ECCOnoob mocks those young people who really did do something – setting up Occupy Sheffield. No matter how transient and ephemeral their cardboard and canvas presence, they were young and poor, but they were active and visible. They drew attention to the corruption and the scandalous, rotten system.

 

ECCOnoob has been consistent in seeking to distract people from my posts and contributions here on sheffieldforum, it is a routine that all supporter of neoliberalism consider to be their duty – hide the truth, keep the population ignorant. Distract, divert, bluster and bully. Nevertheless, here, at last, ECCOnoob is acknowledging that the multinationals and the wealthy are succeeding while the rest of us are paying the price.

 

In the eighteenth century land was the chief asset of the capitalist, usually stolen from the poor by enclosure, or gained by pleasing the crown. Then manufacture took over in the nineteenth century as the chief source of wealth for the rich, leading to a life of dislocation, toil and poverty for ordinary people. Then followed the propaganda revolution of Edward Bernays, breaking the link between needs and purchases in favour of manufactured wants to inflate consumer bubbles. Then, from the nineteen eighties finance capitalism took over, making debt the mechanism of wealth creation - that is, the rich forcing ordinary people into debt (with a great deal of help from government policy) and then making profit through interest bearing loans. But the greed and sleaze of finance capitalists infected the whole system, leading eventually to the scandal of 2007/8 and the sickening spectacle of billionaires pocketing vast amounts of public money to bail themselves out and keep their bonuses flowing.

 

And all this was used as an excuse for the lie of austerity, used instrumentally to privatise lucrative public assets, cut thousands and thousands of essential jobs across the public sector, then to deregulate everything so that no one could be held accountable for service failures (private enterprise is focused on profit not service) and simultaneously keeping wealth happy by maintaining those channels of tax abuse through which £billions slip quietly off shore as the rich and the big businesses cheat the system.

 

The rich just get richer and richer and the poor are, as ever, cheated, exploited and scorned.

[Anna B]

This sneering at people who are trapped in the consumerist habit is cynical and unwarranted. If ECCOnoob had been vocal in drawing attention to the mechanisms of neoliberalism and helping to highlight the connection between high returns for the already wealthy and the lack of income growth for ordinary people, and the link between tax abuse and public service cuts, then there may have been more awareness of these processes and more consumer resistance.

 

Instead ECCOnoob mocks those young people who really did do something – setting up Occupy Sheffield. No matter how transient and ephemeral their cardboard and canvas presence, they were young and poor, but they were active and visible. They drew attention to the corruption and the scandalous, rotten system.

 

ECCOnoob has been consistent in seeking to distract people from my posts and contributions here on sheffieldforum, it is a routine that all supporter of neoliberalism consider to be their duty – hide the truth, keep the population ignorant. Distract, divert, bluster and bully. Nevertheless, here, at last, ECCOnoob is acknowledging that the multinationals and the wealthy are succeeding while the rest of us are paying the price.

 

In the eighteenth century land was the chief asset of the capitalist, usually stolen from the poor by enclosure, or gained by pleasing the crown. Then manufacture took over in the nineteenth century as the chief source of wealth for the rich, leading to a life of dislocation, toil and poverty for ordinary people. Then followed the propaganda revolution of Edward Bernays, breaking the link between needs and purchases in favour of manufactured wants to inflate consumer bubbles. Then, from the nineteen eighties finance capitalism took over, making debt the mechanism of wealth creation - that is, the rich forcing ordinary people into debt (with a great deal of help from government policy) and then making profit through interest bearing loans. But the greed and sleaze of finance capitalists infected the whole system, leading eventually to the scandal of 2007/8 and the sickening spectacle of billionaires pocketing vast amounts of public money to bail themselves out and keep their bonuses flowing.

 

And all this was used as an excuse for the lie of austerity, used instrumentally to privatise lucrative public assets, cut thousands and thousands of essential jobs across the public sector, then to deregulate everything so that no one could be held accountable for service failures (private enterprise is focused on profit not service) and simultaneously keeping wealth happy by maintaining those channels of tax abuse through which £billions slip quietly off shore as the rich and the big businesses cheat the system.

 

The rich just get richer and richer and the poor are, as ever, cheated, exploited and scorned.

 

Good post.

 

However, what's missing is a solution.

