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That’s in the other papers too. 2044 is a long way off and lots could change in between. But the rise from 66 to 67 is due to begin in 3 years’ time — when there could be a Labour government but you can safely bet they won’t do anything to stop it. Maybe they will be faced by French-style opposition and Starmer will be the British Macron.
There’s a quote in today’s Times from Professor Sir Michael Marmot “an expert on health inequality” pointing out that
“The most deprived two-thirds of the population do not have disability-free life expectancy as long as 68, so if you make the pension age older than that, you’re going to find a huge swath of the more deprived can’t work to 68 and will have less time time to enjoy this pension.”
In other words, they will die before or soon after retiring. In fact this must be happening now to some extent with the retirement age at 66 and to a greater extent when it goes up to 67. How convenient for the finances of the capitalist state. If you can’t work you are no use to capitalism, just an expendable drag on profits.
Is seems a bit of a concocted charge by an Establishment out to get him for the erratic things he did during his presidency (rather than follow the usual line, as Biden is doing).
Surely paying hush money to somebody isn’t a crime or, if it is, would just be a “misdemeanour” to be dealt with at State rather than Federal level?
Since the basic state pension in the UK will amount to just over £10,000 a year from next week, raising the pension age by one year robs workers of that amount and forces them through economic necessity to endure another year of wage-slavery.
Don’t expect a Labour government to act any differently from a Tory government on this issue.
We shouldn’t really be discussing this question of the violation of personal privacy on this thread. One of us should start a new thread on this in the World Socialist Movement section.
Actually, banking reformers (to be polite and not call them currency cranks) do propose to legislate to separate these two functions of a bank. There was even a referendum in Switzerland to do this a few years ago (it was voted down). Here’s what they proposed:
“The proposal is that banks should not be able to re-lend money deposited in current accounts. When it receives such a deposit the bank will be required to re-deposit it with the state’s central bank in return for what Sandhu calls ‘State e-money’. All banks would be able to do with this is transfer it between current accounts.
This would certainly restrict bank lending but it wouldn’t (and is not intended to) stop it altogether. As the Swiss banking reformers explained, after the enactment of their reform:‘The banks can only work with money they have from savers, other banks or (if necessary) funds the central bank has lent them, or else money that they own themselves.’
But this is already, now, the case ! Money deposited in a current account is just as much a loan to the bank as is money deposited in a savings account. Banks can, and do, re-lend most of it too, except that, unlike with a savings account, it keeps all the interest. But if money re-lent from a current account is money created from thin air, why is money re-lent from a savings account not?”
If implemented, this would bugger up the financial system and impede banks from carrying out properly their function under capitalism of channelling idle money to those who want money to invest for profit.
We socialists understand better how capitalism works than some of its supporters.
Something else, Lizzie, for you whoopee about. British Gas have just sent me an email to say they have a charity to help people in difficulty because they can’t keep up with paying their energy bills. You might be eligible since you don’t have to be a British Gas customers. Let us know if they agree to throw you a few coppers.
https://www.britishgas.co.uk/energy/british-gas-energy-trust.html?cid=dplk_BGET
Incidentally, Movimento, not all those here are Socialists — this forum is mainly to discuss or be read by with those who aren’t yet — and we do have a forum just for Socialist Party members.
So the Tartan reformists have chosen a new Leader. He’ll just be in charge of running the administration in the Scottish region of UK plc. Not even national leaders can make capitalism work in the interest of the majority wage-working class. Regional leaders even less. Setting up a separate Scottish state wouldn’t make any difference either.
So they’ve decided to ban Corbyn from standing for them at the next election — because they think it will lose them votes. It will probably lose them a seat, though, as if Corbyn stands as an independent he is certain to win.
Starmer comes across as a person entirely without principle, a complete opportunist who adapts what he says to what he as been told will win votes.
So he wins and becomes prime minister, then what? He takes over looking after the affairs of British capitalism and will administer things in the only way they can be under capitalism, giving profits and profit-making priority.
Interesting that people in South Africa, on hearing the case for real socialism, should react by saying that that’s like how the Bushmen used to live.
Talking about South Africa, by coincidence Imposs1904 has just put up on his blog the letter column from the March 2004 Socialist Standard which recalls the following experience of a socialist living there at the time of Aoartheid (it’s the last letter):
“During the apartheid era he (Alec) was visited on many occasions by the ‘Special Branch’. Alec had an enormous picture of Karl Marx on the wall and when asked by one of these detectives ‘Who’s that man?’, he quite blandly said it was Johannes Brahms. Fortunately they believed him!”
http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2023/03/letters-making-allowances-2004.html?m=1
I think pro-capitalist ideologies like to deal with us because we are actually putting a case for a society different from capitalism which they can get their teeth into while they recognise that others who call themselves socialists don’t.
In the 1970s the Libertarian Alliance was obsessed with us.
Last year, Andrew Bailey, the Governor of the Bank of England, called on workers to exercise self-restraint over wage demands so as not to cause inflation to get established. Last week he called on businesses to exercise self-restraint on price increases for the same reason.
Neither workers nor businesses are taking any notice. In today’s Times, it’s Financial Editor, Patrick Hosking, explains why business won’t be any more than workers:
“Surely, when first introduced to an economics textbook, Bailey learnt that firms are not driven by altruism or patriotism but by market forces and profit? They will charge what the market will bear (…) While modern-day corporations have to consider many stakeholders, they still see their primary duty over the long run to maximise profits for the shareholders.”
There you have it.
Explaining what “charge what the market will bear” means, Hoskins adds:
“Until businesses see more capitulation by their customers, the price escalation will go on. Business will stop lifting their prices only if enough customers defect to competitors, trade down to cheaper lines or find near-substitutes. Or stop buying at all. For the poorest households, this has happened already.”
Nice system capitalism, isn’t it?
I thought I’d check what Professor Richard Werner, the leading academic currency crank (in fact the only one), had to say about the failure of Silicon Valley Bank.
He has claimed to have found evidence that an individual bank on its own can create money ‘out of nothing’:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521914001070
In an article on his blog on 16 March he argues that banks should not be allowed to fail because they create most of the money needed to keep the economy going. He seems to think that banks have two quite different and unrelated functions. To act as a safety deposit box, keeping safe money that people don’t want to use for the time being, and to create new money. Apparently, for him, the two are unconnected.
His blog item doesn’t address the question of why, if individual banks can simply create money ‘out of nothing’, they don’t create some, when they are in financial difficulty, to stop them going bankrupt; in fact, why they need depositors at all:
You’d think that, given what has just happened to SVB and Credit Suisse, those like him who argue that a bank doesn’t need depositors (whether individuals, companies, or other financial institutions) to be able to lend money would crawl away and hide in some dark corner. Unfortunately they won’t but will continue to point critics of the effects of the present economic system in the wrong direction.
I am not the moderator but this thread has become completely toxic descending into an exchange of insults that is a discredit to our website. I expect I am breaking the rules myself in posting this but Rule 7 of the Forum’s Rules is being consistently infringed by both sides.
7. You are free to express your views candidly and forcefully provided you remain civil. Do not use the forums to send abuse, threats, personal insults or attacks, or purposely inflammatory remarks (trolling). Do not respond to such messages.
