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Great site here for tracking projections and polling for the Presidential, House and Senate elections over the next month. A wealth of info on each state in each race.
"I don't think everyone on the left indulges in mock outrage, there's a fair few that get their heads down and try to change stuff for the better (often misguidedly in my opinion), but the loud ones you hear about through the media or on messageboards seem to be the ones that do it the most."
Are you really well qualified to judge whether or not people's "outrage" is genuine or whether or not people are contributing to try to change stuff for the better? Lilly Allen might be doing fu ck-all for refugees other than a nice little weekend away for her in sunny Calais, but equally, she might have donated a wedge to organisations helping refugees and be volunteering to teach new arrivals English. I don't know, and I'd suggest you don't either. Seems to me a bit daft to accuse people you don't know of mock outrage.
Fulham FC: It's the taking part that counts
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US Elections 2016 on 13:02 - Nov 11 with 1766 views
Clive, I'm by no means 'left-wing' but I've never agreed with a word you've said for the past five years. Nor have I read anything from you other than tilting against lefty windmills that don't even exist any more, at least for anyone on this board. Others on here may weaken the force of their arguments with their partisan positions, but that comes with views on other things like, say, QPR. You stand apart as a fixated one-dimensional troll.
A magnificent football club, the love of our lives, finding a way to finally have its day in the sun.
Despite the obsession with Nazism there seems to be a great deal of confusion over the whether the Nazi economy was a capitalist economy. After all, as one poster pointed out earlier in this thread, the Nazis had the word 'Socialist' in their name didn't they?
I have just been reading Adam Tooze's excellent 'The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy' (2006)
This passage gives a flavour of what's in the book:
'The combination of rising domestic demand, an end to foreign competition, rising prices and relatively static wages created a context in which it was hard not to make healthy profits. Indeed, by 1934 the bonuses being paid to the boards of some firms were so spectacular that they were causing acute embarrassment to Hitler's government. In the light of the far more modest increase in workers' incomes, it seemed that the Communists and Social Democrats did indeed have a point. The Nazi regime was a 'dictatorship of the bosses'. Having regulated imports, exports and domestic price-setting, the Reichswirtschaftsministerium (Reich's Ministry for Economic Affairs) therefore moved in the spring of 1934 to control the use of business profits. The distribution of profits to shareholders was not to exceed a rate of 6 per cent of capital. This did not of course have any effect on underlying profitability. It simply meant that corporate accountants were encouraged to squirrel profits away in exaggerated depreciation and reserve bookings. Over the following years, German business built up gigantic financial reserves, which could be used for internally funded investment. And this, apart from the cosmetic aspects, was clearly the real purpose of the dividend decree. From the point of the Reich authorities the aim was to divide up the national resources available for investment and public spending. Industrial investment would be funded out of the profits not distributed to shareholders. Access by corporate borrowers to the long-term capital market — replenished out of household savings flowing through the banks, savings banks and insurance funds — would be restricted, reserving these funds for use by the state.
Reichsbank control over the financial flows in the German economy was further enhanced by the new system of banking regulation imposed in 1934. The crisis of 1931 had left the Reich with a controlling stake in all three of the major national banks — Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank and Commerzbank. If some of the spokesmen of the Nazi left had had their way, there might even have been a wholesale nationalization of the banking system, followed by the breaking up of the national commercial banks and the creation of an integrated system of regional banks. Not surprisingly, this idea was also strongly backed by the regional savings banks (Sparkassen), in which local Nazi party activists had a strong interest. But Hjalmar Schacht (President of the Reichsbank) saw to it that this radicalism came to nothing. Instead, the moment of crisis was turned into an opportunity for managerial reform and tighter oversight by the central bank. Between September 1933 and October 1934 a committee of inquiry held a series of carefully stage-managed debates, in which radical positions were progressively sidelined. The end result was a draft law that gave the Reichsbank extensive powers of oversight. To prevent a repeat of the financial scandals of the early 1930s, limits were imposed on the level of loans that banks were permitted to' provide to any one private borrower. For the first time, the Reichsbank was given the power to define basic reserve requirements and to fully regulate the deployment of private banking assets. The Great Banks of Berlin were thus saved from nationalization.'
