On Feb 13, 1:23*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:42:50 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

The average individual family cannot survive on a single salary
without suffering a significant loss of living standards.
Quite, although this seems incongruous with your proposal that
families do exactly that: survive on one salary.

You may recall that I stated that a return to the traditional
one-worker family is IMO highly *desirable*, but I then lamented that
unfortunately present economics will not allow that to take place for
many/most families.

You also said that the problem was one of "expectations", asserting
your belief that the nanny state had caused or enabled this shift to
"irresponsibility", and then went on to say that you think it would be
beneficial to make close relatives strictly liable for the care of
family members. I hardly think people can be blamed for a state of
affairs where, by your own assertion, they cannot afford to be
"responsible".



=A0The
ever-rising fixed expenses such as mortgage/rent, council tax, water,
electricity, gas etc. have resulted in *very* little money left over
from the wages of an average worker, and in many cases the second
income is necessary to even be able to afford to buy a reasonable
amount of food, let alone any luxury/leisure items.
Agreed, although I suppose it will not be unexpected if I point out
that this is all perfectly consistent with what I said about there
being sufficient economic capacity for all families to live on a
single income. The only reason some families would struggle under the
current circumstances, is because other rich families are consuming
vast amounts of finite economic resources.

Whilst physical resources are necessarily finite, economic resources
are an artificial construct. *We presently have a situation in which
there are sufficient of many resources (especially all the essentials)
to supply everyone with as much as they would take if the resource was
completely free. *The very rich do not consume more food, for example,
than the poor in this country - and IME the quality is not
significantly different either (even though the rich person may pay
more for better presentation, preparation or packaging). *You will
find that physical comfort in the homes of the vast majority of people
in the UK is equal to the physical comfort in the homes of the very
wealthy in terms of temperature, air quality, the comfort of beds &
furniture etc.

It is easy to talk of what they have in common. Less easy, but
actually more interesting and relevant, to talk of what they do not
have in common.



*Whilst the wealthy may have larger homes, the average
person does not feel particularly short of room in their home.

If they have a home - and aren't paying an arm and a leg for it.



*Whilst
the wealthy may have leisure and luxury facillities in their own home,
those same facillities are available and affordable to most people as
public facillities, and the real increase that having such facillities
in the home afford to a person's standard of living is largely one of
perception than reality.

Having facilities in one's home typically means more ability to
partake at the convenience of your own moods, and without spending an
inordinate amount of the day travelling elsewhere.



*In fact in many cases people *prefer* to
indulge in such activities in a public place than in their own home
because of the increased social interaction of the former.

Presupposing that you want such social interaction - either in
general, or at that instant. Quite regularly, I find myself wanting to
be left alone so that I can dedicate and maintain my mental resources
on some other important task, without having either undesirable
interruption from those in proximity, and without having to maintain
social nicety with those I might encounter.

Anyway, the point is that the rich can choose whether they want social
interaction or not - the poor it seems must accept interaction whether
they want it or not.



*I have a
fridge containing drinks, tables and chairs in my house, for example,
but I still visit pubs on occassion even though the same activity in
my own home would, if anything, be more comfortable.

Quite, but that for you is a matter of choice. You can choose what you
want to do.



Having experienced both camps, it is my belief that in fact there is a
relatively small difference between the actual quality of life of the
rich and the actual quality of life of the average person in the UK.
A person sipping a £15 cocktail at the poolside of a £1000 per night
hotel on an exotic tropical island is not gaining significantly more
pleasure from that activity than someone drinking a Barcardi Breezer
at the side of a hotel pool in Spain or Portugal - which is an
activity that the majority of the UK population is able to afford to
do at least once a year.

There is a certain point at which extra money does not buy extra
quality of life, I agree. Personally the most valuable thing to me is
*time* - and perhaps mental energy. It is these things that I too
often find I do not have enough of - indeed, the point about mental
energy is probably why I routinely find myself infuriated by the
workings of the free market which levy a constant high tax on this,
leaving less remaining for those things in life that are actually
interesting and productive.

Anyway, the point is that for those who cannot afford a foreign
holiday at all, while others can, that causes a disconnect in common
experience and culture. If there is no culturally accepted alternative
to a holiday, then that is likely to cause a degree of both boredom
and stress directly, and its likely to cause a loss of closeness with
friends.

Shared interests and experience are central to human relationships -
I'm again touching on the point about continuity in human
relationships, and how lacking this often is in today's society.



*And having dined fairly often at places
where meal prices are in the 3 figure bracket per person, I can say
that if anything I enjoy a £10 meal at Weatherspoons just as much if
not more. *And I can completely honestly state that I get no more
pleasure or satisfaction from washing my hands in a marble sink with
gold taps than I do in the typical batroom of an average home.

I'm not too bothered whether the sink is marble or ceramic. However, I
do prefer to wash my hands in bathrooms that are clean and
aesthetically pleasing, and I've been in plenty of bathrooms in poor
households that are neither, and at the end of the day the only remedy
usually is to spend money on improving the fittings (money that such
people do not have). Generally, old fittings are both harder to clean
(making people less like to clean them, other things being equal), and
harder to make look clean.



Probably the biggest difference wrt quality of life is the ability of
the wealthy to employ servants to carry out the boring chores that
most people have to put up with - though again, having been in such a
position myself, there are plenty of downsides to having servants that
are not necessarily compensated for by losing the need to clean the
floors or do the washing-up. *And these days many onerous tasks are
made a lot easier with affordable machines - heck, choose your clothes
wisely and you don't even have to use an iron all that often.

Indeed, labour-saving appliances are the key to eliminating boring
chores today. Though frankly, I find that just having a sink that is
big enough to fully submerge all items being cleaned (a grill pan
particularly), and store them on the draining board without careful
(i.e. mentally demanding) stacking, often makes the operation seem so
much easier - but again, it means having a sufficiently large kitchen,
and the money to buy a big sink, and the spare mental resources to
analyse that particular problem as I have done, and the power (either
as owner or secure tenant) to fit such a sink and get enough use out
of it to make it worth the investment.

On Feb 13, 1:39*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:53:21 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:





It is more an attitude of mind and expectations than a reorganisation
of society. =A0A married couple in the UK are perfectly prepared to
sacrifice their life to some extent in order to raise children. =A0In
other countries thare is *exactly* the same attitude and expectation
regarding the care of parents in their old age. =A0A couple will marry
and sacrifice much of their time to caring for their children.
Following that, an elderly relative will move in and they will devote
more time to caring for that relative. =A0And finally they will
themselves become old and frail, and move in with a son or daughter.
It is something that is taken as a given and normal sequence of events
in any average life. =A0Sending a parent to a care home is as unusual as
it is to send a child to a care home in the UK.
But to return to what I was just saying about child daycare, the whole
point of elderly care homes is to wring out labour from the process of
caring, freeing that labour up (women's labour, in particular) for
consumption in the market economy - and also, to some extent,
alleviating the psychological burden of care, so that other burdens
created by the market economy can be successfully carried without
mental breakdown.

It is not the "market economy" that is soaking up people's wages to
make it unaffordable to live on a single income. *It is government
taxation.

Rubbish! Direct taxes are at their lowest in living memory. Indirect
taxes (e.g. point-of-use charges) have increased massively, but people
such as yourself often tend to support such things anyway as an
alternative to direct taxes.

And the point is, my taxes pay for the public services that I, my
family, and friends enjoy. I don't have a problem paying taxes in
principle, and I don't have this imaginary perception like you do that
the public sector is full of workshy layabouts who sit around drinking
tea all day. As I've said previously, my experience of the public
sector is that most of the 'waste' occurs at the interface with the
private sector. It is true (though not in my direct expeirence) that
the public sector can be inefficiently organised and lacks political
control, but the private sector often lacks organisation almost by
definition, precisely because there is so much atomisation of the
productive process (not least because monopoly is prevented), and it
often also lacks the appropriate incentives (which is precisely why it
cannot be permitted monopoly).



And a great deal of that taxation is used to provide the
expensive services and benefits that would not be necessary if a
family could afford to live on a single income!

Indeed.



Consider how much of your income ends up going to the government one
way or another. *Obviously there is income tax, VAT and council tax,
which of themselves eat up a huge percentage of your income (work it
out and surprise yourself). *But you also pay indirectly for business
taxes because the cost of *all* goods, utilities and services must
incororate that levy - which in many cases you are then charged VAT
on. *And of course there is the huge cut that government takes from
motor fuels that again affects the cost of almost everything.

If people could afford to go back to single-income families, it would
increase the number of jobs available which consequently would
decrease the amount needed to pay unemployment benefits.

Yes, but like I said previously, it improves the bargaining power of
labour! Why do you think they ended the post-war policy of full
employment, and put one in ten on the dole in the 80s?

On Feb 13, 1:39*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:53:21 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

But to return to what I was just saying about child daycare, the whole
point of elderly care homes is to wring out labour from the process of
caring, freeing that labour up (women's labour, in particular) for
consumption in the market economy - and also, to some extent,
alleviating the psychological burden of care, so that other burdens
created by the market economy can be successfully carried without
mental breakdown.

It is not the "market economy" that is soaking up people's wages to
make it unaffordable to live on a single income. *It is government
taxation. *And a great deal of that taxation is used to provide the
expensive services and benefits that would not be necessary if a
family could afford to live on a single income!

My other reply went off on a different tack, but I've just realised
what you were responding to. I didn't say the market economy was
soaking up people's wages. I said it's soaking up their *labour
power*. In other words, women's labour is increasingly sold on the
market, rather than bartered domestically.

On Feb 13, 8:37*pm, Tim Streater wrote:
In article
,





*Ste wrote:
On Feb 13, 1:39*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:53:21 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:
It is not the "market economy" that is soaking up people's wages to
make it unaffordable to live on a single income. *It is government
taxation.

Rubbish! Direct taxes are at their lowest in living memory. Indirect
taxes (e.g. point-of-use charges) have increased massively, but people
such as yourself often tend to support such things anyway as an
alternative to direct taxes.

And the point is, my taxes pay for the public services that I, my
family, and friends enjoy. I don't have a problem paying taxes in
principle, and I don't have this imaginary perception like you do that
the public sector is full of workshy layabouts who sit around drinking
tea all day.

No, they probably work quite hard, a lot of them. But because it's a
monopoly, there's no incentive, as there is in the private sector, to
improve processes and squeeze out waste.

Rubbish. There isn't a need to constantly motivate people with
"incentives", by which you implicitly mean financial incentives. Moral
narratives and collective purpose, are sufficient to an extent to
motivate people. It is private profit that often assaults these very
incentives.

It doesn't mean the public sector runs itself - it needs political
oversight to ensure efficient use of public money (and by 'efficient'
I mean efficient in terms of achieving political policy, not in terms
of spending the least possible amount of money), but the private
sector is simply not a substitute for this.



As I've said previously, my experience of the public sector is that
most of the 'waste' occurs at the interface with the private sector.

And that's because in the public sector, there appears to be a complete
inability to write contracts.

No, it's because they're being forced to write contracts that would
otherwise not be written, because the nature of the operation requires
flexibility and above all, mutual trust. It's the same reason as why
most organisations have employees rather than contractors, because you
don't have to renegotiate a contract every time you want the employee
to do something different.



It is true (though not in my direct expeirence) that
the public sector can be inefficiently organised

Got that bit right ...

and lacks political control, but the private sector often lacks
organisation almost by definition, precisely because there
is so much atomisation of the productive process (not least because
monopoly is prevented), and it often also lacks the appropriate
incentives (which is precisely why it cannot be permitted monopoly).

