The 'source' has some cheek claiming there are 'no examples'. Maybe the TUC didn't collate them, but welfare campaigners have been suffering the necessity to debunk them for two and a half years non-stop now. Here's a few, I'll post more later. Number One: The government started early in conflating expenditures lost to fraud and error: error in benefits made both by claimants and by the DWP is rather common, but fraud isn't. By lumping the two together, ministers exaggerated the prevalence of fraud in the system.
They treated this as a mere technicality and insist they have never misrepresented benefit fraud; except that this figure was only being reported in newspapers being briefed, who then printed articles with direct quotes from ministers. Government peer David Freud even apologised for conflating fraud and error, but he's the only minister to do so and quickly did it again anyway.
Number Two: The government has repeatedly tried to paint the rise in Disability Living Allowance claimants as inexplicable. It isn't. It's largely a change caused by demographics, along with a mechanism inserted into it by the Conservative government in 1992. You can't claim DLA if you are pension-age and must claim Attendance Allowance instead for a disability. However, if you are already claiming DLA when you reach pension-age, you may keep claiming it rather than moving to Attendance Allowance. This means that DLA was siphoning many of the on-flows for pension-aged Attendance Allowance. Aside from the demographic changes, the rise is in the pension-aged group. The government responded to campaigners that challenged them by conflating the AA-siphon with demographics, avoiding acknowledging it at all. The only acknowledgement to have come out was a DWP research paper which was deliberately delayed whilst the Welfare Reform Bill was going through crucial votes in Parliament. They released it almost three months later, in the middle of the August riots where they thought no one would notice.

what was it a minister said about this?
erm, we want examples not anecdotes? - how many have to die to count as an example?

agreed these people need to be dragged out of office NOW!

What, and be left with the far more catastophic alternative of Labour?

Go to the top of the class! Great to see a well-researched comment!

Some astute observations there.

rabbitlug I'm surprised you could understand it :)

Aw bless you Lee

@twitter-21316278 Thanks Andy :) I need it .

Good comment

I think Labour should ask people the following question

do the tories have ordinary peoples best interests at heart in trying to attack welfare claimants?

the answer is a resounding NO

What's the point of asking Labour to ask a question when you've already decided what the answer is.

A bit like this poll really.

I'm sorry but what does this even mean? The poll asked the public what they believed, before and after being given the true facts. They didn't believe the government was right to cap benefit increases given the reality of benefits. No good you objecting to reality, what do you think it makes you look like?

Very often there are no true facts here. Just the facts that you represent to fuel your side of an argument.
The tories are trying to remove the drag on the economy caused by debt, labour and the liberals are attempting to provide services for all. The trouble is, that on one side you can have the seeming heartlessness of cuts and removal of services whilst on the other you have the bankruptcy of the country.
Up to you, pick your truth... or try and think out of the box

Labour are not responsible for the mess the economy is in, the banks are. Stop swallowing the crap that the right-wing rags feed you. The country is far from bankrupt, there is plenty of money, it is just held in capital and not moving. If it were, the debt would be manageable. Let's not forget that Labour got debt to a much lower level of GDP (%35) in 2008 -before the banks caused the crash, than it was when the last Tory government left office (%42).

"Very often there are no true facts here. Just the facts that you represent to fuel your side of an argument."

Name one falsehood, other than those peddled by the Coalition. Go on, name one. Or go away with your baseless assumptions.

"The tories are trying to remove the drag on the economy caused by debt, "

Their austerity has increased the deficit, as they were warned it would. The changes they are making are ideological, and mysteriously coincide with their core free-market beliefs rather than any retrenchment plan. For example they are privatising services, which always cost the taxpayer more while making corporations rich. The reorganisation of the NHS has cost money. the work programme cost 500million pounds and had a lower success rate than no programme, by their own calculations. they are a disaster

"whilst on the other you have the bankruptcy of the country. "

Says you, with such confidence. Countries cannot go bankrupt, it's a myth. Sorry you don't even know that.

Right then, regarding Ed Balls and the structural deficit :-

“The IMF declared today that Britain’s structural deficit was £38bn worse than originally thought and running at £73bn or 5.2% in 2007 – a year before that ‘global economic crisis’ Ed Balls hides behind. Here is what he told Marr in January 2011:“I don’t think we had a structural deficit at all in that period [before the recession]”

Isn't that a falsehood? You said to name one, I really was a bit spoiled for choice.

