Sampson

But again, you're not taking into account what happens after government intervention and wealth distribution. No one thinks poverty and having to subsidise working families is fun, but the more you tax the mega-rich companies, the more they have to put up prices which leads to inflation making people's money worth less anyway and people less being able to afford food (because again, it's not just about looking at the simple figures we got in) - the smaller companies who they buy or produce from often getting a big brunt too - the more the big companiles in whatever sector either have to deal with increases in demand due to more spending in the economy while simultaneously having to deal with higher taxes is a double hit - which both naturally lead to price increases and inflation. It's difficult getting the perfect balance right - absolutely it is. But more government intervention in markets in this way inevitably leads to failure - because the laws of supply and demand offer truer and more natural pricing than government intervention ever can - again, that;s not to say markets and perfect, but it's so intuitive to say that there are people in poverty, - we have to tax the rich to give them more money is absolutely intuitive, I get that - but you also have to understand why it can be so, so dangerous to the real value of the average person's wage and why it can inhibit innovation which gets round these barriers and that's why free markets have shown historically to be far better at pulling people out of poverty than government interventioned ones and why heavy tax burdens on the rich can be catastrophic to the poor people of a nation even though they may be getting more money they can easily end up being far less wealthy and cause far more poverty. The only way the idea that a barter system is the only alternative to money is fallacious is if we ever reach a point where robotics and technology is at such a point as to whereas human labour is rendered completely obsolete so we don't have to negotiate what limited labour time we have - where robots think for us and create all new technologies, where they can pick up anything we want, where they advertise for us and tell us what we want, where they create and build all new ideas, where they are our government and govern us, where they resolve all human conflict, where they create every piece of music, art, film, computer game and book ever possible to create, where they decide what's fashionable and what clothes to wear etc. etc.. And that frankly, sounds terrifying to me - the loss of the individual in Socialism taken to its absolute extreme. In any other system, yes, the barter system absolutely is the only other alternative to money - a universal means of exchange for acquiring someone else's labour for favours. How else is anyone going to receive an efficient way of negotiating for the skills and services they provide to others - even if it's through the kindness of their heart.That isn't fallacious at all, that's Economics 101, the first thing you ever learn in your first lesson of A-Level Economics - you may call it something else, you may call it "a universal tally of favours" - but that's what money is, that's how we negotiate quickly and easily without having to spend our limited labour hours bartering who and what to offer our limited labour too - it's either bartering each and every deal or a system in which we have a universal tally to exchange goods, services and labour for - can you please explain what other possible systems we can come up with? Of course they are man-made subjective ideas which we attach to them, but so are human rights, so is language, so are laws, so are ideas of subdividing animals into species when we are all just differently deformed evolutions from the same bits of bacteria. - just because something is man-made doesn't mean these things are bad or we will inevitably evolve past language or basic human rights - in fact t's exactly these collective man-made "fictions" which are what separate humans from the rest of the world and what we've built our industry on. Money or Economics will not die out anymore than language or laws will because it's not possible to create huge interacting systems without them without turning humans into one connected hive-mind (yes, I've read Yuval Harari too) - because Economics and money are just the study of how humans interact with each other and how those interactions work within society and that's it. Of course there are faulty Economics which cause horrible devastation - just like there are faulty laws or faulty human rights which cause horrible devastation - but that's bad Economics, just like those are bad laws or and human rights, it does not mean the existence of Economics is not an absolute necessity to mass human interaction, just as it does not mean human rights and laws are not essential to the flourishing of the human race - humans would be either extinct or still in the trees with the chimpanzees and have very little knowledge of their own self-consciousness or all the fruits of human history and knowledge without any of those subjective man-made fictional things. I could easily see a future date where humans do come up with systems which are genuinely much better than Capitalism and manage to keep its benefits while stopping its flaws (but there's certainly been nothing which comes close to Capitalism so far) - but I cannot see a future where money would become obsolete - even in Lenin's Communist vision where everyone would receive the same amount for the same amount of labour hours, regardless of the job, money was still used as a quick form of exchange and negotiation and measuring labour hours, Maybe there are alien races who perfectly understand empathy and can instantly negotiate with thousands of different people at the same time some of whom are millions of miles away meaning money isn't needed, but humans - who are not mind reading and mind communicating creatures - are never going to get to that place without some kind of Invasion of the Body Snatchers style loss of individualism which I would hope most humans of the future will guard against.