The private sector knows how to manage sub-contractors, and how to get
the best results from them in terms of quality and price, precisely
because they have the incentive to do so, a quality so conspicuously
lacking in the public sector.

The private sector manages difficult kinds of subcontracting by
internalising those functions - it only externalises those functions
that it can manage successfully, so it is very easy to reflect and say
the private sector is expert in managing external subcontractors. The
public sector does divide and externalise - you don't have the same
organisation running schools as railways - but if permitted (which it
is not), the public sector does so in a more efficient way than the
private sector.



How often are we hearing about IT
projects, or MoD cost increases? All the bloody time.

All projects run by the private sector! Funnily enough, I don't
remember all these IT fiascos before the mid-90s, when it was all
outsourced to the private sector.



You may or may not remember a time some 25 years ago when Jaguar nearly
went tits-up, because they allowed their subcontractors to do component
quality testing, rather than doing it themselves. As a result,
reliability of the XJ6 during that era was rubbish and sales plummeted.
Eventually they scrapped that policy and things picked up.

That sort of discipline is lacking in the public sector.

But if the production of those components had been internalised, there
would have been *no incentive* for anyone to have violated the quality
parameters in the first place!

On 13/02/2012 22:57, Tim Streater wrote:

Christ on a bicycle, you dope. I'm not talking about ****ing bonuses,
I'm talking about the fact that in any private company that expects to
thrive, and survive, theres's gonna be a person, or team, whose job(s)
it is to examine how the company does things and work out ways to
improve them. And save money. And therefore keep the company alive. And
in the long term stop it going bust.

Public sector has the same thing when it's run well.

Yes - and a screw up because the public sector is crap at managing
suppliers. It's easy for a wide boy to underbid and then, oh dear, there
are "unforeseen extra costs", and oddly enough the contract allows me to
charge those back to the saps in the public sector - who didn't write it
tightly enough in the first place.

Private sector is entirely capable of doing that too.

On Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:09:05 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message 4f3903d0.83396046@localhost, at 13:23:18 on Mon, 13 Feb
2012, Cynic remarked:
I have a fridge containing drinks, tables and chairs in my house, for
example, but I still visit pubs on occassion even though the same
activity in my own home would, if anything, be more comfortable.

The societal sea change in the last generation has been exactly that -
homes becoming more comfortable than pubs, rather than vice versa.
Although some pubs try quite hard to keep their comforts ahead of the
game, that's often at the expense (no pun intended) of pricing
themselves out of the market.

Exactly my point - the average home is just about as comfortable as it
is possible to get, and that aspect would not improve significantly if
you won the lottery. You go to a pub for the *social* aspect, not the
comfort, and the use of many *public* facilities is thus preferable to
having such facilities in your own home.

--
Cynic

On Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:31:56 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

You may recall that I stated that a return to the traditional
one-worker family is IMO highly *desirable*, but I then lamented that
unfortunately present economics will not allow that to take place for
many/most families.

You also said that the problem was one of "expectations", asserting
your belief that the nanny state had caused or enabled this shift to
"irresponsibility", and then went on to say that you think it would be
beneficial to make close relatives strictly liable for the care of
family members. I hardly think people can be blamed for a state of
affairs where, by your own assertion, they cannot afford to be
"responsible".

Only in the case of supporting a fairly severely disabled relative
would one person need to stay at home. If the person needed support
simply because they were unemployed, there is no reason why anyone
would have to give up their job. The additional expense in supporting
such a family member is little more than the cost of food for that
person.

in addition, the premise is that were such a scheme adopted, the state
would save money and would lower taxes, thus giving every working
family more disposable income - hopefully sufficient to allow one
partner to be able to give up employment.

Whilst physical resources are necessarily finite, economic resources
are an artificial construct. =A0We presently have a situation in which
there are sufficient of many resources (especially all the essentials)
to supply everyone with as much as they would take if the resource was
completely free. =A0The very rich do not consume more food, for example,
than the poor in this country - and IME the quality is not
significantly different either (even though the rich person may pay
more for better presentation, preparation or packaging). =A0You will
find that physical comfort in the homes of the vast majority of people
in the UK is equal to the physical comfort in the homes of the very
wealthy in terms of temperature, air quality, the comfort of beds &
furniture etc.

It is easy to talk of what they have in common. Less easy, but
actually more interesting and relevant, to talk of what they do not
have in common.

What do you need that you do not have?

Whilst the wealthy may have larger homes, the average
person does not feel particularly short of room in their home.

If they have a home - and aren't paying an arm and a leg for it.

There are very few people above the age of 25 in the UK who do not
have their own home (rented or mortgaged). The cost of that home has
nothing to do with how comfortable it is.

=A0Whilst
the wealthy may have leisure and luxury facillities in their own home,
those same facillities are available and affordable to most people as
public facillities, and the real increase that having such facillities
in the home afford to a person's standard of living is largely one of
perception than reality.

Having facilities in one's home typically means more ability to
partake at the convenience of your own moods, and without spending an
inordinate amount of the day travelling elsewhere.

Sure, wealth has advantages and gives you convenience and flexibility.
But that additional flexibility and convenience provides only a minor
increase in a person's quality of life - and my point is not that a
wealthy person does not have a better quality of life than the average
non-wealthy person, but that the difference is not nealy as great as
the perception.

=A0In fact in many cases people *prefer* to
indulge in such activities in a public place than in their own home
because of the increased social interaction of the former.

Presupposing that you want such social interaction - either in
general, or at that instant. Quite regularly, I find myself wanting to
be left alone so that I can dedicate and maintain my mental resources
on some other important task, without having either undesirable
interruption from those in proximity, and without having to maintain
social nicety with those I might encounter.

Sure - and I suspect that you have a home where you can do exactly
that in just as much comfort as Bill Gates can in his home. In many
cases a wealthy person has *less* privacy than the average person,
because they will have various non-family members in the house most of
the day.

Anyway, the point is that the rich can choose whether they want social
interaction or not - the poor it seems must accept interaction whether
they want it or not.

That divide is in fact probably more on the side of the average person
than most wealthy people. I would go so far as to say that the
average person is socially more secure than a wealthy person, because
theiy can be reasonably sure that their friends and lovers are with
them because they enjoy their company rather than because they want to
enjoy their money.

I have a
fridge containing drinks, tables and chairs in my house, for example,
but I still visit pubs on occassion even though the same activity in
my own home would, if anything, be more comfortable.

Quite, but that for you is a matter of choice. You can choose what you
want to do.

It is a matter of choice for the vast majority of average working
people in the UK. Again, it is the very wealthy who are often trapped
into a situation where they cannot indulge in such things, because
wealth brings with it quite a bit of undesirable baggage.

Having experienced both camps, it is my belief that in fact there is a
relatively small difference between the actual quality of life of the
rich and the actual quality of life of the average person in the UK.
A person sipping a =A315 cocktail at the poolside of a =A31000 per night
hotel on an exotic tropical island is not gaining significantly more
pleasure from that activity than someone drinking a Barcardi Breezer
at the side of a hotel pool in Spain or Portugal - which is an
activity that the majority of the UK population is able to afford to
do at least once a year.

There is a certain point at which extra money does not buy extra
quality of life, I agree. Personally the most valuable thing to me is
*time* - and perhaps mental energy. It is these things that I too
often find I do not have enough of - indeed, the point about mental
energy is probably why I routinely find myself infuriated by the
workings of the free market which levy a constant high tax on this,
leaving less remaining for those things in life that are actually
interesting and productive.

Extreme wealth would in that case probably be very frustrating for you
unless you refrained from using it (in which case why would you want
it?) You will find that a great deal of time is taken up *managing*
all the various things that your wealth has brought to you. You can
mitigate that to an extent by hiring people to manage your money and
assets - but even then you will be required to make a myriad decisions
every week - and also spend time ensuring that your managers are doing
their job satisfactorily and that nobody is taking advantage of you
(which they certainly will if it becomes known that you are not
keeping an eye on all your affairs).

Anyway, the point is that for those who cannot afford a foreign
holiday at all, while others can, that causes a disconnect in common
experience and culture. If there is no culturally accepted alternative
to a holiday, then that is likely to cause a degree of both boredom
and stress directly, and its likely to cause a loss of closeness with
friends.

Almost everyone in the UK has been capable of achieving sufficient
income to afford a foreign holiday once a year for some considerable
time. Albeit that the present economic downturn might have seen a
temporary blip in that situation for a significant number of people.

Shared interests and experience are central to human relationships -
I'm again touching on the point about continuity in human
relationships, and how lacking this often is in today's society.

I believe that the level to which our social welfare state has risen
has played a very large part in causing the decline in social
interaction within the larger community.

=A0And having dined fairly often at places
where meal prices are in the 3 figure bracket per person, I can say
that if anything I enjoy a =A310 meal at Weatherspoons just as much if
not more. =A0And I can completely honestly state that I get no more
pleasure or satisfaction from washing my hands in a marble sink with
gold taps than I do in the typical batroom of an average home.

I'm not too bothered whether the sink is marble or ceramic. However, I
do prefer to wash my hands in bathrooms that are clean and
aesthetically pleasing, and I've been in plenty of bathrooms in poor
households that are neither, and at the end of the day the only remedy
usually is to spend money on improving the fittings (money that such
people do not have). Generally, old fittings are both harder to clean
(making people less like to clean them, other things being equal), and
harder to make look clean.

Oh come off it! Given that poor households are the ones most likely
to have unemployed adults living in them, the only reason for dirty
bathrooms is that the person is too lazy to clean. Perhaps you should
consider the probability that it is the person's laziness that is
responsible for both the dirty bathroom *and* their poverty rather
than trying to argue that economic inequality makes a person incapable
of picking up a cloth and applying a bit of elbow-grease.

And I can assure you that expensive ornate fittings are often far more
difficult to clean than an ordinary chromed bath tap, and that even
people living on benefits can get sufficient money to make basic
improvements and decorations to their home - in poorer households the
council will even do that for them completely free of charge.

I've been to the homes of people who are earning enough to spend on a
restaurant meal once a week and a foreign holiday twice a year, but
are living in a filthy pig sty. Conversely I have visited OAPs who
are struggling to get by on a state pension, but who have spotless
tidy houses. Cleanliness in the UK has very little connection with
wealth.

Probably the biggest difference wrt quality of life is the ability of
the wealthy to employ servants to carry out the boring chores that
most people have to put up with - though again, having been in such a
position myself, there are plenty of downsides to having servants that
are not necessarily compensated for by losing the need to clean the
floors or do the washing-up. =A0And these days many onerous tasks are
made a lot easier with affordable machines - heck, choose your clothes
wisely and you don't even have to use an iron all that often.

Indeed, labour-saving appliances are the key to eliminating boring
chores today. Though frankly, I find that just having a sink that is
big enough to fully submerge all items being cleaned (a grill pan
particularly), and store them on the draining board without careful
(i.e. mentally demanding) stacking, often makes the operation seem so
much easier - but again, it means having a sufficiently large kitchen,
and the money to buy a big sink, and the spare mental resources to
analyse that particular problem as I have done, and the power (either
as owner or secure tenant) to fit such a sink and get enough use out
of it to make it worth the investment.

But honestly - just how much would the quality of your life improve if
you had a big sink? I find that with most limitations, I only have to
figure out a solution once, and then make trivial changes to my
work-habits to accomodate it with little or no disadvatage. And if
such a change would, for you, make a significant improvement to the
quality of your life, I have little doubt that you would find a way to
get yourself a bigger sink (or a smaller grill pan!)