As far as increased deficit - of course the deficit has increased, because the coalition has piddled about with wielding the axe thanks to lilly-livered LibDems. As a result of the spending plans of the last Labour government, the first step was to stop the increase in spending, before any plan to reduce the deficit could be enacted. Because the reductions haven't been swift enough (in stark contrast with what happened in the private sector) the deficit has kept rising (albeit at a reduced rate relative to the plans Ed Balls would seem to prefer). If you have a mortgage, you know how this works, the debt goes up at first and it is a long time to start biting into the initial loan value. If you pay back less than that required to pay off the loan after the term then the debt just keeps increasing.

As for the sanctified NHS. It desperately needs reorganising. It wasn't designed for the treatments, drugs, age, health tourists etc. etc. it is currently being subjected to treating. Also, over the years, a lot of inefficiencies have crept in to the system that they would be well advised to turn to the private sector to learn from (or even to outsource to). What is wrong, is burying your head in the sand and just saying that any changes are wrong. That is just ignorant and stupid.

Countries can go bankrupt in fact, if maybe not in name. Greece is bankrupt. A number of countries in Africa are bankrupt. They can't get credit and are outside of normal banking protocols.

As I said, there are very few firm facts in the world. So pick a side and argue it, but don't hide behind the illusion that you have facts on your side, because in the world of politics, facts are in very short supply.

When I was a child, growing up in the valleys of South Wales, I thought very much as you do. Now, thankfully, after I have lived life experiencing many more different situations, my viewpoint has matured considerably, perhaps you should consider trying to look at life from more than one frame of reference too?

Sorry, are you sure you came to the right page? Glad as it must make you to think you have come up with an example of lying as I asked, though I think you would be far better employed re-reading the Conservative and Liberal Democrats' 2010 election manifestos for politicians' lying big time, the issue here is the way the Coalition has lied about benefits and demonised the vulnerable to enrich the elites, and not anything about the lamentable Ed Balls bullshitting his way out of questioning about the structural deficit on the Andrew Marr programme, least of all when Balls is as guilty as George Osborne of sucking up to Big Finance and causing the problems we have now, for which those least responsible are taking all the punishment, and from which corporations are now being allowed to profit more than ever before. To return you to our topic, here are some facts:

"70% of welfare budget is spent on retirement age benefits

3% of welfare budget spent on unemployment benefits

Percentage lost to fraud 0.7%

Percentage of people claiming JSA for more than one year 27.8%

The LOWEST fraud rate is on
Disability Living Allowance, fraud rate of 0.3%, this is because this
benefit is already severely restricted and a very strict claimant
process is in place, currently just 2% of all applicants actually
qualify for any level of the benefit."

The Government has exploited people's ignorance in order to carry out their agenda, which has less to do with 'paying back the deficit' than allowing the wholesale looting of taxpayers through Benefits and Health reforms, whilst launching an attack on those who depend on these services, and this is costing and will continue to cost lives. Fact. From the article above: " by a margin of three to one, people think the squeeze will mainly hit
the unemployed. When told it will also affect low-paid workers receiving
tax credits, people oppose the move by 40 to 30 per cent. Only one in
four people believe benefits should go up by less than wages or prices,
while 63 per cent want to see them linked to wages, prices or both." Another inconvenient fact, within the context of this debate, for you.
And don't you call me ignorant and stupid and refusing to accept the need for change, when I and many others have the measure of the NHS reforms in that they will make things worse for those who need the service most. No system is perfect, and nobody could object to sensible, value-for-money reforms. There are no excuses for what is being done to the NHS now, It is the greedy looting the needy, and lives are at stake.

So I quoted an example of lying, which you accept, but for some reason, it "doesn't really count", even when it comes from the Labour guy who speaks for Labour on economic matters. Very surprising you can sweep his lies under the carpet so comfortably.

My point regarding deficit reduction is still valid. Vent your spleen if you wish, but the rich are the most able to move away from taxation, like the "evil" capitalist corporations like Apple, Google and Starbucks. Considering that "big business" and relatively a very small number of individuals fund everything in this country, what do you think will happen if the "vast majority" get their way. ? Everyone will live in some neo-socialist Utopia? Paid for by who? Because the capitalists will be gone, taking their money, their industry and their drive with them. Do you want that to happen? Look at Hollande in France...

At the end of the day, a country is the same as a business is the same as a person. It has to live within it's means. The Labour party were addicted to debt because they were completely economically inept. You cannot remove the people who make money as that will damage the long term prosperity of the country. So what do you have to do then?