Can only echo these 2 posts. especially KingGTF who put it much more eruditely than I ever could. I'd also add another one of depressing tactics has been Bernie Sanders trying to bizarrely claim that small, oil-rich and natural resource-rich free-market capitalist countries with higher tax rates like the Scandanvian countries are Socialist countries - and the age old problem of Socialists picking and choosing their definition of Socialism to things which have nothing to do with the common ownership of industry (be it through state control or syndicate control) and the old "that's Socialism" to a non-Socialist system like the Nordic model and "that's not true Socialism" when a genuine Socialist country like Venezuela capitulates - hasn't helped in getting to this position where Socialism is being promoted as any kind of even comparable replacement for free-market Capitalism which I also cannot understand either. The reason why the current Labour government scare me far more than any other I can remember - is that it's the first time in my voting lifetime I can remember where either a hard-Right or hard-Left populist party actually have a very good chance of getting power. It reminds me of that old Simpsons' episode with the self-help guru Brad Goodman who gets famous just by saying a lot of meaningless niceties which sound profound and Lisa says exactly how I feel about Corbyn - "he's just peddling a bunch of easy answers". Look at some of the ideas Corbyn has talked about in the past and present - all easy answers, but all Economic quackery: Money printing Rent controls Price fixing A fast minimum wage hike to £10 in 3 years It's the easiest thing in the world to say taxing the rich and giving to the poor will pull people out of poverty or that increasing the minimum wage will pull people out of poverty or that rent controls will push rent prices down or price fixing will solve inflation - but this is an incredibly simplistic view of Economics and goes against all the basic principals of Economics and the basic law of Supply and Demand which governs human interaction - Printing money just causes people to spend a lot more which causes all businesses to have to put their prices up rapidly to deal with the increased demand which they cannot keep up with which leads to hyper inflation as people's savings become more and more worthless people also end up spending incredibly quickly as prices are rising which causes the Economy to spiral into hyper-inflation - and nearly all the worst most catastrophic examples of hyper-inflation in history (The Weimar Republic, Greece 1944, Hungary 1946, Yugoslavia 1994, Zimbabwe 2008) - all have money printing playing a major role in them. Rent controls - Simultaneously increase demand in housing and reduce the amount of Landlords who want to supply as they cannot make money of it - it then also reduces the amount in which Landlords can put back into renovation, construction and fixing damages of housing reducing the number of houses being built and the reducing the quality of these houses as Landlords cannot afford to be responsive to tennents needs - you have to allow Landlords to make a living no matter how "greedy" or manipulative they seem - it's how we get more and better housing. Price controls - Price ceilings and capping prices causes hikes in demands and lower supply (as more people can afford it but less people can make money off it) - and as there's no way for businesses to put prices up to compensate for the added demand and lack of supply it just causes a shortage and no way for the market to correct for that shortage. - and a price floor and state set minimum prices not allowing for the market to find a natural supply-and-demand equilibrium price causes producers an incentive to produce more increasing supply but consumers would go and buy substitutes instead causing spending in unsellable markets and many businesses having to cut jobs as a result (as they cannot compensate by cutting prices to sell more because of the artificial government intervention). Btw rent controls and price fixing are some of the most unanimously agreed on principals in Economics - that rent controls and price fixing are a horrific ideas for the long-term health of the housing market or Economy and these are exactly the kind of principals that Chavez was obsessed with which have just caused such huge problems in Venezuela too. Minimum wage - How do you honestly think businesses will respond to the higher outgoings needed by having to pay more to employees and the greater spending in the economy caused by this therefore leading to increased demand meaning they have to hire more people to create greater supply as a result of this demand? This is just going to lead to inflation which makes the minimum wage rise worthless and businesses having to cut jobs as a result - there's a reason minimum wage generally goes up at a steady rate as a result of inflation and not the other way around -I get that people are frustrated at the decreasing of real spending during austerity but a sudden swing the other way is absolutely not the answer. And all this is expected to be paid by a "small" rise in taxes by big businesses which won't cause any of them to have to cut jobs or put up prices (leading to inflation) to deal with this? People cannot honestly be that naive. It reminds me of that 90 day price and wage freeze which Richard Nixon got elected on the back of campaigning for because it's an easy answer which appeals to people's hearts intuitively but is incredibly naive Economics and turned out to be a disaster. Farage and UKIP scared me, but I didn't think they'd ever had any chance of getting into realistic power- even though I was an avid Remainer and thought te referendum fiasco was ridiculous, but this current Labour government is a different beast entirely. But as, the reason they are scary is because you can see the shifting opinion and we know MacDonnell and Abbott are self-described defenders of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Mao and you have to be pretty blind not to see Corbyn comes from the same place as these and the likes of Tony Benn etc.- it's the shift that scares people, the idea that this is the start to a shift to the hard Left and the slow drift away from free-markets and towards Socialism and Governments monopolies. Free-market Capitalism has proven to be by far and away the best system humans have ever designed at pulling people out of poverty and making people far free-er individuals, given far greater individual liberties - because it's not naive enough to think poverty is just about the raw numbers in front of you and how much money you have and instead promotes innovative ideas which society and individuals themselves decide are worthwhile through competition and the laws of supply and demand - which have included far better agricultural machines and systems, fast and efficient travel and vehicles, much cheaper food in relation to hours of labour work. All Socialism does is lead to mass poverty - it screws with the laws of Supply and Demand in the way that things which people need do not get made on the scale on which they need them - 100 years on and we've still yet to a see a Socialist regime which wasn't either 1. An Economic disaster which led to mass poverty and the death of millions or 2. Only held together by brutal dictatorships who forced people to do things against their wishes for "the Economic good" of the country - and most times it's both. And please, stop with this "it's just a few industries" "it's not really Socialism, it's just Nordic Capitalism" - because to anyone who's been paying attention to what Corbyn, Abbott and MacDonnell have been saying, it's clear where their actual influences lie - and even if they don't achieve it themselves it's the way they're shifting the argument in that favour for future generations. THAT'S what's scary about it - that's why it's just as scary as Donald Trump or Nigel Farage on the populist hard-Right and while many Corbyn supporters can (righty) see how Trump is dangerous and what his victory means for the belittling of the American democracy, what's scary is how they cannot see that Corbyn is doing the same thing just on the other side of the spectrum - he's a hard-Left populist ideologue who's peddling a bunch of easy answers. It doesn't help that Theresa May is an incompetent robotic leader who can't seem to get anything right in a very Gordon Brown kind of way, but Corbyn absolutely isn't the answer and he absolutely isn't "the lesser of two evils" - he's a FAR bigger evil much like Trump was over Hilary. And I hope we aren't in the same situation whereas May's incompetence doesn't match Hilary's incompetence where the incompetent but clearly lesser evil ends up losing to the frightening, charismatic ideologue. I understand it makes intuitive sense and appeals to people's hearts which is why Socialism and the hard-Left is such a less obvious evil than facisicm and the hard Right, but make no mistake, it's just as evil and just as devastating to the poor and average people of the country - this has been shown over and over again throughout the last century and we've spent most of the last century trying to tackle Government intervention and state monopolies and it's frightening that's we're seeing the beginning and the foundations of a comeback here - that's what's frightening more than anything. Things like price fixing, mass wealth distribution and monopoly of unnecessary government markets do not pull people out of poverty - they just keep everyone in poverty and inhibit the wealth creation of a nation and the innovation which makes things which do make basic amenities easier and cheaper to access.