--
Cynic

On Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:10:01 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

My other reply went off on a different tack, but I've just realised
what you were responding to. I didn't say the market economy was
soaking up people's wages. I said it's soaking up their *labour
power*. In other words, women's labour is increasingly sold on the
market, rather than bartered domestically.

I don't see how you can blame the "market economy" for that. IIUC it
all began when the *government* persuaded women to go out to work in
order to replace the male labour force that the government had just
removed from the labour market in order to fight its war.

Prior to that, the labour market was perfectly happy to use a
predominately male labour force, and women were happy to stay at home.
The market was *forced* to adapt to an increasingly female workforce
after the government removed a sizable chunk of the men - the jobs
obviously had to be filled or they would not get done. So when the
war ended and the men were once again available, they returned to find
a labour market that was pretty full and consequently soon became
completely saturated. Added to which the market was itself shrinking
thanks to a combination of increasing automation and the cessation of
military based manufacturing.

--
Cynic

On Feb 14, 3:43*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:10:01 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

My other reply went off on a different tack, but I've just realised
what you were responding to. I didn't say the market economy was
soaking up people's wages. I said it's soaking up their *labour
power*. In other words, women's labour is increasingly sold on the
market, rather than bartered domestically.

I don't see how you can blame the "market economy" for that. *IIUC it
all began when the *government* persuaded women to go out to work in
order to replace the male labour force that the government had just
removed from the labour market in order to fight its war.

I wasn't "blaming" the market economy for bringing women into the
workforce, and I'm not saying they should be forced back out of the
workforce. What I am saying is that the labour market has adapted to,
and benefitted from (i.e. the rich have disproportionately benefitted
from), a supply of female labour. If you reverse the situation, there
will be a transfer of wealth and power from women to men, and from
rich to poor, so broadly speaking rich women stand to lose most,
whilst poor men stand to gain most.



Prior to that, the labour market was perfectly happy to use a
predominately male labour force, and women were happy to stay at home.
The market was *forced* to adapt to an increasingly female workforce
after the government removed a sizable chunk of the men - the jobs
obviously had to be filled or they would not get done. *So when the
war ended and the men were once again available, they returned to find
a labour market that was pretty full and consequently soon became
completely saturated. *Added to which the market was itself shrinking
thanks to a combination of increasing automation and the cessation of
military based manufacturing.

The rebuilding of the country provided a reasonable amount of work to
be done, whilst an increasingly fairer distribution of economic
production provided an increasingly higher living standard for the
average worker. Many ordinary people lived better during and after the
war, than they had done before it! I'm not aware of any labour surplus
immediately following WW2.

On Feb 14, 12:56*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:31:56 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

You may recall that I stated that a return to the traditional
one-worker family is IMO highly *desirable*, but I then lamented that
unfortunately present economics will not allow that to take place for
many/most families.

You also said that the problem was one of "expectations", asserting
your belief that the nanny state had caused or enabled this shift to
"irresponsibility", and then went on to say that you think it would be
beneficial to make close relatives strictly liable for the care of
family members. I hardly think people can be blamed for a state of
affairs where, by your own assertion, they cannot afford to be
"responsible".

Only in the case of supporting a fairly severely disabled relative
would one person need to stay at home. *If the person needed support
simply because they were unemployed, there is no reason why anyone
would have to give up their job. *The additional expense in supporting
such a family member is little more than the cost of food for that
person.

Perhaps I was confused (and I'm not inclined to go back and check),
but I thought you were advocating full liability for "care", not just
financial liability for the unemployed. How exactly would your
proposal work where most or all family members are out of work?



in addition, the premise is that were such a scheme adopted, the state
would save money and would lower taxes, thus giving every working
family more disposable income - hopefully sufficient to allow one
partner to be able to give up employment.

Lol. Do you really think that the savings would be so manifest?



Whilst physical resources are necessarily finite, economic resources
are an artificial construct. =A0We presently have a situation in which
there are sufficient of many resources (especially all the essentials)
to supply everyone with as much as they would take if the resource was
completely free. =A0The very rich do not consume more food, for example,
than the poor in this country - and IME the quality is not
significantly different either (even though the rich person may pay
more for better presentation, preparation or packaging). =A0You will
find that physical comfort in the homes of the vast majority of people
in the UK is equal to the physical comfort in the homes of the very
wealthy in terms of temperature, air quality, the comfort of beds &
furniture etc.
It is easy to talk of what they have in common. Less easy, but
actually more interesting and relevant, to talk of what they do not
have in common.

What do you need that you do not have?

What I need depends largely on what other people have.



Whilst the wealthy may have larger homes, the average
person does not feel particularly short of room in their home.
If they have a home - and aren't paying an arm and a leg for it.

There are very few people above the age of 25 in the UK who do not
have their own home (rented or mortgaged).

I suspect the taxpayer will actually be paying, in part or whole, for
quite a few of those.



*The cost of that home has
nothing to do with how comfortable it is.

Of course it does. If homes are costly, then by and large poorer
people will be in smaller homes than would otherwise be suitable. And
so too, unless you own your home outright, then it can be difficult to
make that home particularly comfortable, without the risk of
forfeiting the cost of any improvements.



=A0Whilst
the wealthy may have leisure and luxury facillities in their own home,
those same facillities are available and affordable to most people as
public facillities, and the real increase that having such facillities
in the home afford to a person's standard of living is largely one of
perception than reality.
Having facilities in one's home typically means more ability to
partake at the convenience of your own moods, and without spending an
inordinate amount of the day travelling elsewhere.

Sure, wealth has advantages and gives you convenience and flexibility.
But that additional flexibility and convenience provides only a minor
increase in a person's quality of life

It seems to me Cynic that if wealth provides so few advantages for the
wealthy which are of minor benefit only, then why on Earth are they so
keen to retain those advantages, and so keen to maintain disadvantage
for others?

I'm sure I had this one with Ricardo I think the other week, where for
all his claimed view on wealth and poverty, his political
prescriptions and personal behaviour suggested quite the opposite view
to the one claimed.



- and my point is not that a
wealthy person does not have a better quality of life than the average
non-wealthy person, but that the difference is not nealy as great as
the perception.

It really depends on what perception we're talking about, since we
seem to be talking about the perceptions of unidentified third parties
rather than our own.

I would certainly assert that, between more equal and more unequal
*societies as a whole*, the differences in quality of life are quite
significant, although I am quite content to concede to you that
inequality erodes the QoL of the rich as well as the poor - but it
erodes the QoL of the poor moreso, and so in any given society, it is
always better to be rich.



=A0In fact in many cases people *prefer* to
indulge in such activities in a public place than in their own home
because of the increased social interaction of the former.
Presupposing that you want such social interaction - either in
general, or at that instant. Quite regularly, I find myself wanting to
be left alone so that I can dedicate and maintain my mental resources
on some other important task, without having either undesirable
interruption from those in proximity, and without having to maintain
social nicety with those I might encounter.

Sure - and I suspect that you have a home where you can do exactly
that in just as much comfort as Bill Gates can in his home.

I do, but I am reasonably satisfied with the standard of comfort in my
own home, and generally speaking I have the money to rectify any
deficit.



*In many
cases a wealthy person has *less* privacy than the average person,
because they will have various non-family members in the house most of
the day.

I'm not sure that is necessarily the case, nor does it necessarily
follow that the presence of such people is unwanted.



Anyway, the point is that the rich can choose whether they want social
interaction or not - the poor it seems must accept interaction whether
they want it or not.

That divide is in fact probably more on the side of the average person
than most wealthy people. *I would go so far as to say that the
average person is socially more secure than a wealthy person, because
theiy can be reasonably sure that their friends and lovers are with
them because they enjoy their company rather than because they want to
enjoy their money.

Yes you may well be correct, but once again, the rich have the
*unilateral choice* to give up their money, if it becomes an
inordinate burden. The poor do not have the unilateral choice to
become rich. Once again, it seems to me that you're in danger of
arguing in support of redistribution, when it does not seem to be your
general intention to do so.



I have a
fridge containing drinks, tables and chairs in my house, for example,
but I still visit pubs on occassion even though the same activity in
my own home would, if anything, be more comfortable.
Quite, but that for you is a matter of choice. You can choose what you
want to do.

It is a matter of choice for the vast majority of average working
people in the UK.

Indeed, most people can still choose to go the pub, but I'm making a
more general point there are lots of basic choices that are
increasingly enjoyed only in proportion to one's wealth.



*Again, it is the very wealthy who are often trapped
into a situation where they cannot indulge in such things, because
wealth brings with it quite a bit of undesirable baggage.

Why don't they give it up then? That is the question that your line of
argument seems to raise.



Having experienced both camps, it is my belief that in fact there is a
relatively small difference between the actual quality of life of the
rich and the actual quality of life of the average person in the UK.
A person sipping a =A315 cocktail at the poolside of a =A31000 per night
hotel on an exotic tropical island is not gaining significantly more
pleasure from that activity than someone drinking a Barcardi Breezer
at the side of a hotel pool in Spain or Portugal - which is an
activity that the majority of the UK population is able to afford to
do at least once a year.
There is a certain point at which extra money does not buy extra
quality of life, I agree. Personally the most valuable thing to me is
*time* - and perhaps mental energy. It is these things that I too
often find I do not have enough of - indeed, the point about mental
energy is probably why I routinely find myself infuriated by the
workings of the free market which levy a constant high tax on this,
leaving less remaining for those things in life that are actually
interesting and productive.

Extreme wealth would in that case probably be very frustrating for you
unless you refrained from using it (in which case why would you want
it?)

I *don't* want extreme wealth. And it is not that I begrudge material
goods to others who do want them - the point is that economic wealth
is a source of power, and what I do not want is for that excess power
to be used against my interests, and the powerful almost invariably do
use power against the powerless.



*You will find that a great deal of time is taken up *managing*
all the various things that your wealth has brought to you. *You can
mitigate that to an extent by hiring people to manage your money and
assets - but even then you will be required to make a myriad decisions
every week - and also spend time ensuring that your managers are doing
their job satisfactorily and that nobody is taking advantage of you
(which they certainly will if it becomes known that you are not
keeping an eye on all your affairs).

I find it quite funny how you can refer to the wealthy fearing being
"taken advantage of", when taking advantage is what most of the
wealthiest are doing.



Anyway, the point is that for those who cannot afford a foreign
holiday at all, while others can, that causes a disconnect in common
experience and culture. If there is no culturally accepted alternative
to a holiday, then that is likely to cause a degree of both boredom
and stress directly, and its likely to cause a loss of closeness with
friends.

Almost everyone in the UK has been capable of achieving sufficient
income to afford a foreign holiday once a year for some considerable
time.

The point about holidays is that one has the power to afford them *in
addition to* other normal cultural activies, not instead of them. I'm
not sure that "almost everyone" can - and indeed, where the vast
majority can afford something, the deprivation becomes even more harsh
on the minority who cannot, because there are less likely to be
socially acceptable alternatives where only a minority cannot afford
to participate in the mainstream activity.



*Albeit that the present economic downturn might have seen a
temporary blip in that situation for a significant number of people.

I would say so, although I'm not so sure that it's going to be that
temporary.



Shared interests and experience are central to human relationships -
I'm again touching on the point about continuity in human
relationships, and how lacking this often is in today's society.

I believe that the level to which our social welfare state has risen
has played a very large part in causing the decline in social
interaction within the larger community.

