Are the Conservatives that bad?

Hmmm, I wonder which government that poster has lived under during the majority of his/ her education. Was it Labour? Yet you still wish to vote Labour?

Your ad hominem towards him turned out to be a bit of a fail didn't it?

If you're rich and live a lavish fantastic lifestyle, then nothing is wrong with the Conservative party, however if you're the rest of the 95% of the population, everything is wrong with them.

If you're going to get pedantic about it, you should know that there is no comma between the bits in bold. It make more grammatical sense when you remove the comma and instead replace it with the word "then".

But of course I'm not a bell end so I won't be pointing this out.

Exploiting the rape of underage girls for party political gain, wow you must be so so proud of yourself. Really that is inspired, Crosby will be knocking on your door with a job offer any day soon.

You do realise back in the 80s politicians of all parties were raping and murdering kids themselves at Dolphin Square. And while they refuse to release any proper details it seems there was literally an actual paedophile ring at the top of the Tory and Liberal parties. Why aren't you posting disgusting, disrespectful memes about that?

Oh yeah, because those people were all white.

It's not 'exploitation for political gain' because frankly I don't care who you vote for if it isn't Labour, but if it makes you uncomfortable that the only industry that boomed under the administration you intend to help into power was child sex trafficking, you should probably follow these steps:

They've reduced the deficit by half and quite frankly, seem to be the only party willing to make stringent cuts without being affected by emotions or fear of public reprimands. Granted, some of the effects austerity has had on many has been problematic, but surely we should applaud the ruthlessness of a Government, who are willing to make the tough decisions for the long term benefits of our society and generation?

I'm no balled over my the jargon or false promises of other political parties as my sole intention is for the deficit to be eradicated before we, the young generation, become the next leaders of this society.

So bearing this in mind, I ask again: Are the Conservatives really that bad?

Labour voters like free hand outs. Tory voters are hard workers (the majority of them are).

This BS about them only supporting the super-rich is ridiculous as if that was true, most people who voted wouldn't be voting for them. They represent hard-working tax-payers, in-fact they've done more regulation for "super-rich" people than Tory-lite, sorry "New Labour", ever did.

Conservatives did NOTHING on immigration just like the last several Conservative governments. WHY?!

Any party in power in this period would have regulated the banks, just as any party pre-crash would have spent like mad and deregulated (the Tories were constantly saying "spend more" and "deregulate more" in this period).

In my estimation it's the Tory voters who like free hand-outs (mortgage tax relief, housing benefit accruing to landlords, general house price bubble, pensions triple lock, right to buy schemes) and the Labour ones who work hard for a pittance (zero hours, workfare, three jobs, low pay, crap conditions, no employment protections, high rents, walking six miles to the food bank, even nowadays navigating benefits is a full-time job).

And on the Tory side all I've looked at there is the middle-class ones, I haven't even considered the grasping, scrounging behaviour of the super-rich (who with their control over the media represent many votes).

The Tories only care about artificially protecting the wealth and returns of the asset-wealthy. Sure they don't care if you're a wealthy aristocrat or if you're a barrow boy done good out of right to buy and buy-to-let, but none of that is looking at boosting the productive parts of the economy (you know, the ones that involve work and innovation) and the moral duty to provide for those who are most vulnerable.

Ha. What's artificial about letting people keep their wealth? And here's another thing - newsflash - the productive parts of the economy are lead by the rich and those who want to make money. PS cutting corporation tax HAS boosted the productive parts of the economy.

I see where you're coming from but I'm not convinced.

I see many people are putting the blame on government nowadays and indeed many arguments have merit to them,, But the point I am making, and which is not readily known, is that conventional high-street deposit banks CREATE money. If you see the pre-crisis period and compare it to the roaring twentites, a great similarity is that the level of private not public but PRIVATE debt expanded to unprecedented levels. How? Banks dont channel money from savers to borrowers. The conventional view taught is that X goes to a bank to borrow £100. The bank uses the savings from Y to finance X. Therefore Y's purchasing power has reduced by £100 and X's increases by £100. At the aggregate there is no change in purchasing power. The CORRECT view is that X goes to borrow £100, the bank created additional deposits worth £100 so Y has experienced no change but X has purchasing power increased by £100. At the aggregate the change in debt is INCOME + CHANGE IN DEBT.

Now if X uses the money to fund productive investment then he'll generate profits to pay the loan back. BUT, if X is borrowing money to finance speculative activity such as betting on house prices to increase, then this will ultimately lead to ponzi behaviour and is not sustainable. As people constantly lend to fund unproductive activities a credit-bubble will generate and once the bubble bursts we're all in trouble.

