Ed Balls New Toys...

Why does nothing this government do surprise us any more? I gues the budget and this story set the scene for Gordy as President; er sorry, Prime Minister. A sort of Robin Hood who got it wrong. Well 20 milion people are better off, so that's OK then.

Enjoy him spluttering on BBC radio

There was supposed to be a point behind the Child Trust Fund.  Brown apparently read some scholarly article about how rich children (who often have trust funds) do better off throughout their childhood and their start in life, and concluded that the deciding factor was the presence of the trust fund, rather than, say, all the other privileges that go with growing up in a rich family.  It's a bizarrely shallow idea that makes no sense (like observing that kids who go to schools called "Eton" do rather well in life, so renaming all schools Eton), but he believed that it's the attitude with money that makes people decide to be rich or poor. 

This might be so, but something tells me that some piddly little government trust fund that might account for 5% of the cost of what had formerly been a free university education, isn't going to go far against decades of shite telly, financial advisors who lie (sorry, mis-sell), and everything else out there designed to make us stupid and disempowered so as to make more money for the rich. 

Anyway, I think it seemed like a good idea to him at the time, and looked like a bargain, as well as keeping the banks pleased (lots of state money illogically invested by private interests in the stock market). 

They do think they're doing good, but they fail utterly because they have not even the slightest grasp of the human condition, and don't appreciate their ignorance.  That's what makes it so <i>desperately</i> sad. 

You can pick up on these points in any of the older articles:
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/1297324.stm
  http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/johann_hari/article303234.ece

Two pertinent quotes:

"Everything the government touches turns to crap; It's called the Reverse Midas Touch" - Paul Craig Roberts, Cato Institute

"The scariest words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you'" - Ronald Reagan

As they say over there, go figure...

The Reagan quote was part of that administration's drive to enrich corporations by privatising everything in sight and destroying unions, consequently massively increase the gap between rich and poor. Although Blair is more a Clinton clone corporatist than the befuddled Reagan I would wager.

I don't think we really need take any lessons from an right wing Exxon-funded climate change denying welfare privatizing American think tank like the Cato Institute.  "Reverse Midas Touch" - my ass!  Isn't there a better explanation than the mantra that "everything they touch turns to crap"

/How I learned to stop worrying and love Tescos/

RickB and goatchurch, why do you get wound up about the sources of the quotes? What matters is whether these statements are true, not who said them. Do you seriously dispute that most governments, especially the present one, very often end up spending huge sums of money and achieving the opposite of what they set out to do? That's because the problems they tackle are too difficult for them. (Their way of putting it is "this situation turned out to be counter-intuitive" - in other words, "I didn't think it through properly").

The idea that government's proper task is to give everyone everything they want, make everyone equal, and right all the world's wrongs, is a magnificent dream. But it is no more practical than the Christian dream of "love thy neighbour as thyself". In practice, what happens is that the government raises taxes to pay for all its ambitious programs. Then it hires masses of people to carry them out, carefully installing cut-outs so that as little responsibility as possible remains with itself. As time goes by, all these organizations expand in accordance with Parkinson's Law; more and more people come to depend on government largesse. Past a certain point, the process is irreversible because too many people stand to lose if taxes are cut. So they just have to go on increasing. But simple arithmetic shows that can't happen indefinitely. What happens when the state gets too big can't be predicted exactly, but it won't be nice. (It never has been in the past).

Here are two alternative quotes that may be more palatable:

"When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic" - Benjamin Franklin.

"An election is nothing more than the advanced auction of stolen goods" - Ambrose Bierce.

What's annoying is that these quotes are stupid, banal, and always out of context.  You are treating them like poetry, like the foundation of your argument, rather than the conclusion drawn from a some kind of informed discussion that we could choose to delve back into.  That's why you don't care who said them, when they said them, why they said them, just so long as they sound good and jive with your mindset.  They're just the starting point of flights of fancy. 

So, as a self-confessed libertarian, can you explain what part of the Russian experiment with libertarianism and shock therapy departed from how you would have dreamed it?  Or is this too much of a dose of reality? Maybe their sudden six year drop in life expectancy was a good thing, because living beyond sixty years of age is one of those little luxuries that shouldn't be afforded by the state. 

On the contrary, I gave a fairly lengthy paragraph of logical argument. You may disagree with my premises, or my logic; or you may protest that none of it really applies to Britain today. As for the quotes, they simply distil the points I wish to make. This doesn't seem to be the place to write a couple of chapters of dense explanation, even if I had the time or the inclination.

As for the "Russian experiment with libertarianism and shock therapy", what does that have to do with Britain today? Russians suffered from suddenly having the cocoon of socialism yanked away, whereas Britain is going in exactly the opposite direction: towards a fully socialist state where only the government has any power, responsibility, or money. Lions are well equipped by evolution to survive on the veldt; but if you take a lion that has been raised in captivity and release it on the veldt, it will die quickly. That does not prove that the veldt is a bad environment for lions. Free societies are better than repressive societies that depend heavily on government control; but like all institutions, they have to evolve gradually. Sudden transitions, like the downfall of the USSR, are always dangerous.

Oh I'm sorry I didn't realise you were a libertarian.

If you can call a few tired metaphores a "lengthy paragraph of logical argument", then you obviously won't see what's wrong with your bold assertion that people want the government "to give everyone everything they want, make everyone equal, and right all the world's wrongs". 

Most of us would settle for humans generally getting what they needed survive, and that they stopped using racism to cause wars. 

So, we both agree that the transition from state capitalism to corporate capitalism in Russia was astonishingly ill-managed.  I think you will find that almost all libertarians were exponents of this disastrous shock therapy policy as the way to go about it.  I can see why you want to ignore this minor detail. 

So, if it was the suddenness of transition that was the problem, how about enlightening us with your wisdom about, say, the American health care system?  That's taken over century to evolve quite gradually and is deeply unpopular -- for reasons everyone is aware of -- when compared  to the repressive socialized system we have to endure here, that incidentally costs five times less and covers everybody so well that we take it for granted to the point that we forget it's even there.   It's not possible to mismanage it down to the American standard of care through mere incompetence. 

Is there anything about the US system that is less than perfect in your view?  Feel free to explain it in terms of giraffes, ostriches, and zoos if you have to.  I've always thought that ridiculous parables about Aesop's animals were more relevant to Britain today, than, say, the after-effects of policies imposed by governments in other countries that derive from the same bone-headed business-sell-out credulous thinking that goes on here, but that's just a personal view. 

One of the more laughable aspects I find about this is that the Government gives these Kids £250 so that when they are old enough to enjoy their 18 years interest, I think it works out at about £450 total, I could be wrong.
Of course given that the cost of a games console is that price now, in 18 years they should be able to afford the power cable for a new one. However, we wouldn't want them to go splurge on the power chord because we can't forget that they need to have to have an ID card when they get to that ripe old age of responsibility. Which, priced by the government at the moment is £92, given their reputation for estimating by a half it's fair to say £180 is a good guess, incorporating inflation will be about £404 in 18 years. So we are back down to £46 in yer pocket but of course can't forget  to attend the very important 200 question session needed to get the ID card. I'd take a taxi because if you missed one of those now it's a £2500 fine by then it will be £5617 so the taxi should be about £40 for a moderate journey across town otherwise it's kidney+ebay time. So you have a grand total left of £6. The price of a BigMac meal18 years from now.

So in summary, the Government have invested in the future of our children. What do they get with this investment:

a piece of plastic.
a complete loss of freedom.
a little fatter.