Reply to: More pensions doom

[sasguru]

It would have had the same effect except that it would have given buying power to all the people instead of just the banks.

No it wouldn't - Asset buying (QE) is not the same as a helicopter drop. And neither of them is the same as bailing out the banks.
Lefties, being thick, often don't know the distinction - hence their new found enthusiasm for "printing money".

[sasguru]

Good so you'll be there to witness the looting.

Look you can rabbit on about hard work and that BS all you want (I take it you're using weighted keys that take a lot of effort to type with?), but the fact is that to keep the engine the economy turning over in its present form you will need to give people money to spend. How you do this is another matter, but if you think the status quo is going to continue, you're living a blinkered existence.

I can't see much future in IT, at least not sysadmin, which is what I've been doing most of my adult life. It's getting steadily de-skilled and you're already seeing the Windows approach to problem-solving in the Linux VMWare estates: bounce it if you have a fault that isn't hardware-related; log a fault for the service tech otherwise. I'd be doing prison counselling myself if it paid as well - now THAT'S a growth industry!

This is a revealing post: clearly you're not aware of thinking as hard work.
But I can see that from your cliched, second-hand ideas.
Personally I think there's plenty of future in "IT", depends how high up the food chain you are, and that depends on your intellectual chops.

[AtW]

Riot shields, tax havens, prostitutes and duck houses.

You forgot moats...

[AtW]

Sell up, move somewhere sunny with low cost of living.

Don't you lose rights to your state pension if you do it? It's as if they are almost counting on it happening

[AtW]

Why not just bin the state pension entirely and replace it with tax credits for poor folk if they're going to use a cynical calculus to just work people to death otherwise?

They don't want to do it because it gives them good excuse to tax everybody a lot for this "state pension" thingy

[seanraaron]

Why is it excessive? Don't you want everyone in your socialist utopia to be rich? And why do you get to decide?
Give everyone a personal money printer so they can print what they want.

tulip, I've got that chuckle that rises deep inside when I come across serious and profound boneheaded stupidity - the deep down belly laugh that means I sit in my chair laughing uncontrollably. Lucky I work from home.

Good so you'll be there to witness the looting.

Look you can rabbit on about hard work and that BS all you want (I take it you're using weighted keys that take a lot of effort to type with?), but the fact is that to keep the engine the economy turning over in its present form you will need to give people money to spend. How you do this is another matter, but if you think the status quo is going to continue, you're living a blinkered existence.

I can't see much future in IT, at least not sysadmin, which is what I've been doing most of my adult life. It's getting steadily de-skilled and you're already seeing the Windows approach to problem-solving in the Linux VMWare estates: bounce it if you have a fault that isn't hardware-related; log a fault for the service tech otherwise. I'd be doing prison counselling myself if it paid as well - now THAT'S a growth industry!

[expat]

And this is different from our existing shared delusion, how? What exactly is the provision of additional credit to bail out banks but "printing money?" Other than it being electronic I can't see it. If we work together with other nations to open the taps it's less illusory somehow?

Old-fashioned printing money was intended to give more buying power to some party, often the government; inflation was an unfortunate side effect. With QE, inflation is the whole point.

I'm not sure that it couldn't have been done better by just giving everybody £100,000. It would have had the same effect except that it would have given buying power to all the people instead of just the banks.

[sasguru]

Im not left wing by any standard but even I can see that things need a radical change. We are based on an never ending growth strategy because telling everyone that the trillions of money that is owed to each other is never getting paid isn't going to happen because it makes the wrong guys poor...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0

I get your point, but the solution is not what simplistic lefties like that bonehead, seanaaron, propose.
(Incidentally this prediction of 50% unemployment is over-egged. It came about because some high profile scientists and entrepreneurs started bigging up Artifical Intelligence, but it's quite clear we are nowhere near the point where a computer can demonstrate all the varied skills any professional needs. It's quite impressive what robots and computers can do in very limited domains, however).

[bobspud]

Why is it excessive? Don't you want everyone in your socialist utopia to be rich? And why do you get to decide?
Give everyone a personal money printer so they can print what they want.

tulip, I've got that chuckle that rises deep inside when I come across serious and profound boneheaded stupidity - the deep down belly laugh that means I sit in my chair laughing uncontrollably. Lucky I work from home.

Im not left wing by any standard but even I can see that things need a radical change. We are based on an never ending growth strategy because telling everyone that the trillions of money that is owed to each other is never getting paid isn't going to happen because it makes the wrong guys poor...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0

[sasguru]

That's a bit excessive. I think the figure I saw recently was £50,000 to give people the ability to live as they see fit.