My point is therefore not only 100% reserves but to take the privilege of money creation away from banks.

Moreover, the whole deficit thing needs to be reconsidered. No doubt a very large and sustained deficit is bad but, it actually improves utility.

Government borrowing or excess spending has implicit in it the notion of inter temporal borrowing. When the economy is in a bad state and private sector is deleveraging then the government SHOULD run a deficit. If it didn't then you're basically in for a nasty depression. I find that people don't really understand the concept of government deficits. They should borrow in bad times to prop up the economy but spending should be PRODUCTIVE i.e. construction etc so that it generates revenues to repay in the future.

Two recent examples for those against government deficits..

1) Japan. After its crisis around two decades ago the government ran a deficit for the next few years and although the economy was slow it didn't shrink - growth was positive every year. After the IMF demanded it to focus on austerity, the economy literally went into a slump and only then did GDP growth become negative.

2) Greece - I think we all know about Greece already. - but a quick point, all those politicians on Question Time comparing the UK to Greece are literally idiots and they should be stripped of any political role.

A currency is only worth something when a government backs it.

*******s, nobody believes this trickle down rubbish any more, it's not 2010. It's the opposite: the rich suck up wealth created by workers and innovators and it ends up offshore or in unproductive assets like housing.

Cut corporation tax for small British businesses who can't really take money out by globalising operations or financialising profits, raise it HARD on multinational corporations who can.

Raise the tax for multinationals, they'll go offshore and you'll lose all tax. Goodbye economy.

This forum is full of unrealistic thinkers, who whilst they have nice ideas, they don't work in the real world. That is what you get with the left, unrealistic and unsustainable plans.

The right are tougher but at least you'll be certain that the economy won't be a giant mess again.

Yes, I understand that banks can create money i.e. debt out of nothing and have legal privileges to do so. In a free system, they would not have these privileges. I don't see how relevant these criticisms you are making are as you aren't going against anything I said however you are still making the same mistake of saying banks being able to create money is bad but the government being able to is good.

How does this deficit stuff matter? I never said that the government should never run a deficit. I said that without control of the money supply that they couldn't devalue the currency to pay for things. No mention of deficits or surpluses.


No, that's clearly not true. Where did you get this nonsense from?

They would be traded 1 for 1. In a way it would be the same currency like the pound but different banks would issue their own notes. There would be no central bank.

*******s, nobody believes this trickle down rubbish any more, it's not 2010. It's the opposite: the rich suck up wealth created by workers and innovators and it ends up offshore or in unproductive assets like housing. (So it's not even "their" wealth to keep - they didn't produce it. The state and company/property law have set it up so this form of theft is not only legal but encouraged.)

Cut corporation tax for small British businesses who can't really take money out by globalising operations, financialising profits, socialising risk, raise it HARD on multinational corporations who can.

It's very simple: let's align the profit motive with innovation and away from speculation.

The reason why state* control is better than private bank control is very simple. It's because the state's interests are more naturally aligned with the well-being of the people within that state. The state allows private individuals to profit from their assets (the consumptive and labour market, the land, that sort of thing). Seeing as this requires the upkeep of the people who comprise the consumptive and labour market, the state will never let them all die/get too unhealthy to work/too poor to buy anything.

Private banks have no such interests in keeping things fair enough that people can survive. That's because they are globalised, so they can just rape a country, wipe all of its people out of the economy and then move on to the next one.

*note, not government, that's why the Bank of England was made independent of government by Brown, which afaik most people think was an inspired move

Yeah, they wouldn't restrict supply, devalue, etc for their own private gain or anything like that, would they? Seriously, giving banks the power to create not only money on a whim, as they do today, but then demand it be traded in bank scrip, what are you on? Here's what happened when it was tried in America years ago.

Yeah for a bit, but there is demand so a British company will fill the gap. Then they become big and evil and require regulation in their turn.

Nobody wants it to come to kicking companies out but if we are not allowed by "sensible" laissez-faire people like you to impose regulation that keeps things fair, it's going to have to come to that eventually and we will all suffer.

I'm even sure this response warrants a reply, but I'll have a go.

Workers and 'the rich' (by which I assume you mean business people) are in a contract - they provide labour and the rich provide jobs and wages. The 'wealth created by workers' is, therefore owned by the rich in return for the rich giving wages to the workers. Workers aren't giving their labour to business people for free - it is simply a transaction. The argument that the people producing the stuff should keep that stuff is frankly obscenely unfair.

So you agree that we shouldn't force big companies out with punitive tax measures...what regulation are you referring to then?