Tory vilification campaign against the poor is so clever

[Aurora]

Polly Toynbee - The Guardian - 12/06/12

Poverty is not about having no money. Pay no attention to poverty figures because they only measure money.

People are poor because of their lifestyles; worklessness, family breakdown, bad parenting, drink and drug addiction, irresponsible debt, crime and lack of aspiration … All week expect that message to be blasted out by ministers trying to drown out Thursday's official poverty figures.

The aim is to rubbish the poverty measure accepted by all international organisations and to call for new measures that ignore inequality.

Article continues ...

[Little John]

Polly Toynbee - The Guardian - 12/06/12

Poverty is not about having no money. Pay no attention to poverty figures because they only measure money.

People are poor because of their lifestyles; worklessness, family breakdown, bad parenting, drink and drug addiction, irresponsible debt, crime and lack of aspiration … All week expect that message to be blasted out by ministers trying to drown out Thursday's official poverty figures.

The aim is to rubbish the poverty measure accepted by all international organisations and to call for new measures that ignore inequality.

Article continues ...

Get the peasants to turn on each other instead of on their overlords....

It's the oldest trick in the book

[nexus]

Yep divide and rule, this bit is worth quoting :

Who are the poor? Most are in work – repeat that three times, for you will hear no ministers say it. Only 4% are addicts. Most are poor because their wages are so low. Labour's solution was tax credits, topping up incomes to make sure work was always worthwhile. Recent cuts knock people back into poverty, with £4,000 cut from families on £17,000, unless they can up their hours to at least 24 a week: 1.4m part-timers desperately seek full-time work. Ministers boast of whipping people into work with mandatory work experience, airbrushing out the lack of jobs. Claims of falling unemployment disguise the drop in full-time work: growth is all part-time jobs.

[extractorfan]

As we know the economy is going to flatline and then shrink, we also know there will be more people in "poverty" (I put in quotes not to be cynical but because defining poverty is difficult).

There are too many people in the country to "go back to the land" and manage to feed everyone, besides the skills aren;t there anyway.

So we (that's the royal we), either: Blame the poor for being poor. Pity the poor and try to be charitable. Hope we don't become poor. If we are poor hope we can get out of being poor.

Either way, there's going to be a hell of a lot more people disenfranchised in the years to come.

[Aurora]

Polly Toynbee - The Guardian - 12/06/12

Poverty is not about having no money. Pay no attention to poverty figures because they only measure money.

People are poor because of their lifestyles; worklessness, family breakdown, bad parenting, drink and drug addiction, irresponsible debt, crime and lack of aspiration … All week expect that message to be blasted out by ministers trying to drown out Thursday's official poverty figures.

The aim is to rubbish the poverty measure accepted by all international organisations and to call for new measures that ignore inequality.

Article continues ...

Get the peasants to turn on each other instead of on their overlords....

It's the oldest trick in the book

+1. Strange that the vilification of our public service workers, via the ever vigilant MSM , began after 'they' ****ed things up in 2008.

[Aurora]

Cartoon courtesy of The Guardian - 20/06/12

[Lord Beria3]

The public sector is doomed.

The end of growth means the end of the big state.

Wake up Aurora.

[RenewableCandy]

Ain't necessarily so. Cuba survived a cut-off of oil and ag supplies with a large public sector. OK we're not Cuba, but we're an island, with a history of public-spiritedness...it's a start

[Lord Beria3]

Additionally faced with a near-elimination of imported steel and other ore-based supplies, Cuba closed refineries and factories across the country, eliminating the country's industrial arm and millions of jobs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Period

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11291267

Cuba has announced radical plans to lay off huge numbers of state employees, to help revive the communist country's struggling economy.

Even Communist Cuba is massively cutting back the public sector! Carry on taking on the pot RC!!!

[Little John]

Additionally faced with a near-elimination of imported steel and other ore-based supplies, Cuba closed refineries and factories across the country, eliminating the country's industrial arm and millions of jobs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Period

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11291267

Cuba has announced radical plans to lay off huge numbers of state employees, to help revive the communist country's struggling economy.

Even Communist Cuba is massively cutting back the public sector! Carry on taking on the pot RC!!!

The problem is not one of lowered allocation of resources. It is one of inequitable allocation of resources. An Ayn-Randian "utopian" model of of "F--k-you-Jack" free-marketeerism only works on the way up because there are enough crumbs flying around for the people who are not sat at the top table to be able to catch. If it is attempted to be used on the way down, there will be trouble. Or, even worse, if there is an attempt to do away even with the Randian model and, instead, socialize the losses of those at the top table onto the rest of us, then there will be more than trouble. There will be blood.

People can live with taking it up the arse if they have enough going in their mouths to compensate. Take even that away and see what happens.

[biffvernon]

And, importantly, on the way up poor people can have realistic aspirations for a wealthier future that give them a stake in the system.

[RenewableCandy]

Beria your logic is flawed.

Communist Cuba was the place that survived the massive economic hit (of being cut off from trade) gracefully, by to all intents and purposes forcing a more equitabe distribution of what little there was. Today's Cuba are making cuts. It is highly likely, given what has already happened to Ireland etc after "austerity", that as a result of said cuts, Cuba will not survive gracefully. Time will tell, mind.

[JavaScriptDonkey]

Beria your logic is flawed.

Communist Cuba was the place that survived the massive economic hit (of being cut off from trade) gracefully, by to all intents and purposes forcing a more equitabe distribution of what little there was. Today's Cuba are making cuts. It is highly likely, given what has already happened to Ireland etc after "austerity", that as a result of said cuts, Cuba will not survive gracefully. Time will tell, mind.

Are you forgetting the massive subsidises from the USSR?

[Little John]

Beria your logic is flawed.

Communist Cuba was the place that survived the massive economic hit (of being cut off from trade) gracefully, by to all intents and purposes forcing a more equitable distribution of what little there was. Today's Cuba are making cuts. It is highly likely, given what has already happened to Ireland etc after "austerity", that as a result of said cuts, Cuba will not survive gracefully. Time will tell, mind.

Are you forgetting the massive subsidises from the USSR?

Those "subsidies", as you describe them, were simply what Cuba needed to avoid outright starvation, given the total blockade imposed by the US and they still required that Cuba lived on a minuscule level of wealth per capita than say, the US. Additionally, the subsidies stopped when the soviet wall fell. Cuba, you may have noticed, is still standing. Indeed, I have read that it has a lower infant mortality rate and higher level of literacy and numeracy than its neighbour, the richest country on the planet.

I realize it is a difficult ideological pill for you to swallow, but this is what can be achieved when policy and resources are directed at the common good.

[nexus]

Yes, economic neo liberals love to bash Cuba, but it has a higher life expectancy than the US, probably because it has a doctor for every 170 citizens.