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Of course! But that's also a huge false equivalency! No one is saying Socialism and Capitalism haven't done good or bad or been successful or unsuccessful of course they have! So have Feudalism and Mercantalism but that doesn't mean they're equal and the issues arising from Socialism have proven to be way worse than those which have arisen from Capitalism. Look, I don't think we're that far from each other here and Bernie Sanders bizarrely declaring Nordic countries as Socialist hasn't really helped the discussion in recent times from getting muddied when you're actually quite similar. But of course there's a reason that, North Korea aside, almost every country in the world is neither pure Laissez Faire Capitalist or pure Command Economy Socialist state - it's not the 1920s anymore. But at the same time, there's a reason the countries with the best quality of life, the least amounts of starvation and the most well off populations (I.e. Western and Central Europe, North America, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand etc.) are overwhelmingly Capitalist Economies which only leave essentials liie health care, education, police, fire service etc. to the Public Sector and have overwhelmingly free markets - checked and balanced with anti-monopoly laws, pro-competition laws etc. Of course plenty of businesses treat staff poorly but you don't think some of things Corbyn suggests will make things worse? You think such a hike in minimum wage in a short space of time mixed with extra taxes for businesses at the exact moment we leave the biggest market in the world will actually make things better? Because to me all I can see is inflation rising, many will lose their jobs and many businesses having to downsize or go elsewhere as a result because businesses have to make that money back to keep growing somehow. If you want to do these things you do them gradually not as a huge overhaul as Corbyn and his last manifesto was suggesting. I don't think anyone thinks Capitalism and free markets are perfect or that there aren't huge issues with it - but Nationalising needless stuff and trying to add a bunch of extra taxes to Capitalists and big businesses to give up money, hiking up minimum wage to £10 per hour in just 3 years just doesn't strike me as being sensible at all or anything like the answer to the problems with Capitalism - in fact they strike me as much worse and I think History has been a pretty good indicator that that is likely to be the case.