Obviously, the answer is to cut. Cut services, cut benefits, remove the rights of individuals to sit back and have things given to them. That, I'm afraid, is the stark reality. It might be unpopular, but it is an absolute reality that is inescapable. I am not affiliated to any party or dogma, my views have developed as the son of a Labour councillor from the valleys of south Wales. I've seen recessions, been unemployed, a student, had good jobs and not so good jobs. I was fortunate in some things that the state provided, however, I have not had any help from the state for a large number of years now, even when my family had to choose not to heat our home for two winters because we had no money, and our kids only got fed thanks to the help of a relative.

I've seen both sides in my life, and there are liars and spinners and idiots and trolls on both sides, I am not one. We all have to admit there are a large number of things that are wrong with our society, many of which are traceable back to Brown/Blair, many from the tory era before and many more again that we have accrued over time. To ignore these things and base your entire argument on various "snapshot" facts and popular opinion (which is laughable, the government should govern and lead opinion and do the right thing, not the popular thing, which alas too few governments have actually done) is false and obfuscates the underlying requirements for bringing this country out of the mire it is currently in.

I actually did not call you stupid or ignorant, I said it was ignorant not to admit that ... passive voice ... and you agreed with that, which is all to the good.

At the end of the day, I doubt we will agree, but just because someone at the TUC spins a story doesn't make it true, even as the same happens from activists for any political viewpoint.

Like I said, think outside the box. If that's a problem for you then so be it, rant and rage and quote figures and obsess about details, it changes absolutely nothing, no-one actually really cares what either of us think anyway.

"The country is the same as a business"

No. no. no. No it is not. The country is dependent on its businesses and households tax revenue as one side of a 3-part system. If, in recession (or rather depression as it's proving now) 2 of those parts (namely the households and businesses) are fiscally constrained and reluctant to invest, it doesn't do anyone any good if the third party (government) fails to aid the other two on the basis of misguided austerity. When the revenues plummet in the long term from failing businesses and the even greater disparity between rich and poor households, that precious budget which you think is worth all the pain and suffering will never be balanced. There is more and growing evidence for this than the ludicrous 'expansionary austerity' doctrine that has hit Europe and the UK like a plague.

Just recently Deloitte and a number of other Accounting firms have released a gloomy report on retail, the main factor being the reduced consumer budget. Whatever you may think about the moral virtue of living within one's means, if you are using public policy to make everyone poorer, you will destroy your nation's businesses. What the 'evil' super rich corps as you say are afraid of mostly is that government investment in infrastructure and alternatives on the large scale can loosen their grip on providing for national GDP. After all, who would need them then? As for the financial sector, you want thinking outside the box? How about Iceland, who actively engaged in household debt relief and put their criminal bankers in prison. Since they have bounced back with more vigour than we ever will with our corrupt establishment

Thank you for putting me in my place, pity the opinion is rot. No matter how entwined modern economics and nations and global economics is, at the end of the day - if you pay more than you earn you are doomed. Nations have all sorts of resources to call upon, but the same end result is there for them should they continue to ignore this fact. Your argument is actually rather akin to saying that if I fall off a cliff it's up to me whether I splat on the floor or not ... gravity is optional.
The Icelanders sorted their affairs out. Good for them, I have huge respect for them. We haven't done that as our judicial system is completely unfit for purpose too. That has absolutely nothing to do with the central theme of my comment which is that you can only afford to pay for what you can afford to pay for. At some point you have to make debt manageable, turn your back on credit or come to the end of your credit line. The latter one of these is Ed Balls's option and the same mentality got us into the state of requiring IMF funding in the 70's. At the end of the day, the country needs it's exporters, everyone else is just recycling money in one way or another. It is that tiny minority of people we have to keep hold of and all this class war rhetoric will just make them jump.

They are not using public policy to deliberately make people poorer, just trying to live within their means and ensure everyone gets what they deserve, rather than just redistributive equality.

If everybody was to 'live within their means', as you say, what would be the point of banks or financial markets? Getting a mortgage certainly isn't 'living within your means' in the strictest sense. I don't think that the rent seekers who lobby and fund government policy are so much concerned about making people poorer rather than protecting the value of their huge levels of crippling household debt (that they own as assets) which would otherwise be whittled away by debt relief or demand-led inflation. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if City fund managers actually did believe in the virtues of saving and thrift, as long as it didn't have to apply to them.

Well, there wouldn't be one. Living on loans isn't sustainable for individuals, nor is it for governments. If more housing was built (and there is massive demand), prices would fall and mortgages would become les necessary. It's fine to take out one or two loans, as long as they can be paid back and they are not a lifestyle choice.

