Very rich people call for higher taxes - on themselves

You can't have your cake and eat it. How exactly are we solve the, and I quote 'suffering and expense of the poorest?' Given that the only option you seem to have is to throw money at them, most likely taken from the mega rich, one cannot blame these mega rich from using offshore accounts, which they are perfectly entitled to do.

'Lose the debate and throw insults.'

Exhibit A - "I'm also sure you dont hold the cognitive abilities to understand what it is I'm saying, either that or your bigotry prevents you from seeing what I'm saying." - Burton Bridge.

I just like winding you up now, to be fair. It's like arguing with a toddler, you're never going to listen, nor are you going to provide any actual substance. You'll just keep spouting your happy clappy crap, and that's fine.

No evidence of what? How damaging Brexit will be to this country economically? I didn't think I'd need to provide any specific evidence given that there are a choice of about 15 or so economic reports showing this. However, just for the crack...



Three in one for you to cast your eyes over.

That still does not change the fact that money is thrown at the poorest in our society. Perhaps, the allocation of that money could be better. For what it's worth, I completely agree that we need to be investing substantially more on schools.

Any chance you could answer the question regarding the poor being poorer as a result of Brexit, or are you happy to ignore that fact, like most Brexiteers?

Because certainly over the last few months the left has become the home of LGBT and identity politics. Given that we've seen the radical left hijack BLM and pedal their horrible rhetoric for the world to see, what else are most people supposed to think?

The sheer arrogance. @Stiff Little Fingers I wouldn't bother. It's like arguing with a toddler.

This is true, but we aren't the party to suggest ideas for people to steal. That's what I was trying to get across to @Wired_1800 months back, the main purpose of being in politics is to win, if you dont win you cant do anything. The Tories are good at compromising to win, they understand it's better to have a little bit of what you believe than non at all.

I agree with you. I used to want a pure form of socialism, but I have begun to accept that to take power one must be able to compromise to an extent.

Some awfully rich people are demanding that governments impose higher taxes on them.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/jul/13/super-rich-call-for-higher-taxes-on-wealthy-to-pay-for-covid-19-recovery

A letter signed by 83 super-rich people has been circulated demanding they be taxed properly to provide funds to tackle the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic crisis. The letter was organised by, amongst others, Tax Justice UK and Oxfam.

Globally, taxes on the very wealthy are the lowest since the 1930s and huge amounts of global wealth are hidden in tax havens. Many of these tax havens are British overseas territories.

We will all be facing deep economic recession and higher tax rates and we should return to the position in the 50s - 70s when the rich were taxed properly and society worked far better than it currently does.

Actually, I might be wrong, but I don't think you can 'voluntarily' pay more tax in the UK - if you send the money, the HMRC will just send it back.

You can't voluntarily pay more tax.

And in any event, it will raise far more money if all persons of that wealth paid more tax than just the 83.

It true you could simply donate it to a government department like the NHS for example.

They are calling for it, if they are so in favour they should put their money where their mouth is.

This is true, but we aren't the party to suggest ideas for people to steal. That's what I was trying to get across to @Wired_1800 months back, the main purpose of being in politics is to win, if you dont win you cant do anything. The Tories are good at compromising to win, they understand it's better to have a little bit of what you believe than non at all.

And if taxes are raised, then they will do. If they subsequently avoid taxes then yes they would be hypocrites.

Implying half the Labour apparatchiks aren't rich themselves.

How do you define ”exploited”?

There's a difference between Chinese-run slavery in East Turkestan (which most people would describe as exploitation) and paying someone to work of their own free will for minimum wage (not exploitation).

What would you have against a British bill of rights?

The Tories have 365 seats in Parliament. Labour have 203. This was the worst result for Labour since the 1930s.

Please, explain to me how you won the argument exactly?

Ok got abit of time now.

Answers in bold.

