Another great piece Kristian!… I haven’t read Gary’s book and have no intention to either. But I have seen him on question time not that long ago and what he was saying chimed with my own thinking. I started to write to the exchequer and governments alike from the turn of the Century. I had come to the same conclusion that the rich are getting richer and that meant there was no money in our day to day economy! In those days I could see money was also tight, but it had to be somewhere!? I experienced more in my lifetime than Gary. I experienced the 3 day week and the oil crisis of the early seventies! Oil went up and petrol with it. And gold first hit around $1000 an ounce. I also experienced the Thatcher years and the start of the Access card! Who incidentally I worked for for 6 years or so. I witnessed the ‘loads of money’ era and the down turn of the late 90s a definite recession in my view. And later the crash of 2008 that was totally expected if you looked at it. I certainly wasn’t surprised. I had my own business and despite me stocking fantastic goods I could not easily find buyers. So I started to think why after the late 90s recession. And I came to the same conclusion. The system is stacked for the rich to get richer and it’s because the poor were losing out and transferring wealth to those wealthy! So the poor were getting poorer. So both Gary and I came to the same conclusion it appears from your précis from different experiences. My thinking in gambling is not his. I have been in the past a thoughtful punter and the punter never wins! The bank or the bookie will always win overall. That’s what a set of books prices do! They are skewed to win overall. So if Gary used it for a big punt, I’m glad he won! But I don’t believe any punt is a stone bonker! It’s a punt that can work or not work out. He convinced himself enough to think it was a good bet that’s all. But he is right, someone has to lose to be the gainer! Money has to come from somewhere! In your précis Kristian you elude to the rich being less now than in the previous two/three Centuries. But you forget a few things Kristian. The use of ‘investments’ by the wealthy. With the advent of slavery and trading around the world the rich began to invest to earn more! So the Industrial Revolution was ripe for investors to begin their attack on our economy! Investments like gambling doesn’t always pay off! But, it didn’t stop them trying. Too much money makes them take more risks in the chase to be very rich! So investments are important to see the greed of the rich who funded most of that revolution. Also the Banks role became more entrenched as that money had to be put somewhere and let’s face it the Bankers wanted to treat it as their own money! Another reason why in 2008 the crash came! Leverage of money that wasn’t theirs with loans that were thoughtless and the gambling between Banks of those poor debts, it was easy to see a crash would come because a few banks ran out of money! Literally. A few other factors Kristian are the world wars, the thatcher years and exchange controls being removed, North Sea oil and coal! ( we’re on a mountain of coal but she stopped it!) we’re now paying for that decision! But also the killer inflation! Which is a market led phenomenon based on people like Gary being allowed to bet on it! How we ever allowed such madness is beyond me! Gambling that now lets that tail wag our economic dog! You can’t buck the market but you can close down markets! They are no god to anyone! We need one bank, one pension.. a proper state pension! We need one insurance company that allows everyone and you get out what you put in! All services are overrated and overpaid! They are all Ponzi schemes in my view as one day someone’s going to be holding the debt! We borrow because history tells us we have no way of earning enough and we hoard money by giving to to those who gamble with it, because we think it might not come back again! You cleverly state the level of wealth holders and their reductions of ownership of money over time. From heady days of the previous centuries of 10% holding 90% of money. To today where it may be they hold 60% of money. But think about it, they have bought Bonds! So have exchanged money for debts! That’s probably why they show holding less money. But whatever the reason it’s still huge and unbalanced! Too much money is being held by people who don’t spend it! Gary is right! Too much money is in the hands of the few rich! Not just here but worldwide. With exchange controls being removed by Thatcher she wanted money in! But in fact we now have our money going out!!!! So we are even poorer! No, we must reverse this trend. Put exchange controls back. Stop money going abroad. Bring back the money by making a new currency! Exchanged only by presenting the old money. Then see who has it! Snd refuse if it’s not legal. But make a currency in house on a digital card. Spend it or lose it to the exchequer. Earn as much as you can! But you have to spend it back in a month! That way the balance of scales will be more central and even more balanced. Not mega rich or mega poor, more just well off! Make benefits more and make wages much more! With all that spending it will be a tsunami of vat into the exchequer! They’ll have more revenue than they know what to do with! Much bigger pensions, bigger proper wages that shows work us best! But also really good benefits for those who can’t. Put a spend by date on all money! The rich will still be rich! On the stuff they buy! But like us all they have to spend it. A perpetual autonomous and streamlined economy that works for all or at least the majority! After all it’s a democracy! Now I know it’s extreme! But it’s a way that works!! We definitely need a spending policy that makes those who have it, spend it! It’s not the poor or the working middle classes it likely to be the rich. No tax is charged, triggered if paid by money unspent! Tax is only triggered by money moving dnd being spent. So if we need extra tax revenue it had to be found in money being spent snd it moved as that’s how tax works! Tax taken once is fine. But, tax taken time again by it flowing around the economy via spending brings in more! I agree with Gary but not his reasoning. We need sure things not gambles. So make the system work! The system we have doesn’t!
