What's wrong with the UK ... and the USA ....and...?

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/16/after-recession-britain-...

17 June 2014 6:45pm

Some key points from this article that require some urgent rethinking by the older generation whose obsession with low taxes, deregulated free markets, and something for nothing gains from property have brought Britain to the brink of collapse with no easy way back to stability or unity.

Average worker pay adjusted for inflation is down 8%.

For under 25's it is down 15%

Graduates are doing work that was previously done by school leavers.

" There comes a moment when when people's emotion turn to anger. Because they are treated disgracefully."

The alarm bells have been ringing for decades but Parliament dozes on.

The social cohesion of the nation is almost gone - the young are handed debts of many tens of thousands of pounds for an education the old had for free, the young are forced into jobs that pay slave labour wages making home ownership unaffordable, whilst the older ones buy up residential homes for multiple holidays or for investment purposes

The older generations go on cruises and jet off to the sun, whilst the young grovel for jobs that do not pay a living wage.

And where did this wealth for the lucky but selfish generations come from - not from God, not created, but mostly acquired from those who have been deprived of it through rip off pricing, rip off fees, an unfair tax structure, tax dodging by the better off, and above all through housing inflation.

The UK housing market has for four decades been a monstrous Ponzi scheme that has wildly inflated the value of houses to more than double their true value through effectively sucking up the earnings from each follow on generation to an ever greater degree, as they pay more and more for less and less.

In the process our entire banking system has been corrupted, no longer serving the industry of the nation to produce the goods we need and pay our way in the world through exports carried in British ships, manned by British seafarers and built in British shipyards.

Instead finance is so enmeshed in the housing market that the necessary major fall in house prices would bankrupt the banks - hence they once more want to package up mortgages and sell them on to suckers.

Sooner or later Capital taxes will have to substantially rise to rebalance the wealth between generations, to rebalance the economy towards self sufficiency in Europe, to pay for the rebuilding of our national infrastructure, and to pay for stronger defences in the face of the rapidly growing interlinked global problems of climate change , mineral depletion, peak oil, over consumption, and food insecurity that threaten to cull the human race if we do not come together to manage this rock in space for mutual good.

Wake up everbody: there is no way back to the country of old, and no way forward that the nation can survive without replacing our disfunctional failed Parliament, for here is the heart of of the matter. London has ill served the needs of the nation as it has cravenly bowed to the demands of the wealthy, sold off our industries to overseas interests that plunder them, and sold out the birthright of all young people to have a fair start in life.

Our bad governance was not made in Brussels, Berlin or Paris, it was made in Westminster.

To survive we need a Federal England, a Federal UK and a Federal European State.

17 June 2014 7:59pm

Kind of agree with all you say Alarmcall, except, you make no mention of the fundamental cause of all that's wrong with system as is. That is fractional reserve banking, the system that has allowed the transfer of wealth from those that create it to those who don't, by means of fraudulent 'thin air' money creation.
A beautiful system of deceit, 99% of people do not understand ...... much to the delight of the banking fraternity.Alarmcall nixy45

• 17 June 2014 9:09pm

  As I understand it, fractional reserve banking is integral to the functioning of banks to provide long term finance for credible legal investments through the smoothing of the aggregated likely demand for withdrawals by depositors; to this end the expansion of the total available to lend is some imaginary amount that is a multiple of what is deemed to be a prudent reserve held by the bank.

  I do not know if there is a better alternative way to finance new enterprise. What is clear is that the system has been pushed to breaking point, particularly on Wall Street and in the City of London, by incredible lending, sometimes with illegal side bets, and by hiding liabilities off balance sheets or mis-representing the true risk of loans and selling them on. In short greed has got the better of many of the major participants with incestuous bonus systems driving further extremes of wrong doing.

  I doubt that many western economies will ever be able to pay off their national debts and when this becomes more apparent to more and more creditor nations, there will have to be some kind of internationally agreed mechansim to handle this that may see a return to fixed exchange rates and restricted capital flows.

  What is clear to me is that planet Earth does not have the physical resources to sustain global growth economies for much longer, and that the speed with which we are polluting the atmosphere and seas, degrading the fertility of soils and over exploitation in general are all signalling that humans are on a suicidal course to a much smaller global population well before the end of this century. The days of markets dictating to governments are nearly over. The question is which nations will survive long enough to have any influence over their fate.

  This is no time to be a failing small nation.

  Only strong regional groups can give hope of weathering the storms ahead or influence the global choice between co-operation to mutually share all vital resources including defence rather than the road to global warfare that we are currently on. Hence my deep concern about the dire state of Britain and our foolishness in not doing all we can to unite our nation and to build a United States of Europe whilst we still have a choice.

  nixy45

18 June 2014 8:55am

1

Thanks Alarmcall for your considered reply.
The fundamental is the lack of honesty.
You lend the bank £10..... the bank lends out £100!! So now your £10 worth of purchasing power has been taken from you.
The beauty of this fraudulent system is it create more demand than there would otherwise be. We (those who have access to the fraudulent money) buy houses......NOT because we actually need then, rather because they are perceived to increase in 'value'. Of course it has been no perception.
So people buy more stuff and planet resources than they would naturally do.....ALL due to the corrupt banking system.
Even Chinese are buying flats in the UK, off plan, They don't need them. They perceive the prices will rise due to the BoE money creation. So the young here have no chance.....ALL due to the corrupt banking system.

18 June 2014 9:41am

If we carry on as we are, warfare will dominate this century as civilisation collapses in the face of revolutions in a climate ravaged world in which food, water, energy, minerals and habitable land are fought over by nations and within nations.

The world is in desperately need of visionary leadership to reduce inequality between and with nations so that global problems can be tackled by rational reforms for mutual benefit.

18 June 2014 10:33am

Who is the nearest we have to visionary leadership??

I'd suggest one who advocated the incarceration of ALL PEOPLE who used or threatened to use violence for attacking others. This sounds so obvious as to not require further thought, doesn't it?

The corrupt bankers only behave the way they do because THEY KNOW the government will FORCE tax payers to bail the bankers out.

Without this threat of force, the force government has over tax payers, the corrupt bankers would end up in jail. They would be exposed for the crooks they are. Trouble is, the entire western world is as dependant on fraud as any drug addict. The banking pushers know this.

Articles such as this helped to open my eyes.
https://www.mujahidkamran.com/articles.php?id=28

"It was Baron Nathan Mayer de Rothschild (1840-1915) who once said: "I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England to rule the British Empire on which the sun never sets. The man that controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply."

Of course some have said these quotes are not true..... but look were we are now...... if he did not say it. It certainly is the type of thing an arrogant banker might say.