No, it is the level to which market forces and inequality have risen,
that have played the largest part in causing that decline.



=A0And having dined fairly often at places
where meal prices are in the 3 figure bracket per person, I can say
that if anything I enjoy a =A310 meal at Weatherspoons just as much if
not more. =A0And I can completely honestly state that I get no more
pleasure or satisfaction from washing my hands in a marble sink with
gold taps than I do in the typical batroom of an average home.
I'm not too bothered whether the sink is marble or ceramic. However, I
do prefer to wash my hands in bathrooms that are clean and
aesthetically pleasing, and I've been in plenty of bathrooms in poor
households that are neither, and at the end of the day the only remedy
usually is to spend money on improving the fittings (money that such
people do not have). Generally, old fittings are both harder to clean
(making people less like to clean them, other things being equal), and
harder to make look clean.

Oh come off it! *Given that poor households are the ones most likely
to have unemployed adults living in them, the only reason for dirty
bathrooms is that the person is too lazy to clean.

I didn't say the unemployed lacked the time to clean them. I said that
they were *harder* to clean, and harder to make *look* clean. In other
words, you will put more effort into cleaning older fittings, and they
will look comparatively dirtier even after having put that effort in -
I've seen plenty of bathrooms that look worse when clean, than mine
does when moderately dirty, and I can only assume that the vast
majority of people (including those who are forced to accept old
fittings) make a similar assessment as I do of bathroom quality.

And whilst you may assume that the unemployed poor by virtue of their
lifestyle have plenty of effort and willpower to spare, the reality is
likely to be quite the opposite, that increased financial stress,
increased consequential demands on physical and psychological effort
across the board with everyday activies, and fewer pleasant everyday
experiences, are likely to leave them sorely depleted of willingness
to exert effort.

I know when I feel stressed, even if I otherwise have a surfeit of
time, I find myself *less* inclined to do unpleasant tasks or
difficult chores, not moreso. I have no reason to think other people
generally behave any differently - nobody I have ever known, has ever
said to me "cor, I feel extremely tired and stressed at the moment, I
think I'll go and do a few hours of unpleasant work". More often, they
either say that they do not want to do anything at all, or else they
say they want to engage in activities that they find recreational -
and indeed that is exactly how I think too.



*Perhaps you should
consider the probability that it is the person's laziness that is
responsible for both the dirty bathroom *and* their poverty

I don't observe that. This seems to be an instance of how all this
imaginary work abounds in the economy, and how, since the recession, a
million people suddenly got lazier (for reasons that are never made
entirely apparent by the people who offer this line of reasoning).



rather
than trying to argue that economic inequality makes a person incapable
of picking up a cloth and applying a bit of elbow-grease.

Of course, I did not say anything so simplistic.



And I can assure you that expensive ornate fittings are often far more
difficult to clean than an ordinary chromed bath tap,

I accept that, but garishly ornate fittings are increasingly less
popular these days - especially in working households where money is
available but time is at a premium.

Personally, I was recently looking at commercial-quality hands-free
taps for my bathroom sink (so as to completely do away with moving
parts and intricate details where muck tends to accumulate and which
are particularly difficult to clean), and next time I'm tempted to
have the tap and pipework wall-mounted instead of sink-mounted - so
that you do not get the unpleasant accumulation of water and scale
around the base of the taps, and wiping the sink clean can be done in
pretty much one swoop of the hand.



and that even
people living on benefits can get sufficient money to make basic
improvements and decorations to their home - in poorer households the
council will even do that for them completely free of charge.

I know several people who have struggled to get repairs done by
private landlords. Even so, it is one thing to throw up some wallpaper
or lash on some cheap paint, another to fit a high-quality kitchen to
a property in which you have no real security of tenure.



I've been to the homes of people who are earning enough to spend on a
restaurant meal once a week and a foreign holiday twice a year, but
are living in a filthy pig sty. *Conversely I have visited OAPs who
are struggling to get by on a state pension, but who have spotless
tidy houses. *Cleanliness in the UK has very little connection with
wealth.

I certainly agree there is no perfect correlation - some people will
always be content with dirt, and others will always try to polish mud
floors, meanwhile the standards of the vast majority of people are
sensitive to the physical and mental effort required to maintain those
standards. It wasn't all about cleanliness anyway - I also mentioned
aesthetic (and unfortunately no amount of cleaning makes a worn green
or brown bathroom suite look acceptable), and I don't know about you
but I really do prefer to use modern, quality bathrooms.



Probably the biggest difference wrt quality of life is the ability of
the wealthy to employ servants to carry out the boring chores that
most people have to put up with - though again, having been in such a
position myself, there are plenty of downsides to having servants that
are not necessarily compensated for by losing the need to clean the
floors or do the washing-up. =A0And these days many onerous tasks are
made a lot easier with affordable machines - heck, choose your clothes
wisely and you don't even have to use an iron all that often.
Indeed, labour-saving appliances are the key to eliminating boring
chores today. Though frankly, I find that just having a sink that is
big enough to fully submerge all items being cleaned (a grill pan
particularly), and store them on the draining board without careful
(i.e. mentally demanding) stacking, often makes the operation seem so
much easier - but again, it means having a sufficiently large kitchen,
and the money to buy a big sink, and the spare mental resources to
analyse that particular problem as I have done, and the power (either
as owner or secure tenant) to fit such a sink and get enough use out
of it to make it worth the investment.

But honestly - just how much would the quality of your life improve if
you had a big sink?

If I was using the sink several times a day for cooker fittings, or
draining a high number of items on the draining board, it would make a
significant difference I think to have a sink area that was of a
commensurate size.



*I find that with most limitations, I only have to
figure out a solution once, and then make trivial changes to my
work-habits to accomodate it with little or no disadvatage. *And if
such a change would, for you, make a significant improvement to the
quality of your life, I have little doubt that you would find a way to
get yourself a bigger sink (or a smaller grill pan!)

I'm not quite sure I understand your point.

On Tue, 14 Feb 2012 13:44:27 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

Only in the case of supporting a fairly severely disabled relative
would one person need to stay at home. =A0If the person needed support
simply because they were unemployed, there is no reason why anyone
would have to give up their job. =A0The additional expense in supporting
such a family member is little more than the cost of food for that
person.

Perhaps I was confused (and I'm not inclined to go back and check),
but I thought you were advocating full liability for "care", not just
financial liability for the unemployed. How exactly would your
proposal work where most or all family members are out of work?

My proposal was that the state would only give aid (of any sort) to
people who *don't* have any relatives capable of supporting them, and
that people become obliged by law to provide support for family
members. Obviously it would need a fair number of details sorting
out, but that was the bare bones of the proposal. Basically it
extends the responsibility that we have for the wellbeing of our minor
children to a larger family circle.

in addition, the premise is that were such a scheme adopted, the state
would save money and would lower taxes, thus giving every working
family more disposable income - hopefully sufficient to allow one
partner to be able to give up employment.

Lol. Do you really think that the savings would be so manifest?

It would only happen if a substantial tax decrease was specifically
made part of the new proposal - which it would have to be in order to
stand any chance of being accepted by the voters.

It is easy to talk of what they have in common. Less easy, but
actually more interesting and relevant, to talk of what they do not
have in common.

What do you need that you do not have?

What I need depends largely on what other people have.

That is true, but does not answer my question. What, right now, do
rich people have that you do not have that causes you to feel that
your general quality of life is significantly worse than theirs?

There are very few people above the age of 25 in the UK who do not
have their own home (rented or mortgaged).

I suspect the taxpayer will actually be paying, in part or whole, for
quite a few of those.

And? We are talking about the relative quality of life between rich
and poor, so the question of who pays for what is irrelevant. In the
case of wealthy businessmen, their customers are no doubt paying for
their home - and if their main customer is the government, that means
that the taxpayer is effectively paying for their home as well. So
what?

=A0The cost of that home has
nothing to do with how comfortable it is.

Of course it does. If homes are costly, then by and large poorer
people will be in smaller homes than would otherwise be suitable. And
so too, unless you own your home outright, then it can be difficult to
make that home particularly comfortable, without the risk of
forfeiting the cost of any improvements.

The comfort of a home does not improve significantly with its size, so
long as it is big enough not to be overcrowded. My degree of comfort
whilst watching TV, lying in bed or sat at my computer is unconnected
with how many rooms the house has or how big its garden is. Comfort
largely consists of having comfortable furniture and a comfortable
temperature in the home. I also see no problem with buying and doing
things that will improve my everyday comfort and convenience in a
rented property (and have frequently done so) - and it is often
possible to make all necessary improvements in a way that does *not*
mean they are forfeit if and when you move. It seems stupid to me to
put up with discomfort just because making an improvement might end up
benefitting the landlord. The only question for me is whether the
increase to my comfort or convenience is worth the money and/or
effort. You might also consider that even if you own your own house,
very little of the money you spend on it will end up increasing the
selling price significantly, so that money is equally forfeit when you
move out. In fact, a homeowner must spend quite a lot just to
*maintain* the value of the house, and that expense is something that
a person renting a property does not incur, so it's very much swings
and roundabouts.

Sure, wealth has advantages and gives you convenience and flexibility.
But that additional flexibility and convenience provides only a minor
increase in a person's quality of life

It seems to me Cynic that if wealth provides so few advantages for the
wealthy which are of minor benefit only, then why on Earth are they so
keen to retain those advantages, and so keen to maintain disadvantage
for others?

I have not come across any wealthy people who are "keen to maintain a
disadvantage to others". Many (but not all) people are indeed keen to
become wealthy themselves - mainly due to the *perceived* advantages.
If they achieve that goal, they often find that the reality of the
situation is not nearly as great as they imagined (although there are
obviously some real advantages), and in many, many cases the wealth
brings far more disadvantages. Achieving "fame and fortune" has ended
up killing quite a few people at a young age by one means or another.

- and my point is not that a
wealthy person does not have a better quality of life than the average
non-wealthy person, but that the difference is not nealy as great as
the perception.

It really depends on what perception we're talking about, since we
seem to be talking about the perceptions of unidentified third parties
rather than our own.

I think your own perception affords wealth rather more advantages than
the reality. I have experienced both poverty and moderate wealth, and
whilst I can certainly state that I prefer wealth to poverty, it is
also true that my happiness and quality of life have not been
associated in any way with my bank balance. Indeed, the most content
and happiest period of my life so far was during a period when I
didn't even have a bank account.

I would certainly assert that, between more equal and more unequal
*societies as a whole*, the differences in quality of life are quite
significant, although I am quite content to concede to you that
inequality erodes the QoL of the rich as well as the poor - but it
erodes the QoL of the poor moreso, and so in any given society, it is
always better to be rich.

Again, apart from *extreme* poverty and *extreme* wealth, the
difference in QoL is, I mainatain, more a product of your perception
than reality.

Sure - and I suspect that you have a home where you can do exactly
that in just as much comfort as Bill Gates can in his home.

I do, but I am reasonably satisfied with the standard of comfort in my
own home, and generally speaking I have the money to rectify any
deficit.

Does that mean that you regard yourself as a member of the "rich"
class? In the UK, the vast majority of people have the ability to
rectify any significant deficit to their comfort.

=A0In many
cases a wealthy person has *less* privacy than the average person,
because they will have various non-family members in the house most of
the day.

I'm not sure that is necessarily the case, nor does it necessarily
follow that the presence of such people is unwanted.

