How Thatcherism Failed The Majority

[Liquid Goldfish]

Why do people think the economy was strong in '97 rather than booming (i.e. lacking in fundamentals to justify its good performance)? Hadn't we already decimated out manufacturing base and moved over to a focus on tertiary industry lead by the financial sector? Or do we think that can actually constitute a strong economy?

Isn't it obvious? Labour inherited the most wondeful economy in world history and within 10 years they had caused a global financial crisis with their radical socialist policies .

[South Lorne]

Why do people think the economy was strong in '97 rather than booming (i.e. lacking in fundamentals to justify its good performance)? Hadn't we already decimated out industry manufacturing base and moved over to a focus on tertiary industry lead by the financial sector? Or do we think that can actually constitute a strong economy?

...first of all Labour were handed virtually no deficit in '97 ....industry was ruined in the seventies mainly by the unions and Labour....cheaper to manufacture elsewhere ..with less hassle ....we were competing with the rest of the world but Labour didn't get that in the seventies...and industry was ruined again and the whole country trashed after '97...and is only now making some recovery...from a bust base reflected in Liam Byrnes famous hand over letter "Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid there is no money. Kind regards – and good luck! Liam." .....typical ....and we vote for people like that......?....

[South Lorne]

Isn't it obvious? Labour inherited the most wondeful economy in world history and within 10 years they had caused a global financial crisis with their radical socialist policies .

..hardly socialist policies to anoint and award Knighthoods to all those bankers ..radical only in their choice of Champagne.....

[thecrashingisles]

Maggie clearly had no intellectual grasp - whenever I see her finger-gesture description of trickle-down I wonder if she was a bit thick (at 6:35):

She wasn't talking about trickle-down at all, merely trying to illustrate that the absolute level of wealth of the poorest was more important that the level of inequality. Nothing in what she said implied that she believed that inequality in itself was a good thing.

I don't agree with the characterisation of her as simply having a lawyer's mind. She was primarily a political practitioner and understood instinctively what needed to be done in order to achieve a certain objective. Blair on the other hand really had the lawyer's brain par excellence. He could argue any case but was totally flummoxed by anything that required real action. (He possibly overcompensated on the action front in his wars but that's one for the psychologists to debate.)

Edited May 16, 2014 by thecrashingisles

[Neverwhere]

...first of all Labour were handed virtually no deficit in '97 ....industry was ruined in the seventies mainly by the unions and Labour....cheaper to manufacture elsewhere ..with less hassle ....we were competing with the rest of the world but Labour didn't get that in the seventies...and industry was ruined again and the whole country trashed after '97...and is only now making some recovery...from a bust base reflected in Liam Byrnes famous hand over letter "Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid there is no money. Kind regards – and good luck! Liam." .....typical ....and we vote for people like that......?....

Okay, so I think that actually means the economy wasn't really strong in '97 then. Clearly nothing has been done to fix that by any of the mainstream parties given we still don't have a strong industrial base. I would place the blame for that on all of their shoulders as they've all had time in office since the 70s. I still think given the bust (have we really had the full bust yet? I think not) was global and largely to do with policies (namely those that promoted loose credit) that had cross-party and international support it's overly reductionist to think it was the work of a single UK political party.

Edit: btw, definitely agree re Labour, they've not been socialists in my lifetime at least

Edited May 16, 2014 by Lo-fi

[wonderpup]

She wasn't talking about trickle-down at all, merely trying to illustrate that the absolute level of wealth of the poorest was more important that the level of inequality.

Actually if you follow the logic of the argument she was talking about trickledown. It goes like this;

We can't tax the rich to produce a more equal society because the rich are the wealth creators and taxing them too much will inhibit their wealth creating activity- so-she was implicitly arguing- it is better to have the rich keep their wealth rather redistribute it because the wealth created by the rich will then trickledown to the poor, who will be better off even if the gap between them and the rich is very wide.

It's a nice story- unfortunately wealth creation is a collaboration between producer and consumer in which the income of the consumer is vital to the success of the producers venture- so allowing most of the wealth to congeal in the pockets of a few does not in the end lead to more wealth for the many or even more wealth for the wealthy- sooner or later the demand destruction of grossly unevenly distributed purchasing power catches up with both.

[thecrashingisles]

Actually if you follow the logic of the argument she was talking about trickledown. It goes like this;

You're projecting. It was just a rhetorical point to counter another rhetorical point - an attack on the motivation of her opposition.

Edited May 16, 2014 by thecrashingisles

[silver surfer]

allowing most of the wealth to congeal in the pockets of a few

Never mind the rights and wrongs of the argument...that's just a brilliant turn of phrase!

[alexw]

To be honest - that reads like the sort of myth that sounds OK in the abstract.

If the 'right wing' is Capitalism and the 'left wing' is Communism then it works OK. If capitalism can be both 'left' and 'right' then it starts becoming a bit misleading - although its on that precise point that New Labour and Labour risks smashing itself to bits. But I also think the Right is in trouble.