All of your talk of traditional labour voters and traditional working class is little more than a racist dogwhistle. The working class now is heavily diverse, disproportionately BAME folk, particularly black people, and disproportionately LGBTQ folk. The idea that Labours core vote don't care about those identities and advocating for them only follows if you pretend that the working class is just white northerners, rather than actually a lot of young people in cities who've been divorced from any sort economic achievement by a long standing generational wealth transfer to the elderly.

You claim it's out of their own free will but it's absolutely not - there is no free will in choosing to work when the other option is starvation and homelessness; all employer-employee relationships under capitalism are inherently coerced and so exploitative. The exploitation is obvious when you ask who actually creates the value. Take Amazon, who actually creates the value there? The warehouse staff, those working in the distribution network, the IT staff who keep the site running. And yet it's Bezos, who is not responsible for creating any value, who takes home the vast majority of the value those workers create. If all the employees disappeared from the planet, every company would collapse, if the CEOs went there'd be very little impact.

TLDR but on the amazon point, are you on crack? The point of amazons value is the business model not the staff who will be replaced by automation asap as that is what the business model is

You do know that you aren't forced to work under capitalism? If you're disabled, benefits exist.

As for your point about CEOs, no. Bezos set up Amazon and runs Amazon. That means he creates a lot of the worth of Amazon. You seem to be using the concept of labour theory of value to argue there, which is flawed.
You have two people who sell firewood for a living. The first guy (let's call him Peter) picks up fallen branches, makes them into ******s and sells them as firewood. The second guy (let's call him Paul) cuts down a tree, chops it up, and sells the chopped up wood as firewood. It takes Peter 2 hours to produce a cubic metre of firewood, whereas it takes Paul 6 hours to produce a cubic metre of firewood. If you use the labour theory of value, Paul's firewood should be worth three times as much as Peter's firewood because he spent three times as much time on it.

You do know that you aren't forced to work under capitalism? If you're disabled, benefits exist.

You very much are forced to work since benefits do not pay out enough for people to live on - that's a major point of why austerity has killed over 100,000 people (this, combined with it having always been known that austerity doesn't actually work is why I would argue that any government that institutes it is guilty of a large number of counts of premeditated murder)

That doesn't follow properly, labour is not merely energy and the time taken to expend it - you can work smart and achieve the same level of labour as a social factor in a shorter time, not to mention that not all labour creates just commodities, but even in your analogy, it is Peter and Paul who have created value - not as individual commodities (that's not what LTV focuses on) but as part of a macro system. We can demonstrate even more clearly how it is the labour that creates value by adding in a third guy to this analogy, let's call him John. John buys the fire wood from both Peter and Paul and sells it at a markup. Has John created any value there? Has John done anything to add value to the firewood? No, of course he hasn't, the firewood exists without his input and could be sold without his input, what he has done doesn't add to the value of the firewood in a social system, and yet he syphons from Peter and Paul, he exploits them as they are no longer paid the full commodity value for their labour.

You do know that you aren't forced to work under capitalism? If you're disabled, benefits exist.

As for your point about CEOs, no. Bezos set up Amazon and runs Amazon. That means he creates a lot of the worth of Amazon. You seem to be using the concept of labour theory of value to argue there, which is flawed.
You have two people who sell firewood for a living. The first guy (let's call him Peter) picks up fallen branches, makes them into ******s and sells them as firewood. The second guy (let's call him Paul) cuts down a tree, chops it up, and sells the chopped up wood as firewood. It takes Peter 2 hours to produce a cubic metre of firewood, whereas it takes Paul 6 hours to produce a cubic metre of firewood. If you use the labour theory of value, Paul's firewood should be worth three times as much as Peter's firewood because he spent three times as much time on it.

If Bezos disappeared tomorrow, nothing would happen, in fact world would probably improve if we're honest. If all the employees disappeared, Amazon would collapse. That capitalism treats us all as expendable cogs ignores that it is labouring and the work force that creates value, indeed keeps the entire system running, not the CEOs.

