Foot

useful idiot

Comment I Made

NHS
Leon the UK does not spend an inordinately large part of its GDP on Healthcare , it does have a uniquely state dominated health sector. Furthermore the vast increase in cash thrown at it has not achieved commensurate benefits .It has killed off alternative private health provision. The results of this are two fold , while we get good health results per buck( which, true to form, the state takes credit for, a highly dubious contention ) we get poor results on things that may matter to individuals, like cancer recovery. Britain has always been somewhat health orientated and health is delivered to the population by reliable low level jobsworth stuff . The NHS provides good coverage but thats about it .
For ordinary people you cannot say it is a good deal the taxes spent on the NHS would buy you about £500,000 of health insurance . I know what I would prefer , many people whose parents, say,do not fit the Soviet view of whose life matters would agree.
The reason this international absurdity is able to continue is not, as you might think the fundamentally socialist nature of the Brtiish but the fact that it redistributes from young to old and poor to rich and from ill-educated to educated ensuring that class advantage tells as much if not more than it would have done anyway. Life expectancies in poor areas remain a standing indictment of the post war socialist model . Thus it was easy for Cameron to sell ” Don`t touch the NHS” to his older voters.
Your simple attitude is awfully handy to vested interests , but then the naturally bovine have always been handy to power brokers; always will be .

On the situation of the Laffer curve the research was done by the IFS under Robert Chote and it is a matter of projecting actual empirical results not imagining what would in a vacuum. On this subject the answer is simple. You don`t know what you are talking about .Sorry but there it is .

Left wingery in Europe stands at a point of crisis having been in retreat for years and David Milliband ( The PLP `s leader over the water ) pointed to the fact that Social Democracies failure was not just a British phenomena . It has not had universally good results, Norway sits on a Lake of Oil so ignore that . Sweden established its industries under conditions of ruthless capitalism, has a tiny population vast resources and a legendary habit of social obedience . For example they changed the side of the road they drive on in one day. Imagine that here. Imagine Italy ( another large state ) or Greece , (another triumph for the left ) .Nonetheless its tax code is less redistributive than ours if greater in magnitude

The really sad thing is that government spending as a % of GDP is now getting over 50% in this country whilst taxes are about 38/9%… what does that tell you ?
Government spending in Sweden and Denmark , your top lefty heavens is hardly any more.

In other words you are living in your socialist paradise without as yet paying for it , how do you like it ?

Australia achieves social mobility reasonable equality prosperity ,fiscal sense and a lively democracy with out having East Germany inflicted on it. Why not take that as the model ?
PS
Do you know what you have become Leon …a conservative . We need reform and your backward looking sepia tinted crackly radio nostalgia is running out of time.

Stats

100 years