Is Corbyn right about "requisitioning" property from the rich?

[Takhisis]

It seems like they almost want to blame rich people for the fact that the fire happened. This sort of blame-shifting is not going to make anyone happier.

It's not as if rich people hadn't voided all regulations for health and safety and ordered that flammable materials be used as cladding (i.e. siding if you're a USian), effectively charging taxpayers for their homes to be turned into furnaces for them to roast in.

Edit: oh wait, it is!

 

[Manfred Belheim]

All rich people did that did they?

 

[Takhisis]

I dunno. Poor people caused Hillsborough (well, it was actually Thatcher's police, but that doesn't count) and it was decided to price poor people out of football. Price them out of housing, out of everything… there's a certain imbalance there.

 

[Traitorfish]

#notallcapitalistpigs

 

[Kyriakos]

#keepthemanyforthefew

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I dunno. Poor people caused Hillsborough (well, it was actually Thatcher's police, but that doesn't count) and it was decided to price poor people out of football. Price them out of housing, out of everything… there's a certain imbalance there.

Could you reply with an even bigger non-sequitur? I'm afraid I can only aware 8/10 for that.

 

[W|M]

#notallcapitalistpigs

Actually, workers are the real exploiters!

 

[Takhisis]

Could you reply with an even bigger non-sequitur? I'm afraid I can only aware 8/10 for that.

You are speaking about poor people (exploiters, as per wim's post) v. rich people. In the past 30-40 years we've seen the poor suffer what can only amounts as persecution.

Higher education didn't use to entail fees. Now people can be bankrupted by trying to pay tuition fees and loans alone.
By how much have football ticket prices risen again? Even taking into account inflation, there must be at least one zero added to them. (this was the example from above, which might have felt disconnected)
Hospitals… well, the destruction of the NHS still goes on.
On top of the ‘buy-to-let’ strategy from the Thatcher years, housing prices go through the roof because suddenly rich people want to buy homes to keep empty as an investment. The new highly combustible panellings have been installed to make tower blocks prettier under pressure from wealthier neighbours.

So, yes, this is a series of actions taken by rich people in order to acquire even more wealth from those who have (=are worth) less than them. If you can't own your home (or have a fireproof one at least), can't pay for your education, can't even go to a football match, then what are you meant to do at all? Sit in front of the telly swilling beer all day?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

what are you meant to do at all? Sit in front of the telly swilling beer all day?

That is precisely the impression that the wealthy and upper-middle class have of the low-income people of Alberta.

Back when Ralph Klein was our premier, he was persuaded to share some of the oil money with the people. So the decision was made to give every adult Albertan who qualified (18 or over, citizen, resident of Alberta, had filed an income tax form the previous year) $400. This payout was cynically dubbed "Ralphbucks" and lo and behold, an argument broke out. Some people wondered why the already-wealthy should get it when they obviously didn't need it, and the wealthy disapproved of the low-income/welfare/AISH recipients getting it because "they would only spend it on beer and popcorn." As for the homeless... unless they could produce ID with an address on it, they weren't eligible to receive any money.

A very few among the wealthy made a point of returning their cheques or donating them to charity.

As for me, my $400 was spent on 3 months' worth of utility bills, property taxes (I was still living in the family home at the time), and I ended up with $10 left over. I used that $10 to buy a paperback Star Trek novel - the first new book I'd been able to afford in years.

 

[W|M]

Anti-poor sentiment feeds into a positive feedback loop where anti-poor sentiments let the rich more easily get away with further destroying the living conditions of the poor, which makes them seem more lazy/criminal/etc. (due to being unemployed, having to steal food to survive, etc.), which feeds more anti-poor sentiment, etc.

You are speaking about poor people (exploiters, as per wim's post) v. rich people. In the past 30-40 years we've seen the poor suffer what can only amounts as persecution.

Not just in the past 30-40 years, class warfare has been going on for thousands of years, but it's just become more clear that the rich wage active war against the poor since the 1980s with Thatcher, Reagan, and neoliberalism in general

So, yes, this is a series of actions taken by rich people in order to acquire even more wealth from those who have (=are worth) less than them. If you can't own your home (or have a fireproof one at least), can't pay for your education, can't even go to a football match, then what are you meant to do at all? Sit in front of the telly swilling beer all day?