You just don't like our "corrupt establishment" because it's not a Socialist "utopia". These cuts are not "ideologically driven", they are the neccessary and logical consequence of stupid redistributive tax and spend policies and the state overreaching itself. It's responsibility is to provide roads and infrastructure, health, education, and ensuring its citizens don't starve and have a house, and to protec them from terror and crime.

I consider myself a Social Liberal, not a socialist. I believe in the
state having a role as mediator in tough times (ironically something the
Tories pre-Thatcher also believed in), not creating an overreaching
tyranny which arguably has already been created by the city finance
firms in its stead. My point about state spending is that it is not
necessary to bow down to such firms on their every whim. I do wish you
would provide some backup that they are a 'necessary and logical
consequence'. In fact, that notion and a lot of other supply-side zombie
economics about 'Expansionary Austerity' is being contradicted by
evidence from the bond market (via yields and sales) and obviously the
terrible state of growth. How many exuses about 'confidence' and 'the
Eurozone' are enough? There was a very good article by Ramesh Patel re
this issue with relevant sources

If big business moves away, that leaves room for smaller local firms.If they're not paying any taxes, why should we care when they go?

It's not big businesses, or not just big businesses. They do pay lots of taxes, just try and minimise CT. They pay rates and employment taxes and NI (tax), so the more people a big business employs, especially if it has a positive balance of trade with other countries, means there is a net influx of money into the country by the virtue of all the taxes which that company pays to employees and also it's suppliers and their employees.
Where will the little companies come from? If the entrepreneurs can't see the value of setting up those companies in such a hostile environment. If you are going to put your family through hell to create a business, there needs to be something at the end of the rainbow (potentially) to make all the misery worthwhile. That's the real danger of this rhetoric and hostility to high earners.

But herein lies the limits of your reasoning:

"Where will the little companies come from? If the entrepreneurs can't
see the value of setting up those companies in such a hostile
environment."

The same applies to a country in recession, particularly one under austerity. As wages decline (and have done since the 70s) relative to the cost of living, as more lose their jobs, both directly in council layoffs due to cuts, and secondarily due to the fall in aggregate demand created by rising unemployment, ALL firms are disinclined to hire more workers. Many large corporations are sitting on huge 'cash piles,' afraid to invest for fear of lack of demand (and no amount of tax breaks will make them invest where there is no demand), meanwhile the SME struggles to gain access to credit, and struggles with falling demand. This is fine for the big companies, who love the trend towards monopoly as they buy up failed smaller businesses. Austerity becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, a downward spiral for the nation, as evidenced by the rising deficit: Benefits receipts have increased under the Tories and will continue to do so, while tax revenues fall, due to rising unemployment and depressed demand. If the agenda of the government is to cut the deficit, then they are doing all of the wrong things. Economists Joseph Stiglitz, and Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureates both, agree. Which leads me to think that actually, the Tory agenda isn't deficit reduction, it is idealogical. At first I thought they were just stupid, with a highly selective reading of economic theory, but it becomes clear that their intent isn't deficit reduction or a stable economy, it's the creation of a low wage state (via high unemployment), trashing of the social structures such as the NHS so that their failure can be declared, and they can be replaced with private institutions. Basically, capitalism in crisis, not content with perhaps the largest stratification of wealth in recent memory, needs/wants more markets, so these markets must be opened up, either by war and conquest, or by economic warfare. Here we see just that, with the banks, the IMF and credit ratings agencies holding a gun to the heads of numerous governments, and demanding that they sell the family silver, ironically to pay for a crisis which was in large part the fault of the very same people who benefit the most from the continued crisis.

As for your spouting the myth of private companies always being more efficient, I have two words: Rail privatisation. On every key metric, (number of services, number of accidents/fatalities, cost to the tax payer, cost to the end user, punctuality) it is a failure. Only the deluded would argue otherwise. In fact, I have another example: The US healthcare system, which the Tories so badly want to emulate in many ways, costs more than any other on the face of the earth by a long margin, and it's actual health outcomes are an embarassment for an 'advanced' nation,and that's before we consider the tens of millions who are still not adequately covered. If you're poor in the US, you are best taking a holiday to Cuba, which in spite of the decades long economic embargo, has universal healthcare.

