Bob8

This goes back to the painfully obvious. The issue is not that wealth is being accumulated by old people, but that inequality is growing, labour is becoming relatively less valuved and increasingly the way to wealthy is through owning assets. A working boomer has probably amassed a decent home and income. A working millenial far less do. But a silver spooned millenial has a standard of living and relative wealth than their grandparents could only dream of.

The presumption that landlords have a right to have their mortgage paid for them is evident: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/property/buy-to-let/rent-increase-landlord-inflation-section-24/ A BTL hero article

...or it could be that much of the wealth and industries are all centred on one place? Meaning that highly qualified people in many industries have to compete for a small number of properties? Meanwhile, labour is valued lowly compared to assets, so the wealthy out compete those working for a living.

Looking at the opinion polling, there are two significant dips in Tory party support: 1. Partygate, when Labour overtook the Tories. 2. Truss, when she was abysmal. More recently, we have a small decline in the Tory figures, which I would not consider significant were it not for a significant uptick in support for the Reform party. Reform went up with Truss being kicked out and a Biden-esque brown person taking over the Tory party and a more recent boost as the Tories just seem directionless. But, the whole populist racist vote is typically about 13% and the Tories have largely lost that. About a third of the voting population still want to vote for them and they always well. A Labour Government not being racist enough/being woke would soon drive most Reform voters back to the Tories. I do not see a difference here that makes it far worse that 1997:

Yes. Most 16-18 years olds are school children. Then a few more years of University education. Many people are seriously ill, then there are stay at home parents. Let's say there are three siblsings. One does A-levels, then university, a few years work, does a masters, then married and has a few kids and stays to look after them. Then goes back to work until they retire. A second sibling is severely disabled and lives in a home. A third sibling, does A levels, BSc, MSc, PhD and then works as a scientist until ther retire. That is stll far less on average i terms of working years.

I have really not seen any significant argument on this thread that vaccines are 100% safe, merely that they are less dangerous than not being vaccinated. Much of the conspiracy argument is not bona fide, and they are pretending that there is this polarisation. Personally, I consider this lying but you might consider it merely knowingly pretending something is true in a deliberate attempt to mislead.

Buy yourself a map. Or look at where the UK and Russia are on this helpful link: maps.google.com

You were a rugby league player, Stewy? Very few of us on this baord I fear.

I am not sure. Adults seem less nice, but kids seem nicer. When I have new starters at tge gym and I give them an intro to boxing, I ask if they have ever punched someone or been punched and the answer is always no. At that point, I despair at the younger generation and how they talk about feelings and make meaningful emotional connections rather than repressing it all and taking it out in self-destructive drunken fights. I am joking of course, but there is some truth in it.

I watched it and broadly agree. He is saying it is daft to think all the wealth has gone to poor people and that it has actually gone to wealthy people. This seems self-evident, but I think he does not see that people will not accept it. Firstly, people do not see the very wealthy around much so they tend not to be bothered by them. The Sun and Mail can point to people without jobs or poor paying getting closer to working peoples standards of living and blame hte poorest because that is what scares most people. They are more scared of the very poor catching up with them than themselves or their kids. Secondly, people really think that being rich means you deserve more money. His argument that houseprices are elevated as they have become an asset class is one that has been said on HPC many times. There is no will to undermine the value of an existing asset class by providing mass high quality housing. But most on HPC blame immigrants and will continue to do so.

Let us all tear this apart bit by bit. It talks of decline over the last twenty five years, which is odd as most would talk about the last 16 years, but that would implicate the Government they have blindly cheered on for fourteen years. Everything is getting worse and the Telegrah has supported pretty much everything while deploring the results. That it claims that what it supports is not blind support of our ruling class is lying. Telegraph demanded Brexit and got it, it demanded populism and got it, it demanded a Turss budget and cheered it, and now complains. This is a spoilt toddler. In the 2000s, the Telegraph was convinced we just needed a Tory Government. Then they got it and then they declared 2000s were the good old days. Then we have racism. The Telegraph is pontificating on racism. A paper that has old white men pontificating on racism and then chucks brown women a few hundred quid to pretend they wrote it. And dumb old people swallow it. This is the newspaper that dismiss brown and black people for thinking racism is still a thing as only white people get to judge that. Particularly if they are Jewish white people (not gypsies, they do not get to speak). Then we have anti-semitism. This is the newspaper that cheered for Jacob Rees Mogg, who referred to two Jewish MPs as illuminati, who was happy to sneer and Ed Milliband for not being on of us for not eating a bacon sandwich properly, who published a Tory letter regaring cultural marxism. The Telegraph is clearly not concerned about racism