I agree with Gary's reasoning but not with Gary! What is the point of raising the revenue from a world record breaking wealth tax (communist places excepted when it was 100%). The government doesn't need the takings! It can literally create all it wants at the press of a few keys. But if inequality is off the scales and it is then what are the elements that make it so and how do we create more elements. If someone owned the periodic table and it had gaps in it you would permit filling those gaps, not create a Committee for the Prevention of Discovery of Element 43. We definitely need to permit building to 80 feet anywhere in the UK outside of SSSIs, NNRs and the two best national parks! Liberalise it all. No height limits at all within 10 minutes walk of a railway or coach station! Bring a property price crash now and all the doctors with their portfolios will scuttle back to work until normal retirement age!
An excellent piece by Kristian here to combine a part biographical with an academic paper in a single review.
But what about aesthetic inequality. Set local authorities free to provide beautiful municipal parks, clean beaches and pristine river sections for people to swim! If we must tax then go after the big country house owners with their mansions hidden behind a screen of trees and 8 foot walls. A beautiful house with balconies, dorics, and a roller on the gravel drive is an uplifting public good if visible from the highway just as a lighthouse is if viewed from a couple miles out at sea! So tax driveways!
Hi Andy! Whatever that was, well said! … there is only one element in an economy….money. Without which we are back to bartering. Money is an exchange for work, effort, enterprise and culture amongst others. But that exchange has become completely out of balance. For example, is a MP worth more than a nurse? Or is a television football pundit worth more than a front line soldier? In a modern forward thinking democracy, we must consider all our citizens. But we have to accept the will of the 51% over the 49%. Or rather the 49 have to! A bit like Brexit! (Except the winning vote in that was less than half the total electorate but, that’s another argument). However, we must consider the minority but not let that tail wag the dog. We all have a duty of care to one another, or at least that’s the theory. Money should represent fairly the work we all do. But increasingly that is not the case. But hey, you can’t buck the market, I’m happy we are free to spend all our money our work can produce. Take Wayne Rooney! If 50,000 people want to spend £100 each to watch him kick a ball around a park , then let them! Why not I say. But unless he spends that money back with those 50,000 then how can they keep coming back each week? In simple terms that shows a one dimension path of money, out! Or two dimensional if your Wayne as he has gone to work and earned his wage so for him it’s in!That two dimensional in and out is the book by which our accountant general Rachel Reeves is pondering over! But there are two more dimensions, or in your world ‘elements’ that she and Starmer have charge over that can help or hinder her in her duty of care to us. Those two dimensions are that money has to come back round again and again in, a third dimension and finally as every Dr who fan knows, you may be one Andy, the fourth dimension is ‘time’! How long that cycle of money coming back takes! Now while our accountant general has her head in a two dimensional dilemma that, appeared to leave her in tears, she is not looking at the bigger picture in the round! In 3D! Money has to move and come back round again. After all it’s the same money! It rotates around and around or is supposed to, so our economy works! So if she doesent get her head up we’re in deep trouble! …I blame Thatcher! She started this idea of governing like a household budget! And we’re still doing it now! …Well I’m not, I’m trying to see the path money should take, who said it? “Follow the money!”