As for the allocation of tax revenues, I would argue that actually government spending can be brought into line without these attacks on the poorest, and thus unfortunate enough to not have a job when unemployment is high. Firstly, the hundreds of billions given to the various failed banks could have been saved, and the banks allowed to collapse under the weight of their prolifigate greed, fraud and idiocy. If that is unacceptable to you under the dogma of the too big to fail mythology, then they could have been actually nationalised, rather than only nominally nationalised without any of the benefits of real nationalisation (ie their profits becoming government revenue): Currently their losses are socialised and their profits privatised. Secondly we could scrap trident 2 (not content with our existing ability to wipe out a continent with ease, a more advanced way is needed apparently). Tax revenues can be raised by higher marginal tax rates on high earners (which for all their whinging are nowhere near the levels seen in the 60s and 70s), a crackdown on tax evasion (by all, not just the rich) and greater taxes on capital gains and 'rent seeking' behaviours. A financial transaction tax could help dissuade some of the riskier speculative behaviour the banks engage in, and raise revenue along the way.

And before you trot out the tired 'the rich will take their toys and go abroad' argument, let's have a quick think on that idea. Do you honestly think that Starbucks (we'll use them as an example as you mentioned them earlier) will 'take their toys and go home' if we make them pay more tax? You honestly think that taxation at a higher level, that still leaves a good portion of their impressive profits untouched, will cause them to leave the country? What complete, mind numbing piffle. How about Google? Or Phillip Green? He'll close Topshop, Vodafone et al, and forgo his enormous business and personal profits (paid to his wife in a tax haven anyway) and leave the country? Complete nonsense, although it is a useful myth for certain agendas to propagate. You use France as an example, but Gerard Depardieu does not a statistic make. I see no reason that businesses and wealthy individuals should pay a lower effective tax rate than someone like me, who earns a modest salary.

The money raised could be spent on infrastructure projects, green energy developments (ultimately lowering energy costs to all, increasing cash available for consumer spending and thus increasing demand) and other public works projects, raising employment levels, increasing aggregate demand and ultimately making the nation more energy independent. More people earning money would raise tax receipts, and the introduction of a higher minimum wage could have the effect of ending the state subsidy both of low earners and their poor paying employers (yes, tax credits are a subsidy to business also, if you think about it - the state subsidises poor pay, in effect).

I am by no means blaming only the Tories here, successive governments have taken a short sighted approach and squandered tax revenues spectacularly. Labour's little experiment with privatisation, PFI, is terrible value to the tax payer in the long run. The deregulation of finance (and indeed labour and capital, leading to offshoring of many UK jobs, and the increased dependence of our economy on finance and service jobs) under Thatcher, and the failure of subsequent governments to do anything to create a sensible regulatory environment for banks allowed the proliferation of 'exotic financial instruments' such as CDO's and CDS's, and also allowed the lowering of reserve requirements and the loosening of lending requirements allowed the entire house of cards to be built, with banks holding paltry reserves, sometimes lower than 2% of liabilities (including IOUs from other, also technically insolvent banks). Remember too, that it was the banks who wanted less regulation, and they lobbied hard to get it. The so called 'free market' utopians have remarkably little to say on the matter of the state's 'socialism for the rich' largesse to the banks.

The crisis itself is in my opinion a product of the huge wealth disparity, and the deregulation of the bank and finance sector, as well as the offshoring of the productive economy to the far east in pursuit of short term profit gains. The number of parallels with the 1929 crash is actually striking, except in the US in the 30s efforts were made to remedy the problems, with progressive taxation and sensible regulation of the banks put into place to prevent another crash(Glass-Steagle as an example). Then as now, consumers were forced to live on credit due to falling wages and rising costs, and then as now bubbles formed, exacerbated by fraud and poor regulation, and then as now a crisis occured. Alas, today the religion of neoliberalism (and it is a religion, contradictory evidence does not affect it's adherents) and the greater stranglehold of banking and finance on national economies makes change difficult. Add in the dominance of a range of regressive economic and social myths (neoliberalism, benefit cheats), without a countervailing political ideology worthy of mention, and add in highly concentrated mainstream media ownership which is devoid of true criticism, and we find ourselves absent any forces capable of challenging the status quo.

As an end note, it is worth musing on the research that suggests that EVERY social ill you care to consider, from teen pregnancy to divorce, suicide, murder, drug abuse and mugging, is exacerbated by large disparities in wealth. The more unequal your society is, the worse all of your social problems are. In many ways, one could argue that current Tory policy is pro-crime, anti family, pro-drugs and pro-murder. But that would be very facetious.