I do not rule out conspiracies either. At least not that there are vested interests in media, lobby groups and industry. The life expectancy in the USA is declining and below the UK. The UK is also doing badly compared to comparable nations. IAs all the nations were affected by COvid-19 and all had vaccines, we cannot really blame either. It does seem that well funded nationalised health systems and proper regulation on what is permitted to be sold as food is effective. But there are vested interest against that and useful idiots too.

It is bonkers. The JFK shooting has been laid out fully. They found the killer. It is just a bit boring for some people to accept. Epstein does look dodgy, but frankly suicide is by far the most likely. The idea that there was not a reasonable risk Epstein would not kill himself is fanciful in itself. Even if Navalny did die natually, the Kremiln would do well to imply otherwise.

This is often said about Labour voters. Particularly working class Labour voters. Meanwhile, posh educated Tory voters who vote Tory like their parents did do not question they might be similar.

It is worse that that. It is a deliberately stupid argument. That she is chosen by national Governments, it is an example of the national Governments having the power. Were it not the choice of national Governments, it would be the choice of the people of Europe, which would offend the sovereignty argument.

There are a lot of poster on my Ignore and lots I just do not pay attention to. Most posters on here cannot accept they were not unusually right. I agree with you. I suspect that people felt poorer and felt that continue. That said, that has been the case even in some years when there was growth as the growth went to a small number of people.

I have been reading this forum for abut fifteen years. Increasingly, it is clear to me and some others that houses are increasingly traded as a financial asset so they are more linked to stocks and football wages rather than salaries. I am sure planning laws and low house building levels ceratinly exacerbate much of this, but house prices have inflated everywhere. A recession would affect house prices, but in the same way it would affect the FTSE. It will not make the more affordable, which is what matters.

TBF, the leaders of the west is going to be in his 80s

By the "real economy", do you mean how the average working person is doing?

Everytime there is a shock invasion or attack, there are rumours that it was known before. We have this discussion with Pearl Harbour, Falklands, 9/11 etc. Clearly, neither Hamas nor Netanyahu want peace. They both rely on violence and keep themselves in power. They do not necessarily need a masterplan for that. I am very much agreeing with you. Incompetence is always more likely than conspiracy.

That strikes me as an inequality issue.

Personally, I do not see a major recession. I think house prices will be buoyant and stock prices will rise (events pending). I also think the vast majority of people will be worse off (other than incomes rising with age).

Inflation is still likely to come down a bit and interest rates too, perhaps to 3%. If the problems with the economy is poor people having too much wealth, then those people need a hard wake up call. Personally, I think it more likely that poor and working people are going to have a hard time as money continues to be sucked up by the super wealthy.

There certainly should be. There are two possible enquiries that could be done though. The first would be "Overview of decision making and what lessons we could learn", hte second would be "How everything is definately the fault of vaccines". THe interest on this thread is more in the latter. There is an asssumption that vaccine should be completely safe, have no side effects and be completely effective or they are worthless. That is clearly preposterous. A issue is have is that people who can balance risk and people who cannot balance risk are both convinced that they are the ones that balance risk. I can also see I got things wrong on balance. Masks are more effective than I thought, whether that is physically or for psychological reasons does not matter. An early lockdown would have been far more effective and prevented later OTT measures that were punative and ineffective. The vaccine was actualy more effective than I expected at preventing death, but less effective at preventing spread. I also think that as a culture, we looked too much to our own history of pandemics and not enough to the much greater experience of Asia. But we also have people who are convinced they got nothing wrong and get nothing wrong. Whcih makes them cling to being wrong even harder.

I thought it might be. I was actually there, rather than in hindsight on an emotional level.