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Re: The state benefits system mega-thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter (Post 36006805)

Now that the baby boomers have got their free degrees and have achieved positions of power, they have stopped the above for most students and implemented tax cuts

Be careful, there are those who take your correct assertions as personal attacks on the aged :)

Re: The state benefits system mega-thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter (Post 36006781)

And to top it all off, those who had a free university education along with grants, Housing Benefit etc then pulled the ladder up for those coming after them.

---------- Post added at 19:38 ---------- Previous post was at 19:35 ----------

Well, it wasn't the individuals who did this, it was the Government. There again, it could be argued that it was many of these people who voted for the Governments that did these things.

Edit: I've just been reading that Thatcher made no mention of privatisation in her first manifesto.

Individuals vote for Governments. Free money for now, debt for future generations and a one time opportunity for a windfall.

Re: The state benefits system mega-thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jfman (Post 36006683)

So household budgets being drained by private sector companies has no effect on the economy? That's a startling claim, even by your standards

It is true that bills have gone up. The intention was to fund the infrastructure investment needed. One of the problems of nationalisation, as you find time and again, is that investment and service standards suffer.

Of course, it is fair to say that some of the privatised utilities have not performed as well as they should, which reveals that more contract monitoring needs to take place.

Re: The state benefits system mega-thread.

Or that it just doesn't work. People pay either way, privatisation is a way to shift the costs onto the poorest.

Re: The state benefits system mega-thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jfman (Post 36006941)

Or that it just doesn't work. People pay either way, privatisation is a way to shift the costs onto the poorest.

Well the nationalised railways certainly didn't work.

Re: The state benefits system mega-thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by OLD BOY (Post 36006968)

Well the nationalised railways certainly didn't work.

Ask £5000 a year commuters if privatisation and increased competition lowered prices.

Re: The state benefits system mega-thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jfman (Post 36006969)

Ask £5000 a year commuters if privatisation and increased competition lowered prices.

Compared to what? There is no sensible comparison available. At least a private company will aim to keep costs down and attract customers.

Re: The state benefits system mega-thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nomadking (Post 36006976)

Compared to what? There is no sensible comparison available. At least a private company will aim to keep costs down and attract customers.

And the state couldn’t do that?

As far as I can tell state run TOCs return profits to the treasury, and privatisation has left the loss making element (Network Rail) under state ownership anyway.

Consumers pay anyway, through the price points or through taxation.

Re: The state benefits system mega-thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jfman (Post 36006982)

Ones run by socialists.

Re: The state benefits system mega-thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nomadking (Post 36006990)

Ones run by socialists.

Why would they not seek to save on expenditure? It’s money they could spend elsewhere. Infrastructure, health, social care? :confused:

What we know is capitalism is happy to let people die in the pursuit of profits. Pharmaceuticals 101. Limit supply, push prices up.

Re: The state benefits system mega-thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jfman (Post 36006997)

Eg Greece, where it ended up being cheaper to pay for people to travel by taxi, than continue to fund the railways.

Company X makes drug A, whilst company Y makes drug B, and Z makes C. That is not only common sense, it keep costs down by not having excess unused capacity from all 3 firms each making all 3 drugs.

Re: The state benefits system mega-thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nomadking (Post 36006999)

Can you translate that into English and more importantly explain why people needlessly die due to the cost of medical care? Either that not provided by the NHS or failed insurance based mldekd elsewhere.

Monopolies don’t keep costs down to the consumer. Don’t they teach capitalists basic economics?

Re: The state benefits system mega-thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jfman (Post 36006982)

Most of the UK's train companies are state-owned anyway. Which treasury do they return their profits too?

German state-owned
CrossCountry (100%)
Chiltern (100%)
Grand Central Railway (100%)
London Overground on behalf of TfL (100%)
Northern (100%)

Dutch-state owned
East Midlands Railway (60%)
Greater Anglia (100%)
Merseyrail (50%)
ScotRail (100%)
West Midlands Trains (70%)

French state-owned
Eurostar (55%)
Gatwick Express (50%)
South Eastern (50%)
Southern (50%)
Thameslink (50%)
Transport for Wales Rail (50%)

Hong-Kong state-owned
South Western Railway (30%)

Italian-state owned
C2C (100%)
North West mainline (30%) (from December)

UK state-owned
LNER (100%)

Re: The state benefits system mega-thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jfman (Post 36007001)

If 3 firms have to EACH build 3 plants giving a total of 9 plants, but only one for each of the 3 drugs is needed because of the level of demand, then the cost and resources used to build that total of 6 unnecessary plants has to be recovered by higher prices. There can be drugs where the demand can be increased, but for the most part demand cannot be increased.

A comparison is where thousands of developers all independently decided there was a huge untapped demand for housing, and massively overproduced new housing leaving a lot of it empty and UNPAID for. That in turn hit the banks who didn't get their money back, and guess what happened?
Ireland

Quote:

A decade after the crash, Shannon Valley housing estate, on the outskirts of Ballaghaderreen, in Co Roscommon, remains unfinished and partly in ruins. Although the number of “unfinished housing developments” has fallen sharply since 2010, Shannon Valley is one of hundreds that still dot the country.

Spain

Quote:

Between 2000 and 2008, around five million homes were built in Spain as developers looked to take advantage of cheap credit and regulatory incentives provided by the government.
But as the US subprime mortgage catastrophe unravelled and economies everywhere shuddered, Spain’s housing market collapsed while the world entered a global financial crisis.

From Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy(PDF)

Quote:

ABSTRACT: This article addresses the phenomenon of abandoned or failed
commercial or residential developments, sometimes referred to as “zombie
subdivisions” in America, and “ghost developments” in Europe. Both arose as a
result of the real estate market disintegration after 2008. Around the world, but
particularly in America and in certain European countries, developers ran out of
funds and were unable to finish their projects, resulting in non-completed or
largely vacant “zombie” or ghost properties. Such abandoned properties can be
found throughout America and Europe, but they are more common in particular
Intermountain states in the United States, and in Ireland, Spain and Portugal.

Re: The state benefits system mega-thread.

So competition, and by proxy capitalism, is bad?

Not the point I thought you were aiming for but there we go.