'Capitalism' seems to be going horribly wrong - the 'invisible hand' is taking away rather than providing.

Its almost as if we have a lefty version of Capitalism, better and better products for less and less money empowering more and more people who are increasingly clumping together in richer and richer communities.

And a right-wing version exemplified by the 'housing crisis' where we have worse and worse products, for more and more money, increasingly debilitating people, wrecking lives destroying communities and siphoning up a bigger and bigger proportion of meagre income to the excessively wealthy.

Not that the Left don't share the blame for the latter - but - if they get their head round it - they at least seem to have a choice . The Right however, for perverse and contradictory reasons seem to be ideologically locked into the latter.

Both the left and right have long been "capitalist". However historically the left have been for strongly regulated capitalism where the spoils went mostly to the broad mass of people. This is where labour arose from, to fight for this. Historically the right was about funneling the spoils to a smallish elite.

The right in terms of the political class have returned to form, the left as characterized by nulabour followed them.

The 2008 crash was a shock to labour and they seem to be slowly waking up, the right have not. They might do so when the full depression hits though. At that point they will have no choice because if they don't they will disappear as a political force.

[alexw]

On the big economic decisions Labour pretty much continued down the same path of the previous 18 years - a service economy based on consumer debt with tax rates virtually unchanged. The main difference was the extra spending on public services and tax credits - 4% of GDP extra on health, 1% extra on education and 2% extra on tax credits (over the old Family Credit). That's 7% of GDP. Returning these to 1997 levels would wipe out the deficit at a stroke. But the public wouldn't accept the consequences. I'm not sure how PFI fits in though.

By a very strange coincidence 7% is exactly the increase in the share of the economy going to the top 1% pre-1979 to now.....

[cybernoid]

Always amuses me to watch losers who have done nothing with their lives criticise and pontificate about others who have lived more and done more than they are capable of in their wildest dreams.

Also interesting to note the only member posting on this thread who has actual credentials and been interviewed many times on national television due to their expertise disagrees with the ignorant pontificators.

How do you socialist losers justify your self appointed roles as authorities on subjects you plainly have no understanding or knowledge of? What a ridiculous way to spend your time.

[alexw]

Thing is won't destroying the middle class and most of the native workforce in the UK end up being a Pyrrhic victory for the super rich as the megacorporations lose consumer spending as a result and eat themselves, then the Establishment faces Arab Spring/Ukraine level civil unrest throughout the West?

Yes, it's already happening. It's the cause of why we and everyone else is in this mess. Moreover you can see that anger at it all is gradually increasing.

But the super-rich can't help themselves. To change course willingly, practically everyone in that class would have to agree to it, but of course most of them want everyone else to change course except for themselves. While the smaller number who actually do want to change course, are not going to do it or be able to do it, without the rest of the super rich agreeing to it.

[alexw]

...some people have already posted trickle - down debt was introduced long before Thatcher ....and it was rife in the early seventies......while Labour inherited the strongest economy in Western Europe in 1997 and proceeded to trash it ...where were you in the trashing ..?....blowing bubbles with Gordo...?.....

The concept was introduced, it has been around for hundreds of years as I have said, but it was not adopted as government economic policy until thatcher.

[alexw]

Why do people think the economy was strong in '97 rather than booming (i.e. lacking in fundamentals to justify its good performance)? Hadn't we already decimated out manufacturing base and moved over to a focus on tertiary industry lead by the financial sector? Or do we think that can actually constitute a strong economy?

Exactly!

Edited May 16, 2014 by alexw

[Liquid Goldfish]

Also interesting to note the only member posting on this thread who has actual credentials and been interviewed many times on national television due to their expertise disagrees with the ignorant pontificators.

Perhaps the world's weakest argument. You've outdone yourself.

[davidg]

according to this chart it was labour wot killed manufacturing in the UK, esp NuLabor

[Neverwhere]

according to this chart it was labour wot killed manufacturing in the UK, esp NuLabor

That graph shows a pretty steady decline from 1970 onwards so to me it still looks like both Labour and the Conservatives have some hand in it.

[cock-eyed octopus]

Why do people think the economy was strong in '97 rather than booming (i.e. lacking in fundamentals to justify its good performance)? Hadn't we already decimated out manufacturing base and moved over to a focus on tertiary industry lead by the financial sector? Or do we think that can actually constitute a strong economy?

If you're advocating a return to mass production as a means of wealth creation, you need your bumps felt. The only hope is to stay constantly ahead of the game, which requires a very diverse & adaptable labour force - with most of the labour being of the intellectual variety.

I have come to the conclusion that people of a socialist persuasion are essentially conservative, in that they believe the cake can only be of a certain size, so if one person has a bigger piece than someone else, well they must have stolen it. The justification for capitalism is that it makes the cake bigger; if it doesn't , then it isn't working (so, yes, some people who call themselves capitalists are in fact simply thieves).

