Civil War by any other name? Youth Versus...

[madibe]

Are we seeing a true uprising?

Discontented Youth...

Discuss?

[UndercoverElephant]

Are we seeing a true uprising?

Discontented Youth...

Discuss?

No, I don't think so. Their total lack of a future worth living in doesn't help, but this has a lot to do with people who've never been taught respect or responsibility and think they can get away with almost anything.

When they are smashing up banks because they are banks, rather than smashing shop windows so they can loot the contents, then I'll believe it is the start of a true uprising. These are mainly thugs and criminals, not anarchists or political protestors.

[kenneal - lagger]

Dey r ganstas, man!!

They started off having a pot at the police and when they realised the police weren't going to do anything they started thieving and then a few nutters started torching things as well. It wasn't a riot in the political sense, it was drug gangs getting their own back on the police for hassling them.

[DominicJ]

and think they can get away with almost anything.

They dont think it.
They know it, and are right.

The Dixon of Dock Green Carrot only works when around the corner The Tommy from 2Para stick waits.

But no, this isnt civil war, that follows next, when a turkish ghetto burns out a neigbouring black ghetto.

[Cabrone]

Are we seeing a true uprising?

Discontented Youth...

Discuss?

No, the youth have just cause to feel disaffected but the people who went out were doing it for no other reason than grabbing whatever you can.

In my town all the banks + McDonalds etc were left completely alone whilst small independent guys like the local jeweller were looted. Why? Because that's where the easy money was.

Pretty obvious that higher issues were not on their minds rather than how much cash they could get.

That said - the fact that these riots spread like wildfire across London and various other cities makes me think that banks\politicians\police\media was a background factor upping the anti but it's not what was going through their minds at the time.

I hope they all get nicked.

[DominicJ]

Cabrone
Monkey See Monkey Do

This was nothing to do with anything but people realising how easy criminality is.

If a Group in London can kick a shop door open and steal all the electronics, as the police stand by, why would a group in Manchester not do the same?

[featherstick]

Cabrone
Monkey See Monkey Do

This was nothing to do with anything but people realising how easy criminality is.

If a Group in London can kick a shop door open and steal all the electronics, as the police stand by, why would a group in Manchester not do the same?

That's the real issue - the personal cop that social norms put in most people's heads has been shown to be a phantom, and there are too few real cops to deal with the results, 'specially when this is just stealing and looting, and not a cause-related protest.

[adam2]

Dey r ganstas, man!!

They started off having a pot at the police and when they realised the police weren't going to do anything they started thieving and then a few nutters started torching things as well. It wasn't a riot in the political sense, it was drug gangs getting their own back on the police for hassling them.

Yes, not a political riot at all, just large scale criminal disorder.
They soon realised that police were unable or unwilling to do much about it, and therefore escaleted the scale of thieving.

The more political riots and disorder in the Middles east are quite different.
They have leaders with stated views and aims such as "we want XYZ kicked out of power, and then an election"
Apart from a general hatred of law and order or authority in general, our rioters dont appear to have any political views, agenda or leaders.

[DominicJ]

Hence my point that after the first day, the police should have been swearing in special constables arming them with riot shields and battons, and putting 7 under the command of each police officer, with radio.

Then there could be no claims that "The Man" was cracking down, it would be residents of the areas under threat, protecting them, as is supposed to happen.
"The people are the police and the police are the people"

Looters could have been could rounded up, herded into deignated areas, parks with barbed wire fencing, and processed at will.

[emordnilap]

Are we seeing a true uprising?

Discontented Youth...

Discuss?

[cynicism]Well, you could say it's one way of stimulating growth in the economy.[/cynicism]

Well, why not? I mean, the building & maintenance jobs following the destruction, the prisons required, the replacement stock when shops get up and running again and so on and so forth.

Then, wonder of wonders, the fire services, the police, the ambulances, the judges, all the overtime and the money that flows through these areas - add it all up and Britain will, in 2011, show a growing economy in terms of GDP.

Investors will flock to a country where so much money is floating around, surely? Workers from places like Poland will come to help re-build. This is what we want, isn't it?

[DominicJ]

The broken window fallacy.

If you grew food and burnt it, we could solve world hunger.



*****
The money spent repairing damaged buildings and keeping prisoners is money that cant be spent building windmills.
*****

[Little John]

Are we seeing a true uprising?

Discontented Youth...

Discuss?

I don't go for the general argument that young people today have unrealistically high expectations.

Sure enough, they have a few more toys to play with than previous generations. But, so what? They know well enough that these toys don't represent real economic advancement or security. In terms of those more fundamental variables, young people of today have it far, far worse than any generation since the war.

People who were born in the West just post the 2nd world war were the luckiest generation alive, ever. This is not to castigate them for their good fortune. I am merely stating facts. They bought into our economy at the very bottom in terms of asset prices. In particular, house prices. In real terms, even when you take into account monetary debasement due to inflation, house prices were fantastically low for this post war generation.

On top of the above was the "job for life" many of this generation enjoyed. They were born into a world where, if you kept you nose clean, if you kept you head down and worked hard, you could be guaranteed a decent private pension and a house that was affordable for one major wage earner. However, if you were not a big wage earner, you could be guaranteed to be looked after by the state in terms of cheap housing, healthcare, education and, finally, a state pension that would allow you to live a dignified old age. Beverage's "cradle to grave" society, in other words.

Those days are gone now. Today's generation, just jumping on board the system, can expect to have no state pension by the time they retire. They can expect to see health care fully privatised before they reach retirement. Indeed, even if they are able to afford to pay into a private pension, they can expect to see the value of it well below the value their parents and grandparents enjoyed as they will be paying into a contracting economy giving ever smaller returns on investments (not to mention the fact that, in terms of their state pension contributions, these are being used to pay for today's pensioners).