But if you've read it why are you just quoting a point which is ignoring everything I said? I don't understand what you're trying to say - that the system you are proposing will magically wipe this out when it hasn't before? You asked why I think we need a wealth inequality to create more innovation and I explained it to which you gave a completely unrelated point about dying children which has nothing to do with free market Capitalism. I even said that free market Capitalism hasn't worked in every instance but it has worked better than any other system and we have less poverty than any other system we've ever come up with (which is undoubtedly true). What country do this children come from? Do they even live in free market Western Capitalist countries which have had time to develop? Or do a lot of them live in former Socialist and heavily Command Economy countries that have only just opened up some of their markets and many of their markets are still restricted like China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Venezuela, Russia, Libya, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia etc. etc. - and if they do, how is it in comparison to other countries which restrict the freedom of their markets? If so, what's your point as to why this is a failing of long term free markets and how is it related? Where have I claimed there isn't still poverty or that capitalism always works without failure- i haven't, but I've said that allowing Capitalists a free market and a fair Stock Market of which to invest in has shown to be a better way of pulling people out of poverty than has forcing wealth distribution. If you want to believe it's all text book rhetoric then that's fine - but you think this is just guesswork? You don't think that this is in fact text book rhetoric because it's proven to be the best system we've honed thus far over thousands of years whereas forcing mass wealth redistribution and extra nationalisation (which have been tried plenty of the times in the past and not proven to be as effective) and that all the Economics and Historians who spend their lives studying this are all wrong? Again, you're doing what Climate Change deniers do - you're ignoring the overwhelming expert mainstream view of Economists and Historians who give their life researching this stuff for your own personal ideological tendencies. Call me crazy, but I think I'll take the overwhelming conclusions of the Economists that free markets are far better wealth creators, allow for far more innovation and are far more efficient than nationalised or restricted ones any day of the week.

*Sigh* If you're going to do such an obvious straw man you could at least read what I wrote. Capitalism has unquestionably pulled people out of poverty far better than any other system we've ever designed has, because it's made food far cheaper and worth far less in labour hours for the average person. It's only 200 years ago we had Malthus suggesting if the population reached 1 billion it would catastrophic because humans would not have the food to support those numbers - because he did not count on the agricultural, servital and manufacturing innovation that allowed much more food to be sold for much cheaper and much less labour hours. The modern Capitalist West is the only time in human history where more people are dying from obesity than from starvation. It's the time where least people are dying of starvation because of specialisation and innovation, because of Adam Smith. But what are these sectors? As I've said - yes, absolutely! It makes sense that sectors where innovation is not as important as the service provided such as health care, policing, defence and education to be nationalised, absolutely! But It's getting silly when you try and extend these things to things such as the railways.

Ok, as a simple example: there are 1,000 new products and services which 1,000 different people have invented or come up with in the past week which they think can benefit society. Everything from innovative new computer games, new kitchen appliances, new budgeting apps, new systems to innovate ways people communicate more efficiently, a new middle man company which can make selling food cheaper, a new more efficient way of using electricity, probably some new stuff no one could have thought of etc. etc. Some of these have been created by already established big businesses, some by new start ups and everything in between. However, they or no one else know what the general public want or actually sell either at this moment in time, in 6 months time, in 5 years time, in 10 years time. So the overwhelming majority of these products will never go anywhere - well over 900 of them will fail and people just won't be interested in selling them, a few of these might get by moderately in a niche market and an even fewer of these (probably less than 10) will sell hundreds of millions of products or completely change their industry. How do these products get out there? Through investment mostly -- through essentially crowd funding, a rich person wants to make more money and he sees a product or service which he thinks would sell and thinks he'll get on that and so buys a stake in the company - at which point the company cam use this extra money for advertising, creating new jobs to increase manufacturing numbers etc. etc. Once this product becomes popular, naturally another company or other companies come into the market with a similar product which drives innovation to either refine the product or to make more money by selling it to the masses (which is why every Western Capitalist country has anti-monopoly laws and pro competition laws, because competition in business is good for its people). Look at the current market for electric cars with Tesla, Uber and a few others for example how their technology is constantly updating and their prices are being driven down because of the competition and because it appears like the laws of demand seem to suggest that the mass rolling out of electric cars is currently wanted by the public which is why everyone is predicting we're on the cusp of electric self-driven cars. Anyway, the reason you need rich private investors to be the ones investing in these things is for 2 reasons: 1. The reason it doesn't work in nationalised markets and why Socialism naturally reduces innovation is because governments cannot afford to take the risks that 1,000 different investors can. They have a limited supply of money which mostly comes from tax payers and you just don't know which of the 1,000 products will sell and which won't - and you cannot afford to start making all 1,000, spend the money on infrastructure of the 1,000 new businesses, hire people to design, make, market and sell these products and services etc. when the overwhelming majority of them will fail. - This is what people mean when they say the problem with Socialism is you inevitably run out of other people's money. But unrelated, private investors or Capitalists or Entrepreneur funding themselves or someone else's product, can as a collective - It's not nice if your new business or new product fails as an indivual of course it's not but it's a hell of a lot better than the alternative when this is all biblically funded by the tax payer - and we all, as individuals, benefit a lot more and get a lot more innovations as a result of this system. 2. The reason forcing Capitalists and the rich to give more and more up in tax to the the less well off hampers this is because wealthy people invest in numerous companies at once as they hedge their bets as that's the tried tested and proven way to make money on the Stock Market (and reduces their risk of losing because most businesses and products fail) - and you need hundred if not thousands of these people to take a risk on your company or new product or service by an established company (which because it is always in competition with rival companies because of our anti-monopoly and pro-competition laws, always are at risk of being left behind if they don't innovate like their competitors do). Again, think of how some companies (HMV, Virgin Megastore etc.) got left behind and had to radically change in recent times because technological innovation and how their competitors used it better than them moved the goalposts. You need this position in the Stock Market where people feel they can fairly make money off it else no one would bother funding businesses and innovations and you need many wealthy people in that and if you want Capitalists and rich people to invest millions across numerous companies then they need to be in a position where millions of pounds is just a drop in the ocean to them else they will not risk investing that much. And this is not to mention the tens of thousands of jobs that investors and Capitalists create through this way too - this is why Capitalists create wealth a lot more efficiently than Governments do - and you need to allow them to have that element where thet can afford to lose millions in risky ventured and they can afford to invest in hundreds of companies at once as one or two of them will cover the losses on the other 98 or 99. And what do you think will happen in the international market in 2017 (especially given Brexit) if we slap huge extra taxes on Capitalists and huge Corporations while also raising the mimumu. wage at such a huge rate - investors will just invest in companies elsewhere - in different countries where It's easier to make money. Unless this is done world wide at the same time (which is not feasable given how every natiomal economy is in a hugely different position of growth and has very different population densities, natural resources, climates etc. etc.) then you've got to be very naive to think it won't drive investors away. Again, no one thinks Capitalism is perfect and doesn't have huge flaws - yes, It's shitty seeing the famous Capitalists like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg have all this money while millions live below the poverty line but you have to remember they create tens of thousands of jobs, they invest and buy companies which helps improve the lives of the many and they create both innovation and wealth at an international level much more efficiently than Governments can. But I think Ed Miliband put it best that that it was the "least worst Economic system humans have come up with" to date. And that doesn't mean every Capitalisy country has succeeded either, but it's unquestionably pulled people out of poverty, into being able to afford food and improved the quality of life of the average individual far better than any other type of Economic system which humans have come up with so far (And that's not to say that humans won't come up with a better system in the future, especially given future technology, but neither nationalizing markets or mass wealth equality is the answer).