Good if very long response. Two additional points I would make:-
1) Hollande in France is trying a bold experiment - if it fails we need to think again.
2) We - the person on the bus - need to be active in this process. When non tax payers are identified we should be clear about being non-users of their service. Boycotting Starbucks and Amazon is easy, Google is more difficult but note who advertises on Google and let them know that you will not be using them while they support Google. The consumer must act with a view to ethics and their own long term benefit
Ben

I agree with you about the banks to some degree. Labour made a shocking job of bailing them out as it did. But interestingly they WEREN'T nationalised because that would have been the end for them. However, the nation carries those debts, we should be major shareholders of those banks and when the good times roll again, we should be able to keep our shareholding in them until the debts and the interest are paid off via dividends. That is a reasonable expectation. Though it is a gamble.

As to more or less everything else you have said I think you need to consider how money gets into the country, how it goes out (foreign holidays, ludicrously well paid foreign footballers, Chinese made-Apple sold trinkets, debt repayments etc. etc.) look at why debt is bad and how much of our skin the Chinese own now and also to open your mind to the fact that state controlled interference in economics and redistribution of wealth fails. That's what brought down the USSR after all.

There is a strong body of evidence that points to the fact that a completely free market is a much better scenario than the mish-mash of interferences and regulation we currently have, as the market would be forced into an equilibrium given the time and the opportunity to reach it.

I don't really fancy living in a UK where everyone is poor. I want to live in a country where everyone dreams of a bright future and a prosperous present, not a dreary end-of-communist -Russian homage to dogmatism and the class warrior rhetoric that seems to be all the rage at the moment (this is spoken as a working class son of an ex-steelworker). Unfortunately, the majority of people in this country don't seem to agree with me, which is fine, no doubt the truth lies somewhere in-between.

Social ills are not caused by the disparity in wealth, they are caused by competition for limiting resources, which could be anything from water to a particular friend. What they all have largely at least (not wanting to make too many sweeping statements here) in common is sociobiology and avarice to underpin very biological urges to compete that are programmed in all of us. We do have moral frameworks, or should do at least to counteract some of the worst of this though, but in the real world bad things happen don't they...?

Thanks for your measured and well thought out response :) I suppose we will never necessarily agree on all of these things, even though we come from similar socio-economic backgrounds. On the free markets comment, my last 5 years+ of research in this area leads me to think that the free marketeers occupy as much of a utopian fantasy-land as do the die hard communists: The die hard's forget that their goods and services travel on public paid for roads, that their educated and healthy staff are in that condition because of tax revenue and the state, that regulation, although so often taking the form of red tape, often also protects the weak from the strong, Certainly in the case of finance, it was deregulation that helped to facilitate the 2008 crash, as I noted earlier.

I suppose the question to me is 'what kind of world do we want to inhabit?' Do we want to live under the economic brutalism of unrestrained capitalism, where ecological damage and dead, impoverished or sick workers are an 'externalised' cost of doing business, and unrestrained financial speculation in the casino world of finance sucks money from the very real world of creating and trading goods and services, distorting markets against the poor, SME's and workers, facilitating, and indeed accelerating, trends towards monopoly, and undermining one of the central tenets of capitalism - competition.

A truly free market is an elegant idea on paper or in the heads of the pure maths economist, but it is doomed to trend towards monopoly, and towards the dominance of a limited oligarchy/plutocracy. It results in a form of social darwinism, the opposite in many ways of the dream of the meritocracy (due to entrenched wealth and power, our 'betters' are foten no better, but were fortunate to make the correct choices before birth), which I find neither long term sustainable or desirable. Markets, and specifically the profit motive as the main driving, nay, defining quality of a social and economic system leaves little room for concerns which, at least in my opinion, should be more important than the sanctity of 'the market,' (a human construct in spite of it's depiction as a 'natural force'), thats purpose should be (again my opinion) to facilitate and cater for human need and development, not to enrich the few at the expense of the many, and at the expense of the ecosystems that sustain us all.

Indeed, if capitalism, or a big business where your friend, it would be a terrible friend: a thief, an exploiter and liar. It seems odd to me that our economic structures so celebrate almost everything that is wrong with the human condition: and social attempts to prove we are more advanced than our ape cousins are attacked ad infinitum by an economic class who most benefits from the decimation of the social safety net, through their darwinian vision of a free market. The bottom line, is that in many areas the profit motive is not, and never will be aligned with human or ecological need: There aint no money in feeding the poor. The same goes for private involvement in healthcare. When I'm treated, or indeed anyone is, I would like to know that the ONLY concern is the health outcome, not profit, then the health outcome.