(Over time the German economy became more 'Keynesian' as an increasing proportion of economic expenditure was devoted to armaments)
Lots of interesting things in the book about the size and productive capacity of the German economy in relation to Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the USA, and why Germany made some of the military decisions it made (the Nazis knew from the beginning that the longer the war went on the more the balance of power would shift against them).
[Post edited 25 Mar 2020 13:07]
Air hostess clique
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US Elections 2016 on 13:59 - Dec 6 with 1529 views
In reply to Tactical's good post which is too long to quote and clog up, but also to build on some of the political compass thoughts others wrote on here - I was always taught at uni that the political spectrum in the 20th century was less a straight line , but more of a horse shoe where the far right and left arc back towards each other with regards to both authoritarianism and economic structure - the gap being that the 20C far right tended to advocate corporatism and the left collectivism.
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US Elections 2016 on 09:08 - Dec 7 with 1435 views
Frightening report on Trump's stance on Israel and Palestine.
I've given up worrying, Brian.
Between some of the crap he came out with during the election, the stuff he gave inconsistent and contradictory positions on during the election, the stuff he has changed his mind on after the election, and the stuff he has changed his mind on after changing his mind after the election, you absolutely cannot predict what he is going to do.
Some of his wacky ideas may genuinely have a seed of radical improvement in them, but even then, I don't know if the bloke has the nous to bring it to fruition.
Between some of the crap he came out with during the election, the stuff he gave inconsistent and contradictory positions on during the election, the stuff he has changed his mind on after the election, and the stuff he has changed his mind on after changing his mind after the election, you absolutely cannot predict what he is going to do.
Some of his wacky ideas may genuinely have a seed of radical improvement in them, but even then, I don't know if the bloke has the nous to bring it to fruition.
We just have to wait and see.
I think the point you make is right, however his volatile, unpredictable temperament coupled with his ahem minimal knowledge of anywhere 10 yards East of New York or West of LA makes him the ultimate bull in a China shop. If he doesn't know what he is going to do next the rest of the world has no chance. I think we are headed for a sh*tastrophe!
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US Elections 2016 on 14:19 - Dec 7 with 1936 views
I think the point you make is right, however his volatile, unpredictable temperament coupled with his ahem minimal knowledge of anywhere 10 yards East of New York or West of LA makes him the ultimate bull in a China shop. If he doesn't know what he is going to do next the rest of the world has no chance. I think we are headed for a sh*tastrophe!
Agreed.
The Boing deal for Air Force 1 is a prime example, after firing off a tweet, the stock is down and thousands of workers are now seriously worried about there jobs just before Xmas. Like Farage, he is too stupid to be able to join up the dots or simply comprehend the seriousness of his office and position.
If he carries on like this we're likely to be in nuclear end game with China by Easter, I reckon.
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US Elections 2016 on 16:27 - Dec 7 with 1900 views
Between some of the crap he came out with during the election, the stuff he gave inconsistent and contradictory positions on during the election, the stuff he has changed his mind on after the election, and the stuff he has changed his mind on after changing his mind after the election, you absolutely cannot predict what he is going to do.
Some of his wacky ideas may genuinely have a seed of radical improvement in them, but even then, I don't know if the bloke has the nous to bring it to fruition.
We just have to wait and see.
I think there needs to be a law that says if Prime Ministers/President's don't predominantly stick to their pre-election manifesto, they're out and the person who came second is in.
It's a ridiculous situation where people can blatantly lie to get in then do things completely different to what they promised. Boris Johnson did more u-turns than a London taxi.
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US Elections 2016 on 15:36 - Dec 13 with 1793 views
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