chess | (no subject)

To be fair, they might believe that everyone should fend for themselves - it's just that that's easier for the rich...

I'm further left of centre than Labour (not that that's hard nowadays). But looking towards my future, it would be easier to get a house by doing no work, getting a council house, and using the right to buy in two years time, then it would by trying to slog my way through an academic career and actually trying to earn anything. I think that the idea of helping those who are unlucky sits quite easilly, but the idea of spending your money helping those that are lazy smarts a bit. And does it really help them, if we leave them with no incentive to better themselves because their life is fine as it is?

but the idea of spending your money helping those that are lazy smarts a bit.

I know that you know this (but not everyone reading this will) but benefits are available to a much wider range of people than those who are too lazy to work. Whether this is better or worse, I wouldn't like to comment.

I agree that the current system is deeply flawed, though. I spent a summer on Income support* once, and I learnt first hand that if you aren't prepared to play the system, you get almost nothing. Which encourages people to play the system, so they end up dependent on it etc etc.

*For those who don't know, you get IS if you are too ill/injured to work, rather than job seekers.

Don't worry, not all of us are. I would personally prefer to know how the labour supporters can support people so blatantly right wing as the current government. For all the reasons you mention.

Well, I'm an American and about as liberal as they come, so I wouldn't know at all. But isn't Blair Labour? Surely you can do better than that.

I'm assuming that (coughcough) Margaret Thatcher was a Tory...that'd give me some incentive to dislike the party...

Blair is currently the head of the Labour party, who finally managed to get back into power by stealing all the Tory policies. The current main left-wing party is the Liberal Democrats, who used to be the centerists. Thatcher was indeed a Tory.

It's not as clear cut as Michelle makes out, frankly all of the major British parties are now awfully close on the left-right scale, and who scores the furthest in any direction rather depends on which question you ask (and to which representative of the party you ask it), we don't have anything like the spectrum of economic policies that American politics offers.

Every so often the Coservatives try to persuade Labour to drastically raise taxes so that they'll be a difference between them, but Labour have opted for the slow and steady stealth tax (much of it aimed largely at students actually) which the other parties don't seem to have much objection to.

It's possible the BNP have different economic policies, but I've never succeeded in looking past all their racism nonsense to find out. (By which I mean they're rasist and so have nonsense policies.)

American politics? Where you have a choice of Far Right or Even Further Right? :)

(you can't plausibly elect anyone other than a Democrat or a Republican for anything...)

Re: The Economic Spectrum in British Polotics

From:

passage.livejournal.com - Date: 2004-09-19 12:33 am (UTC) - Expand

That's a fairly loose approximation to Toryism, I feel.

On the other hand I'm sitting here as an anarcho-communist who pragmatises as LibDem at the moment, so...

I don't think you can reduce the essence of Conservatism to "the rich should get richer and the poor should get poorer", or "everyone should be left to fend for themselves". That would be as incorrect as saying that the essence of Socialism is "the rich should be punished for being successful and the poor should be rewarded for being unambitious".

The Conservative Party is as broad a church as the Protestant movement, and there are hardliners and moderates, people with tough outlooks on life and people who have a genuine social concern. My general outlook on the role of government in society is firstly to maintain a social order which reflects the values of the Kingdom of God and those values which people agree are certain peremptory social norms, secondly to provide a safe environment for everyone in which to live, thirdly to provide people with the resources they need to achieve realistic goals in life, whilst acknowledging that for some people those goals will be a lot lower or higher than for others and not trying to maintain the false idea that everyone is equally capable of achieving the same goals, and finally to provide a minimum standard of living for everyone, regardless of their motivation or capability to succeed, because that is the minimum duty of love which we owe to each other, as Jesus exemplified in the parable of the good Samaritan. I believe that people in government should love their neighbours as themselves. All that probably sounds a lot like New Labour, because New Labour ideals occupy the centre ground of politics. The difference is that I actually mean what I say, so I could never vote for this government.

