They like it in Yurp just as much as they do here:
George Osborne’s austerity programme will cut the living standards of Britain’s families by more than 10% over the next three years as those on the lowest incomes suffer most from the tax increases and spending cuts designed to reduce the budget deficit.
A study from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the UK’s leading experts on the public finances, concludes that the chancellor’s strategy will result in greater inequality and rising child poverty, throwing into reverse progress made in the final years of the last Labour government.
David Cameron is an even more glorified variant of Paul Ryan. So serious, so brave.
Linda Featheringill
Yep. The Brits are getting screwed. And their “underclasses” are more firmly walled off from mobility than they were before.
TheMightyTrowel
Class warfare never went out of style on this side of the Atlantic.
I’ve been having the stupid-evil conversation about both Osbourne and Cameron quite a lot over the last few months. the consensus is that the scale tips more stupid with Cameron and more evil with Osbourne.
Judas Escargot
On the flip side, when even the Tories are pushing for their version of Glass-Steagall, what does that say about our ‘Representatives’ this side of the pond?
srv
The lower classes will just have to work harder, and of course that never hurt anybody. Sets a good example for the kinder too.
SRW1
But their underclasses are feral!
Zifnab
Hey, at least we have people to sympathize with across the pond. Misery loves company and all that.
MikeJ
And if you like spineless Dems in the US, you’ll love the LibDems. Every time they have a chance to stop some Cameron plan, they step right up and help him.
danimal
They’re brave, and serious, because they fearlessly face the disapproval of decent people snarking at them on the internet as they put children and the elderly at risk.
Wars have been won based on this fearlessness (see 101st Chairbourne).
PeakVT
It’s worse in Greece. They’re headed for a 5% contraction of GDP this year. Five percent. And it will be the third straight year that the economy has shrunk.
srv
Has anyone run the numbers on the pricing/sq foot for Sarah’s book below? I think it’s actually cheaper than toilet paper.
Just saying.
Phil Perspective
Has anyone seen the latest polls of NY-09(Weiner’s old seat)? According to PPP, a candidate of the Socialist Workers Party is getting 4%. Just think on that for a second. I knew there is a Working Families Party in NYC. But a Socialist Workers Party? Anyone know anything about that?
Phil Perspective
Ugh!! I have a comment in moderation hell.
jibeaux
Obama’s line about “it’s not class warfare, it’s simple math” can’t be trotted out too often in my view. You can pay for schools and bridges, or you can pay for tax cuts for the rich, but if we’re not going to run a deficit we can’t pay for both. It’s just math.
Origuy
@TheMightyTrowel: Have they started turning those twee Victorian buildings full of lofts and art galleries back into workhouses yet?
ciaran
such fiscal conservatism. no wonder sully gets all moist for cameron.
Linda Featheringill
@SRW1:
:-)
TheMightyTrowel
@Origuy: It’s only a matter of time.
Culture of Truth
Meanwhile the Irish are rebelling against their debt terms.
daveNYC
Holy crap but eschaton is broken in my IE. Harumph.
The world wide push for austerity is the stupidest thing ever. It doesn’t even make sense from a class warfare perspective, since the resulting drop in demand will screw over everyone. The UK’s push only makes sense as part of a long term LibDem plan to never get a single vote ever again. At least our local spineless Dems have enough sense to try and look after their own job security.
daveNYC
@Culture of Truth: About fucking time. They should have busted out the pitchforks a while ago. Roughly five seconds after their toolish government decided to assume all the bank debt.
Lurking Canadian
And when the austerity has the predictable effect of further depressing the economy, reducing government revenue even further and increasing the deficit, what will they do? MORE AUSTERITY! The beatings must continue until morale improves.
Jamie
well, I’m inclined to think the UK austerity moves are both stupid and evil
Dennis SGMM
“Austerity cannot fail. It can only be failed.” That,I’m afraid, is going to be the answer when the current austerity mania makes things worse. Rather than actually determining why it’s a FAIL the pols will double down because, ya’ know, the beatings must be enhanced until morale improves.