Of course it is not *necessarily* the case, but people who live in
large homes *need* to employ staff for everyday cleaning and
maintainance, for example. The presence is obviously not unwanted in
one sense (they were hired to do a job), but you do not have privacy
whilst they are in your house. You probably wouldn't(for example) pop
to the kitchen dressed only in underclothes or less when there is the
probability of passing a cleaning lady on the way.

Anyway, the point is that the rich can choose whether they want social
interaction or not - the poor it seems must accept interaction whether
they want it or not.

That divide is in fact probably more on the side of the average person
than most wealthy people. =A0I would go so far as to say that the
average person is socially more secure than a wealthy person, because
theiy can be reasonably sure that their friends and lovers are with
them because they enjoy their company rather than because they want to
enjoy their money.

Yes you may well be correct, but once again, the rich have the
*unilateral choice* to give up their money, if it becomes an
inordinate burden. The poor do not have the unilateral choice to
become rich. Once again, it seems to me that you're in danger of
arguing in support of redistribution, when it does not seem to be your
general intention to do so.

To say that a wealthy person could simply get rid of their money if
they don't like the disadvantages it brings is as simplistic as
arguing that a fat person could simply stop eating so much if they
don't like being overweight, or that a poor person could simply get a
job if they don't like being poor. Yes, it is possible, but it is far
from easy.

People born into wealth are also born into a culture that is different
to the culture of average or poor people, and so getting rid of money
would entail a change of the person's cultural identity.

Wealth also carries quite a few responsibilities. A typical wealthy
person will be supporting several families by employing members of
those families, and will also have formed various social attachments
that would not (for very real social reasons) be possible without
having money. Therfore giving up wealth will mean breaking off strong
social attachments as well as harming a few other people.

Whilst a person who aquires wealth suddenly - such as in an
inheritance or lottery win would *at that time* be perfectly able to
give the money away, almost all people will at that stage perceive it
as being of great benefit to them - and by the time they discover that
money also has downsides they will have formed the abovementioned
bonds.

Also, in our culture money=success and poverty=failure, and so there
is the person's self-esteem at stake as well. added to which many
wealthy people have become obsessed with making money to the point of
addiction, and consequently devote all their time to the task - which
ends up destroying their family and social life and means that they do
not actually take the time to relax and *enjoy* the extensive fruits
of their labours.

It is a matter of choice for the vast majority of average working
people in the UK.

Indeed, most people can still choose to go the pub, but I'm making a
more general point there are lots of basic choices that are
increasingly enjoyed only in proportion to one's wealth.

We are discussing the situation in the UK. I am therefore not
considering people who are so poor that they have to sleep on the
streets and cannot afford to eat. I am also not including the very
top extremes of wealth, such as people who can afford to buy a
tropical island and set up their own society and live completely apart
from the rest of the World.

=A0Again, it is the very wealthy who are often trapped
into a situation where they cannot indulge in such things, because
wealth brings with it quite a bit of undesirable baggage.

Why don't they give it up then? That is the question that your line of
argument seems to raise.

See above. On balance most people will find being wealthy preferable
to being economically average, and I do not pretend otherwise. my
point is only tyhat the difference is a heck of a lot less than most
people's perception, and there are downsides involved that most people
either do not consider at all, or do not appreciate how much of a
downside it will end up being.

Extreme wealth would in that case probably be very frustrating for you
unless you refrained from using it (in which case why would you want
it?)

I *don't* want extreme wealth. And it is not that I begrudge material
goods to others who do want them - the point is that economic wealth
is a source of power, and what I do not want is for that excess power
to be used against my interests, and the powerful almost invariably do
use power against the powerless.

Very few wealthy individuals exert power over the general population
to any extent whatsoever. If power is what you fear, then direct your
attack toward governments that have far more power, and moreover wield
it routinely against the general population.

=A0You will find that a great deal of time is taken up *managing*
all the various things that your wealth has brought to you. =A0You can
mitigate that to an extent by hiring people to manage your money and
assets - but even then you will be required to make a myriad decisions
every week - and also spend time ensuring that your managers are doing
their job satisfactorily and that nobody is taking advantage of you
(which they certainly will if it becomes known that you are not
keeping an eye on all your affairs).

I find it quite funny how you can refer to the wealthy fearing being
"taken advantage of", when taking advantage is what most of the
wealthiest are doing.

You are very much mistaken if you believe that it is all a one-way
street. The more you have (or are perceived to have), the more people
there will be trying to take it from you. There will also be people
trying to deliberately harm you because of jealousy. If you owned a
car worth over £100K, you would soon learn to be very fearful of
parking it in the average public place because of the very high
probability that it would suffer malicious vandalism.

Almost everyone in the UK has been capable of achieving sufficient
income to afford a foreign holiday once a year for some considerable
time.

The point about holidays is that one has the power to afford them *in
addition to* other normal cultural activies, not instead of them. I'm
not sure that "almost everyone" can - and indeed, where the vast
majority can afford something, the deprivation becomes even more harsh
on the minority who cannot, because there are less likely to be
socially acceptable alternatives where only a minority cannot afford
to participate in the mainstream activity.

As said, it is not all that helpful to discuss the small minority of
people at the extreme ends of the financial spectrum - they are
special cases that require special treatment. From what I have
experienced in the UK, even the average unemployed council estate
citizen has managed to find the means to get to Spain for a week or so
each year without impacting their ability to have a pint at the pub a
couple of times a week for the rest of the year. It is more likely to
be the businessman who cannot spare the time from his business to take
a decent holiday.

=A0Albeit that the present economic downturn might have seen a
temporary blip in that situation for a significant number of people.

I would say so, although I'm not so sure that it's going to be that
temporary.

We may indeed be at the start of a general lower standard of living
ratherr than a temporary hiccough. Which means a depression. If
inflation and our present high taxation continues into a depression
era, we will end up with riots and civil unrest that will force a
radical change. The government will have to re-learn that the
population must be given their bread and circuses - and both
commodities consist of far more than they once used to.

I believe that the level to which our social welfare state has risen
has played a very large part in causing the decline in social
interaction within the larger community.

No, it is the level to which market forces and inequality have risen,
that have played the largest part in causing that decline.

We will have to agree to disagree on that point. For me, the fact
that the government is taking my hard-earned money and giving it to
the 17 year old single mother next door gives me far more reason to
decide she doesn't need any further help from myself than the fact
that the CEO of Tesco is earning a 7 figure income. YMMV.

Oh come off it! =A0Given that poor households are the ones most likely
to have unemployed adults living in them, the only reason for dirty
bathrooms is that the person is too lazy to clean.

I didn't say the unemployed lacked the time to clean them. I said that
they were *harder* to clean, and harder to make *look* clean. In other
words, you will put more effort into cleaning older fittings, and they
will look comparatively dirtier even after having put that effort in -
I've seen plenty of bathrooms that look worse when clean, than mine
does when moderately dirty, and I can only assume that the vast
majority of people (including those who are forced to accept old
fittings) make a similar assessment as I do of bathroom quality.

Most rooms can be made to look nice if the effort is made without
needing to spend any significant amount of money.

And whilst you may assume that the unemployed poor by virtue of their
lifestyle have plenty of effort and willpower to spare, the reality is
likely to be quite the opposite, that increased financial stress,
increased consequential demands on physical and psychological effort
across the board with everyday activies, and fewer pleasant everyday
experiences, are likely to leave them sorely depleted of willingness
to exert effort.

I see. Which is a long-winded way of saying that they are lazy.

I know when I feel stressed, even if I otherwise have a surfeit of
time, I find myself *less* inclined to do unpleasant tasks or
difficult chores, not moreso.

There are plenty of things that I feel "disinclined" to do, but
nevertheless I still do them. Its how people who are *not* lazy
behave.

I have no reason to think other people
generally behave any differently - nobody I have ever known, has ever
said to me "cor, I feel extremely tired and stressed at the moment, I
think I'll go and do a few hours of unpleasant work". More often, they
either say that they do not want to do anything at all, or else they
say they want to engage in activities that they find recreational -
and indeed that is exactly how I think too.

So you go and watch the TV and leave the dirty dishes stacked in the
sink for yet another day. I know. It's called "laziness".

=A0Perhaps you should
consider the probability that it is the person's laziness that is
responsible for both the dirty bathroom *and* their poverty

I don't observe that. This seems to be an instance of how all this
imaginary work abounds in the economy, and how, since the recession, a
million people suddenly got lazier (for reasons that are never made
entirely apparent by the people who offer this line of reasoning).

Laziness might not be the reason they are out of work, but it *is* the
reason that they have a dirty bathroom - and if the bathroom indicates
that they are lazy then laziness *might* be the reason for the lack of
a job as well.

And I can assure you that expensive ornate fittings are often far more
difficult to clean than an ordinary chromed bath tap,

I accept that, but garishly ornate fittings are increasingly less
popular these days - especially in working households where money is
available but time is at a premium.

I did not state that they were prevalent in such places - I was
refuting the statement that cheap fittings are more difficult to clean
than expensive fittings.

Personally, I was recently looking at commercial-quality hands-free
taps for my bathroom sink (so as to completely do away with moving
parts and intricate details where muck tends to accumulate and which
are particularly difficult to clean), and next time I'm tempted to
have the tap and pipework wall-mounted instead of sink-mounted - so
that you do not get the unpleasant accumulation of water and scale
around the base of the taps, and wiping the sink clean can be done in
pretty much one swoop of the hand.

If you would really like such taps but cannot reasonably save the
money to buy them from a showroom, there are several places where you
could try to find perfectly good second-hand products. Then borrow
some tools and fit them yourself.

and that even
people living on benefits can get sufficient money to make basic
improvements and decorations to their home - in poorer households the
council will even do that for them completely free of charge.

I know several people who have struggled to get repairs done by
private landlords. Even so, it is one thing to throw up some wallpaper
or lash on some cheap paint, another to fit a high-quality kitchen to
a property in which you have no real security of tenure.

A kitchen is either fit for purpose or it is not. If not, the
landlord has a duty to fix it. It would appear that you have fallen
victim to the sort of marketing that you claim to abhor. There is no
reason whatsoever why a traditional kitchen should be more difficult
to work in than a modern "fitted" kitchen (which seem to be comprised
of overpriced and badly made glitzy chipboard and plastic units that
damage easily).

What, exactly did you have in mind when speaking of a "high quality"
kitchen? The kitchen appliances are quite correctly the tenant's
responsibility - and remain the tenant's property.

I've been to the homes of people who are earning enough to spend on a
restaurant meal once a week and a foreign holiday twice a year, but
are living in a filthy pig sty. =A0Conversely I have visited OAPs who
are struggling to get by on a state pension, but who have spotless
tidy houses. =A0Cleanliness in the UK has very little connection with
wealth.

I certainly agree there is no perfect correlation - some people will
always be content with dirt, and others will always try to polish mud
floors, meanwhile the standards of the vast majority of people are
sensitive to the physical and mental effort required to maintain those
standards. It wasn't all about cleanliness anyway - I also mentioned
aesthetic (and unfortunately no amount of cleaning makes a worn green
or brown bathroom suite look acceptable), and I don't know about you
but I really do prefer to use modern, quality bathrooms.

TBH the appearance of a functional room such as a bathroom is of very
little concern whatsoever, though a pleasant appearance is better than
a shoddy appearance. It is its functionality that affects the quality
of life however, and just about every bathroom in the UK has similar
functionality. If the difference was between having a hot shower
available and having a galvanised cold water bath in the living room
rather I would agree that it is a difference that would affect quality
of life. While I very much prefer the bathroom in the house I am
currently renting (which is big enough to hold a dance) to the house I
was renting last year (which was small and cramped), it is not
something that I could say affects my quality of life to any extent.
A shower takes just as long and gets me just as clean in both, and I
can't say that using the toilet is a noticeably different experience.