…but the principles stay the same, fair exchange of work paid for by money. Without money we can’t earn and without it we can’t spend. But in giving it in payment there is an expectation it will run its course and return once again next week or next month to be able to run the race again. We need to be assured it returns in a fair time. Not slow! We need to pay bills, loans and tax so it has to be fast don’t you think Andy? …I don’t know what you are worth paying as a wage as I have no idea of your worth but, without an element or driveway or municipal aesthetic in sight surely, you can see the value of money to you me and everyone else is survival. Without this cycle of joy we are all in the life’s toilet! Most of us work hard in life in the ‘hope’ that money comes our way for us to live and survive if we work hard or we have great inventions or plans or if we’re brilliant or the best. But hope is not good enough! We need rules!…whether we are just hard working, caring or diligent! And as we want to care for those who can’t we have a duty and the moral justice to help pay for those who can’t. But they are not on the scrap heap! They too can be all of the above but need help. Some will never be able to work as they are just unemployable! Who wants to give a job to a thief or drug addict? Some will but, mostly we will pay for them to stay at home! Whatever the reason we accept our duty of care to all. As we all know it could be us! We could all be in that pile given different circumstances. And let’s face it, workers can probably be replaced by most disabled people given the chance so their job security is not a given! Could your job be done by someone else Andy? Mine could. With millions of non workers and only one million jobs, some will always need our help, one day it might be you Andy! Or at least you will need a pension? My point is that Starmer is the one who can set the rules for money to return to us so why doesn’t he just change the rules then!? Because he can’t see it! He’s stuck like Thatcher in the household budget! Two dimensional thinking! Unlike Gary who can obviously see in a different way that things are wrong, Starmer can’t see beyond his calculator! We have dimwits in charge and have had for at least 50 years! The plan needed is as obvious as, a long driveway Andy! Make money come round again! And make it fast! And furthermore we need it in a pot that houses all us workers that spend all our money each month! Because we need it back again! Income tax is daylight robbery! As it’s taken before we have a chance to spend it! And enjoy it! So do away with it!…But in fact it’s not us who pay it! It’s our employers who pay it! When they spend on wages. We never get it! So what good is taking it once when if we were all to spend it, exponentially more tax is collected through VAT! …. Surely that’s better?….So tax on anything else but spending is not enough! In the words of that overpaid tv giant who later showed us all his true colours, “can you see what it is yet” Andy? Once we earn and spend we need others to do the same! We can’t hope anymore. Spend it too! And so on. So we get it back again! And the key Andy if you can’t see it is ….SPENDING! Not a tax on driveways or the bringing down of the downtown abbey Berlin Wall to smell and see the roses NO! Spending money back is required! So we can’t allow a system where the minority hold on to all the money and take years to spend it back! There is no tax collected or triggered on unspent money! So it’s useless to us workers!…,Do I think Alan Sugar is worth more to me than a nurse? No! But he had the right to earn his money but that right comes with a duty, a contract. In your words a municipal expectation it must come back! It’s not new money like you intimate, it’s old money used and abused old money. It’s the same pounds revolving around. Andy, thank you for your words of wisdom! But it was a rant. An incoherent reply. But the answer to this problem is even more simple than your effort. …Make all money move for the benefit of all. Think of it in your mind please Andy….A children’s party. Pass the parcel. A big bag of money is being passed around. The music is playing, laughter is everywhere and loud! Imagine yourself as that loudest child if you will…. Joy is abound. Then suddenly the music stops! Laughter is swapped with tears and screems, you are the loudest and most upset! You haven’t got the parcel! … No! …I’ve got it! I’ve got all the money! And everyone else hasn’t! Can you imagine the fear and dread of having no money, Andy!? ….Well I don’t want that for you or anyone else in real life. I just want the music to keep playing and the money revolving for us all to play!…. Just not Rolf Harris eh!