EDIT: I see that Lurking Canadian beat me to it.
Leave it to politicians to fuck us by doing everything they could to advance a free spending consumption-driven economy and to fuck us again when we run out of money.
drkrick
We know that in the US Jay Gould is still right – you can always hire one half of the poor to kill the other half. Is that also true in the UK?
ruemara
I’m guessing that they do enjoy a boisterous round of rioting there, because they’re sowing the seeds for more of that harvest quite liberally.
TheMightyTrowel
@ruemara: means to an end… the riots brought on the shock doctrine thinking. Suddenly it became okay for major commentators and politicians to talk publically about young people (specifically working class young people) as ‘feral youth’ and to advocate sending 13 year olds to jail.
ruemara
Speaking of class warfare, anyone see this Bloomberg article? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-12/obama-gets-credit-for-saving-auto-jobs-in-michigan-where-voters-disapprove.html
What’s the point of fighting for the underclass when you get no credit and no support for saving them?
handsmile
To demonstrate that it is not above the occasional tabloid item, the Guardian reports today that Natalie Rowe, who ran the escort agency Black Beauties in the 1990s and claimed friendship and cocaine use with George Osborne at that time, was informed by Scotland Yard that her phone had been hacked by Murdoch’s News of the World :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/12/escort-agency-boss-george-osborne
Sure it’s scurrilous, and undoubtedly published to tweak Osborne in light of the IFS report, but anything that stains Britain’s ruling elite with the depravity of Rupert Murdoch’s empire is always welcome. (Last week it was Poodle Blair.)
Polling indicates that the fragile coalition government of Tories and Liberal Democrats has been temporarily buttressed as a result of last month’s urban riots. But this has been a year of tremendous unrest and disquiet throughout the septic isle. The political fissures that first erupted publicly during the Miurdoch phone-hacking revelations in June/July will likely be riven further should Cameron/Osbourne continue to pursue implementation of austerity measures.
Shinobi
Oh well I’m sure there won’t be any more rioting then.
Elie
More than anything, I just don’t see how they operate the logic of it. Improverishing your people prevents consumption, the very engine that drives what they want — growth and increased demand. People without jobs or resources do not buy things and the rich do not buy enough and enough variety to prop up the economy themselves.
The strategy, independent of their ideology, is not connected to real world cause and effect.
It is hard to believe how many times someone can go down a wrong road and history should provide them with the information, but here they go again anyway.
kideni
Speaking of Paul Ryan, watch his interaction with an unemployed constituent at the Janesville Labor Day parade:
Constituent: Do I have to work for $1 an hour? Is that the competitiveness that’s needed?
Ryan: Would you like some candy?
Constituent (flabbergasted): no…
Ryan: A Packer/Badger Schedule? Have a nice day.
The whole time Ryan’s contempt for the poor kid just oozes out (his wife doesn’t seem to be much better).
daveNYC
@ruemara: Ugh, just read it. Some of those dumbasses seem to think that the bailout just would have sorta happened, you know, not like the Republicans were dead set against it or anything.
I swear, if the Republicans get back in power because of idiots like that, I’m going to go down to whatever overpass they’re living under and laugh at their sparrow eating ways.
wrb
We’re ruled by madmen
JGabriel
Class Warfare: The big difference is that the Brits will riot against some of the measures Cameron is proposing. In America, we, in the classes that are losing, identify with our rich oppressors and just buy more lottery tickets.
.
El Cid
The goal is the punishment and impoverishment of the working and underclasses so as to thereby more empower the richest classes; the budget crises and the economy are the excuses.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@ruemara: shit, that article is American politics in a nutshell. A Republican whose plump and comfortable ass was saved by government spending is going to vote Republican to get his taxes cut, and a working class guy who’s been helped, but not enough, by a safety-net that Republicans have been working to shred, is either going to vote Republican or stay home. Fuck.
