Prime Minister Of Britain

Peter Parka · 08-23-2008, 02:51 AM

Who do you want? It's a tough one, aint it? Personally I think Cameron is the lesser of the evils, might vote for the Libs if they could actually get off the fucking fence!

Tattva · 08-23-2008, 06:03 AM

Cameron by all means
3 sucsessive labor goverments have done very little compared to thair claims. The gap between ritch and poor increased, they cancled student grants despite wanting to make education seem more appealing and joined in with an un-nececery war.
I lost what little respect i had for Brown after his miserable song and dance performance over the lisbon treaty.

skyblue · 08-23-2008, 06:15 AM

i hated her at the time but what britain needs now is another thatcher

Fox Mulder · 08-23-2008, 04:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tattva

The gap between ritch and poor increased . . .

I wanted to comment on this because this is a claim that liberals use erroneously to appeal to the envy and emotion of the average working person.

The gap between rich and poor in terms of standard of living has NOT increased and in fact has gotten much closer over the past 30 years or so. The problem is that these people use a mathematical trick--let me illustrate.

Say a guy in 1970 is making 5,000 pounds and that's considered poor (don't know the actual poverty rate but let's use that as an example) and the rich guy is making 100,000 pounds. The "gap" is 95,000 pounds

Okay, now fast forward to 2008 and now the poor guy is making 20,000 pounds. The rich guy has to make 400,000 pounds to be in the exact same relative position as the poor guy in 1970. But the "gap" is now 380,000 pounds. Bottom line is that the "gap" between poor and rich is ALWAYS going to be increasing even when the poor are getting closer to the rich if you measure the "gap" as the mathematical absolute difference between the two.

Carthage · 08-23-2008, 06:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fox Mulder

I wanted to comment on this because this is a claim that liberals use erroneously to appeal to the envy and emotion of the average working person.

The gap between rich and poor in terms of standard of living has NOT increased and in fact has gotten much closer over the past 30 years or so. The problem is that these people use a mathematical trick--let me illustrate.

Say a guy in 1970 is making 5,000 pounds and that's considered poor (don't know the actual poverty rate but let's use that as an example) and the rich guy is making 100,000 pounds. The "gap" is 95,000 pounds

Okay, now fast forward to 2008 and now the poor guy is making 20,000 pounds. The rich guy has to make 400,000 pounds to be in the exact same relative position as the poor guy in 1970. But the "gap" is now 380,000 pounds. Bottom line is that the "gap" between poor and rich is ALWAYS going to be increasing even when the poor are getting closer to the rich if you measure the "gap" as the mathematical absolute difference between the two.

OH...MY...GOD...

gLing · 08-23-2008, 06:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fox Mulder

I wanted to comment on this because this is a claim that liberals use erroneously to appeal to the envy and emotion of the average working person.

The gap between rich and poor in terms of standard of living has NOT increased and in fact has gotten much closer over the past 30 years or so. The problem is that these people use a mathematical trick--let me illustrate.

Say a guy in 1970 is making 5,000 pounds and that's considered poor (don't know the actual poverty rate but let's use that as an example) and the rich guy is making 100,000 pounds. The "gap" is 95,000 pounds

Okay, now fast forward to 2008 and now the poor guy is making 20,000 pounds. The rich guy has to make 400,000 pounds to be in the exact same relative position as the poor guy in 1970. But the "gap" is now 380,000 pounds. Bottom line is that the "gap" between poor and rich is ALWAYS going to be increasing even when the poor are getting closer to the rich if you measure the "gap" as the mathematical absolute difference between the two.

But the price of goods is going up faster than wages.

Zorak · 08-23-2008, 06:37 PM

They're all fucking wankers.

I abstain.

Strauss · 08-23-2008, 06:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gLing

But the price of goods is going up faster than wages.

And that statement relates to the alleged increasing wage gap how?

BTW, it depends on what goods you are talking about and when.

wednesday · 08-23-2008, 06:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zorak

They're all fucking wankers.

I abstain.

skyblue · 08-23-2008, 06:50 PM

work for a large company.....an annual 3% pay increase is usual across the board.....from directors to shop floor.......to me that equates to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer

Peter Parka · 08-23-2008, 07:55 PM

To be honest, under Labour, the gap between rich and poor hasn't increased, financially most people have been better off, it was what we needed to get out of a slump but something wasn't right which is why we are going to pay for it with the start of this recession we're heading into. Maggie Thatcher and the Conservatives under her was the worst in recent years of shitting all over the poor while the rich were getting richer. I and my family suffered greatly because of that bitch which is why I hope we never ever go back to her way of running the country!

gLing · 08-23-2008, 07:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Strauss

And that statement relates to the alleged increasing wage gap how?