Another great piece Kristian!… I haven’t read Gary’s book and have no intention to either. But I have seen him on question time not that long ago and what he was saying chimed with my own thinking. I started to write to the exchequer and governments alike from the turn of the Century. I had come to the same conclusion that the rich are getting richer and that meant there was no money in our day to day economy! In those days I could see money was also tight, but it had to be somewhere!? I experienced more in my lifetime than Gary. I experienced the 3 day week and the oil crisis of the early seventies! Oil went up and petrol with it. And gold first hit around $1000 an ounce. I also experienced the Thatcher years and the start of the Access card! Who incidentally I worked for for 6 years or so. I witnessed the ‘loads of money’ era and the down turn of the late 90s a definite recession in my view. And later the crash of 2008 that was totally expected if you looked at it. I certainly wasn’t surprised. I had my own business and despite me stocking fantastic goods I could not easily find buyers. So I started to think why after the late 90s recession. And I came to the same conclusion. The system is stacked for the rich to get richer and it’s because the poor were losing out and transferring wealth to those wealthy! So the poor were getting poorer. So both Gary and I came to the same conclusion it appears from your précis from different experiences. My thinking in gambling is not his. I have been in the past a thoughtful punter and the punter never wins! The bank or the bookie will always win overall. That’s what a set of books prices do! They are skewed to win overall. So if Gary used it for a big punt, I’m glad he won! But I don’t believe any punt is a stone bonker! It’s a punt that can work or not work out. He convinced himself enough to think it was a good bet that’s all. But he is right, someone has to lose to be the gainer! Money has to come from somewhere! In your précis Kristian you elude to the rich being less now than in the previous two/three Centuries. But you forget a few things Kristian. The use of ‘investments’ by the wealthy. With the advent of slavery and trading around the world the rich began to invest to earn more! So the Industrial Revolution was ripe for investors to begin their attack on our economy! Investments like gambling doesn’t always pay off! But, it didn’t stop them trying. Too much money makes them take more risks in the chase to be very rich! So investments are important to see the greed of the rich who funded most of that revolution. Also the Banks role became more entrenched as that money had to be put somewhere and let’s face it the Bankers wanted to treat it as their own money! Another reason why in 2008 the crash came! Leverage of money that wasn’t theirs with loans that were thoughtless and the gambling between Banks of those poor debts, it was easy to see a crash would come because a few banks ran out of money! Literally. A few other factors Kristian are the world wars, the thatcher years and exchange controls being removed, North Sea oil and coal! ( we’re on a mountain of coal but she stopped it!) we’re now paying for that decision! But also the killer inflation! Which is a market led phenomenon based on people like Gary being allowed to bet on it! How we ever allowed such madness is beyond me! Gambling that now lets that tail wag our economic dog! You can’t buck the market but you can close down markets! They are no god to anyone! We need one bank, one pension.. a proper state pension! We need one insurance company that allows everyone and you get out what you put in! All services are overrated and overpaid! They are all Ponzi schemes in my view as one day someone’s going to be holding the debt! We borrow because history tells us we have no way of earning enough and we hoard money by giving to to those who gamble with it, because we think it might not come back again! You cleverly state the level of wealth holders and their reductions of ownership of money over time. From heady days of the previous centuries of 10% holding 90% of money. To today where it may be they hold 60% of money. But think about it, they have bought Bonds! So have exchanged money for debts! That’s probably why they show holding less money. But whatever the reason it’s still huge and unbalanced! Too much money is being held by people who don’t spend it! Gary is right! Too much money is in the hands of the few rich! Not just here but worldwide. With exchange controls being removed by Thatcher she wanted money in! But in fact we now have our money going out!!!! So we are even poorer! No, we must reverse this trend. Put exchange controls back. Stop money going abroad. Bring back the money by making a new currency! Exchanged only by presenting the old money. Then see who has it! Snd refuse if it’s not legal. But make a currency in house on a digital card. Spend it or lose it to the exchequer. Earn as much as you can! But you have to spend it back in a month! That way the balance of scales will be more central and even more balanced. Not mega rich or mega poor, more just well off! Make benefits more and make wages much more! With all that spending it will be a tsunami of vat into the exchequer! They’ll have more revenue than they know what to do with! Much bigger pensions, bigger proper wages that shows work us best! But also really good benefits for those who can’t. Put a spend by date on all money! The rich will still be rich! On the stuff they buy! But like us all they have to spend it. A perpetual autonomous and streamlined economy that works for all or at least the majority! After all it’s a democracy! Now I know it’s extreme! But it’s a way that works!! We definitely need a spending policy that makes those who have it, spend it! It’s not the poor or the working middle classes it likely to be the rich. No tax is charged, triggered if paid by money unspent! Tax is only triggered by money moving dnd being spent. So if we need extra tax revenue it had to be found in money being spent snd it moved as that’s how tax works! Tax taken once is fine. But, tax taken time again by it flowing around the economy via spending brings in more! I agree with Gary but not his reasoning. We need sure things not gambles. So make the system work! The system we have doesn’t!
