Mal Volio

mmm It does seem that only a certain set of views are permitted to be put on this forum.

Well I could have written "Welsh" but he isn't British adequately covers the both of us. Sorry if you find that offensive.

Perhaps you're just not very funny

Do you really think so ? How terribly sad for you I'm pretty proud of it. Sorry about that, but I love my country, I'm happy in my skin, I like my life and my family and friends and where I live and my job and everything. I'm not all burned up with self-hatred and envy and bile. Sorry about that. Maybe I'm just on the wrong forum, eh ?

Oh, I'm sorry, is that point of view forbidden on "your" forum ?

Farrange is just an ignorant shouty idiot He's an embarrassment to anyone proud to be British

+1 childishly simplistic brutalist idiocy. He's an austrian all right.

I'm studiously neutral in this debate - learning a lot from both sides, and finding myself agreeing with parts of both, and with posters I normally don't agree with at all. From that liver-assed, fence-sitting perspective, I'd say that Godley's being as reasonable as most anyone else on this thread.

I disagree with quite a bit of what's on here, and even I worry about confirmation bias ! This place is probably as close to a monoculture as you can get on t'interwebs

So... Most people are male, aged 35-44, have a PhD and browse from school

+1 Managerialism is what's strangling the country; crappy 1980s management-by-write-it-down worship Bad enough in the private sector, bonkers in the public. Public services should be run as services, not pretend-businesses

Of course it can, in principle. Might be a weird society but it can exist. And the world in which there were no public sector would also be weird...

<shrugs> depends how you look at it. The source of that wealth is people buying stuff from them, directly and indirectly. With the public sector it's much the same people paying, directly and indirectly, just through a different mechanism.

That there is no legitimacy to democracy or that they're holding a gun to your head ? Really ? Well, I never actually said that. And, just to be clear, I'm not. Apart from that - top response, Cheffers, top response

That's still a "no" then No. I'm just saying you can't respond to my point on the economy without either denying the legitimacy of democracy or using language better suited to stage and screen, like " the state does point a gun in people's face to get what it wants" I mean, if that's all you've got then that's OK. It's exactly what i expected No. No names have been called. edit for /quote

Agreed. But so is the private sector. That's the point - you've been arguing against the former when it's the latter that's the thing I've been trying to get across.

My replies arn't sarky: it is a no, isn't it ? Perfectly seriously, it is a no. You can't do it without recourse to denying the legitimacy of democracy. That very post proves it again. and of course, the recourse to amateur dramatics.

Of course they do. Even avoiding your logical fallacy about income tax, they pay VAT, stamp duty, alcohol, tobacco, fuel and car tax etc etc etc They do however contribute to the pension of everyone who works for every company they buy goods and services from

Nope. that's not what i said Nope. I didn't say that either Or indeed that Look, we can have a debate - or you can carry on assigning me positions I don't have. Up to you.

Good. We at last have a recognition of principle. From here it's just a case of "how much". That comes down to ones personal politics, as much as anything, I'd suggest Yes if you extract all the money out at some point in the system it'll fail. That's kind of the issue with house prices isn't it ? A mechanism that sucks away the ability of society to pay for stuff other than through debt.

It has, though, in the short term. That's kind of the point. It may not be long-term sustainable, but the very effects of that injection show the inter-relatedness of this stuff.

Not really. A state could be quite capable of manufacturing stuff and employing everyone. But that would be a totally different society. As would one with no public sector at all. Indeed. I'm just saying that it's a fallacy to say that the crude model of public as a simple sink and private as a simple source is adequate. As I said way upthread, it's considerably more nuanced than that.

That's actually a failure of attempted reductio ad absurbum because the possible existence or not of such extremes doesn't affect the way our current system functions.

Anyone actually say anything like that ? No, thought not.

That'll be a no then