BTW, it depends on what goods you are talking about and when.

It's simple. If the cost of living is rising faster than wages then the poor just get poorer despite an increase in wage. They end up having less spending power.

Fox Mulder · 08-23-2008, 08:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gLing

But the price of goods is going up faster than wages.

Over what period of time? The last year or two maybe, but its cyclical--over the past 30 or 40 years the purchasing power of the lower income strata has INCREASED dramatically. That is, people today have much more than people did 30 years ago at every income level excep the highest levels.

Conside this article from the NY Times which is about as liberal as source as you can get:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/op...eberstadt.html

Quote:

The most widely quoted federal statistic on deprivation and need in modern America is the "poverty rate" - a measure tracking households with annual incomes below a "poverty threshold" established at the beginning of the Johnson administration's "war on poverty" in the 1960's and adjusted over time for inflation. According to the latest poverty rate estimates - released by the Census Bureau on Aug. 30 - the total percentage of Americans living in poverty was higher in 2004 (12.7 percent) than in 1974 (11.2 percent). According to that same report, poverty rates for American families and children were likewise higher last year than three decades earlier.

On its face, this momentous story should have shocked the nation. After all, it suggested (among other alarming things) that Washington's long and expensive campaign to eliminate domestic poverty has been a colossal failure. So why did that poverty rate report end up mostly buried deep inside daily papers?

Maybe because many news editors, like policymakers in Washington, know the dirty little secret about the poverty rate: it just isn't any good. Truth be told, the official poverty rate not only fails to calculate trends in impoverishment with any precision,it even gets the direction wrong.

The profound flaws in our officially calculated poverty rate are revealed by its very intimation that the poverty situation in America was "better" in 1974 than it is today. Those of us of a certain age remember the year 1974 - in all its recession-plagued, "stagflation"-burdened glory. But even the most basic facts bearing on poverty alleviation confute the proposition that material circumstances in America are harsher for the vulnerable today than three decades ago. Per capita income adjusted for inflation is over 60 percent higher today than in 1974. The unemployment rate is lower, and the percentage of adults with paying jobs is distinctly higher. Thirty years ago, the proportion of adults without a high school diploma was more than twice as high as today (39 percent versus 16 percent). And antipoverty spending is vastly higher today than in 1974, even after inflation adjustments.

In the face of such evidence, what do you call an indicator that stubbornly insists that the percentage of Americans below a fixed poverty threshold has increased? How about "a broken compass?"

The soundings from the poverty rate are further belied by information on actual living standards for low-income Americans. In 1972-73, for example, just 42 percent of the bottom fifth of American households owned a car; in 2003, almost three-quarters of "poverty households" had one. By 2001, only 6 percent of "poverty households" lived in "crowded" homes (more than one person per room) - down from 26 percent in 1970. By 2003, the fraction of poverty households with central air-conditioning (45 percent) was much higher than the 1980 level for the non-poor (29 percent).

Besides these living trends, there are what we might call the "dying trends": that is to say, America's health and mortality patterns. All strata of America - including the disadvantaged - are markedly healthier today than three decades ago. Though the officially calculated poverty rate for children was higher in 2004 than 1974 (17.8 percent versus 15.4 percent), the infant mortality rate - that most telling measure of wellbeing - fell by almost three-fifths over those same years, to 6.7 per 1,000 births from 16.7 per 1,000.

The poverty rate is out of step with all these other readings about deprivation in modern America because it was designed to measure the wrong thing. The poverty rate has always been derived from reported household income. (Exigency played a role here: at the start of the war on poverty 40 years ago, those income numbers were already available from the Census Bureau.) But a better gauge of a household's material deprivation is not what it earns, but what it spends. When we look at spending patterns, we immediately see a huge discrepancy between reported incomes and reported expenditures for low-income Americans.

In the Labor Department's latest Consumer Expenditure Survey (2003), the average reported income for the bottom fifth of households was $8,201, while reported outlays came to $18,492 - well over twice that amount.

Over the past generation, that discrepancy widened significantly: back in the early 1970's, the poorest fifth's reported spending exceeded income by 40 percent.

Unfortunately, economists and statisticians have yet to come up with a clear explanation for this gap (which is not explained by in-kind payments like food stamps or other assistance). The divergence may be in part a measurement problem: partly a matter of income under-reporting, partly a consequence of increasing income variability in our more "globalized" economy. But whatever its cause, it does drive home the unreliability of using reported household income as a benchmark for poverty.