But that's exactly what already does exist in Western and Central Europe, North America and countries like Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea etc. now and that's what I believe in - the modern liberal capitalist state with checks and balances like minimum wage laws, anti-trust laws, competition laws etc. Socialised essentials like health care, schooling, police force etc. for services where the importance to offer to all vastly outweighs the inefficiencies which nationalisation inevitibly brings - Western Liberal modern day Capitalism already has brought people better qualities of lives than any other system - to the point that for the first time in history in the West more people die from obesity and suicide than they do of starvation - the problem is people concentrate too much on how much money they have compared to others rather than what their money can actually afford them in comparison to the past. But there always has to be an element of financial inequality in this system and there has to be a class system. The problem is though, that doesn't necessarily mean people's lives and quality of life doesn't go up because of Economic inequality. The standard of living increase in Capitalist states over the past 100 or 200 odd years vastly outweighs pretty much any other system humans have ever devised because it naturally increases innovation and ideas which companies will make more money if they can sell these ideas to the masses. No one is saying that wealth inequality isn't horrible but it's how societies move forward - it's how we innovate - because 99% of products and services offered won't benefit society in a big way, but that 1% that do - the Ford motor car or the cheap sliced bread which costs the average person 5 minutes of labour or the movie camera or the computer or the Lidl model supermarket - you need to allow the financial freedom for the 100% of products attempts to go through to allow these innovations so that what society dictates as the good ones can go through and you also need to allow for innovation creating competition too. You need to allow for the capitalists to create the national wealth so both they and other people invest in these ideas and create these jobs.