You very much are forced to work since benefits do not pay out enough for people to live on - that's a major point of why austerity has killed over 100,000 people (this, combined with it having always been known that austerity doesn't actually work is why I would argue that any government that institutes it is guilty of a large number of counts of premeditated murder)

That doesn't follow properly, labour is not merely energy and the time taken to expend it - you can work smart and achieve the same level of labour as a social factor in a shorter time, not to mention that not all labour creates just commodities, but even in your analogy, it is Peter and Paul who have created value - not as individual commodities (that's not what LTV focuses on) but as part of a macro system. We can demonstrate even more clearly how it is the labour that creates value by adding in a third guy to this analogy, let's call him John. John buys the fire wood from both Peter and Paul and sells it at a markup. Has John created any value there? Has John done anything to add value to the firewood? No, of course he hasn't, the firewood exists without his input and could be sold without his input, what he has done doesn't add to the value of the firewood in a social system, and yet he syphons from Peter and Paul, he exploits them as they are no longer paid the full commodity value for their labour.

If Bezos disappeared tomorrow, nothing would happen, in fact world would probably improve if we're honest. If all the employees disappeared, Amazon would collapse. That capitalism treats us all as expendable cogs ignores that it is labouring and the work force that creates value, indeed keeps the entire system running, not the CEOs.

You very much are forced to work since benefits do not pay out enough for people to live on - that's a major point of why austerity has killed over 100,000 people (this, combined with it having always been known that austerity doesn't actually work is why I would argue that any government that institutes it is guilty of a large number of counts of premeditated murder)

That doesn't follow properly, labour is not merely energy and the time taken to expend it - you can work smart and achieve the same level of labour as a social factor in a shorter time, not to mention that not all labour creates just commodities, but even in your analogy, it is Peter and Paul who have created value - not as individual commodities (that's not what LTV focuses on) but as part of a macro system. We can demonstrate even more clearly how it is the labour that creates value by adding in a third guy to this analogy, let's call him John. John buys the fire wood from both Peter and Paul and sells it at a markup. Has John created any value there? Has John done anything to add value to the firewood? No, of course he hasn't, the firewood exists without his input and could be sold without his input, what he has done doesn't add to the value of the firewood in a social system, and yet he syphons from Peter and Paul, he exploits them as they are no longer paid the full commodity value for their labour.

You mean in social democratic states. There's nothing per se in capitalism that caters for people who can't work. In the extremist capitalist model, if you can't toil for the owners, you perish.

TThere's a fourth guy we can add: Mark. Mark declares that he now has sole ownership of the forest, tells Peter and Paul that all the firewood they produce now belongs to him, then gives them a choice between handing over all the firewood they make in exchange for a small hourly wage, or leaving the forest and freezing to death.

There's a fourth guy we can add: Mark. Mark declares that he now has sole ownership of the forest, tells Peter and Paul that all the firewood they produce now belongs to him, then gives them a choice between handing over all the firewood they make in exchange for a small hourly wage, or leaving the forest and freezing to death.

Mark sounds like he has a lot more in common with a far left government than he does with any model of capitalism.

No. If Bezos disappeared Amazon would face problems because they're now leaderless.

I'd like a source for the ”100k dead” claim.

You're implying that John sells the firewood without doing any work and that when John gets the firewood it magically disappears in exchange for money. Peter and Paul sell their firewood to John, who finds a buyer. That's work.

Besides, in a free market, Peter and Paul are free to sell the wood themselves or to form a wood salesmen's union and sell their wood for a set price.

Note the word ”extremist”. Saying that all capitalists unironically support the idea of Ancapistan and think that all taxation is theft is like saying all social democrats unironically think Stalin did nothing wrong and support putting kulaks against the nearest wall.

If we're going to discuss Mark declaring he owns the forest using libertarian ethics (given half the people on this thread seem to think the only form of capitalism that exists is Ayn Rand-style libertarianism) then Mark stealing the forest from whoever owns it would be a violation of the NAP.