Latest Moan From You and Me 2024

I could forgive them for finding themselves between a rock and a hard place and collapsing under the strain. What I find harder to grant them slack on is their not having stepped into the gap between the Tories and Labour since then as a credible third way. They do not seem to have the guts to look at what needs doing and find a way to do it. I can't see things being any better under them than under the two main parties.

Tory policies always favour the wealthy.
Labour policies are what lefties think the electorate should want if only it knew what was in its best interests.
Lib Dem policies are a mishmash of the two, with some green unrealism thrown in for good measure.

 

How long have you both been having these symptom's

I get tinnitus from time to time as well.

 

Basically it seems to boil down to the fact the country is broke and paying billions in interest on the national debt.
Whoever gets the job I cant see them doing much unless they borrow money.

They all talk about growth, but growth has never really benefited the bloke in the street.

 

Have you thought about pet shops? They sell vermiculite as reptile bedding. I buy both perlite and vermiculite online.

 

No I hadn't thought about those @Jenny_Aster I didn't think they sold them in such places.
Thanks for the inf

 

'Growth' just means 'earn us some big taxes, so we can try and recoup the money we previously magicked out of thin air to launder & pay newly formed fake PPE companies and the like.'
Not that I'm cynical.

 

Spot on. Sadly, Corbyn tried to get people talking about wealth inequality, and it backfired spectacularly. Everyone is terrified to touch it now.

You need someone with less baggage talking about it. The problem is, when they do, they will have to be prepared to have endless lies spread about them because the super rich have too much influence over the media landscape and what people talk about.

 

Indeed! There's no need to measure GDP at all. It is a whim of economists that suits the wealthy and so politicians cling to it as the be all and end all. But growth doesn't help the majority (which is why we are where we are) and is unsustainable on a planet with finite resources.

Exactly so. What is needed is a media sector that is either neutral, so sensible discussion can be had on the topic, or, better still, on the side of the majority, ie the 95% who are not in the "wealthy" category.

 

Anyone who is saving into a pension scheme benefits from 'growth'. Most of your pension, certainly in the earlier years, is invested in the stock market. If you just leave it alone for the pension company to deal with it, there will be a strong UK bias in your investment portfolio. That means the FTSE 100 makes a decent general indicator of how well your pension savings are doing. If growth is, on average, significantly higher than inflation, then you'll have money when you retire. If growth is on average below inflation, then basically you're throwing money away because it will be worth less when you claim it back than it was worth when you put it in.

Ergo, for most people, economic growth is good.

 

Pensions are an important part of the economy, but growth needs to reach throughout society. If the gain from growth is siphoned off by the already wealthy, the standard of living for workers does not rise, and probably falls.

Take housing. Building new housing adds to GDP. However, if those houses are purchased in bulk by foreign wealth funds, people living and working here can't buy them and all the profits (from rents and appreciation over the yrs) leave the country. There's been growth, but people are worse off.

An economy in which people had secure housing and jobs, with wages that allowed them a reasonable standard of living, would grow. It just wouldn't give the excessive profits the wealthy have got used to. Exploitation would be reined in.

 

We won't hold our breath, eh?