Why is it excessive? Don't you want everyone in your socialist utopia to be rich? And why do you get to decide?
Give everyone a personal money printer so they can print what they want.

tulip, I've got that chuckle that rises deep inside when I come across serious and profound boneheaded stupidity - the deep down belly laugh that means I sit in my chair laughing uncontrollably. Lucky I work from home.

[bobspud]

Got a question for you.
Why isn't Corbyn's policy (or any leftist party for that matter) to simply give every adult an income of 100,000 pounds per year?
Might as well go the whole hog, what, since money is illusory.

Because its a transition problem. Today the country needs idiots like you and me to pay vast amounts of tax and to work. Giving the unwashed enough cash to do **** all is not going to help the middle / working class bother to get out of bed...

Shift on a few decades and all of a sudden Amazon doesn't need stock pickers, Tesco's doesn't need wetware to stack shelves, Cars arrive when we need them and sod off again when we are where we need to be. Even our smartwatches will be able to monitor health and auto order DNA tailored drugs to help keep sickness at bay. (Well thats for the rich classes anyway)

But for the rest, all you have is a mass of humans that have no economic place in this world. But don't worry technology will provide jobs and everyone talks about how the next generation of kids really get technology but having spoken to a few of the kids in my daughters computer science classes they are thick as tulip. Even a kid that got his A-level in computing couldn't explain what a database is The jobs that are left will be specialist.

But those jobs are ripe for change and we have seen Weavers, Engineers, Coalminers, Tailors, draftsmen all lose their jobs to cheap imports or technology.

Ah but we need someone to have a job so they can buy stuff...

Ask McLaren about that. They have a multi million pound factory and hand build every thing but they don't even care if 99% of the world exist because they do business with a few hundred clients...

So we have a tosspot of a chancellor telling the country the answer is work longer, having sat in Davos knowing that they are predicting 50% unemployment in the coming years...


Im willing to bet that in the not too distant future we will need a different way to feed people. otherwise the pitchforks will be out.

[seanraaron]

Got a question for you.
Why isn't Corbyn's policy (or any leftist party for that matter) to simply give every adult an income of 100,000 pounds per year?
Might as well go the whole hog, what, since money is illusory.

That's a bit excessive. I think the figure I saw recently was £50,000 to give people the ability to live as they see fit.

[sasguru]

And this is different from our existing shared delusion, how? What exactly is the provision of additional credit to bail out banks but "printing money?" Other than it being electronic I can't see it. If we work together with other nations to open the taps it's less illusory somehow?
.

Got a question for you.
Why isn't Corbyn's policy (or any leftist party for that matter) to simply give every adult an income of 100,000 pounds per year?
Might as well go the whole hog, what, since money is illusory.

[seanraaron]

Today there is little need as most of the world has some form of way to make money. In fact we have built a society based on employment and capitalism but we are rapidly moving toward a place where the top 1% won't need the other 99%. In fact they will be looking to reduce the number of people in the 1% as well. When they wanted to reduce labour strengths they used outsourcing to destroy wage growth. When they finally get the nirvana of machine intelligence do you think they will waste their time on outsourcing to some undeveloped country? I don't. So the only options coming down the line is a massive fight or some way to pacify millions of now economically useless humans...

the fact that it has not happened yet isn't the argument to say it never will.

Seems obvious to me. But you know you can buy a lot of violins to play when the place is burning down with all that made-up currency.

[bobspud]

Yes I'm aware of the lefty argument for a universal basic income.
There's a reason why no country has tried it wholesale.
On the whole do you think it would make us more or less competitive?
But nothing the left proposes surprises me any more - I've read a book where an educated lefty suggested we just print money and hand it out (this is quite a bit different from the helicopter money theory which has been proposed in an extreme deflationary scenario).
Again there's a reason why no serious economy has ever tried it.

Today there is little need as most of the world has some form of way to make money. In fact we have built a society based on employment and capitalism but we are rapidly moving toward a place where the top 1% won't need the other 99%. In fact they will be looking to reduce the number of people in the 1% as well. When they wanted to reduce labour strengths they used outsourcing to destroy wage growth. When they finally get the nirvana of machine intelligence do you think they will waste their time on outsourcing to some undeveloped country? I don't. So the only options coming down the line is a massive fight or some way to pacify millions of now economically useless humans...

the fact that it has not happened yet isn't the argument to say it never will.