(no subject)

[chess]

I've been finding out lately that a disturbing number of you are conservatives/Tory supporters of some stripe or another. Being somewhat of a flaming red socialist myself, I'm interested in how you guys justify the belief that the rich ought to get richer and the poor ought to fend for themselves that seems to be the Tory standpoint to me...

Comments

[ylla.livejournal.com]

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

[atreic.livejournal.com]

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?

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

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.

[leisaie.livejournal.com]

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...

[senji.livejournal.com]

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...

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

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.

[lockymclean.livejournal.com]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

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)

[angelofthenorth.livejournal.com]

Although I'm a paid up libdem, I get fed-up with the benefits system as it presently happens. THe people that need it don't get it and the people that don't deserve it wind up going on 3 holidays a month...

[chess]

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.

[chess]

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.

[sath.livejournal.com]

I'm a socialist but I don't understand politics so I do the country a favour by not voting..

[chess]

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.)

[chess]

What is it that you don't understand about politics? Or is it just that you don't feel you have the time to look into what the parties actually stand for, etc?

[sath.livejournal.com]

I don't really understand any of the terms or anything.. so I probably wouldn't have any idea which parties are actually socialists. I only know I'm a socialist because Vikki explained it to me in gcse history class ;p But feel free to tell me who I should be supporting ;p

[chess]

Liberal Democrats are the most socialist party who has a hope of getting any say at all in government at the moment; Labour used to be the socialist party but then they decided they'd prefer to be in power than to stick by their principles.

Unfortunately the reality of politics at the moment is that most people do not want to pay taxes, even though they'll then complain about the state of schools and hospitals and police and stuff taxes pay for, so only parties who commit themselves to cutting taxes (the opposite of socialism, which relies on fairly high taxes to be able to provide public services) actually get elected. That's why it's so important for people who do realise that we need public services to vote for parties who haven't sold out like this yet.

[senji.livejournal.com]

You appear to have a hidden assumption here that taxes are being used efficiently at the moment.

[chess]

Not really. I don't believe any of the parties are capable of / will make some amazing change which will make tax use more efficient to the extent that they can cut taxes safely. I do believe that cutting taxes is a downwards spiral whereby taxes are used less and less efficiently because nobody has the money to pay anybody to investigate how to use them more efficiently.

Taxes are never going to be 'used efficiently' in the way people expect them to, because people aren't perfect. OTOH, I think that the major governmental institutions (that don't change instantly with the changing of political parties) do a tolerably good job of it, and that there is no magic bullet that can be applied to make them do better. There are lots of obvious and horrendous wastes of taxpayers' money, but most of them are very hard to deal with. (My mother has been working as a secretary in the public sector for many years now, NHS and local government, and so I do have some knowledge to base this on.)

[senji.livejournal.com]

OK, that taxes are being used as efficiently as they can be.

(I'm happy to accept that you think that they are, because I tend to agree, but I don't like hidden assumptions).

[chess]

Okay - my assumption is that no current political party has a 'magic bullet' that will let them maintain public services whilst cutting taxes by making spending 'more efficient'. This is not to say that spending cannot be made more efficient, just that nobody currently has a good enough plan to do it on the vast scale that would be required.

[requiem-17-23.livejournal.com]

Now there's a controversial point.

First, that's not the belief at all. The belief is that most things aren't the government's business - and that the government should restrain itself to providing those things the market doesn't correctly provide and leave social engineering to the charities and demagogues.

Second, I'd better lay out my political 'affiliation' so that people may more correctly analyse my answer for bias. I'm a liberal Conservative, right-of-centre but not too far, who thinks that Thatcher went too far and despises the US Republican party but stands to the right of even New Labour.

I don't believe that the rich 'ought' to get richer. Merely that they will regardless - and that they earned their money and it's their business how they spend it (remembering that this money will eventually end up in the hands of some worker somewhere as wage). Neither do I believe that the poor ought to fend for themselves - but I don't believe that the way to help them is to penalise the successful.

If everyone is equal, there is no incentive for self-betterment. I know that this sucks. But there it is. Benefit for the poor should be a temporary thing, while said poor person finds work again. Those that cannot work should of course be supported. But long-term unemployment should not happen. Once someone's in work, they can climb the ladder and get richer - all the while contributing to the wealth of the economy. So I believe that the support of the unemployed should be entirely focused on getting them a job and a roof over their head, and supporting them while this happens.

I hope that answers your question without being too biased. :p

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not an economist, and I've not studied it in any depth, so I can't provide you with anything formal to back up or refute the theory. Nevertheless, it seems to me absolutely clear-cut that you cannot have an increased standard of living without an increased amount of wealth (be that in terms of money, freedoms, or whatever) to allow it; you absolutely need economic growth and freedoms for people's standard of living to increase.

While economic growth is necessary to increase standard of living, it is not sufficient. Here there is a role for Government in improving public amenities and encouraging investment and development where living standards are poor. Education and healthcare are important components in this, and funding them requires that a country should be economically well off. It also requires a willingness on the part of the Government to spend the money, but these days such a willingness is shared by parties of all colours. The differences these days are mostly in balance, timing and mechanism.

(S)

[chess]

Increased equality can increase standard-of-living indicators (like lower crime rates and higher literacy rates, less public health scares (because everyone has medical care so diseases don't spread)) without there needing to be 'economic growth' in a strict sense.

Economic freedoms seem designed to drive down standard of living; if a company is allowed to get away with overworking people, for instance, it will.

[chess]

Let me give you a for-instance, here, to clarify a point or two: assume somebody is a devout Jew, and the only business in the area with jobs is a pork-products factory. Not only will they have to handle unclean things, they will also probably not get enough holiday to make their religious observences, not even being allowed to work extra during the week to not have to work night shift on a Friday, for instance. Should they be forced to 'get a job'?

This is an extreme example, I know, but there are lots of similar examples of people being forced to do morally objectionable or physically overdemanding jobs, not being allowed to take care of their kids because they need to work three jobs to make ends meet, etc etc.

How do you intend to make sure people are fed, clothed and housed, and their children educated and supported so that they grow up into people who can get satisfying jobs, without 'penalising the successful' by making them pay for it?

(Also, actual current conservatives don't seem to be based on the 'isn't the government's business' model; they tend to do lots of things of the 'protecting family values' type, which aren't the government's buisiness much more than 'making sure everyone has access to what they absolutely need' isn't.)

[senji.livejournal.com]

How does your society deal with there being less jobs than jobseekers?