Automation has destroyed & will continue to destroy many jobs that nobody in their right mind would want to do. As I've said before, there is no shortage of stuff, but we've lost any meaningful way of distributing it. Where I agree with most people here is that housing is dwarfing other living expenses & is being deliberately & unnecessarily kept that way. It's the only remaining significant panem problem - otherwise it's circenses all the way.

[alexw]

She wasn't talking about trickle-down at all, merely trying to illustrate that the absolute level of wealth of the poorest was more important that the level of inequality. Nothing in what she said implied that she believed that inequality in itself was a good thing.

I don't agree with the characterisation of her as simply having a lawyer's mind. She was primarily a political practitioner and understood instinctively what needed to be done in order to achieve a certain objective. Blair on the other hand really had the lawyer's brain par excellence. He could argue any case but was totally flummoxed by anything that required real action. (He possibly overcompensated on the action front in his wars but that's one for the psychologists to debate.)

Well she did a good job reducing the absolute wealth of the poorest relative to what it would have been otherwise. Actually she did a good job via neoliberalism of reducing the wealth of everyone relative to where it would have been otherwise - but for the poor most of all.

[okaycuckoo]

She wasn't talking about trickle-down at all, merely trying to illustrate that the absolute level of wealth of the poorest was more important that the level of inequality. Nothing in what she said implied that she believed that inequality in itself was a good thing.

I don't agree with the characterisation of her as simply having a lawyer's mind. She was primarily a political practitioner and understood instinctively what needed to be done in order to achieve a certain objective. Blair on the other hand really had the lawyer's brain par excellence. He could argue any case but was totally flummoxed by anything that required real action. (He possibly overcompensated on the action front in his wars but that's one for the psychologists to debate.)

I say it's a daft attempt to describe trickle-down - you can tell by the way she widens the distance between her fingers. LOL! My point is she had as much understanding of the consequences of her policies as someone posting on HPC or in the Daily Mail.

I understand decisions about levels and flows are complex, but a politician pitching this stuff ought to be dismissed as a bu llshitter.

And I disagree on the lawyer point: a lawyer is focused on the immediate objective, but a politician sees the law as a means to manipulate central policy to infinity. So Blair had a wider view than Mrs T.

[renting til I die]

Also interesting to note the only member posting on this thread who has actual credentials and been interviewed many times on national television due to their expertise disagrees with the ignorant pontificators.

Perhaps the world's weakest argument. You've outdone yourself.

I was enjoying reading this tread but now I'm more interested in who the HPC front man is! National TV, hey, am I going to have to go back and read through the whole tread again before I can work out who it is?

[okaycuckoo]

I was enjoying reading this tread but now I'm more interested in who the HPC front man is! National TV, hey, am I going to have to go back and read through the whole tread again before I can work out who it is?

David Icke. In panties.

[Neverwhere]

If you're advocating a return to mass production as a means of wealth creation, you need your bumps felt. The only hope is to stay constantly ahead of the game, which requires a very diverse & adaptable labour force - with most of the labour being of the intellectual variety.

I have come to the conclusion that people of a socialist persuasion are essentially conservative, in that they believe the cake can only be of a certain size, so if one person has a bigger piece than someone else, well they must have stolen it. The justification for capitalism is that it makes the cake bigger; if it doesn't , then it isn't working (so, yes, some people who call themselves capitalists are in fact simply thieves).

Automation has destroyed & will continue to destroy many jobs that nobody in their right mind would want to do. As I've said before, there is no shortage of stuff, but we've lost any meaningful way of distributing it. Where I agree with most people here is that housing is dwarfing other living expenses & is being deliberately & unnecessarily kept that way. It's the only remaining significant panem problem - otherwise it's circenses all the way.

Do you think that we can game the rest of the world into perpetually buying services from us? In relation to manufacturing and industry I was referring to their share of the economy rather than the job market, on that point I agree that many such jobs going forward will be intellectual positions such as R&D (although someone will need to service the robots).

As to your second point many resources are finite - but not necessarily small (the size of the UK is finite to all intents and purposes but we've still only built on less than 10% of it) or currently in usable form (such as crude oil that has yet to be extracted) - the money supply, on the other hand, can both expand or contract, so whether or not the cake can get bigger over all depends on whether you measure your cake in resources or money. I don't think there's anything un-capitalist or inherently socialist in measuring your slice of the cake in terms of what resources you own (but then I think the whole left/right thing is just very well executed divide and rule anyway).

[Neverwhere]

I was enjoying reading this tread but now I'm more interested in who the HPC front man is! National TV, hey, am I going to have to go back and read through the whole tread again before I can work out who it is?

I've been wondering this also!

[pig]

Isn't it obvious? Labour inherited the most wondeful economy in world history and within 10 years they had caused a global financial crisis with their radical socialist policies .