I agree with Gary's reasoning but not with Gary! What is the point of raising the revenue from a world record breaking wealth tax (communist places excepted when it was 100%). The government doesn't need the takings! It can literally create all it wants at the press of a few keys. But if inequality is off the scales and it is then what are the elements that make it so and how do we create more elements. If someone owned the periodic table and it had gaps in it you would permit filling those gaps, not create a Committee for the Prevention of Discovery of Element 43. We definitely need to permit building to 80 feet anywhere in the UK outside of SSSIs, NNRs and the two best national parks! Liberalise it all. No height limits at all within 10 minutes walk of a railway or coach station! Bring a property price crash now and all the doctors with their portfolios will scuttle back to work until normal retirement age!
An excellent piece by Kristian here to combine a part biographical with an academic paper in a single review.
But what about aesthetic inequality. Set local authorities free to provide beautiful municipal parks, clean beaches and pristine river sections for people to swim! If we must tax then go after the big country house owners with their mansions hidden behind a screen of trees and 8 foot walls. A beautiful house with balconies, dorics, and a roller on the gravel drive is an uplifting public good if visible from the highway just as a lighthouse is if viewed from a couple miles out at sea! So tax driveways!
Hi Andy! Whatever that was, well said! … there is only one element in an economy….money. Without which we are back to bartering. Money is an exchange for work, effort, enterprise and culture amongst others. But that exchange has become completely out of balance. For example, is a MP worth more than a nurse? Or is a television football pundit worth more than a front line soldier? In a modern forward thinking democracy, we must consider all our citizens. But we have to accept the will of the 51% over the 49%. Or rather the 49 have to! A bit like Brexit! (Except the winning vote in that was less than half the total electorate but, that’s another argument). However, we must consider the minority but not let that tail wag the dog. We all have a duty of care to one another, or at least that’s the theory. Money should represent fairly the work we all do. But increasingly that is not the case. But hey, you can’t buck the market, I’m happy we are free to spend all our money our work can produce. Take Wayne Rooney! If 50,000 people want to spend £100 each to watch him kick a ball around a park , then let them! Why not I say. But unless he spends that money back with those 50,000 then how can they keep coming back each week? In simple terms that shows a one dimension path of money, out! Or two dimensional if your Wayne as he has gone to work and earned his wage so for him it’s in!That two dimensional in and out is the book by which our accountant general Rachel Reeves is pondering over! But there are two more dimensions, or in your world ‘elements’ that she and Starmer have charge over that can help or hinder her in her duty of care to us. Those two dimensions are that money has to come back round again and again in, a third dimension and finally as every Dr who fan knows, you may be one Andy, the fourth dimension is ‘time’! How long that cycle of money coming back takes! Now while our accountant general has her head in a two dimensional dilemma that, appeared to leave her in tears, she is not looking at the bigger picture in the round! In 3D! Money has to move and come back round again. After all it’s the same money! It rotates around and around or is supposed to, so our economy works! So if she doesent get her head up we’re in deep trouble! …I blame Thatcher! She started this idea of governing like a household budget! And we’re still doing it now! …Well I’m not, I’m trying to see the path money should take, who said it? “Follow the money!”