There are plenty of ways to make a shabby room look better that does
not involve spending a great deal of money. Just take a wander around
your local pound shops and charity shops to get lots of ideas of
things that can be put on walls and floors to cover up wear and tear
and make the room look brighter.

But honestly - just how much would the quality of your life improve if
you had a big sink?

If I was using the sink several times a day for cooker fittings, or
draining a high number of items on the draining board, it would make a
significant difference I think to have a sink area that was of a
commensurate size.

So *if* you were doing those things I would expect you to find a
practical solution. I doubt it would take mne a great deal of thought
to come up with an idea if I were actually in such a position.

=A0I find that with most limitations, I only have to
figure out a solution once, and then make trivial changes to my
work-habits to accomodate it with little or no disadvatage. =A0And if
such a change would, for you, make a significant improvement to the
quality of your life, I have little doubt that you would find a way to
get yourself a bigger sink (or a smaller grill pan!)

I'm not quite sure I understand your point.

My point is that the things that *do* make a significant difference to
your quality of life are capable of being fixed by even poor people,
with only a moderate amount of thought and effort.

--
Cynic

On Feb 15, 6:18*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Tue, 14 Feb 2012 13:44:27 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

Only in the case of supporting a fairly severely disabled relative
would one person need to stay at home. =A0If the person needed support
simply because they were unemployed, there is no reason why anyone
would have to give up their job. =A0The additional expense in supporting
such a family member is little more than the cost of food for that
person.

Perhaps I was confused (and I'm not inclined to go back and check),
but I thought you were advocating full liability for "care", not just
financial liability for the unemployed. How exactly would your
proposal work where most or all family members are out of work?

My proposal was that the state would only give aid (of any sort) to
people who *don't* have any relatives capable of supporting them, and
that people become obliged by law to provide support for family
members.

So I interpreted your position correctly the first time around! I
think it is absurd from any reasonable political perspective - quite
out of kilter with your usual standard of reasoning.



Obviously it would need a fair number of details sorting
out, but that was the bare bones of the proposal. *Basically it
extends the responsibility that we have for the wellbeing of our minor
children to a larger family circle.

Even that responsibility does not exist in practice, except at the
will of the parents (by which I mean their choice to continue caring
for a child they have already delivered, as well as their choice over
whether to conceive a child at all).



in addition, the premise is that were such a scheme adopted, the state
would save money and would lower taxes, thus giving every working
family more disposable income - hopefully sufficient to allow one
partner to be able to give up employment.
Lol. Do you really think that the savings would be so manifest?

It would only happen if a substantial tax decrease was specifically
made part of the new proposal - which it would have to be in order to
stand any chance of being accepted by the voters.

As I've said to you before Cynic, all this combination of proposals
does is erode the redistributive mechanisms in society. As with the
poll tax, lots of people supported it, until they suddenly saw how
much they were personally going to pay, once the inequality in the
initial market distribution of incomes was left completely unfettered
by redistributive taxation.



It is easy to talk of what they have in common. Less easy, but
actually more interesting and relevant, to talk of what they do not
have in common.
What do you need that you do not have?
What I need depends largely on what other people have.

That is true, but does not answer my question. What, right now, do
rich people have that you do not have that causes you to feel that
your general quality of life is significantly worse than theirs?

I'm not currently in dire want of anything that the rich have. Most of
the things that I do want and which would benefit me, such as bridling
or abolition of the market mechanism, would benefit the rich also to a
degree (but also incidentally harm them by the erosion of the benefits
they derive from the market generally). That is, from a purely
personal point of view, it's not that I want something from them that
they have - it's that I want something for everybody including myself,
that will incidentally involve the rich becoming poorer.

Take the example of theft crimes. When I was in Cyprus, I left a water
pump and several tools out in the street (bit of a long story). When I
came back from the pub later, nothing had moved, and I was quite
surprised to find that they had not been taken - in Britain, you'd
expect to find similar things taken away in short order, either by
unruly kids or actual thieves. I'd benefit from a reduction in crime
in Britain, and a reduction in the fear of it and the preventative
measures that I have to constantly take against it (so much so that I
don't even think about routine behaviours like always locking cars and
not leaving things on display in them, and certainly not leaving tools
in the street). The rich would also benefit from such a reduction in
crime. But the solution would inevitably involve a reallocation of
wealth from the status quo, and the rich would lose *far* more to that
reallocation, than they currently lose to crime - all the money they
spend on security systems, bodyguards, bulletproof cars, ransoms,
etc., all pale into significance compared to their collective loss
from political redistribution.



There are very few people above the age of 25 in the UK who do not
have their own home (rented or mortgaged).
I suspect the taxpayer will actually be paying, in part or whole, for
quite a few of those.

And? *We are talking about the relative quality of life between rich
and poor, so the question of who pays for what is irrelevant.

Yes, and since your proposal is to *reduce* tax, it is going to have
an impact on relative quality of life surely.



*In the
case of wealthy businessmen, their customers are no doubt paying for
their home - and if their main customer is the government, that means
that the taxpayer is effectively paying for their home as well. *So
what?

The point is that tax is redistributive. Whenever any individual
succeeds in gaining a higher share of overall economic production via
the market mechanism, the taxation mechanism then disgorges that gain
somewhat. At the lower end, whenever any individual fails to achieve a
sufficient share of overall economic production via the market
mechanism, the 'taxation-credit' mechanism then steps in to supplement
that income. By the state taking more in from the rich than it pays
out to them, and correspondingly by paying more out to the poor than
it takes in from them, individual incomes are brought more into line
with the economic average.



=A0The cost of that home has
nothing to do with how comfortable it is.
Of course it does. If homes are costly, then by and large poorer
people will be in smaller homes than would otherwise be suitable. And
so too, unless you own your home outright, then it can be difficult to
make that home particularly comfortable, without the risk of
forfeiting the cost of any improvements.

The comfort of a home does not improve significantly with its size, so
long as it is big enough not to be overcrowded. *My degree of comfort
whilst watching TV, lying in bed or sat at my computer is unconnected
with how many rooms the house has or how big its garden is. *Comfort
largely consists of having comfortable furniture and a comfortable
temperature in the home. *I also see no problem with buying and doing
things that will improve my everyday comfort and convenience in a
rented property (and have frequently done so) - and it is often
possible to make all necessary improvements in a way that does *not*
mean they are forfeit if and when you move. *It seems stupid to me to
put up with discomfort just because making an improvement might end up
benefitting the landlord. *The only question for me is whether the
increase to my comfort or convenience is worth the money and/or
effort. *You might also consider that even if you own your own house,
very little of the money you spend on it will end up increasing the
selling price significantly, so that money is equally forfeit when you
move out. *In fact, a homeowner must spend quite a lot just to
*maintain* the value of the house, and that expense is something that
a person renting a property does not incur, so it's very much swings
and roundabouts.

I don't disagree with any of what you say, I just think you miss the
point I was making, that the sorts of people I'm talking about don't
have the sort of income where they can justify improving their
"everyday comfort" if that might only erode their bargaining power
further versus their landlord (by sinking money into the property).
Admittedly the range of people I have in mind, suffer basically from
lack of fittings, not square footage. You and I do not incur financial
discomfort in risking "benefitting the landlord", whereas the sorts of
people I'm thinking about would incur financial discomfort and cannot
afford to subsidise landlords.



Sure, wealth has advantages and gives you convenience and flexibility.
But that additional flexibility and convenience provides only a minor
increase in a person's quality of life
It seems to me Cynic that if wealth provides so few advantages for the
wealthy which are of minor benefit only, then why on Earth are they so
keen to retain those advantages, and so keen to maintain disadvantage
for others?

I have not come across any wealthy people who are "keen to maintain a
disadvantage to others".

There must be half a dozen such people on this group who talk about
the "feckless poor" and "penalising success", etc.



*Many (but not all) people are indeed keen to
become wealthy themselves - mainly due to the *perceived* advantages.
If they achieve that goal, they often find that the reality of the
situation is not nearly as great as they imagined (although there are
obviously some real advantages), and in many, many cases the wealth
brings far more disadvantages. *Achieving "fame and fortune" has ended
up killing quite a few people at a young age by one means or another.

But you haven't answered the question. If you are so blase about
wealth (and again I don't entirely disagree with your account of a
wealthy lifestyle), why don't you support more redistribution, since
even by your own account the rich will forfeit little, the desperate
poor will be silenced, and in the meantime there ought to be a social
and economic surplus created for everybody by the reduction in social
tension.



- and my point is not that a
wealthy person does not have a better quality of life than the average
non-wealthy person, but that the difference is not nealy as great as
the perception.
It really depends on what perception we're talking about, since we
seem to be talking about the perceptions of unidentified third parties
rather than our own.

I think your own perception affords wealth rather more advantages than
the reality. *I have experienced both poverty and moderate wealth, and
whilst I can certainly state that I prefer wealth to poverty, it is
also true that my happiness and quality of life have not been
associated in any way with my bank balance.

I don't even believe you when you say there is no association "in any
way". I think you're describing the perfectly legitimate position that
additional tens or hundreds of thousands don't make much positive
difference once you've got a reasonable basic amount by prevailing
social standards, and in fact it can become hard and displeasurable
work just to achieve such inflated income - I agree. Where I think you
go wrong, and where I question what sort of poverty you could possibly
have observed or experienced, is where you assert that having
appreciably less than prevailing social standards also has no impact.

So for example, if you couldn't afford a bus ticket, clean clothes, a
restaurant meal, a pint in the pub, or anything else of the sort for
months or years on end, you're alleging that this would have no impact
"in any way" on your happiness or quality of life.



*Indeed, the most content
and happiest period of my life so far was during a period when I
didn't even have a bank account.

I know, I hear the Robinson Crusoe anecdote at every opportunity, and
there is still no satisfactory explanation within your own terms, for
why you chose a life of comparatively unhappy wealthiness instead, or
why you tend to promote a mode of social organisation that is
completely at odds with the lifestyle you claim to have enjoyed so
much.



I would certainly assert that, between more equal and more unequal
*societies as a whole*, the differences in quality of life are quite
significant, although I am quite content to concede to you that
inequality erodes the QoL of the rich as well as the poor - but it
erodes the QoL of the poor moreso, and so in any given society, it is
always better to be rich.

Again, apart from *extreme* poverty and *extreme* wealth, the
difference in QoL is, I mainatain, more a product of your perception
than reality.

But the extremes *are* what we are talking about. The real difference
between a £30k-a-year man and a £100k-a-year man is not that great,
whereas the difference between a £3k-a-year man (i.e. long-term dole)
and a £30k-a-year man is astronomical - in the latter case, there will
be little if any common culture, outlook, or everyday experience of
life, especially if the effects have been experienced over several
generations.

We could of course go on to talk about the established super-rich on
the opposite end of the scale, who will have had no real concern in
their entire lives about finances or work, but I don't think I need to
labour over describing that side of the coin.



Sure - and I suspect that you have a home where you can do exactly
that in just as much comfort as Bill Gates can in his home.
I do, but I am reasonably satisfied with the standard of comfort in my
own home, and generally speaking I have the money to rectify any
deficit.

Does that mean that you regard yourself as a member of the "rich"
class? *In the UK, the vast majority of people have the ability to
rectify any significant deficit to their comfort.

