The answers are relatively straightforward. Apart from paying decent benefits and appropriate pensions (neither of which happens in the UK at present) we also need to:
Build affordable social housing in sufficient quantity that everybody might enjoy it.
Ensure that essential public services, such as water, gas, electricity, telecoms and transport are affordably accessible to everyone.
Guarantee free healthcare and social care from cradle to grave.
Deliver high-quality education so that people can, if they wish, change their situations and are encouraged to do so.
Have a policy of full employment at a living wage.
All of this is possible, and entirely affordable. All we need to do is:Have a genuinely progressive tax system of the sort that I describe in the Taxing Wealth Report 2024.
Turn private savings into public capital in the way that I describe here.
Have a government that makes the meeting of need its highest priority, rather than the servicing of the wants of the clients of the financial services industry the focus of its attention.
Have a government that believes in a genuinely mixed economy, which has to be the basis of our future prosperity. The market-based dogma of the right, and the state-based dogma of the left, cannot solve the problems of poverty: only mixing the best can do that.
Such a government would also, necessarily, be focussed on delivering sustainability, but those now in poverty do not threaten that. The threat to our planet comes from the wealthy.It is simply not true that we do not know how to eliminate poverty.
Amzin’ how he doesn;t talk about the simplest method of reducin’ poverty – grow the economy so that everyone has more.
He’s forgotten a pony for everyone……
The market-based dogma of the right, and the state-based dogma of the left, cannot solve the problems of poverty: only mixing the best can do that.
I believe a chap called Mussolini had similar ideas about 100 years ago. Whatever happened to him and his ideas?
Build 700,000 homes a year just to house the immigrants.? Let alone what’s needed for the backlog. Right.
He’s overlooked net zero
“All of this is possible, and entirely affordable. All we need to do is:”
Steal all money and property from the owners of it.
It’s winter, time for the cvnt to wear his Lenin cap.
“Turn private savings into public capital in the way that I describe here.”
That’s a quaint description of theft.
What Potato overlooks here is that there are people who are in poverty due to the cruel conspiracy of bad luck and circumstance, but a good number are in poverty because they are incapable of making sound financial and personal decisions, and no about of Gibs is going to alter that.
He’s more into eliminating relative poverty. Growing the economy doesn’t manage that.
Stealing everything from those that have can reduce or even eliminate relative poverty, albeit at the expense of shrinking the economy and making everyone poorer in real terms.
“Amzin’ how he doesn;t talk about the simplest method of reducin’ poverty – grow the economy so that everyone has more.”
Because on that basis poverty in the UK is already eliminated except for very marginal issues. He’s only talking about relative poverty.
One could also stop pissing money away on windmills. And maybe stop flooding the country with more and more colonists from Africa, Asia etc.
But I do agree. Grow the economy instead of just robbing everyone and even the most idiotic expenditure can be afforded.
Come on, Murphy. There are a lot more important problems than those to worry about.
We have to end apartheid for one.
And slow down the nuclear arms race, stop terrorism and world hunger.
We have to provide food and shelter for the homeless, and oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights, while also promoting equal rights for women.
We have to encourage a return to traditional moral values.
Most importantly, we have to promote general social concern, and less materialism in young people.
Cost up the shite we currently get, you need to earn £50k a year all through your working life just to pay for your own education, NHS and Pension…
Ensure that essential public services, such as water, gas, electricity, telecoms and transport are affordably accessible to everyone.
So let the market rip.
See mobile phones and associated telecommunications.
Thirty years ago, hardly anyone had mobile phones, they were bricks you could just about talk on and we’re expensive.
Now, you can buy a smart phone for £52 on Amazon. And a monthly SIM only deal for £10 pcm with unlimited minutes and texts and approx 20GB month from most of the networks.
Can you imagine the rate of progress if the government had been in charge?
The great thing about his system is, once we remove that pesky “need to make a living” by handing everyone that living for free, human nature will make us all work harder and smarter and humanity will flourish! Incentives are such a huge barrier to effort.
‘Can you imagine the rate of progress if the government had been in charge?’
About the same level of progress as there’s been in replacing the coal and gas burners with the nukes invented 70 odd years ago. And of course the Greens’d be foremost in opposing the change.
And I still don’t own a smart phone, as I loathe those horrid innovations.
My God. Do you think I might be a Green!!!!
Patrick Bateman
‘You’re priceless ‘ – Sheer Genius
The Great Chernyy Drakon
Spot on – when there was a state monopoly in telecoms (before the mobile era) the service was absolutely atrocious – ditto across most governmentally owned industries.
I think the rate of progress had the UK government been in charge would be lower than North Korea. Had Murphy been in charge odds are we’d be barred from owning the devices as potential subversives and denied internet access for fear of us promoting misinformation (That’s assuming we weren’t sent into concentration camps for the greater good)
“All we need to do is:”
Ensure peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.
As I believe some obscure Scottish bloke once said. But then he’d never been an accountant.
“…there was a state monopoly in telecoms…”
Indeed there was. Anyone else here remember having to wait six months in order to rent (never buy) a handset designed in the 1930’s?
That’s state monopolies for you; see also the
NHSEnvy of the World.Check out the planning regs : it’s almost impossible to build a house worth living in, in the UK, even if the planning process would allow it
“All we need to do is …”
The famous mantra of the common or garden pub bore. “World peace, it’s easy innit. All we need to do is find people who start wars and stop them doing it. Bish bash bosh. Job done.”
Though, technically, he’s not a pub bore as he’d have to be allowed in them.
A single 5-year plan is not going to be enough.
Anyone opining about ‘poverty’ who does not define which ‘poverty’ he is referring to can be safely ignored