I think we have values the other way around, then. I think that the first duty of government is to provide a minimum standard of living for everyone (which includes 'a safe environment'), then resources for realisitic goals, and I'm not sure they have any place at all in 'maintaining a social order' or 'peremptory social norms' except in as far as that is required for the 'safe environment' clause.

Could you justify your values for the function of government? (Your following post doesn't justify, only expound.)

For my part I think that government should be a body that governs, in particular in moderating the interations of humans with one another.

A body that did that, but did nothing to provide the 'minimum standard of living' you seem so keen on would be a government, a group which didn't but did provide that 'minimum standard' would just be a large soup kitchen.

(I am incidently very pleased that our government, and indeed most if not all western governments, do seek to provide for those of their citizens in need, but that's a bonus, not what makes then governments.)

Hypothetical question while we're at it. You have a choice of two ruling groups, one provides food and shelter for the very poor, but randomly imprisons the innocent and releases the guilty according to a justice system based on the judge flipping a coin. The other has strong standards of justice and a sound legal system, but thinks providing for the poor is the responsibility of their families and friends, and so makes no provision for them, which would you put in power?

(Not that I'm putting forward either as particularly good governments, but their failings I think expose the issue).

Priorities

From:

lockymclean.livejournal.com - Date: 2004-09-20 01:21 am (UTC) - Expand

I'd look at it from a broader angle - references to Jesus, for example, are rather specific to Western democracies. The 'purpose' of government can be said to be to continue to govern, in the same way that the 'purpose' of people is to make more people. This is an evolutionary point of view based on the fact that unsustainable governments will die off.

The point I'm trying to make here is that saying "the purpose of government" is rather ludicrous. It's like talking about the purpose of a billiard ball. From your point of view, the purpose of the ball may be to go into an appropriate pocket, but the ball is probably perfectly happy where it is. The purpose of government then is *whatever government does*.

What do we want government to do? That's a better query, and the contrast with the original question explains the difference in people's answers to that question. Someone who's religious will probably want the government to support faith schools and religious establishments. Someone who's atheist or very tolerant (or paranoid about government powers) will probably want the government to behave as if religion didn't exist as a moral force, preferring to treat religions merely as a specialist type of organisation.

Probably the only conclusive way to decide what the purpose of government should be, then, is to poll everyone and take an average. Which, fortuitously, is approximately what we do :)

Re: Slightly more concise definition

From:

lockymclean.livejournal.com - Date: 2004-09-26 12:53 am (UTC) - Expand

I don't think that is the belief, and it's unfair to characterise it as such. It may or may not be the outcome, but that's a different thing.

The social principles of the British Conservative Party from about 1975 onwards seem to me to be based on self-reliance; you work to provide for yourself and for those close to you (family, relatives, community) and pull yourself up by your bootstraps. The welfare system is there to help you with this at the bottom end, but you do have to make an effort yourself as well.

In concert with this comes a belief that a wealthier economy in general brings increased wealth to individuals working in that economy. The Government should decrease regulation and red tape to promote economic growth, and that economic growth will result in the increased availability of jobs, goods, and services. In addition, a wealthy economy means a wealthy Government, which allows more to be spent bringing everybody to a higher level of wealth; it should be a "virtuous circle" of wealth generation for everyone.

(S)

Except history, from my perspective, appears to disprove these nice theories; 'economic growth' does not seem to be a useful goal for improving standard of living, according to the statistics I saw in A-level Economics and wandering around the Internet. If you have another set of statistics / facts that show that it does, then I want to see them, because I admit that my research is a bit flaky and biased.

The belief stated in the second paragraph, while I don't share it, is perfectly reasonable; the last paragraph is the one I take issue with as working in the real world. (OTOH, I admit that the ideal socialism that I would like to see also has real-world implementation issues.)

(no subject)

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