Xenos
@SRW1:
Of course. Being feral, a couple generations of poverty will just help domesticate them. And if they get shirty, a short, sharp shock will get them tugging their forelocks again.
Paul in KY
Was in Chicago last week to get my Brit citizenship. The consulate was in the Wrigley Bldg. When I arrived there, I was informed they had moved. Managed to find the new place & had the ceremony.
The Vice Consul there told us they’d only been in new digs for 1 1/2 weeks. Had to move out of Wrigley Bldg, due to rent. She also said she had laid off ‘a bunch’ of people.
Great Britain will be introduced to Hooverism, it seems.
Barry
@daveNYC: “It doesn’t even make sense from a class warfare perspective, since the resulting drop in demand will screw over everyone. The UK’s push only makes sense as part of a long term LibDem plan to never get a single vote ever again. At least our local spineless Dems have enough sense to try and look after their own job security.”
The politicians are well-paid (by their corporate backers). In the USA at least, the poorer one is, the less one votes. If this holds in the UK, they probably figure that a chunk of the population will be too hard-pressed to go to the polls (which, of course, might be geographically tailored).
Second, keeping up the theme that the masses should be screwed good and hard is worth something. That way the debate is on how hard, not if.
Jess Sane
Tony BLiar wasn’t really much better.
JGabriel
daveNYC:
It makes sense if: A) it’s about power, not money, and B) less money buys more because everyone else is too desparate to risk arguing for higher wages/prices.
Or, maybe, the Tories and the Lib Dems aren’t thinking that far in advance. Maybe they think Murdoch will still be there to make sure they get re-elected, or, alternately, they are so habituated to thinking that way, that they know of no other way to act.
.
Citizen Alan
@Phil Perspective:
If it were feasible in my ruby-red state (i.e. there were people actually willing to run as Socialists), I’d vote a straight Socialist ticket. My votes for Democrats are squandered anyway (the Mississippi Democratic Party couldn’t even be buggered to field candidates for three of the top five state-wide offices), so why shouldn’t I vote my dreams?
ciaran
@daveNYC:
i dunno here c.o.t is getting this notion, but a as an irish person i can assure you it certainly aint so. we’re a passive and fatalistic people.
Elie
@Paul in KY:
Did you become a British citizen, or did I missread that?
If so, cheerio — or whatever one says to that…
Were you an American?
Elie
I think many on this thread are crazy and way too cynical if they think this bull is going to be sustainable either politically or economically here or in GB.
Just watch.
Won’t happen tomorrow, but it aint gonna work. I DO think that we are in for a period of real political chaos around the world and predict a lot of shit is going to be shaken up…
Paul in KY
@Elie: Yes I did. Born in U.S.A., mother was born in England & that made me eligible. I completed a long & detailed questionaire, had to present alot of documentation (mostly my mother’s) & give them some money (not much) & after about 11 months went up to Chicago to swear in.
BTW, no ‘E.U. citizenship’. As someone else getting their British citizenship remarked: ‘They barely have a currency’.
TenguPhule
So when do the Republicans get shot for war crimes.
mclaren
@Elie:
I certainly hope you’re right, Elie.
Trouble is, when the situation gets bad enough, things tend to explode. You don’t get soshulism, you get Pol Pot or Mussolini.
dutchmarbel
@PaulinKY:
If they gave you UK citizenship without attached EU citizenship you should ask your money back :).
The UK is in the EU, not part of the Eurozone and not part of the Schengen Agreement. The members of those three treaties have a big overlap, but there are a number of countries who are only part of one or two (i.e. Ireland is in the EU and the eurozone but not in Schengen, Norway is in Schengen but not the EU or the eurozone).
Paul in KY
@dutchmarbel: I think for the purposes of ‘E.U. Citizenship’, anyone who is a citizen of a member nation has that citizenship.
Just no certificates or E.U. passports.