Are You Pro Lock Down Or Against?

[dave50]

It seems that the country is divided.
On one side is those who say let's get things back to normal and the consequences of the devistation of the economy is not a price worth paying against the relatively small number of deaths (50000 out of a population of 67 million).
The other side says full lock down must continue until there are no deaths and we have a vaccine, ie lives are more important than the economy.
I am in the get things back to normal camp ASAP, as we are a lot better capable of treating the illness than we were before and its something we will just have to live with, like flu deaths.
What do others think?

[naomi24]

Jim, //Is the only way an economy can function genuinely one that requires, or demands, that a deadly disease is simply ignored?//

No - that hasn’t been suggested and neither has it been ignored. Further, you appear to have some sort of naïve notion that if people work from home there will somehow be more money available for pay rises for the NHS - and this isn’t the first time you’ve attempted to steer these discussions towards that. With businesses going under, jobs being lost, and hence, government coffers being depleted, how that money would become available is anyone’s guess - but it remains a topic irrelevant to the question anyway.

The fact is most jobs can’t be done from home. Processing plants, manufacturers, retailers, distribution centres, caterers …. on and on … all need the workforce on site to function - and there is and never will be an alternative to that.

[Zacs-Master]

You're forgetting Robots.

[naomi24]

Teacake, //Boris and is gang promised new hospitals//

I share you disappointment. I wouldn’t mind but it’s not that anything he hadn’t anticipated has happened in the past year to give him other things to concentrate on. Lazy so and so!! Off with his head!!

[jim360]

There was a very deliberate reason I separated the discussion of NHS, etc, pay from the discussion of contingencies: it's simply not true that I have an "if... then..." notion.

[naomi24]

So in your concept of a 'new' order - whatever that might be - how would it be funded, Jim?

[jim360]

I'm not sure the right question is really "how would it be funded?" , or "where do we get the money?", so much as "how do we persuade those who have the money to let go of it in the interests of society as a whole?". I don't have the answer to that, either. But I don't see the sense in pretending that it isn't a reasonable question.

NB: persuade, rather than enforce: the inherent evil of socialism is that it has always been imposed, and that just introduces another imbalance that history has shown to be equally destructive. I am not advocating socialism. But capitalism comes in many forms too, and I'm not sure it's unreasonable to ask if we should switch to a form of capitalism with a greater role for the state than exists at present. For example, the UK model and the Nordic model are rather different, the latter emphasising the role of the welfare state, at the cost of higher taxation but with the benefits of lower levels of poverty, less inequality, etc etc. Maybe the system wouldn't work in the UK, at least not straightaway, but I don't think there's any harm in considering adopting some aspects of their approach.

[naomi24]

People with higher incomes already pay higher taxes.

[teacake44]

Naomi 13.06 You've missed the point I was making, but eh oh that's normal for you, turn it round to you're own advantage. Obviously Boris's pledge for new hospitals was made before and just after the election, and it was found out very soon after that his new hospitals boiled down to redecoration of the old ones. So please don't try to make me out to be so dim to think they would start any work during the pandemic. But I dare say you will try and scoot round this explanation.

[naomi24]

I don't make you out to be dim, teacake.

[woofgang]

I also think the question is an artificial one....like "have you stopped beating your wife" yet. You have stated two extreme positions as though everyone espouses one ot the other. I think in reality neither position is a sensible one and in fact the country is not divided in the way that you suggest.

[woofgang]

subtle naomi, very subtle

[sevenOP]

"The biggest flaw that Covid-19 has exposed is that there is no back-up system for when things need to change rapidly." jim360

That was done deliberately:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Cygnus ( findings have yet to be published )

naomi> "People with higher incomes already pay higher taxes."

In the Nordic model, every income tax earner is subject to higher taxes, not just the high earners.

"But capitalism comes in many forms too,"

It certainly does jim360, perhaps not "inherent evil " nor "imposed", eh jim ? , but ask those who have gained by it to take a *proportionate* reduction in their Standard of Living for the overall good of society as a whole then watch them weep their nimby tears.