And if it's social darwinism that we are to pursue as a economic and social policy, then why not just go the whole hog and instigate true darwinism? The banker, the billionaire, or the venal politican so keen on decimating the social structures that in some ways represent our humanity, can fight me for the mating rights to their wives, and for the privilege of keeping their bonuses and wealth. Why continue regulating the individual with such burdens as the rule of law, when institutions and the wealthy wish to be freed from any constraints on their behaviour? Anyway, I jest, rant and digress massively, but it's fair to say I am no attendee at the churches of the free market or neoliberalism.

I accept that greed and selfishness are aspects of human nature (I would argue that altruism, empathy etc are equal if not greater components of this nature, and certainly the ones we celebrate), and I no more want to live under the grey facade of some communist dystopia than you, but there is an effort underway, now in it's most aggressive phase, to break the uneasy social compact between capital and labour that existed in the postwar period, and to replace it instead with a capitalist dystopia, where the few control the huge majority of wealth, and the many are left to beg and fight over the scraps. As part of this action, the propaganda of the 'underserving poor' is back, and the pushing of junk economics becomes necessary in the pursuit of 'reducing the deficit,' even though these efforts thus far have only increased it, and nobody can adequately describe the mechanism by which austerity works, because there is not one. I can't remember the economist, and I paraphrase, but I read a quote recently: 'Never has austerity pulled an economy out of recession.' It is not intended to work, it is intended to destroy the remainder of not just the social structures of support and redistribution, but the very concept of egalitarianism, and all for the gain of a few. These wealthy 'rational actors' in the economic game are collectively pursuing an irrational outcome, which is social unrest and irreperable ecological collapse. Perhaps when this occurs the poor will cease to vote with their ballot papers or their wallets, and they will vote instead with the brick, or the noose. 'I'm a reformist, don't make me a revolutionary' I suppose is my point.

Finally, as I am going on far too long again, you are right that I was wrong to conflate cause and correlation between wealth disparity and social ills, but there is a correlation. Google, or better still read, 'The Spirit Level,' which attempted to collate huge amounts of peer reviewed material on wealth stratification with information on social problems, and found that overwhelmingly, the more unequal a society, the worse it's ills were. Its conclusions were at first accepted even by the Tories and Cameron himself, although is has since been aggressively challenged by a number of right wing think tanks. In spite of the challenges to it's conclusions, I am still of the mind that many of it's conclusions are valid.

Thank you for the invigorating debate my friend, it's good to exercise the old brain now and then :)

1) Whether or not high taxes drive away the rich (which they do, see Hollande and Depardieu in France, and certainly more in the case of individuals than companies), progressive taxtion, like all redistribution, is morally wrong. It's not fair to take money from the rich, which they have earnt, and give it on a plate to the poor, who haven't. It also encourages avoidance, and lowers incentives to create wealth.
2) Perhaps a small % of crime is caused by inequality, but to attribute teen pregnancy to it is clutching at straws a little, isn't it? If prison was a real deterrent, rather than a state-funded Butlin's camp, it would stop people committing minor offences for a bed for the night, and other crimes are generally caused by psycopathic tendencies, pure stupidity, or or just people wanting something for nothing.

Because big businesss create more jobs and wealth than small ones.

The IMF did not declare any such thing. This "declaration" was from a treasury "analysis" which it claims was based on an IMF report.

Who's cherry-picking now?

Cherry picking assumes biased selection, that quote was just hanging about as a piece of flotsam amongst all the other pearls of twisted logic trotted out by the class warriors of the labour party (who are strangely, generally, much more middle class than am I). So Balls blustered about a considered analysis of a report rather than the exact wording of the report itself. I seem to remember him being a bit less than his usual ebullient self in facing that question.

Of course, regarding falsehood and politicians - you have to get them to answer the question first don't you?

How about Gordon Brown saying that "Labour has abolished boom and bust"

No, the huge interest payments on Labour's debt is what has increased the deficit. There needs to be a Labour Tax (aka Moron Tax) on anybody who has ever voted Labour. The only problem is that so few Labour voters can hold down a respectable full-time job.

It is very interesting you claim the cuts simply don't go far enough and this is the reason it's increasing the deficit. Surely it has occurred to you that the more you cut, the more you need to cut because the economy is reliant on the public services you're dismantling.

Rebalancing takes decades, you can't simply slash 150 billion from the budget with this economic backdrop, as the Tory's are now finding out. A slow, more controlled withdrawal of the state is necessary and less cutting needs to be done in the long run if growth increases revenue anyway.