This government, and other governments around the Western world, have been busily "printing" money (or the functional equivalent to "printing") like there is no tomorrow in order to keep asset prices (in particular, real estate) at their current insane levels. Just stop and think about the implications of this for a minute. To help you do that, I want to paint an entirely typical anecdote for you involving one of today’s pensioners. This person is one of that post war generation I was talking about, above. He started work in the mid-fifties. He steadily worked his way up to a middling position in his industry, got married and bought a decent detached house commensurate with his economic position. His mortgage was low enough that he could afford to pay into his private pension regularly which was, of course, performing very well as the economy was heading perpetually north. All of this on just the one primary wage coming into his family.

During this time, ever more credit was being lent into existence, inflating the money supply. This credit chased assets in the economy looking for a home that would give a good return on investment. In the fifties and sixties, this would have been in any number of sectors. However, since the mid seventies, much of the primary wealth-generating industries in this country (indeed across the western world) have since moved to developing countries. Nevertheless, money continued to be lent into the economy. This led to that money being diverted into largely a single asset class. Namely, property. Ever since then, an asset class that was already steadily rising in value began to take off. And so we now find ourselves in the position of insanely high house prices. These prices have not risen due to a massive rise in demand (though there has been some of course). They have not risen due to a sudden collapse of supply (though, there is, of course, some shortages). No, the major reason house prices have risen so much is due to a wall of credit chasing them. Indeed, one could argue that we have already had rampant inflation in the Western world for the last twenty to thirty years. It's just that it has expressed itself in inflationary driven price rises in just the one sector and so has not been recognised for what it is.

So what has this got to do with my anecdote, you may ask? To continue his story, he retired about ten years ago and began receiving his pension. About 7 years ago, he decided to sell his detached house which now, instead of being worth the indexed equivalent of the £1000 he paid for it back in the mid sixties, was now worth 300k. He downsized and bought himself a smaller place for 150k and is using the money released from the sale of his house to go on several holidays per year and generally live a very nice retirement.

The thing is, though, you have to consider where all of that "money" has come from. The answer is that is has come from the future. Yours and mine and that of our descendants.

When money is lent into existence in a FIAT system of FRB, what is really happening is that a loan has been taken out from someone's future productive fruits. If the money loaned more or less matches the current supply/demand driven value of the asset it is being borrowed for in order to buy, then the money has been borrowed from the future productive value of the person who has taken the loan out (all other things being equal). However if the amount that is being lent into existence massively outstrips the value of the asset for which it was borrowed, then the "price" of that asset will rise to reflect the debasing rise in supply of the credit that is chasing it. This is what has happened in the real estate market. The upshot of this is that, in a giant ponzi-like scheme, each successive buyer of a given property has been placed in the unavoidable position of having to pay for the rise in value of the previous owner. In other words, the high-on-the-hog lifestyle that is being enjoyed by the now retired person used in my example is being funded by the person who has taken out the massive mortgage when they purchased his 300k house off him.

It was all bound to end in tears, eventually. Eventually, there would come a point where the successive piling on of ever greater levels of debt onto future generation would hit a breaking point. That point came when the economy was no longer able to grow. The reason it was no longer able to grow is because oil hit 150 dollars per barrel. This caused debts to no longer be serviceable and so the whole house of cards began to come crashing down. Don't misunderstand me here, the ponzi scheme otherwise known as a debt based money supply is always a car crash waiting to happen (and that car crash has indeed happened on a number of occasions on our journey from the beginnings of the industrial revolution to the present). It's just that this time is different. This time, it's not just that we had built up unsustainable debt levels (even assuming the possibility of future growth), it’s that this time there will be no future growth. The debt's can never be repaid. I think our illustrious leaders know this only too well and so they are engaging in the only game left in town.

Buying time.

We have had one generation who have gown wealthy off the back of the debt of their children. Those children are now so indebted that they cannot afford to keep up the payments and so our governments have, via QE and other fiscal measures, passed the debt onto their children in turn. The kids of today will be expected to bear these debts by way of reduced pensions, reduced healthcare, reduced education and increased taxes. All in a context of house prices that will be continued to be held aloft if possible.

It's wrong, plain and simple. The debts need to by borne by those who took them out. Or they need to be defaulted on by those who took them out and so be borne by the fuckwits who lent all of this unsustainable debts into existence.

If our governments, acting on behalf of the elites that they truly represent, get away with it the children being born today will be the poorest in human history. Think about this for a minute. A few hundred years ago, the average peasant could expect to be born with nothing and die with nothing. Today, however, they will be saddled with their portion of their country's soveriegn debt (private debt that has been deliberately monetised on their behalf by their governments without their prior permission) to the tune of many tens of thousand of pounds from the moment they are born.

It's called debt-slavery

This generation coming up needs to say "F--k off, we're not paying".

I, for one, won't blame them.

[ziggy12345]

Cabrone
Monkey See Monkey Do....

Yep

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhxqIITtTtU

[emordnilap]

Well said stevecook172001

Indeed, the world economy is precisely that...one giant Ponzi scheme. Madoff must be madly jealous.

[Bandidoz]

Discontented Youth...?

No - disrespectful youth. A whole fecking army of them waiting to be manipulated to join a crusade. We've seen two this week:

1) Opportunists who have realised that the police can't be everywhere at once, and using that to their advantage.

2) Right Wing Nazi thugs, spoiling for a fight, now having something to get all righteous about.

We have to be very careful what we say about intergenerational injustice; it will be seized on by the hard-of-thinking as an excuse for bad behaviour and the associated riots will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.