O/T:- Trump Presidency 2.0 [hic sunt dracones]

[JoePass]

This is completely true


This is complete garbage, if everyone is poor like in many developing countries there isn't the resource available to invest in the young.



Another complete bag of garbage that is clouded by your opinion. You seem the think that those that have the same opinion as you are right and those that disagree are wrong. The social media platforms and governments colluded to cover up problems with the vaccines that were supposed to be effective against Covid. Even today you are not able to post things on youtube that goes against the left wing narrative. Experts in their field were silenced from the main platforms at the behest of the US and EU as what they were saying didn't agree with that narrative. You only have to look into the lies that the "left wing" media pushes out, the Guardian and the Independent are renown for lying about what is going on and too many "on the left" accept it as gospel.

Here's the thing, and i know I've stated it so many times. The established media all of them are lying. They push narratives that will agree with the opinions of their target audience but will also make those that disagree with them angry. If they get people angry then it is more likely that one of those angry people will post it with a link so they get more visits to their site.

You keep going on about things like the Murdock press, well what about "left wing" media sites that are controlled by billionaires, you give them a free pass but they are all doing the same thing. Push out articles that will agree with their target audience but will nudge them in the "correct" direction but will also anger those that disagree with them so that enough of them post links that will drive traffic to their sites.

Also we have people complaining about Musk getting involved with politics, where is the anger when Bill Gates and George Soros get involved or are you only angry when they are pushing opinions you disagree with

Look, you can?t come on here putting intelligent and sensible posts on. You will upset ?people?.

[Elite_Pie]

Look, you can?t come on here putting intelligent and sensible posts on.

Don't worry, he didn't.

[BigFatPie]

I

Don't agree about inherited wealth though. A big part of the motivation for me to save money and build wealth is so that I can pass it on to my kids. It's my money, so it's their money, not the state's.

I 100% understand the notion of wanting to leave stuff to your kids. At the end of the of the day though, the vast majority of inherited wealth is unearned property wealth, a happy co-incidence of being able to buy a house at a good time and sitting back watching its value grow. I got on the ladder aged 27 with a 110% mortgage. Many young people will now never be in that situation, at least partially due to housing being concentrated in ever fewer hands, and inherited wealth reinforces that inequality.

Inheritance tax is deeply unpopular, even amongst people whose estate will never pay any, but it’s interesting that even after 14 years the Tories never got rid of it. The current system certainly needs reforming, but it’s a very fair method of redistributing wealth.

[Jampie]

Another complete bag of garbage that is clouded by your opinion. You seem the think that those that have the same opinion as you are right and those that disagree are wrong. The social media platforms and governments colluded to cover up problems with the vaccines that were supposed to be effective against Covid. Even today you are not able to post things on youtube that goes against the left wing narrative. Experts in their field were silenced from the main platforms at the behest of the US and EU as what they were saying didn't agree with that narrative. You only have to look into the lies that the "left wing" media pushes out, the Guardian and the Independent are renown for lying about what is going on and too many "on the left" accept it as gospel.

This paragraph is a pile of lies. Please post evidence for any of this?

The vaccines are effective against covid. Not very effective against getting it (especially not anymore), but against dying of it? Very effective. Where's the evidence of this huge conspiracy to silence "experts"?

[Jampie]

There?s no doubt those three gentlemen have done things that benefit us all in the process of acquiring their wealth, but that?s not what you originally proposed. What have they done with the wealth they?ve acquired? I suppose some my say Musk has somewhat stepped into the void that has been left by US governments refusing to fund space exploration to the tune that they did, and the starlink program is good, but whether they?re done for altruistic purposes or whether that matters is another question.

That is what they did with their wealth. Musk made his money with Paypal (itself a great innovation) and rolled that into Tesla where he made most of his money. Starlink and spacex etc are also what he did with his money. Admittedly he also spaffed a bunch up the wall buying Twitter and running it into the ground, but AFAIK this too was a public service. If he could just take out Tiktok too that would be great.

