Sky Blue Pete
Well-Known Member
Economic growth doesn’t necessarily mean prosperous
Do you want to discuss boring politics? (20 Viewers)
- Thread starter mrtrench
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Mucca Mad Boys
Well-Known Member
We don't have economic growth and the country doesn't feel prosperous... It tracks quite well with declining GDP per capita.
mmttww
Well-Known Member
Isn't Pete just talking about how GDP as 'the' measure of success might not be the way to go, rather than saying growth shouldn't be a goal? I've thought the same thing for a long time. Feels too crude a measure and totally detached from reality for people, at least as a headline measure in isolation.
Captain Dart
Well-Known Member
So do men get their pensions a few years earlier?
chiefdave
Well-Known Member
Winner of the least surprising news of the year award.
Was listening to a podcast the other day and they had someone who was a supporter of Reform and went on Tommy Robinson marches who was talking about how those groups are happy to unite behind a vague idea of having some things in common and wanting to move in roughly the same direction. Therefore you can end up with people with pretty wide ranging views happily co-existing and in the main putting sometimes big differences aside for the benefit of the bigger picture.
But on the left as we all know the opposite is true. Any slight difference of opinion over policy becomes an issue which sidetracks everyone from the bigger picture. So much time and energy is spent dealing with shit that is in the grand scheme of things largely irrelevant that things never move forward.
There's clearly an appetite for a party on the left but nobody ever seems able to get their act together. Although if they did it would just highlight the problems with a two party system. As we see with Reform it takes the collapse of an existing party to create the space for something new.
Sky Blue Pete
Well-Known Member
Good point I’m not sure I’m sure we could both look it up
www.europeanpensions.net
Denmark to raise state pension age to 70 in 2040
The Danish Parliament (Folketing) has adopted a bill to increase the state pension age to 70 from 2040
So do men get their pensions a few years earlier?
Good timing from Corbo
‘Ex-Labour MP Zarah Sultana has accused Jeremy Corbyn of overseeing a "sexist boys' club" locking women out of the founding of a new left-wing party the pair announced earlier this year’
Corbyn and Sultana clash over new party membership - BBC News
MP Zarah Sultana says she is a victim of a "sexist boys' club" in row over setting up new left wing party.
www.bbc.co.uk
Earlsdon_Skyblue1
Well-Known Member
Instead of Prime Minister's Questions we can just skip to a lie detector test.
Actually, come to think of it, that isn't such a bad idea!
Mucca Mad Boys
Well-Known Member
There some contradictory electoral coalitions out there… None more so than a Corbynista ‘Jezbollah’ party with pro-Gaza independents!
He’s been at their conferences / events lately, didn’t realise this was new information!
Sky_Blue_Dreamer
Well-Known Member
To be honest the triple lock is one thing we could get rid of. As long as it increases with inflation then that's acceptable.
Sky_Blue_Dreamer
Well-Known Member
We've been that for a little while now with DC pensions etc, but the trouble with that is it will have an horrific lag - decades probably.
And even then a lot of the problem is noone having the nerve to do it, or suggest it, due to the political fallback.
Sky_Blue_Dreamer
Well-Known Member
I agree.
A lot of our economic measures are at best of limited use, in some cases completely misleading.
One of the first things I'd put in my manifesto is that I would be introducing what is effectively a 'report card' for various things including but not limited to health (physical and mental), education, environment, transport, housing/homelessness etc. as well as the economy basically giving each a grade like we used to get at school. A letter to say how well each is doing in terms of ability and a +/- to signify effort to show if it's getting better or worse.
It's a simple thing to introduce and could help lead to better change as it becomes aware where our deficiencies are.
Ultimately it'd be nice to be able to collate all this together into some sort of percentage showing the improvement or deterioration of each criteria, and even ultimately a single overall figure. Obviously that would be hard as it's difficult to put a number on many important aspects and everyone will disagree about the overall importance of every criteria so it'd be a long term project for the stattos.
Economics I'd definitely be looking to change the metrics we look at and certainly stopping this obsession with 'growth' as a single figure is not and cannot be a reasonable indicator of how the economy is going.
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duffer
Well-Known Member
Indeed - and to talk about growth whilst ignoring inequality is, imho, ridiculous. This isn't a poor country but what wealth we have is increasingly being funneled towards a very small number of people.
By 2023, the richest 50 families in the UK held more wealth than half of the UK population, comprising 34.1 million people. If the wealth of the super rich continues to grow at the rate it has been, by 2035, the wealth of the richest 200 families will be larger than the whole UK GDP (see link below).
And that's before we even start talking about giant corporates paying their fair share of tax, and the private monopolies in utilities earning millions if not billions from a uniquely anti-capitalist system.
There's money out there beyond just extending austerity and cutting welfare. It's just the lack of political will to look seriously at getting it.
The Scale of Economic Inequality in the UK - Equality Trust
The UK has very high inequality of income compared to other developed countries. The UK's wealth inequality is much more severe than income inequality.
equalitytrust.org.uk