Right now, the cuts are causing recession and recession is cutting revenue and lower revenue means more cuts. I've never seen a conservative answer this, this is the point in a debate they know their position is fundamentally broken but insist this is the only way. You see it time and time again on every vaguely political show. They believe it's the only way for purely idealogical reasons, it's ideology that informed their opinion that cutting public spending would revitalise the private sector and create growth. It was ideology that informed their opinion that quicker was better. It was ideology that informed their opinion that cutting taxes for the wealthy would...something. I still don't know why they did that, although I could certainly speculate. But none of this has proven true and I'm amazed that their response is always go faster, when trying to go faster is what got us in this mess in the first place.

So recession has nothing to do with debt in nations around the world then?
Do you not think that the state is too invasive, it interferes where it doesn't have the wit or right to interfere and on the other hand, the people in our state are becoming an increasing burden?
Essentially - we in the UK have become fat off the years of Empire and since then have managed to lull ourselves into the belief that credit, transactions, and "Britain" has a right to a certain standard of living. That attitude absolutely needs to change. I completely agree that you cannot simply slash and burn, but we are over-reliant on the state and our benefits and our tax credits etc,. etc. and that has to change. We have had universal education for over 100 years and yet our literacy rates are going down. Why? Because the state treats people as numbers and resources and the people (not all by any means) take services for granted, like education.
We also don't have time - Asian economies will increase their pressure on us, the states looks like it is going to decide to ignore the fact that it won;t be able to pay off it's debts to the rest of the world and all the while competition for resources intensifies because of use and population explosion.
We need to readjust and become more agile, we can't do that with a large state and a large debt. It needs to be managed, true, but we don't have forever to do it.
The largest explosion in new businesses is always in times of a recession by the way. Those people take risks, and the good ideas survive to provide those people with a good living that they fully deserve for having the drive, passion, and courage to go for it. Why should the state therefore take an ever larger chunk of the pie from them without actually giving them any voice in whether that is appropriate or the right thing to do?
At the end of the day, all of this is just biology. Is the queen in charge of the ants nest or are the workers in charge of the queen?
At any rate, debt is very bad, recessions happen, but if you are indebted you have no way of mitigating the storm, that was Gordon Brown's legacy. All economies are in a dynamic equilibrium, like the world's climate is, so when you try too hard to regulate it, you usually end up getting bitten where it hurts most, the most sensible tactic long term is to stay fit and agile and put something aside for a rainy day.
Works on the personal level, the company level and it would work on the national level. Of course there is always Apophis and 2036 is it? Then none of us might care less and all of our states will collapse, as will the global economy. But lets not get too gloomy ;)

They didn't ask me.

Completely agree with James and Arecbalrin and I'm sure I can not stand up to them.
One question I always asked myself and never really knew where to post it.
Where did we actually reduce the deficit? So far it has only increased and we have cut the befits. Wonder where all the 'savings' went.

Whats about asking: Do Labour have the best interests of the economy at heart or do they merely use ideological socialism based on envy of the rich and successful on which to base their policies?

Excellent opening comment to this debate, thank you.

No 1s going to take you on, seriously informative

But someone did. They never cease to amaze, no matter how often you confront them with the truth.

The fraud versus error thing is particularly galling given that a Government report says that one of the drivers of fraud is a perception that it is common - so surely on a practical level, exaggerating it is counter-productive!

The problem with your argument is that the overwhelming majority knows of at least one person milking or expert playing the system to get maximum benefits for minimum effort. This diminishes sympathy and undermines sensible reforms to ensure those who genuinely need and deserve help get it.

This is the opposite of the informed opinion you are responding to. An empty assertion. It is as if you have entirely failed to understand the point of the comment or the article, or the poll. Mission Accomplished Happy65. Next for you, why "we should tax the rich less."

I think the point Happy is making is that the human mind responds to anecdotal evidence more than statistics. When you hear (as I have) someone on jobseekers say "I like chilling" or "I'm not working in f***ing McDonalds!" or "Wasn't there a job going in the bakery? I can say I applied there.", or someone on disability say "I don't have to work cos I acted cuckoo in the doctors and they think I'm not right in the head!" that's what you remember, even though these scavengers are actually a tiny minority.

Those who base their 'opinions' on this kind of gossipy stuff make me despair that they have the same right to vote as those who use their minds and do some research. What many people call their 'opinion' is actually only a prejudice, which requires no thought or knowledge at all.