"A country for the many not the few". The slogan for Labour in the recent 'snap-election' which our cretinous Tory government of Brexit dreamers expected would strengthen their mandate. Even I predicted a hung parliament as the obvious outcome of May's pathetic attempt to 'exploit' in-fighting within Labour ranks (I won on PaddyPower at ridiculous odds of 7:2... but more about gambling and winning later). She forgot that she was elected by Remainers.
My problem with Labour's slogan is the implication that the 'few' are bad for the UK and that the 'many' are in some way being unfairly treated by them. Pol Pot had the same idea in Cambodia. That worked out well. Lenin too. In more recent times Hugo Chavez's social spending and high taxation totally destroyed Venezuela. Once a shining example of prosperity in South America, now a horrifically failed state. His Robin Hood politics shattered a successful country. But his popularity was enormous. He would have loved Labour's slogan. It wasn't just the falling price of oil that destroyed Venezuela, it was reckless spending on a laudable welfare system that has now disappeared altogether.
Now I have no problem with increasing spending on welfare and the NHS - not forgetting the police, fire service, defence forces, science, education etc. These must surely be the ambition of all civilised countries. The strong protecting the weak. Totally agree. But you can't spend what you don't have. Spend more now in the hope that you might one day be able to pay for it is irresponsible at best and reckless at worst. Any business run like that will fail very quickly and very certainly. But it seems plenty of people believe it's OK to run a country like that. Keep putting up your prices so you can pay your staff more and more. Ignore whether customers still want to keep buying from you.
Abraham Lincoln wrote "You don't make the poor rich by making the rich poor". In our global world made out of credit (borrowing from the future) what you need is a belief that economies will continue to grow. If they stall or decline, credit dries up and gets called in by lenders. Currencies fail and then you become an agrarian culture with no hope of importing anything you need like pharmaceuticals, technology, food, transport, energy etc. No developed country is or can be self-sufficient. Every country needs a strong currency so we can buy stuff we can't dig out of the ground. Sadly electorates don't understand what drives the value of their currency. But they soon discover what a weak currency means. The Pound is currently hovering at a scarily precarious level. Reckless Socialist spending would surely send it plummeting.
Why is the USA by far the world's wealthiest country with just 300m people? It isn't because they sit on vast natural resources to sell to the rest of the world. If that were the case, Africa and Russia would be much wealthier. It's because they've always encouraged their population to take risks whilst providing them with a stable and relatively safe environment to enjoy the resulting rewards.
Labour's few do one thing that the many don't. Take risks. They do it to have the possibility of achieving rewards which then define them as the few. Without people taking risks, there can be no growth. If as a society we aren't prepared to reward risk-taking (as even Chinese 'communists' eventually conceded), why would anyone bother? Risk and reward are two sides of the same coin. You can't have one without the other. Reduce reward and you reduce appetite for risk. Discourage people from taking risks here, and they'll do it somewhere else (I've been reading that more and more of the people who left their EU homelands to set up businesses in the UK are beginning to regret their decision. Heaven help us if this tide turns).
So what if a few people make obscene amounts of money. It's not money that would otherwise have gone to the poor. Money doesn't work that way. If a leader of a successful company has delivered wealth to her employees and shareholders, why not reward her? If she doesn't reward her employees, they'll go somewhere else. And that won't impress her customers. And if her customers aren't impressed, her shareholders won't be either. And what do rich people do with their money anyway? Spend it on things that employ the many.
We need MORE risk takers, not fewer Mr Corbyn. Destroy financial ambition in the UK and you destroy the machine that created what little the many enjoy today. Take it away and the wealth of the many gets a whole lot worse. Ask a Venezuelan.
Now all we need are some brave politicians who will tell this high-minded but naive nation that the UK is the best place in the EU for the few to want to live... and prosper.
My problem with Labour's slogan is the implication that the 'few' are bad for the UK and that the 'many' are in some way being unfairly treated by them. Pol Pot had the same idea in Cambodia. That worked out well. Lenin too. In more recent times Hugo Chavez's social spending and high taxation totally destroyed Venezuela. Once a shining example of prosperity in South America, now a horrifically failed state. His Robin Hood politics shattered a successful country. But his popularity was enormous. He would have loved Labour's slogan. It wasn't just the falling price of oil that destroyed Venezuela, it was reckless spending on a laudable welfare system that has now disappeared altogether.
Now I have no problem with increasing spending on welfare and the NHS - not forgetting the police, fire service, defence forces, science, education etc. These must surely be the ambition of all civilised countries. The strong protecting the weak. Totally agree. But you can't spend what you don't have. Spend more now in the hope that you might one day be able to pay for it is irresponsible at best and reckless at worst. Any business run like that will fail very quickly and very certainly. But it seems plenty of people believe it's OK to run a country like that. Keep putting up your prices so you can pay your staff more and more. Ignore whether customers still want to keep buying from you.
Abraham Lincoln wrote "You don't make the poor rich by making the rich poor". In our global world made out of credit (borrowing from the future) what you need is a belief that economies will continue to grow. If they stall or decline, credit dries up and gets called in by lenders. Currencies fail and then you become an agrarian culture with no hope of importing anything you need like pharmaceuticals, technology, food, transport, energy etc. No developed country is or can be self-sufficient. Every country needs a strong currency so we can buy stuff we can't dig out of the ground. Sadly electorates don't understand what drives the value of their currency. But they soon discover what a weak currency means. The Pound is currently hovering at a scarily precarious level. Reckless Socialist spending would surely send it plummeting.
Why is the USA by far the world's wealthiest country with just 300m people? It isn't because they sit on vast natural resources to sell to the rest of the world. If that were the case, Africa and Russia would be much wealthier. It's because they've always encouraged their population to take risks whilst providing them with a stable and relatively safe environment to enjoy the resulting rewards.
Labour's few do one thing that the many don't. Take risks. They do it to have the possibility of achieving rewards which then define them as the few. Without people taking risks, there can be no growth. If as a society we aren't prepared to reward risk-taking (as even Chinese 'communists' eventually conceded), why would anyone bother? Risk and reward are two sides of the same coin. You can't have one without the other. Reduce reward and you reduce appetite for risk. Discourage people from taking risks here, and they'll do it somewhere else (I've been reading that more and more of the people who left their EU homelands to set up businesses in the UK are beginning to regret their decision. Heaven help us if this tide turns).
So what if a few people make obscene amounts of money. It's not money that would otherwise have gone to the poor. Money doesn't work that way. If a leader of a successful company has delivered wealth to her employees and shareholders, why not reward her? If she doesn't reward her employees, they'll go somewhere else. And that won't impress her customers. And if her customers aren't impressed, her shareholders won't be either. And what do rich people do with their money anyway? Spend it on things that employ the many.
We need MORE risk takers, not fewer Mr Corbyn. Destroy financial ambition in the UK and you destroy the machine that created what little the many enjoy today. Take it away and the wealth of the many gets a whole lot worse. Ask a Venezuelan.
Now all we need are some brave politicians who will tell this high-minded but naive nation that the UK is the best place in the EU for the few to want to live... and prosper.
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