Amazon employs 1.6 million people. That's a bit more than I do. Bezos doing his bit. Sure conditions could be better, but I refer back to worker's bargaining power being eroded etc.

META only has 67k employees apparently but that's still a lot of jobs. Facebook also did a bunch of cutting edge stuff with web tech that we're still using to this day. In fact, we're using it right now to communicate on this forum.

These guys also do things with their wealth I don't approve of, of course. Superyachts and the like. But, that's the problem with freedom. People do things I don't like. I have to accept it, so long as they aren't harming anyone. These guys didn't steal their wealth, they built it. They inherited a bunch first tho of course. Still, if you want to point to evil capitalists they're pretty bad examples. Of course, the good examples stay in the shadows as much as they can while these poor fools tapdance in the spotlight 24x7. Well musk does, anyway.

No I?m by no means advocating total wealth equality, far from it. But the historic gains we made during the course of the 20th century in partially levelling up to use that awful phrase are in danger of being totally lost by unchecked capitalism, if they haven?t already done so. It will take brave politicians to grasp the nettle, and we?ve already seen the pushback even to the very modest proposals made by Starmer?s government, I?m not sure if he has the stomach to go further. People are easily seduced by demagoguery and easy solutions, and wealth is fantastically efficient at protecting wealth.

I feel like we're on the same page here except I don't follow UK politics at all so this is kinda greek to me. Everyone should pay tax, wealthier people should pay more (%) than poorer. No issues with what you're saying I don't think. Democratically elected governments need to be stronger than corporations and stay stronger. People need to see through the BS and propaganda spewed at them by media corps and actually vote in their interests.

IMO free market capitalism benefits from strong regulation. Markets with no regulation result in criminal cabals running things and don't benefit anyone in the long run.

[Med Pie]

I 100% understand the notion of wanting to leave stuff to your kids. At the end of the of the day though, the vast majority of inherited wealth is unearned property wealth, a happy co-incidence of being able to buy a house at a good time and sitting back watching its value grow. I got on the ladder aged 27 with a 110% mortgage. Many young people will now never be in that situation, at least partially due to housing being concentrated in ever fewer hands, and inherited wealth reinforces that inequality.

Inheritance tax is deeply unpopular, even amongst people whose estate will never pay any, but it?’s interesting that even after 14 years the Tories never got rid of it. The current system certainly needs reforming, but it?’s a very fair method of redistributing wealth.

This fixation with owning property is relatively recent, very few, working class people owned property when I was growing up, in fact, I can only think of two, of my contemporaries whose parents owned their house. When I bought my first house, I was paying 15% interest on the loan so it wasn't as easy as some of you seem to think it was.

Many people only got on the property ladder when Thatcher started giving council houses away for almost nothing, depending on how long you'd lived there.

One of the reasons for the crazy rise in house prices, is the massive, increase in population which hasn't been matched by house building. The fact that some people were lucky enough to have been alive when opportunity knocked, seems to be a constant source of revulsion and jealousy to some here.

[Med Pie]

The US had suspended all foreign aid with the exception of military aid to Israel and Egypt, maybe, tellingly, not Ukraine.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce9nx5k7lv0o

[Old_pie]

This fixation with owning property is relatively recent, very few, working class people owned property when I was growing up, in fact, I can only think of two, of my contemporaries whose parents owned their house. When I bought my first house, I was paying 15% interest on the loan so it wasn't as easy as some of you seem to think it was.

Really? I seem to remember quite a few working class people aspiring to their own property from after the post-war years. Every other house in our 1950s council estate was privately owned by the time I left there in the mid-60s. It was easy to tell in those days because all of the council houses had the same colour scheme (green IIRC), and of course every privately owned house was painted any colour other than green. I did the newspaper rounds so I became reasonably familiar with the housing.

[Old_pie]

The US had suspended all foreign aid with the exception of military aid to Israel and Egypt, maybe, tellingly, not Ukraine.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce9nx5k7lv0o

More power to the global influence of China.

If America becomes Great Again it will be purely to Texans. After a few decades the rest of the world will view it as Little Britain.