I'm certainly not rich. I'm not saying 'the majority' of people suffer
with the material comfort in their home. Speaking of the majority, I'd
be more inclined to focus on their working conditions as being
something that is increasingly adverse.



=A0In many
cases a wealthy person has *less* privacy than the average person,
because they will have various non-family members in the house most of
the day.
I'm not sure that is necessarily the case, nor does it necessarily
follow that the presence of such people is unwanted.

Of course it is not *necessarily* the case, but people who live in
large homes *need* to employ staff for everyday cleaning and
maintainance, for example.

Oh come on! I honestly thought you meant guests that they were
required to entertain. It's hardly a significant mental toll to have
your own staff tending to the house - it's like saying the maids in a
hotel are terribly bothersome.



*The presence is obviously not unwanted in
one sense (they were hired to do a job), but you do not have privacy
whilst they are in your house. *You probably wouldn't(for example) pop
to the kitchen dressed only in underclothes or less when there is the
probability of passing a cleaning lady on the way.

No, you'd surely tell the butler to do so. Anyway, the routine of
putting a dressing gown on is something that most of us do as a matter
of course anyway. You really haven't made out your case that the need
to be polite to friends, acquaintances, and miscellaneous strangers in
public places, is akin to having paid house staff discreetly moving
around completing their tasks.



Anyway, the point is that the rich can choose whether they want social
interaction or not - the poor it seems must accept interaction whether
they want it or not.
That divide is in fact probably more on the side of the average person
than most wealthy people. =A0I would go so far as to say that the
average person is socially more secure than a wealthy person, because
theiy can be reasonably sure that their friends and lovers are with
them because they enjoy their company rather than because they want to
enjoy their money.
Yes you may well be correct, but once again, the rich have the
*unilateral choice* to give up their money, if it becomes an
inordinate burden. The poor do not have the unilateral choice to
become rich. Once again, it seems to me that you're in danger of
arguing in support of redistribution, when it does not seem to be your
general intention to do so.

To say that a wealthy person could simply get rid of their money if
they don't like the disadvantages it brings is as simplistic as
arguing that a fat person could simply stop eating so much if they
don't like being overweight, or that a poor person could simply get a
job if they don't like being poor. *Yes, it is possible, but it is far
from easy.

Yes, because the fat person wants food more than they want thin, and
it's pointless the fat (or their sympathisers) telling us about how
food is so overrated and that it really would be better to be
starving, as they guzzle down another plate of food. It's not that I
think it is 'easy' for the rich to give up wealth - my contention with
you is that you are in danger of denying that the rich are even
addicted to wealth in the first place, quite apart from arguing how
difficult it might be to undergo withdrawal.



People born into wealth are also born into a culture that is different
to the culture of average or poor people, and so getting rid of money
would entail a change of the person's cultural identity.

I accept culture would have to change.



Wealth also carries quite a few responsibilities. *A typical wealthy
person will be supporting several families by employing members of
those families, and will also have formed various social attachments
that would not (for very real social reasons) be possible without
having money. *Therfore giving up wealth will mean breaking off strong
social attachments as well as harming a few other people.

This only really applies to individuals. If the rich all take a step
down at once, it's unlikely that any strong attachments will be
suddenly made impossible.



Whilst a person who aquires wealth suddenly - such as in an
inheritance or lottery win would *at that time* be perfectly able to
give the money away, almost all people will at that stage perceive it
as being of great benefit to them - and by the time they discover that
money also has downsides they will have formed the abovementioned
bonds.

Also, in our culture money=success and poverty=failure, and so there
is the person's self-esteem at stake as well.

It doesn't help when that same person is a promoter of that very idea.
I don't have much sympathy for people who claim to be enchained by the
very social restraints that they advocate.




*added to which many
wealthy people have become obsessed with making money to the point of
addiction, and consequently devote all their time to the task - which
ends up destroying their family and social life and means that they do
not actually take the time to relax and *enjoy* the extensive fruits
of their labours.

So we should step in and help them?



It is a matter of choice for the vast majority of average working
people in the UK.
Indeed, most people can still choose to go the pub, but I'm making a
more general point there are lots of basic choices that are
increasingly enjoyed only in proportion to one's wealth.

We are discussing the situation in the UK.

So was I.



*I am therefore not
considering people who are so poor that they have to sleep on the
streets and cannot afford to eat. *I am also not including the very
top extremes of wealth, such as people who can afford to buy a
tropical island and set up their own society and live completely apart
from the rest of the World.

Neither was I. To give one example of what I was thinking about in the
UK, most people on the dole don't have a car, in a society that
depends heavily on cars for work and leisure.



=A0Again, it is the very wealthy who are often trapped
into a situation where they cannot indulge in such things, because
wealth brings with it quite a bit of undesirable baggage.
Why don't they give it up then? That is the question that your line of
argument seems to raise.

See above. *On balance most people will find being wealthy preferable
to being economically average, and I do not pretend otherwise.

I think you've tried your best to pretend otherwise henceforth.



*my
point is only tyhat the difference is a heck of a lot less than most
people's perception, and there are downsides involved that most people
either do not consider at all, or do not appreciate how much of a
downside it will end up being.

Which is perfectly true, but I think you've overstated your case,
since in your final analysis you conceded that people prefer wealth,
and that was my position to start with (and nor was my position so
extreme as to suggest that being wealthy was all milk and honey).
Frankly, I think you've gone down the same dead-end route that Ricardo
or JNugent (or one of the other crackers) did the other week, in
suggesting that my views arise from some desire on my part to join the
ranks of the rich, when on every occasion I can't be clearer that my
desire is not a change of my position within this society, but a
change in the system itself that would deliver benefits for everybody,
though the cost of that change to the present rich would be the loss
of their relative social and economic position.



Extreme wealth would in that case probably be very frustrating for you
unless you refrained from using it (in which case why would you want
it?)
I *don't* want extreme wealth. And it is not that I begrudge material
goods to others who do want them - the point is that economic wealth
is a source of power, and what I do not want is for that excess power
to be used against my interests, and the powerful almost invariably do
use power against the powerless.

Very few wealthy individuals exert power over the general population
to any extent whatsoever.

I didn't say they did. The wealthy as a class do.



*If power is what you fear, then direct your
attack toward governments that have far more power, and moreover wield
it routinely against the general population.

I do! I have similar views to you on the police, the security
services, the judges, the moral backbone of politicians, etc.



=A0You will find that a great deal of time is taken up *managing*
all the various things that your wealth has brought to you. =A0You can
mitigate that to an extent by hiring people to manage your money and
assets - but even then you will be required to make a myriad decisions
every week - and also spend time ensuring that your managers are doing
their job satisfactorily and that nobody is taking advantage of you
(which they certainly will if it becomes known that you are not
keeping an eye on all your affairs).
I find it quite funny how you can refer to the wealthy fearing being
"taken advantage of", when taking advantage is what most of the
wealthiest are doing.

You are very much mistaken if you believe that it is all a one-way
street.

It doesn't have to be "all a one-way street". It is just relatively
more streets toward their direction than away.



*The more you have (or are perceived to have), the more people
there will be trying to take it from you. *There will also be people
trying to deliberately harm you because of jealousy. *If you owned a
car worth over £100K, you would soon learn to be very fearful of
parking it in the average public place because of the very high
probability that it would suffer malicious vandalism.

Quite, but we're back to square one again, why do the wealthy spend
all their time getting such a large slice of the pie in the first
place, if it only creates conflict as others try to recoup it?



Almost everyone in the UK has been capable of achieving sufficient
income to afford a foreign holiday once a year for some considerable
time.
The point about holidays is that one has the power to afford them *in
addition to* other normal cultural activies, not instead of them. I'm
not sure that "almost everyone" can - and indeed, where the vast
majority can afford something, the deprivation becomes even more harsh
on the minority who cannot, because there are less likely to be
socially acceptable alternatives where only a minority cannot afford
to participate in the mainstream activity.

As said, it is not all that helpful to discuss the small minority of
people at the extreme ends of the financial spectrum - they are
special cases that require special treatment. *From what I have
experienced in the UK, even the average unemployed council estate
citizen has managed to find the means to get to Spain for a week or so
each year without impacting their ability to have a pint at the pub a
couple of times a week for the rest of the year. *It is more likely to
be the businessman who cannot spare the time from his business to take
a decent holiday.

Who needs to take a holiday, if you're doing something all the time
that brings you a great deal of satisfaction? No one is forcing such
businessmen to behave in that way, and so far as social and cultural
pressures on him are concerned, I'm all for change!



=A0Albeit that the present economic downturn might have seen a
temporary blip in that situation for a significant number of people.
I would say so, although I'm not so sure that it's going to be that
temporary.

We may indeed be at the start of a general lower standard of living
ratherr than a temporary hiccough. *Which means a depression. *If
inflation and our present high taxation continues into a depression
era, we will end up with riots and civil unrest that will force a
radical change. *The government will have to re-learn that the
population must be given their bread and circuses - and both
commodities consist of far more than they once used to.

It would be a cinch to solve it by redistributing wealth. Look at
Greece - it has no social or economic problems, other than the fact
that external creditors now have too great a claim on its economic
output and are refusing to relinquish it. So too in this country - the
only problem most people are labouring under, is the weight of their
debts owed to those who were wealthy enough to have capital to lend in
the first place.



I believe that the level to which our social welfare state has risen
has played a very large part in causing the decline in social
interaction within the larger community.
No, it is the level to which market forces and inequality have risen,
that have played the largest part in causing that decline.

We will have to agree to disagree on that point. *For me, the fact
that the government is taking my hard-earned money and giving it to
the 17 year old single mother next door gives me far more reason to
decide she doesn't need any further help from myself than the fact
that the CEO of Tesco is earning a 7 figure income. *YMMV.

Yes, because I see the money given to the CEO of Tesco as being a
claim on my hard-earned money also. More importantly, the single
mother would probably be quite content with the offer of a £30k-a-year
job, whereas the CEO of Tesco would be outraged at the expectation
that he take such a step down, so it is obvious where the real
political problem lies and where the pressure to maintain the status
quo comes from.



Oh come off it! =A0Given that poor households are the ones most likely
to have unemployed adults living in them, the only reason for dirty
bathrooms is that the person is too lazy to clean.

I didn't say the unemployed lacked the time to clean them. I said that
they were *harder* to clean, and harder to make *look* clean. In other
words, you will put more effort into cleaning older fittings, and they
will look comparatively dirtier even after having put that effort in -
I've seen plenty of bathrooms that look worse when clean, than mine
does when moderately dirty, and I can only assume that the vast
majority of people (including those who are forced to accept old
fittings) make a similar assessment as I do of bathroom quality.

Most rooms can be made to look nice if the effort is made without
needing to spend any significant amount of money.

I disagree.



And whilst you may assume that the unemployed poor by virtue of their
lifestyle have plenty of effort and willpower to spare, the reality is
likely to be quite the opposite, that increased financial stress,
increased consequential demands on physical and psychological effort
across the board with everyday activies, and fewer pleasant everyday
experiences, are likely to leave them sorely depleted of willingness
to exert effort.

I see. *Which is a long-winded way of saying that they are lazy.

It was a long-winded way of saying that they live more strenuous lives
than you do.



I know when I feel stressed, even if I otherwise have a surfeit of
time, I find myself *less* inclined to do unpleasant tasks or
difficult chores, not moreso.

There are plenty of things that I feel "disinclined" to do, but
nevertheless I still do them. *Its how people who are *not* lazy
behave.