Starve, apparently

 

[Manfred Belheim]

You are speaking about poor people (exploiters, as per wim's post) v. rich people. In the past 30-40 years we've seen the poor suffer what can only amounts as persecution.

No I'm not, I'm responding to your (sarcastic) statement:

"It's not as if rich people hadn't voided all regulations for health and safety and ordered that flammable materials be used as cladding"

Which seems to be a justification for requisitioning property off some rich people on the basis that some other rich people did the things you say. As if somehow just being rich makes them accountable for the actions of other rich people. Which is stupid. Your response is to talk about the Hillsborough distaster and you don't see that as a non-sequitur?

If you can't own your home (or have a fireproof one at least), can't pay for your education, can't even go to a football match, then what are you meant to do at all? Sit in front of the telly swilling beer all day?

Not sure why I'm responding to this as it has nothing to do with what I said, but... that's just a little bit condescending don't you think? (Well it's condescending in tone, but in the details it doesn't even make any sense. The first two aren't examples of entertainment, so asking what you can do to entertain yourself if you can't do those doesn't mean anything. The third is just... why are you even talking about going to football matches? Even if you have an interest in football, and even if you can afford to go to matches, that's still never going to fill all your leisure time anyway. Why are you acting like it's the holy grail of entertainment and life is empty and meaningless without it? That's just bizarre.)

Also student loan repayments on the average wage are something like £30 -£50 a month, and below a certain income level you don't pay anything at all, so it's hard to see how anyone can be bankrupted by that unless they're living exceptionally beyond their means. But I suppose you'll provide a link to some incredibly unrepresentative story and then I'll be embroiled in a discussion I wasn't even attempting to have, so yay.

 

[Yeekim]

Higher education didn't use to entail fees. Now people can be bankrupted by trying to pay tuition fees and loans alone.

Well, what was the participation rate for higher education in 1950s vs that of today?
Wild guess is something like 5% vs 50%?

 

[Kyriakos]

^Paying 9K pounds/year isn't viable. It will effectively mean that only the rich can afford to study in uni, OR anyone who studies will be after very lucrative professions (eg doctor, civil engineer etc) and still will have to struggle to pay off his/her debt. 9x3, and another 9 for MA? 36 thousands pounds? That is 40 thousand euros...

Moreover, forcing students to pay 1K pounds/year (which Blair the Terrible started) was still problematic, albeit not so much due to the money (cause most students would be paying more than that for a dorm place), but because it felt as if you weren't actually accepted to uni since you had to pay a fee to be there. I did feel that way. It was very annoying, particularly when people i knew from school who got into university here were not paying anything, given there weren't any tuition fees.

 

[Flying Pig]

^Paying 9K pounds/year isn't viable. It will effectively mean that only the rich can afford to study in uni, OR anyone who studies will be after very lucrative professions (eg doctor, civil engineer etc) and still will have to struggle to pay off his/her debt. 9x3, and another 9 for MA? 36 thousands pounds? That is 40 thousand euros...

As a point of information, tuition fees are not charged upfront. You start paying them off only when you're earning (significantly) above the national average. Nor is there any requirement to pay them off in full - after forty years, any remainder is written off. The matter of living for three years while spending most of your time studying is a different question (and one that usually gets left out of the discussion), but tuition fees in themselves stop precisely nobody from attending university. Nor is it possible to be bankrupted by your tuition fees.

EDIT: This is not how it works in the US, however, where they do and it is.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Silurian: Good post

But these public sector organisations are not esteemed by me.

It is simply not their job to be advising anyone how to obtain a false paper trail of
compliance for buildings that are not compliant with government regulations.

If the government regulations are out of date, i.e. not taking into account
new materials and techniques, they might better draft updates to the regulations
(and derived government guidelines) for all to consider and comment
and, if appropriate, for the government to implement in due course.

Having a third tier of documents (their own guidelines) rarely helps;
as it diverts attention from the statutory requirement. That is not to say
that there can never be value in producing a guide as to how to use a
new material or technique, provided it does not contradict the regulations.
But a problem is that tertiary documents are taken to supersede regulations.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

As a point of information, tuition fees are not charged upfront. You start paying them off only when you're earning (significantly) above the national average. Nor is there any requirement to pay them off in full - after forty years, any remainder is written off.