For now, however, we should recognize that America has already achieved far more success in the war against want than our sorry poverty rate can admit - and that we need much better guidance systems for the anti-poverty battles still ahead than this one, arguably the single worst measure in our government's statistical arsenal.

Nicholas Eberstadt, a researcher in political economy at the American Enterprise Institute, is the co-author of "Health and the Income Inequality Hypothesis."

The problem is a lot of this crap you hear in the media gets reported so often people just take it for granted its true. There is no bigger line of bullshit then the "gap between rich and poor is widening" -- you hear it constantly and there is simply no facts to back it up and in fact the facts establishe the opposite--that is the purchasing power of the lower and middle class has increased over the past several decades. That of course is not something the socialists want you to know--they want you to believe that capitalism is failing and that the sky is falling. That's the only way they'll get the type of changes they want to see.

Peter Parka · 08-23-2008, 08:20 PM

Erm, you do realise that this about BRITISH politics people? I don't see what the economic situation in the USA has to do with anything.

Fox Mulder · 08-23-2008, 08:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter Parka

Erm, you do realise that this about BRITISH politics people? I don't see what the economic situation in the USA has to do with anything.

Sorry there Peter--I say bring back Thatcher!!!

View Poll Results: Who Do You Want For The Next British Prime Minister?
Gordon Brown (Labour)	1	25.00%
David Cameron (Conservative)	3	75.00%
Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrats)	0	0%
Voters: 4. You may not vote on this poll

08-23-2008, 02:51 AM	#1
Peter Parka King Of Cunts Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Harlow, Essex, England Posts: 23,362 Tokenz: 112,760	Prime Minister Of Britain Who do you want? It's a tough one, aint it? Personally I think Cameron is the lesser of the evils, might vote for the Libs if they could actually get off the fucking fence! __________________

08-23-2008, 06:03 AM	#2
Tattva Member Join Date: May 2006 Location: England, Yorkshire! Posts: 348 Tokenz: 899	Re: Prime Minister Of Britain Cameron by all means 3 sucsessive labor goverments have done very little compared to thair claims. The gap between ritch and poor increased, they cancled student grants despite wanting to make education seem more appealing and joined in with an un-nececery war. I lost what little respect i had for Brown after his miserable song and dance performance over the lisbon treaty. __________________ I, Was Told By A Knight Of The Sun That Wisdom Could Set People Free • Be Content In Your Questions But May I Just Mention, Jour Only A Drop In The Sea

08-23-2008, 06:15 AM	#3
skyblue DrLovePump Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: here and there Posts: 10,935 Tokenz: 257,958	Re: Prime Minister Of Britain i hated her at the time but what britain needs now is another thatcher __________________ the after christmas prize fund.....jassillem26,250..skyblue25,000...mystic15 .000....vshayes26,250....wednesday40,000....wookie girl25,000....keight25,000....Natasha25,000....bad boy@thewheel20,000

08-23-2008, 06:37 PM	#7
Zorak Age of Empires III addict Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Surrey, England, UK Posts: 2,949 Tokenz: 32,133	Re: Prime Minister Of Britain They're all fucking wankers. I abstain. __________________ "...I will die alone, upside down, in a pub toilet." Hey hey, My my, Rock and Roll can never die.

08-23-2008, 06:50 PM	#10
skyblue DrLovePump Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: here and there Posts: 10,935 Tokenz: 257,958	Re: Prime Minister Of Britain work for a large company.....an annual 3% pay increase is usual across the board.....from directors to shop floor.......to me that equates to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer __________________ the after christmas prize fund.....jassillem26,250..skyblue25,000...mystic15 .000....vshayes26,250....wednesday40,000....wookie girl25,000....keight25,000....Natasha25,000....bad boy@thewheel20,000

08-23-2008, 07:55 PM	#11
Peter Parka King Of Cunts Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Harlow, Essex, England Posts: 23,362 Tokenz: 112,760	Re: Prime Minister Of Britain To be honest, under Labour, the gap between rich and poor hasn't increased, financially most people have been better off, it was what we needed to get out of a slump but something wasn't right which is why we are going to pay for it with the start of this recession we're heading into. Maggie Thatcher and the Conservatives under her was the worst in recent years of shitting all over the poor while the rich were getting richer. I and my family suffered greatly because of that bitch which is why I hope we never ever go back to her way of running the country! __________________

08-23-2008, 08:20 PM	#14
Peter Parka King Of Cunts Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Harlow, Essex, England Posts: 23,362 Tokenz: 112,760	Re: Prime Minister Of Britain Erm, you do realise that this about BRITISH politics people? I don't see what the economic situation in the USA has to do with anything. __________________

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