 

The only power the people have is to stand together, but as you can see from this thread some people are still defending those that are making them poor and ruining their lives.

[Cyclone]

Possible way forwards:

1. Make all tax avoidance unlawful (= count it as tax evasion) EXCEPT where legislation expressly specifies that an item is not taxable (e.g. interest on National Savings Certificates; ISAs; SIPPs/PEPs).

2. Abolish all tax reliefs.

3. Abolish Corporation Tax BUT make all distributions/dividends taxable at source no matter to whom they are paid.

 

1) To be clear, does this mean that you want the country to tax money that is not in this country? Presumably only for residents?

2) Tax reliefs exist for very specific reasons, to stimulate investment and growth in specific areas.

3) This seems ludicrous, companies could avoid tax by simply sitting on the money. Large companies would just stop paying dividends.

 

---------- Post added 14-11-2017 at 08:48 ----------

 

Not often I agree with you, but yes the crash had a very big impact on many people and for many, the world did not keep turning. for a person to talk like that id like to know what ECCOnoob does to be so unaffected in 2008?

 

To be fair, nothing really changed for anyone that I know in 2008.

My parents were a few years from retirement, NHS nurse and lower management at a bus company, nothing changed.

I work in the IT industry, self employed, contracts were a bit thin on the ground, I had to work away from home, but nothing beyond that.

My other half, engineer, work just carried on.

Pretty much all my friends, they all work, no-one lost their jobs, those that own houses, nothing really changed, those that don't, nothing changed.

The financial crash was huge, and many people were affected, but it doesn't follow that we will all know someone affected personally.

[Supertramp]

1) To be clear, does this mean that you want the country to tax money that is not in this country? Presumably only for residents?

2) Tax reliefs exist for very specific reasons, to stimulate investment and growth in specific areas.

3) This seems ludicrous, companies could avoid tax by simply sitting on the money. Large companies would just stop paying dividends.

 

---------- Post added 14-11-2017 at 08:48 ----------

 

 

To be fair, nothing really changed for anyone that I know in 2008.

My parents were a few years from retirement, NHS nurse and lower management at a bus company, nothing changed.

I work in the IT industry, self employed, contracts were a bit thin on the ground, I had to work away from home, but nothing beyond that.

My other half, engineer, work just carried on.

Pretty much all my friends, they all work, no-one lost their jobs, those that own houses, nothing really changed, those that don't, nothing changed.

The financial crash was huge, and many people were affected, but it doesn't follow that we will all know someone affected personally.

 

Same, nothing changed for anyone I know either. IT contractor here too. Had to work as far away as Manchester!

 

---------- Post added 14-11-2017 at 11:13 ----------

 

Good post.

 

However, what's missing is a solution.

 

The only power the people have is to stand together, but as you can see from this thread some people are still defending those that are making them poor and ruining their lives.

But their isn't that many poor people about. Most people are comfortable. They have warm houses, they have enough to eat ( or too much to eat, looking at most people).

[Anna B]

1) To be clear, does this mean that you want the country to tax money that is not in this country? Presumably only for residents?

2) Tax reliefs exist for very specific reasons, to stimulate investment and growth in specific areas.

3) This seems ludicrous, companies could avoid tax by simply sitting on the money. Large companies would just stop paying dividends.

 

---------- Post added 14-11-2017 at 08:48 ----------

 

 

To be fair, nothing really changed for anyone that I know in 2008.

My parents were a few years from retirement, NHS nurse and lower management at a bus company, nothing changed.

I work in the IT industry, self employed, contracts were a bit thin on the ground, I had to work away from home, but nothing beyond that.

My other half, engineer, work just carried on.

Pretty much all my friends, they all work, no-one lost their jobs, those that own houses, nothing really changed, those that don't, nothing changed.

The financial crash was huge, and many people were affected, but it doesn't follow that we will all know someone affected personally.

 

Could I venture that your parent's NHS salary was frozen for 10 years, interest rates on savings dropped to almost 0%, and returns on pensions fell considerably. Also pension age went up which may or may not have effected your parents. If now retired they may be finding that certain services are no longer available.

 

It tends to depend on circumstances. The poorer in society have suffered more directly than most and some have had to depend on food banks etc. But austerity is here to stay, and as people's circumstances change over time it will engulf more people. They will find things they took for granted are no longer available.