The Austerity programme was especially egregious as it directly punished poorer people for the follies of the rich.
The austerity years should be viewed as the greatest transfer of wealth from poor to rich in history. Poor and vulnerable people had to foot the Bill so the banks could compensate already wealthy people for their gambling on the derivatives market.
See, the problem is that this whole idea of āpersonal responsibilityā is nothing but a huge distraction. Poverty is its own massive tax.
Apparently I already posted this in October, but it bears repeating again. Thereās not much you can say about personal responsibility when being poor itself is a huge hindrance. I know it, because Iāve lived through years of stress about trying to make ends meet and Iām acutely aware of the costs and how difficult it is.
Poverty is also often structurally reinforced, e.g. through food deserts in the USA, or the cheapest takeaway foods in the places Iāve lived in with high poverty often just being deep-fried food like fried chicken or chips. That takes a toll on physical health itself, and also eventually, mental health.
When youāre poor, and struggling, you donāt often get second chances. You donāt get to fail over and over again like spoilt Etonian brats. Because once you do, you can almost never make it out.
Deep down, I would be deeply conservative as a matter of personal values, if we all lived in a society where everyone has at the minimum equality of opportunity. But we donāt. There is far more to be done about other causes of poverty than the idea of personal responsibility, which is at best a complete distraction from the pressing issues at hand.
And following the themes of what @Mascot just said, Iād very much rather give my hard-earned tax money to fund welfare benefits, than spunk it up the wall on sleazy politicians and their cronies.
Yep - I was 96 intake. Graduated in 2000
Snap. I took a gap year so went in September 96 rather than 95. Finished undergraduate degree in 99 and post-graduate degree in 2000.
Since weāre now getting into the real story of what happened in the Biblical timesā¦hereās what really happened after the floodā¦
Easy nowā¦ the problems in the US are not related to what heās referring to. Hard work and ethics.
bullshit. and thatās not just America, itās common in many countries.
Anyone who has a half a brain and some initiative can make a decent living if they try. thereās walk-on jobs in construction here right now that are $20/hr to push a broom around a site FFS. Problem is who doesnāt want to work, theyāre on the fucking dole because our useless Liberal fucking leader is throwing the country into debt by sending biweekly cheques to these lazy fucks at home.
Iāve got guys who can barely speak English working for me right now who are grossing $50-60k/year because they show up for work every day and actually get work done. Itās that simple.
I donāt know whatās so shocking that it warrants that āstunned faceā gif, but itās true.
The complete lack of empathy and understanding displayed by that comment perhaps? There are many reasons why people might not be in that narrow situation you describe. A single mother raising children perhaps. Or the people with injuries/disabilities. Or people who cannot work some hours because of the need to care for others with such injuries/disabilities.
Conservative bullshit only tends to work when you look at specific anecdotes, and usually tends to fall apart when you look at it from a systemic perspective.
itās just one scenario, and Iām neither Liberal or Conservative. At what point do folks come to the realization that the system of elitist oppression goes back thousands of years. Sadly to say, we are actually moving forward in terms of class and racial equality as opposed to many examples in history you can easily read in a book. Those who have, will always want a leg up on those who have not. And they get to write the rules. There are families going back hundreds of years who are so wealthy itās beyond measure, and they control the banking institutions who rake BILLIONS of dollars annually from those of us who have no choice but to take loans to purchase a home.
For those who want to elevate themselves, opportunities are there. thereās a joke in our family, goes like this:
How do you turn $40 into $400? Fill your tank with gas and go to work!
1990 - 94 for me. I donāt know what I would have done if the option of paid fees and a grant wasnāt on the table. I couldnāt even drive when I started uni. I took a sandwich year out, got placed with a major UK contractor and earned enough to get lessons and pass my test.
Noting though that I wish different options were also available to me back then. There werenāt many. Uni or college or try to find a low paid local job of which there were very few. While it gave me a good route out it in some ways locked me into a career In an industry that is pretty brutal in many ways.
And it didnāt fix the UK debt problem. Cameron is a damn evil slimeball in my book.
I donāt think thatās the case everywhere myself. A small rural town where industry has been closed down and then ignored, think small mining towns in South Wales or northern England doesnāt offer much to some people. Even being reliant on public transport can be a painful and a real problem in itself.
This is one reason why I believe governments need to step in.
thereās going to be an exception for example. thatās a progression of industry and society. Thereās derelict old towns scattered everywhere, when an industry came in and business was booming until it was not.
Iād be curious to find out how the rural coastline regions of Japan are doing post-tsunami, how their recovery is progressingā¦ completely unrelated, but notā¦
I believe that opportunity is easier to find in some places compared to others. To illustrate from my personal experience:
I remember my dad being unemployed in the early 80s and on Thatcherās scrap heap. This went on for years. We lived in a council house on the Wirral and times were very hard indeed, with barely enough food, and all the problems that go with poverty were all around. I remember going to school with a hole in my shoe and putting cardboard in the bottom, which did nothing in winter. I remember the end of the year school trip to Alton Towers, and the teacher sitting me down and asking how much I could afford, as the school subsidized it. Poverty is crushing, and humiliating, even to good people who want to work and build a life. My dad would have done anything at the time to work and provide for the family, and he applied for anything he could find. There simply wasnāt the work at that time.
Compare to today, where I live in the States, if anyone wants a job anywhere around here right now, they can easily get one. Multiple jobs $15+ per hour, unskilled, in all manner of places. Granted, you arenāt getting rich if that is the peak of your ambition, but there is definitely a path to earn enough money to get by, albeit modestly.
I know that there are lots of places in America that are closer to what I described in the first paragraph, but the point Iām making is that opportunity is much easier to find in some places compared to others.
Thatās where government needs to step in, to invest, so that more people might have access to opportunity.
And yes, at that point, once government has done its job and helped to create better opportunities, I still maintain that part of the solution to poverty is then taking personal responsibility.
But to be clear, no amount of hard work and āliving rightā is going to change the wider circumstances, if the opportunities are not there, so there is very much a role for both government and the individual to play.
of course the opportunities are varied from place to place.
I personally believe that those who rely on the government to step in and improve their situation are leaving a big chance to be disappointed.
Just wondering how you went from a council house on the wirral to living in the States?
Partly being nosy but also, is it a path that other people can take from the same starting place? Not necessarily to the USA, but even to a better life in the UK?
I went to Birmingham University. Met an American girl. Her dad was actually a visiting professor at the University for a while. Along the way we got married. We didnāt move to America then though. We lived in Leicester, then Northampton. Had two kids along the way. Never had any great plan to move to America, and in many ways we liked various places in Europe more.
Personal circumstances intervened. Nearly lost our daughter to a health thing when she was a little girl. She is alive and well today, thank God, and doing well as a High School senior. But that episode prompted my wife to want to live nearer to her family, especially her mum, and they are all in central Indiana, so we moved here at the end of 2008.
Even though we had been married for 11 years before we moved here, I had to get a green card and then I upgraded that to citizenship when Trump came into view, as he looked like a cock, and I didnāt want to be on the wrong side of one of his whims.
I think on this issue there is a bit of a culture clash between America and the UK.
Having straddled both countries and seen all sides of it, they could actually do with taking a leaf out of each otherās book.
I want to live in a country that is more compassionate than America. And at the same time, I want to live in a country that emphasises personal responsibility a bit more than the UK (with the caveat of opportunity being created, as I mentioned).
Is that place Canada? I dunno, but itās cold up there.