Rubbish. I simply do not believe that you become *more* inclined to do
unpleasant tasks with increasing stress in your lifestyle. Isn't part
of the reason for paying huge salaries to bankers, supposedly to make
up for the stress of their lifestyle (since, logically within this
argument, without the compensation the stress would make them
disinclined to do such jobs)?



I have no reason to think other people
generally behave any differently - nobody I have ever known, has ever
said to me "cor, I feel extremely tired and stressed at the moment, I
think I'll go and do a few hours of unpleasant work". More often, they
either say that they do not want to do anything at all, or else they
say they want to engage in activities that they find recreational -
and indeed that is exactly how I think too.

So you go and watch the TV and leave the dirty dishes stacked in the
sink for yet another day. *I know. *It's called "laziness".

=A0Perhaps you should
consider the probability that it is the person's laziness that is
responsible for both the dirty bathroom *and* their poverty
I don't observe that. This seems to be an instance of how all this
imaginary work abounds in the economy, and how, since the recession, a
million people suddenly got lazier (for reasons that are never made
entirely apparent by the people who offer this line of reasoning).

Laziness might not be the reason they are out of work, but it *is* the
reason that they have a dirty bathroom - and if the bathroom indicates
that they are lazy then laziness *might* be the reason for the lack of
a job as well.

Then why is it that "lazy" bankers are being paid millions of pounds a
year to overcome their disinclinations? You can't have it both ways,
where the poor are told to pull themselves up by their bootstraps,
while the rich are told they need "motivation" of a financial kind.

I also refute the idea that the correct response to an unacceptably
low rate of pay, is to either accept less money than someone already
in work (so as to replace one decent position that somebody else is
filling, with a less decent one than you are filling), or work harder
and produce more value than someone already in work for no extra pay
(with the same effect as previous). If people did that as a matter of
routine within the market mechanism, and never refused to work at any
rate or on any terms however poor, then the four yorkshiremen sketch
would be rendered true to life.




Personally, I was recently looking at commercial-quality hands-free
taps for my bathroom sink (so as to completely do away with moving
parts and intricate details where muck tends to accumulate and which
are particularly difficult to clean), and next time I'm tempted to
have the tap and pipework wall-mounted instead of sink-mounted - so
that you do not get the unpleasant accumulation of water and scale
around the base of the taps, and wiping the sink clean can be done in
pretty much one swoop of the hand.

If you would really like such taps but cannot reasonably save the
money to buy them from a showroom, there are several places where you
could try to find perfectly good second-hand products. *Then borrow
some tools and fit them yourself.

But that means knowing a secound-hand outlet, and knowing someone with
the tools who is willing to lend them, and it takes expertise to fit -
which most people don't have.

Hell, I have the tools, expertise, and knowledge of suppliers, and
even I don't know where you'd get such taps second-hand, and I've only
relatively recently started seeing them in newer commercial bathrooms
- because indeed, the demand for such easy-clean, high-cleanliness
devices, and the ability to provide the technology at a reasonable
cost, is relatively recent.



and that even
people living on benefits can get sufficient money to make basic
improvements and decorations to their home - in poorer households the
council will even do that for them completely free of charge.
I know several people who have struggled to get repairs done by
private landlords. Even so, it is one thing to throw up some wallpaper
or lash on some cheap paint, another to fit a high-quality kitchen to
a property in which you have no real security of tenure.

A kitchen is either fit for purpose or it is not. *If not, the
landlord has a duty to fix it.

I'm afraid not. No landlord, even a decent one, is going to replace a
kitchen sink, because your grill pan cannot be completely submerged at
once.



*It would appear that you have fallen
victim to the sort of marketing that you claim to abhor. *There is no
reason whatsoever why a traditional kitchen should be more difficult
to work in than a modern "fitted" kitchen (which seem to be comprised
of overpriced and badly made glitzy chipboard and plastic units that
damage easily).

Comparing my current kitchen to what it replaced before it (1970s
local authority), and setting aside the increase in size achieved by
the demolition of a wall, one of the main benefits is smooth
continuous worktop surfaces that wipe clean easily and have fewer
difficult joins/corners where water, mould, and crap used to
accumulate and which might require several passes of a cloth to clean
plus occasional replacement of silicone (which became more frequent as
the fittings deteriorated due to water ingress).

So too with the cooker, grease and food can no longer splash/fall down
the sides or back of a free-standing unit, or splash up the wall
behind it (there is now a stainless splashback for the hob).

The list goes on really. I don't claim that the chipboard is more
durable than the solid wood units that they replaced. What the kitchen
is as a whole, is aesthetically more pleasing (it has simpler lines
and a more consistent appearance) and easier to use and maintain on a
daily basis.



What, exactly did you have in mind when speaking of a "high quality"
kitchen? *The kitchen appliances are quite correctly the tenant's
responsibility - and remain the tenant's property.

That depends on the contract. Anyway, that wasn't my point - the point
was that the very poor do not enjoy the same quality of household
fittings as you or I can, because they cannot afford them, and that
imposes additional burdens across the board.



I've been to the homes of people who are earning enough to spend on a
restaurant meal once a week and a foreign holiday twice a year, but
are living in a filthy pig sty. =A0Conversely I have visited OAPs who
are struggling to get by on a state pension, but who have spotless
tidy houses. =A0Cleanliness in the UK has very little connection with
wealth.
I certainly agree there is no perfect correlation - some people will
always be content with dirt, and others will always try to polish mud
floors, meanwhile the standards of the vast majority of people are
sensitive to the physical and mental effort required to maintain those
standards. It wasn't all about cleanliness anyway - I also mentioned
aesthetic (and unfortunately no amount of cleaning makes a worn green
or brown bathroom suite look acceptable), and I don't know about you
but I really do prefer to use modern, quality bathrooms.

TBH the appearance of a functional room such as a bathroom is of very
little concern whatsoever, though a pleasant appearance is better than
a shoddy appearance. *It is its functionality that affects the quality
of life however, and just about every bathroom in the UK has similar
functionality.

Functionality is typically related to matters of aesthetic. In
particular, if one of its "functions" is to appear clean when cleaned,
then a bathroom that continues to look dirty (for example, with mouldy
silicones and stained grouts) is not functional in encouraging such
cleaning.

So too, a bathroom with lots of complex surfaces, older materials that
retain dirt, exposed pipework, deep corners, etc., all of which
requires more time and particularly mental resources to clean (because
the cleaning behaviour is more complex), discourages that cleaning or
anyway consumes a disproportionate amount of available effort.
Therefore again it is not "functional", whether it goes uncleaned or
whether it consumes limited psychological resources that are better
spent elsewhere (such as on child-rearing).



*If the difference was between having a hot shower
available and having a galvanised cold water bath in the living room
rather I would agree that it is a difference that would affect quality
of life. *While I very much prefer the bathroom in the house I am
currently renting (which is big enough to hold a dance) to the house I
was renting last year (which was small and cramped), it is not
something that I could say affects my quality of life to any extent.
A shower takes just as long and gets me just as clean in both, and I
can't say that using the toilet is a noticeably different experience.

Presumably you don't bother cleaning the thing much, then, because you
can't be simultaneously unconcerned about bathroom aesthetic, yet
concerned enough to actually clean it.



There are plenty of ways to make a shabby room look better that does
not involve spending a great deal of money. *Just take a wander around
your local pound shops and charity shops to get lots of ideas of
things that can be put on walls and floors to cover up wear and tear
and make the room look brighter.

Lol! Perhaps I have a keener eye for the built environment than you
Cynic, but then again it has been my trade. I can tell you now, I
instantly see through the sorts of charades you're suggesting, and if
anything the sorts of frills you have in mind violate the principle
today that the areas should be visually clean and minimally complex
(not just because of its purely functional benefit, but because if
nothing else it unburdens the mind with processing unnecessary
stimulation).



But honestly - just how much would the quality of your life improve if
you had a big sink?
If I was using the sink several times a day for cooker fittings, or
draining a high number of items on the draining board, it would make a
significant difference I think to have a sink area that was of a
commensurate size.

So *if* you were doing those things I would expect you to find a
practical solution. *I doubt it would take mne a great deal of thought
to come up with an idea if I were actually in such a position.

In reality it's not a huge problem for me, which is why I haven't
remedied the situation. As I say, if I was using the grill every day
for a family, I'd have had a bigger sink by now in which to soak it I
think - not because it alone makes some massive difference to my QoL,
but because this and all the other little bits of time and effort
spent organising the house and circumventing its inherent defects
would add up to an excessive mental burden that would impair both my
work and my leisure (which is, as I say, why these tasks were left
specifically to women in the past).



=A0I find that with most limitations, I only have to
figure out a solution once, and then make trivial changes to my
work-habits to accomodate it with little or no disadvatage. =A0And if
such a change would, for you, make a significant improvement to the
quality of your life, I have little doubt that you would find a way to
get yourself a bigger sink (or a smaller grill pan!)
I'm not quite sure I understand your point.

My point is that the things that *do* make a significant difference to
your quality of life are capable of being fixed by even poor people,
with only a moderate amount of thought and effort.

The problem is, when you put in a moderate amount of further effort
again, you realise that your conclusions the first time around were
quite wrong. In the end, besides quibbling about the specifics of
particular situations (when it was designed only to give substance to
the point in general), your "fix" was to tell the "lazy" poor to pull
themselves together.

In message 4f3a485f.166483843@localhost, at 11:44:10 on Tue, 14 Feb
2012, Cynic remarked:
I have a fridge containing drinks, tables and chairs in my house, for
example, but I still visit pubs on occassion even though the same
activity in my own home would, if anything, be more comfortable.

The societal sea change in the last generation has been exactly that -
homes becoming more comfortable than pubs, rather than vice versa.
Although some pubs try quite hard to keep their comforts ahead of the
game, that's often at the expense (no pun intended) of pricing
themselves out of the market.

Exactly my point - the average home is just about as comfortable as it
is possible to get, and that aspect would not improve significantly if
you won the lottery. You go to a pub for the *social* aspect, not the
comfort

Thus fragmenting their customer base, with the "comfort" aspect having
to move its focus upmarket from "drinking" to "eating".
--
Roland Perry

In message 4f3ba867.49843812@localhost, at 18:18:01 on Wed, 15 Feb
2012, Cynic remarked:
A kitchen is either fit for purpose or it is not. If not, the
landlord has a duty to fix it.

There's a huge gap between "unfit for purpose" and "functional but
depressingly dilapidated". Landlords are also prone to install very
cheap appliances, which are functional, but much less use than the ones
an owner occupier might select.
--
Roland Perry

On Feb 17, 2:22*pm, Roland Perry wrote:
In message 4f3a485f.166483843@localhost, at 11:44:10 on Tue, 14 Feb
2012, Cynic remarked:

I have a fridge containing drinks, tables and chairs in my house, for
example, but I still visit pubs on occassion even though the same
activity in my own home would, if anything, be more comfortable.

The societal sea change in the last generation has been exactly that -
homes becoming more comfortable than pubs, rather than vice versa.
Although some pubs try quite hard to keep their comforts ahead of the
game, that's often at the expense (no pun intended) of pricing
themselves out of the market.

Exactly my point - the average home is just about as comfortable as it
is possible to get, and that aspect would not improve significantly if
you won the lottery. *You go to a pub for the *social* aspect, not the
comfort

Thus fragmenting their customer base, with the "comfort" aspect having
to move its focus upmarket from "drinking" to "eating".

Quite true! I don't go to the local boozer at all anymore, but I eat
out as a matter of routine - where, indeed, I am keen to dine in
physical comfort.