[TheBlackHorse]

... if you think that us giving aid to countries other than a specific few, you are not as bright as I thought you were. FA is largely a pi55 take by the dictators of receiving countries. Gover ment (of the UK) is to important to be carried out by ignorant politicians...but we're stuck with it. ...

[TheBlackHorse]

... government ... too ...

[Med Pie]

Really? I seem to remember quite a few working class people aspiring to their own property from after the post-war years. Every other house in our 1950s council estate was privately owned by the time I left there in the mid-60s. It was easy to tell in those days because all of the council houses had the same colour scheme (green IIRC), and of course every privately owned house was painted any colour other than green. I did the newspaper rounds so I became reasonably familiar with the housing.

You clearly lived in a more affluent place than me, in the early 60's, I'd struggle to know anybody who owned their own house and growing up in Aspley, that percentage would be less that 1%. I'm wracking my brain now and genuinely, cannot recall a single house in my area, which I could identify as privately owned.

There were obviously the privately built homes such as those on e.g Bagnall Lane or Robinswood Drive but cross Aspley Lane and they were all, council houses and it was a very large area, over to Strelley, Broxtowe Lane and Bells Lane, all the way down to Nuthall Rd. This is without mentioning Basford, Balloon Woods or Blenheim flats, all gone now of course. We moved in to a brand new, council house as late as 1974 in Bulwell, my parents bought their first house in 1978.

[Lullapie]

This is completely true


This is complete garbage, if everyone is poor like in many developing countries there isn't the resource available to invest in the young.



Another complete bag of garbage that is clouded by your opinion. You seem the think that those that have the same opinion as you are right and those that disagree are wrong. The social media platforms and governments colluded to cover up problems with the vaccines that were supposed to be effective against Covid. Even today you are not able to post things on youtube that goes against the left wing narrative. Experts in their field were silenced from the main platforms at the behest of the US and EU as what they were saying didn't agree with that narrative. You only have to look into the lies that the "left wing" media pushes out, the Guardian and the Independent are renown for lying about what is going on and too many "on the left" accept it as gospel.

Here's the thing, and i know I've stated it so many times. The established media all of them are lying. They push narratives that will agree with the opinions of their target audience but will also make those that disagree with them angry. If they get people angry then it is more likely that one of those angry people will post it with a link so they get more visits to their site.

You keep going on about things like the Murdock press, well what about "left wing" media sites that are controlled by billionaires, you give them a free pass but they are all doing the same thing. Push out articles that will agree with their target audience but will nudge them in the "correct" direction but will also anger those that disagree with them so that enough of them post links that will drive traffic to their sites.

Also we have people complaining about Musk getting involved with politics, where is the anger when Bill Gates and George Soros get involved or are you only angry when they are pushing opinions you disagree with

Great post, but it really isn?t worth the effort with him.

[Lullapie]

There's no doubt socially, we've moved to the left. Gay marriage is legal. Racism isn't generally accepted. Reproductive health is mostly accessible. Women in the workplace are increasingly in positions of responsibility. Countries mostly look to reduce, not expand, their nuclear weapon arsenal.

At the same time, most of the West has become more capitalist and less economically equal, as the right champions.

In terms of government control, not much changes - though the British state is arguably at its smallest and weakest in decades. Austerity gutted it, especially local government.

I?m not sure if gay marriage is a bastion of the left. Again , I believe it was a common sense issue and had to be legalised. If two people love each other enough then why shouldn?t they be married?

It?s the acceptance of mentally ill people having multiple genders which is more of a left policy.

Left wing politicians can?t even explain what a woman is any more. Very scary and sad.

[Old_pie]

You clearly lived in a more affluent place than me, in the early 60's, I'd struggle to know anybody who owned their own house and growing up in Aspley, that percentage would be less that 1%. I'm wracking my brain now and genuinely, cannot recall a single house in my area, which I could identify as privately owned.

You may be right - one of the large Hucknall estates compared to Aspley! Maybe it was the decade difference.