Obama is absolutely a Centrist to Centre-Right politician. I understand America never had a Socialist movement like the rest of the world so you've got a weird distorted view of things but the guy is overwhelmingly in favour of the free market. Go and read about the Weimar Republic where money became so worthless it essentially didn't exist and why it led to the Nazi Party coming into power. Or Hungary following the Second World War after becoming a Soviet puppet state. The alternative to money is a Barter System. Every human being can be as nice and as well intentioned as they want but they still only have limited labour time and most of us want leisure time too. Once you give up money, everyone has to barter their specialised skills away and to who they will help provide them to in their limited labour time and that is incredibly inefficient especially as most products require many different steps to happen. Money allows an extremely quick and standardised means of exchange - that's literally all it is - a way you get an amount for the favours you have provided to others so you can spend it so other people can provide favours to you - society and the laws of supply and demand decides what each favour is worth and that's all money represents. Of course plenty of people abuse money and get greedy but money is absolutely an inherently good thing. The alternative is having to go to someone (who could be the other side of the world and speaking a completely different language to you) and barter a favour out of their limited labour hours and hope they don't have 30,000 other people also trying to use their particular expertise in society in their limited amount of labour hours. Money is so so efficient. It's one of the greatest inventions humans have ever come up with and probably the single biggest invention above any other that have got us to where we are as a society and as educated and well informed as all of human history and the shared information over the ages has allowed us to get. No one will deny that like any system there aren't huge flaws with it, but pretty much everything from scientific, technological and societal innovation come from it. Money is one of the main things that seperate humans from Chimpanzees or other society based animals like ants or bees. It's what allows 7 billion humans to interact with each other and work with each other whereas sociological research seems to suggest that 150 people is about the maximum a group can work with each other without such systems. I do not believe there will ever or can ever be an Economic future where it doesn't exist without completely destroying human societal efficiency because the Barter System is just such a horribly inefficient alternative to it. So yes, Economics matters and will always matter while human society exists.

What do you think people do with that billion pounds though and how did they create it? Do you honestly think they just hoard it for no reason or do they invest it in up and coming companies with innovative ideas, do they create a company and ideas which creates tens of thousands of jobs for people, do they try and sell products and services to billions of people which makes their lives better and more efficient? People make money because other people like what they do so give money to them! That's the laws of supply and demand, no one makes money with useless products and services that no one wants because no one gives them anything for it! Capitalism has many many flaws, but the reason it's the least bad Economic system humans have ever come up with is because it allows society to dictate what they want through supply and demand and people who create innovative ideas which people like to make money off it therefore investing in infrastructure of their company creating wealth, jobs and technological improvements along the way and they can also invest in businesses who's ideas they like through the stock market (which is essentially just crowd funding). If Elon Musk or Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg or any other capitalist come up with products and services people like and in some cases even make the world better when they find ways to sell them to the masses and create tens of thousands of jobs and create lots of wealth for the international economy in the process. No, markets are not perfect and yes, plenty of greedy make money from capitalism and it's perfectly natural to feel annoyed at wealth imbalance but wealth imbalance isn't some huge conspiracy there to keep rich people happy and **** the majority that only you and a few others have woken up to. It's there for a reason! What happens if you force all business to pay extra tax - those businesses either go to other countries, cannot afford to create extra or new jobs, do not create extra wealth which goes back into the economy through investment or spending etc. or they do not create products and services that make people's lives better. Maybe one day, we'll find a system which is better than Capitalism but mass wealth redistribution in Socialism absolutely is a tried and failed method. It curbs innovation which makes things like food, travel, electricity, heat etc. cheaper, better and more efficient and it causes so much less wealth creation. Yes, it causes greater Economic equality - but only because it keeps everyone poorer and a nation poorer and less technologically and systematically innovative. It's absolutely fair to compare Corbyn to Trump tbf (and I hate the Daily Mail abd the hard Right so dont give me that). They're both Populists who just spout anything to try and appeal to the working man. Just at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not comparing Corbyn to Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot or anyone like that for one second and neither am I saying we're going to decend into Venezuela (who we all know Corbyn is a big admirer of despite the fact several of their policies go completely against all mainstream Economic thought). Even if Corbyn and McDonnell are self-confessed Socialists, there's far too many checks and balances in this country for them to make us a real Socialist state. It's more that I saw someone on the last page say for example that a lot of young people are worried about the lack of jobs (which is fair enough) and want a party to come in and fix what they perceive as being wronged by the previous 2 generations. But immediately following us leaving the EU which (I think a lot of people would agree) we get to the position where we have to try and keep and/or make as many trade deals as possible and it's probably the most important moment to do that in any of our lifetimes, I think electing a government to do things like hiking up the minimum wage so quickly and putting extra taxes on businesses is potentially dangerous and could see us lose a hell of a lot of jobs in this country. Hiking up the minimum wage in a short space of time as Labour propositioned in their manifesto is what Chavez and Maduro did in Venuzuela. All that happens is while it may seem great on the surface for a year or two, businesses have to adapt and that involves getting rid of jobs or not creating new ones and putting prices up because otherwise companies are suddenly going to have much less profit or go into the red (especially with extra business taxes which Labour also proposed in their manifesto on top of that). Say you want a loaf of bread from the supermarket for example, the milling company has to adapt to things being more expensive by either buying from the farmer at a cheaper price, selling to the supermarket at a higher price or else sack some of its staff or not create any new jobs (or a combination of these things), the supermarket too (to keep its profits coming in) has to put the price of the bread up or sack some of its staff or not build those new stores and create those new jobs it was planning as its profits aren't as high anymore. Alongside that, small businesses with great innovative ideas and technology that can make or jobs or lives easier or make certain products easier find it much harder to grow their business and do that now. All that ends up happening is two or three years down the line, milk and bread cost the same in real terms because companies have to adapt to these minimum wage hikes but less jobs are available because certain companies (especially small or modest sized ones) cannot cope or cannot afford to create the new jobs thry eere planning on, while many international companies - given Britain has now left the EU - decide to take the new chains they were going to build to create nee jobs or the products they were going to buy or sell to Britain go to another country instead given that Britain is now both suddenly much more expensive to run a business and you have to pay more tax and it's no longer part of the biggest market in the world. I'm genuinely interested as to how any Corbyn supporter who's worried about the lack of opportunites atm thinks that a Corbyn government would actually increase the number of jobs being created rather than decreasing them. I'm not being glib, I'd like someone to respond with how those two things fit because I struggle to see how those things fit together. I get why people are frustrated that under austerity our real wages have stagnated or gone gown, but a sudden jolt in the raising of them is absolutely not the answer, its even more dangerous to go the other way and spike minimum wage suddenly. Minimum wage should be risen at a very steady and predictable rate based on inflation - not the other way round (inflation rising as a result of minimum wage is far more volatile and potentially scary). And this is why I'm just personally worried that people who are worried about a lack of jobs and opportunities for them atm are wanting to usher in a government who are going to hike up minimum wage and add corporation taxes at the exact point where we leave ourself vulnerable from international trade pulling out of this country after Brexit. To me, it's just a massive contradiction and just makes absolutely zero Economic sense and sounds like a surefire way to make sure the number of jobs available and being created only decreases and businesses who want to create innovative technology and products that make things cheaper or more efficient find it harder to get through. And yes, to add to that, the extra government spending of upping public service worker wages at a similar rate, the renationalising of the railways when we're right on the cusp of self driving cars which could easily make railways extinct in a generation or twos time (given that self driving cars should safely be able to go much faster as they should in theory never crash and there would be tens of millions on the road meaning we could easily end up with far quicker instant taxi services) - I'm not sure where the prospective Labour government thinks it's getting the money for all this either If it still genuinely thinks it's going to get all this money from extra corporation tax and high end wage tax and this won't see any of the side effects of either businesses going elsewhere, businesses cutting jobs or not creating new jobs or new innovation and products not getting through.