…but the principles stay the same, fair exchange of work paid for by money. Without money we can’t earn and without it we can’t spend. But in giving it in payment there is an expectation it will run its course and return once again next week or next month to be able to run the race again. We need to be assured it returns in a fair time. Not slow! We need to pay bills, loans and tax so it has to be fast don’t you think Andy? …I don’t know what you are worth paying as a wage as I have no idea of your worth but, without an element or driveway or municipal aesthetic in sight surely, you can see the value of money to you me and everyone else is survival. Without this cycle of joy we are all in the life’s toilet! Most of us work hard in life in the ‘hope’ that money comes our way for us to live and survive if we work hard or we have great inventions or plans or if we’re brilliant or the best. But hope is not good enough! We need rules!…whether we are just hard working, caring or diligent! And as we want to care for those who can’t we have a duty and the moral justice to help pay for those who can’t. But they are not on the scrap heap! They too can be all of the above but need help. Some will never be able to work as they are just unemployable! Who wants to give a job to a thief or drug addict? Some will but, mostly we will pay for them to stay at home! Whatever the reason we accept our duty of care to all. As we all know it could be us! We could all be in that pile given different circumstances. And let’s face it, workers can probably be replaced by most disabled people given the chance so their job security is not a given! Could your job be done by someone else Andy? Mine could. With millions of non workers and only one million jobs, some will always need our help, one day it might be you Andy! Or at least you will need a pension? My point is that Starmer is the one who can set the rules for money to return to us so why doesn’t he just change the rules then!? Because he can’t see it! He’s stuck like Thatcher in the household budget! Two dimensional thinking! Unlike Gary who can obviously see in a different way that things are wrong, Starmer can’t see beyond his calculator! We have dimwits in charge and have had for at least 50 years! The plan needed is as obvious as, a long driveway Andy! Make money come round again! And make it fast! And furthermore we need it in a pot that houses all us workers that spend all our money each month! Because we need it back again! Income tax is daylight robbery! As it’s taken before we have a chance to spend it! And enjoy it! So do away with it!…But in fact it’s not us who pay it! It’s our employers who pay it! When they spend on wages. We never get it! So what good is taking it once when if we were all to spend it, exponentially more tax is collected through VAT! …. Surely that’s better?….So tax on anything else but spending is not enough! In the words of that overpaid tv giant who later showed us all his true colours, “can you see what it is yet” Andy? Once we earn and spend we need others to do the same! We can’t hope anymore. Spend it too! And so on. So we get it back again! And the key Andy if you can’t see it is ….SPENDING! Not a tax on driveways or the bringing down of the downtown abbey Berlin Wall to smell and see the roses NO! Spending money back is required! So we can’t allow a system where the minority hold on to all the money and take years to spend it back! There is no tax collected or triggered on unspent money! So it’s useless to us workers!…,Do I think Alan Sugar is worth more to me than a nurse? No! But he had the right to earn his money but that right comes with a duty, a contract. In your words a municipal expectation it must come back! It’s not new money like you intimate, it’s old money used and abused old money. It’s the same pounds revolving around. Andy, thank you for your words of wisdom! But it was a rant. An incoherent reply. But the answer to this problem is even more simple than your effort. …Make all money move for the benefit of all. Think of it in your mind please Andy….A children’s party. Pass the parcel. A big bag of money is being passed around. The music is playing, laughter is everywhere and loud! Imagine yourself as that loudest child if you will…. Joy is abound. Then suddenly the music stops! Laughter is swapped with tears and screems, you are the loudest and most upset! You haven’t got the parcel! … No! …I’ve got it! I’ve got all the money! And everyone else hasn’t! Can you imagine the fear and dread of having no money, Andy!? ….Well I don’t want that for you or anyone else in real life. I just want the music to keep playing and the money revolving for us all to play!…. Just not Rolf Harris eh!