The Political Thread

[The Legendary Shark]

DP - sorry.

[Jimmy Baker's Assistant]

If everyone took my stance, there would be nobody left to be a dictator.

I would only be pretending to take your stance, in order to seize power after democracy had been abolished.

Sorry about the NHS, education and social security budgets guys, but my Imperial Space Fleet isn't going to build itself for free.

[The Legendary Shark]

In that case, I bags the position of Darth Shark...

[M.I.K.]

I didn't mean you you, Shark, I meant the folk you were offering to wallop would probably end up getting punched in the throat anyway and potentially end up even worse off. At least they would if you acted like one of them politicaltician types.

[The Legendary Shark]

Damn. And I do so enjoy punching people and stealing their money. :-D
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Vote Shark for violent crime! Heh.
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Seriously, though, I think you're right there, M.I.K.

[IndigoPrime]

Social money would allow all healthcare (including dentistry, prescriptions, opticians, etc.) to be free. That's what social money does - it works for society and not, as is currently the case with private money, the other way around.

I have literally no idea what you're talking about now. What specifically do you mean by 'social money'? Are you talking about local taxation that is then spent specifically on local healthcare? If that's the case and you end up with a ton of little fiefdoms, you lose the economy of scale that makes the NHS work. At best, you end up with a system colossally more expensive to people (via NI or direct payments) than what we have now.

[Grugz]

what if you want to vote for a party and there isn't a candidate in my ward?

[IndigoPrime]

1. Vote tactically for the next best option.
2. Consider a 'vote swap', such as this one for Labour/Green: http://voteswap.org
3. Spoil your ballot.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

what if you want to vote for a party and there isn't a candidate in my ward?

Constituency, not ward.

And yer stuffed. Vote for one of them standing - or stand for those you support next time!

[Richmond Clements]

1. Vote tactically for the next best option.
2. Consider a 'vote swap', such as this one for Labour/Green: http://voteswap.org
3. Spoil your ballot.

Please not 3!

As someone who counts the votes this does nothing but annoy and slow down the tired folks sorting the papers..!

[Grugz]

see, a flaw in t'system we should have just a system where we can just vote the party we want and leave the constituancies for a later date especially as we have two people each for the big two in one ward and two of them are married!

  i'll draw a dredd head instead stating democracy don't work,vote the judges! 

[The Legendary Shark]

I.P., social money is money created by social institutions (local banks, credit unions, etc.), interest-free, and spent into society. Private money (which we currently use) is money created by private institutions (global and national banks), at interest, and lent into society.
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I have posted on this issue many times on this thread. If you don't want to hunt through all my previous posts to read what I've written (and, let's face it, who would?), you might find this link useful.

[Professor Bear]

Surely it's far more sensible for the banks to just create money when they need it?  Wouldn't that have stopped the financial crisis from happening?

[The Legendary Shark]

Good question, Bear. I'll do my best to answer it as clearly as I can. In reality, the process of money creation is quite convoluted but I'll explain in simple terms in the interests of clarity. I'll also focus on the banks/government relationship, because of the election, but the same basic process applies to a single person's or a business's (or any third party's) relationship with any bank.
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The government needs £10M to build a hospital. The private bank creates £10M on an Excel spreadsheet and lends it to the government. The government spends that £10M on building the hospital.
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The bank wants paying back. The bank wants the initial £10M plus interest of say, £1M (for ease of reckoning in this example). So, the bank wants £11M. The only way the government can get this money is through taxes. The £10M can be recovered because it was initially created and exists in the system. However, and this is the truly toxic part, the £1M the banks want in interest was never created - it simply doesn't exist.
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The government must find this extra £1M from somewhere and so it must either raise tax rates, cut spending, impose fines and levies, borrow more money or sell off public utilities to find it.
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If building the hospital using this privately created, interest-bearing money was a one-off then society as a whole could cover the debt. However, as soon as this cycle begins in earnest, it can never stop. The government borrows from these private banks to pay for everything. It becomes like trying to bail-out a leaky boat with a too-small bucket; the government can never catch up and eventually finds itself owing more than can ever be repaid because there is simply not enough money in the system.
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Now, let's take the same scenario, the government needing £10M to build a hospital, but this time allow the government to create its own money. The government creates £10M and spends it on building the hospital.
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That's it. There's no need for this money to be paid back and no interest charge.
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The only pitfall is that too much money might then find its way into the economy. If the government created money irresponsibly then society would be awash with the stuff and it would lose its value. (Diametrically opposite to the debt which is currently sinking our country under the present system.)
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This is, again, where taxes come in but at a much lower rate. Where governments create their own money, taxes become a kind of pressure valve on the economy; if there's too little money in the economy taxes fall and money creation rises and if there's too much taxes rise and money creation eases off.
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Taxes also become, in this scenario, a kind of 'pump' redistributing money to where it is needed most.
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[IndigoPrime]

Right, so that's similar to Green policy on rethinking banking, but it still doesn't address my query to you about how this would work with localism. Say this thinking was practiced in Council A. Are Council A's people and institutions expiated to fund local medical care in its entirety? How would this be remotely balanced, given the gulf between regions of the UK regarding income, amount/size of local business/institutions? How would you foresee buying power from local institutions working for medical care, compared to a fully nationwide service?