I don't think that's quite true. My loans are on the pre-1998 system for which this is true. For loans issued since then the earnings threshold is lower (around £17,000 I believe for '98-'12 loans). The flipside is that with the old system the repayment amounts were fixed and dependent on the amount you had borrowed, so once you get over the earnings threshold you have to pay the full repayments and the more you borrowed the more you pay. With the newer system, the threshold is lower, but the amount you have to pay increases proportionally with your earnings over the threshold and doesn't depend on the amount you borrowed (although of course that will affect the term of the payments). Also I don't think they are written off after 40 years anymore. I'm not 100% certain on all of this but I think it's broadly correct. But I definitely agree that nobody should be being bankrupted by either system.

But really it's all kind of insignificant if you can't afford to go to football matches anyway.

Edit: Oh also that all relates to loan repayments, not tuition fee payments. I think tuition fees do have to be paid up front, but as you will most likely pay them with loans it amounts to pretty much the same thing.

 

[Flying Pig]

I don't think that's quite true. My loans are on the pre-1998 system for which this is true. For loans issued since then the earnings threshold is lower (around £17,000 I believe for '98-'12 loans). The flipside is that with the old system the repayment amounts were fixed and dependent on the amount you had borrowed, so once you get over the earnings threshold you have to pay the full repayments and the more you borrowed the more you pay. With the newer system, the threshold is lower, but the amount you have to pay increases proportionally with your earnings over the threshold and doesn't depend on the amount you borrowed (although of course that will affect the term of the payments). Also I don't think they are written off after 40 years anymore. I'm not 100% certain on all of this but I think it's broadly correct. But I definitely agree that nobody should be being bankrupted by either system.

You're right on the income threshold, which was lower than I thought. You pay 9% of what you earn above £17,775. The UK average income is £22,044, though it's lower (around £20,000) for those of the age to be at or leaving university. The point stands, however, that they can't bankrupt you - if you're making student loan repayments, they will leave you with an income of at least £17,775. If you don't have that, you won't be making repayments.

Looking around on the internet, the rules are slightly complicated but it amounts to saying that the loans are written off by (at the latest) 35 years after graduation, which can be sooner if you happen to be English or Northern Irish, or if you took them out before 2011.

As you say, tuition fees are technically paid upfront, but the loan system makes that pretty meaningless unless you choose (and can afford) to fund your course yourself.

 

[Kyriakos]

^That still doesn't sound good. Moreover i am sure it doesn't cover EU citizens, let alone non-EU foreigners (for whom going to british university means paying a ludicrously vast amount of money).

 

[Flying Pig]

No, it doesn't. EU (and other international) students pay dramatically more, and I don't think they're eligible for those loan systems. Still, it's difficult to see why market forces shouldn't be allowed to reign there - most of the arguments for promoting access to university cease to apply when the students are going to jet off home after their three years, and use the name of their alma mater to make an awful lot of tax money for some other government.

 

[Takhisis]

But I suppose you'll provide a link to some incredibly unrepresentative story and then I'll be embroiled in a discussion I wasn't even attempting to have, so yay.

If you don't want to have a discussion you might want to make clear what it is that you actually want to say and what you're replying to. Even so, the rest of your post doesn't much look as if you didn't want to have the discussion.

If the government regulations are out of date, i.e. not taking into account
new materials and techniques, they might better draft updates to the regulations
(and derived government guidelines) for all to consider and comment
and, if appropriate, for the government to implement in due course.

Yes, but the only thing the current government knows how to do with regulations is to abolish them.

No, it doesn't. EU (and other international) students pay dramatically more, and I don't think they're eligible for those loan systems. Still, it's difficult to see why market forces shouldn't be allowed to reign there - most of the arguments for promoting access to university cease to apply when the students are going to jet off home after their three years, and use the name of their alma mater to make an awful lot of tax money for some other government.

Charging foreigners might be a thing, of course. But during all the time that they are in the UK they are paying taxes and so on (they have to live, and anything they buy is taxed), so how much are they taking out? Never mind that, until whenever the UK finally left the EU, they would be contributing, back in their home countries, to the EU government which, pays, e.g., agricultural subsidies, pays for cultural programmes, etc.

Not just in the past 30-40 years, class warfare has been going on for thousands of years, but it's just become more clear that the rich wage active war against the poor since the 1980s with Thatcher, Reagan, and neoliberalism in general

Yes, but there was this NHS thing, for example, instituted and respected until the neocons disguised themselves as neoliberals and came back with a vengeance in the '80s, and still somehow survives.