I feel in such a difficult place in British politics atm. I hate labels or aligning yourselves with parties or left, right or centrist positions because too many people get stuck in one particular place and then end up spending the rest of their lives just doing confirmation biases (especially given that research showing that most people decide their left, right or centrist by age 20 (before their brain has even fully formed) and then spend the rest of their lives just going into arguments knowing that bias and then automatically hating everything one person does and automatically agreeing with something because it's a left or right or centrist or Labour, LibDem or Conservative idea has shown). Like the way the Left have somehow managed to convince some of their followers that things like gay marriage and abortion are somehow Left/Right issues when they have very little to with being left or right and they seem to never acknowledge Cameron's Centre-Right government with introducing gay marriage (and the fact the majority of countries who have introduced gay marriage have done so by Centrist and Right wing governments). And the fact that parties evolve over the years and change positions constantly and new policies come into bigger importance or relvance and every election is different. I've never understood people who only vote Labour or Tory regardless of their leader and current policy when, say, Blair and Cameron are far more aligned and similar to each other than Blair is to Corbyn or Cameron is to May. I've always been of the opinion you should vote for which party and leader best represents your viewpoint at that particular election and that party loyalty can be a very dangerous thing in politics where you become too tied to a subject and quickly end up in areas of confirmation bias. Anyways, that said, I have more often than not agreed with the LibDems more than other major parties and voted for them mostly throughout my life (though I have voted Labour and Tory when I liked their current state too (under Blair and Cameron respectively) and I'm at a quandary because I've always been a big fan of Vince Cable and wanted him to be LibDem leader for years and I cannot remember a time where I disliked the 2 leaders or the direction of the main 2 parties more than I do now. So normally, it would be a pretty easy decision to back the LibDems right now, but I feel like I'm almost obligated to vote Tory because I know it's the only realistic option to stop Corbyn, who scares the absolute bejesus out of me, from getting into power. The problem is, May is just a horrible, uninspired, robotic leader, where you can just hear the 50 PR people behind everything she says and Corbyn is a genuinely charismatic person that it just scares me that he could actually get into power and I'd feel bad voting for her, but I kind feel obligated to because she's the lesser of two evils. Coincidentally, it's the hundredth anniversary of the October Revolution in a couple of weeks and the fact that people can still believe in Socialism a century on is something I don't think I'll ever understand. To me, Socialists are the climate change deniers of Economics, they ignore all the absolutely overwhelming mainstream Economic theory and historic evidence because they've become a stuckist Ideologue. The thought of post-Brexit, us leaving the biggest single-market in the world and then electing a free-spending Socialist government who want to raise taxes on business sounds to me like a disaster waiting to happen and I cannot see any result other than seeing business running as fast as they can to get out of the UK and running straight into other countries. The markets worry about being restricted and becoming inefficient, it's nothing to do with them worrying about not being able to give ever more money to the rich! Socialism restricts markets, it restricts innovation, it restricts wealth creation, it restricts people being able to pull themselves out of poverty. Capitalism and free markets may lead to more wealth inequality and it's natural for people to get annoyed by comparing their lot to others who have more, but it creates cheaper food, cheaper amenities, more innovation and creates a lot more wealth.- of course we'd all love a way for that wealth to be shared out more equally but humans have been trying to find systems to do that for centuries and all pretty much all mainstream Economic theory and Historic evidence shows it doesn't seem possible for them to work without reducing the creation of wealth to the point where it becomes retrogressive. Economics is everything! It's what puts food on your table, it's what gets you jobs, it's what stops or creates wars, it's what facilitates or puts barriers up to innovation. it's how you solve huge global problems, it's what provides individual freedom or not, it's what resources are used and what comes into this country, it's the way the world works, it's what's made the world what it is today. Economics is not just how much tax you or you don't pay or whether you can buy a house or not, it should be the first thing anyone interested in politics reads and learns about. Economics is the study of the human-made world in the same way Physics is a study of the natural world. I think John Maynard Keynes (probably one of the top 5 most important and influential British people in history (as is Adam Smith)) put it best: “The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.”

