The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

5 responses to “It’s wrong to be prudent, successful, able or talented in modern Britain”

1. 

   Antisthenes

   August 6, 2016

   Low interest rates and QE can in the end only have one conclusion not only will savers and hard workers suffer so will everybody else. Not much of a compensation for liberal conservatives, hard workers and savers I agree and it will not stop the march toward the socialist progressive totalitarian state(hat tip to Cafe Hayek for pointing that fact out). So we will one day have to live our lives in poverty slaves to a Marxist style government.

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2. 

   Nigel Sedgwick

   August 6, 2016

   Very low central bank base rates and QE are (amongst other things) ways for government to delay the disastrous downsides of an excessive national debt and/or ongoing long-term deficits.
   Best regards

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3. 

   James Higham

   August 7, 2016

   Seems to me that, this being accepted, what can the common man do about it, either alone or severally?

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4. 

   Tom

   August 7, 2016

   Not too long ago, I would have shrugged my shoulders and said “probably nothing”. The only hope was the long, slow haul of education – the sterling work done by such excellent bodies as the Adam Smith Institute or the IEA in the UK and the Cato Institute and the Mises Institute in the USA. Optimism is growing in me again, however, as on both sides of the Atlantic there seems to be a rebellion. The “Establishment” – solidly culturally Marxist, Keynesian etc. – has cried wolf too often and has lost credibility. People who don’t find economics interesting are developing an instinctive appreciation that “our leaders” don’t know what they are doing and are borrowing us into oblivion. I think it’s the next generation down from ours that feels most strongly about it. They may object to getting less than us (no free university, no maintenance grants to study, fewer benefits generally) but logically that must surely lead them to the questions of how and why our generation and the one before ours took more than could be afforded.

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5. 

   formertory

   August 8, 2016

   … logically that must surely lead them to the questions of how and why our generation and the one before ours took more than could be afforded.
   The root of this one lies, I believe, in the change in political parties as they abandoned principle and rationality (to the extent they possessed either) in favour of just getting elected.
   These days political parties are brands rather than affiliations of like-minded people – hence the Conservatives and Labour are both controlled by elites who appear to despise their constituents and voters. As the principal need is to get / stay elected, the pressure to dodge issues, to kick awkward problems into the long grass, and to keep bribing people with what they want – borrowing or printing the money to do it, who cares? – becomes irresistible.
   My admiration for Mrs Thatcher as our greatest post-War PM is tempered by the realisation that actually, she has to accept most of the responsibility for the biggest threat to the next generations – the property price bubble. Her decision to allow discounts on the purchase price of former local authority homes (as though the rent hadn’t been about keeping the weather on the outside and having all the maintenance covered) allowed whole generations to profit massively and tax-free from State-sponsored property speculation. It continues to this day with tax-free profits on property (largely), right-to-buy schemes, help-to-buy schemes, and “for heaven’s sake let’s keep interest rates low because when they rise there’s a fair chance the banks will fail all over again”.
   The next generation is likely to need a lot more intestinal fortitude than the most recent two have shown. They may yet have to figure out how to rebuild a monetary system and a national economy.

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