Same. Plus the ball to Vardy for the pen with the outside of his foot was sublime.

Imagine taking a club from League One to the Premier League and building a Premier League winning title and fans still not appreciating him. Regardless of what flaws he had in his tactics, media style etc. He got results and brought the best out of players. How he managed to get that very average 09-10 squad to the play-offs and a couple of penalty kicks away from a game against a Blackpool side we'd beat comfortably in both games that season I'll never know. In 20 years from now he will unquestionably be remembered as a great figure in Leicester's history.

I seem to remember him playing there at home to West Ham last season and he was exceptional.Think we win either 2-1 or 3-2 but it should've been a lot more. In fact I think we played 4-2-3-1 that day with Mahrez, Gray and Albrighton as the 3 AMs behind Vardy and they were all excellent and pretty much the best 3 players on the pitch. We struggled the following game and then seemed to abandon it as that was in Ranieri's constant tinkering phase last year. Never understood why we didn't give the 4-2-3-1 with Gray, Mahrez and Albrighton as the 3 AMs behind Vardy more of a try. edit: Just looked it up. It was 1-0 and Slimani was up front not Vardy who was injured, but the point still stands those 3 were all excellent that game.

He was probably our best player in the second half of last season tbf. He's just going through a bad patch of form, it happens to every player. You only have to go back to the Arsenal match to see how important he can be for us on his day. Gray should probably come in for him atm but Albrighton will play plenty and still have a lot of positive contributions this season. Btw I'm pretty sure tsintskaro has said before he only started supporting us half way through our title winning campaign because we were doing well after no previous connection to the club (unless I'm thinking of another user), so I wouldn't pay attention to him.

As others have said I think we won't know really unless he goes somewhere else but more than whether he is PL quality or not, the issue is he just doesn't suit our style of play and was a bit of a brainless panic buy in hindsight where our recruitment team didn't seem to take enough into account whether he would suit us or not. He needs to be the main striker and doesn't work alongside Vardy and he's never going to replace Vardy as the main striker here.

I'd say I agree and the same is also true of the Socialist Left, but both the far-right and far-left should be hated rather than pitied tbf.

Copenhagen is nowhere near as overrated as Amsterdam tbf. It's worth going for about 2 days to smoke a joint, see the red light district and Anne Frank's House and that's basically all there is there. No idea why people rank it alongside London, Paris, Berlin and Rome as the great western European capitals. It's not even in the same league as those cities.

I'm pretty neutral on him atm. I think we'll know in November once we've had a decent run of fixtures instead of playing the top 6 every week.

It must be opposition players as I cannot even think of any Czech or Brazillian players who played for Leicester.

Also became the first ever player to reach 40 international caps while playing for Leicester!

Ha! I didn't mean that we didn't deserve it just that we should be thankful we never had the kind of injuries we had at the end of last season or start of this one in that season. We absolutely deserved to win it with no luck involved and our starting XI were all magnificent but our squad was undoubtably paper thin that season

As much as we like to defend ourselves from big club fans I do have to admit we were a bit lucky we didn't have a big injury crisis that season. King and Ulloa were the only ones from outside the XI who contributed much. We saw last season and the beginning of this what a few injuries can do. I still think we have am excellent starting XI but we don't have the depth of the top 7 (and we probably have much better depth now than we did then).