Liverpool FC Forum

[Reg]

Long but funny (and true)


Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to £100...
If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this...

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay £1.
The sixth would pay £3.
The seventh would pay £7..
The eighth would pay £12.
The ninth would pay £18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay £59.

So, that's what they decided to do..

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball.

"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by £20". Drinks for the ten men would now cost just £80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.

So the first four men were unaffected.

They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men?
The paying customers?

How could they divide the £20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?

They realised that £20 divided by six is £3.33. But if they
subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.

And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% saving).

The sixth now paid £2 instead of £3 (33% saving).

The seventh now paid £5 instead of £7 (28% saving).
The eighth now paid £9 instead of £12 (25% saving).

The ninth now paid £14 instead of £18 (22% saving).

The tenth now paid £49 instead of £59 (16% saving).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a pound out of the £20 saving," declared the sixth man.

He pointed to the tenth man,"but he got £10!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a pound too. It's unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!"

"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get £10 back, when I got only £2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison, "we didn't get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and government ministers, is how our tax system works.

The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction.

Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore.

In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

[Reg]

I see Red Corbyn intends to repeal Margaret Thatcher's right to buy your council house law and invest 75 BILLION in council houses. Long live magic money!

Corbyn wants to nationalise various industries and companies etc.. I was told at  an investment fund meeting today that overseas funds are already investigating how to sue the government to stop this happening. This isn't the 60's and 70's any more, it's a global market.

The fella's a feckin' loon.

[woof woof !]

Corbyns just like that other loon, the once deputy leader of the militant labour controlled council for Liverpool who famously sent out redundancy notices to it's own workers by taxi !

God save us from another government led by self serving politicians with faux socialist ideals and no grasp whatsoever on economic reality.

[ycsatbjywtbiastkamb]

I see Red Corbyn intends to repeal Margaret Thatcher's right to buy your council house law and invest 75 BILLION in council houses. Long live magic money!

Corbyn wants to nationalise various industries and companies etc.. I was told at  an investment fund meeting today that overseas funds are already investigating how to sue the government to stop this happening. This isn't the 60's and 70's any more, it's a global market.

The fella's a feckin' loon.

Magic money tree? This country was giving away £75 billion a month to banks in QE. Unfettered capitalism pretty much ran this country and indeed western civilisation into a wall back in 2008, if it wasn't for public money (i.e socialism) we would have been fvcked.

[Reg]

Public money is not socialism, where d'you get that impression? QE money was printed, not borrowed. Cost to the treasury was the printing cost. Greed and inadequate regulation led to 2008, it threatened to break the Western banks which would have been catastrophic for the global economy. China was largely unaffected because their banking system didn't have the same exposure to mainly volume bad debt risk however today their economy has developed so quickly they have a massive exposure to both commercial bad debt and home owner mortgage risk. The next banking crisis may well start in China and it would smash the global banking system forever so QE was a necessary evil to provide liquidity, effectively forgive banks their debts and pretend to the public the problem was far smaller than it really was. However... no one went to jail which was a mistake..... Yakka, forget this right/left, socialism thing, when Blair left power his policies were more right wing to quote you, than the Tories were under Thatcher. Remember the book 'Thatcher & Sons'?    Thatcher’s legacy has continued down to the present. Not just John Major, but Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are her heirs and acolytes. so the traditional left/right wing stances have long since disappeared like shifting sands.

I was thinking about Corbyn this morning, a relic from Harold Wilson's government. I chuckled when I thought in football terms that Corbyn getting into power would be like Woy Hodgson becoming Liverpool manager again and Diane Abbot would be equivilent to Paul Konchesky's mother.....

[ycsatbjywtbiastkamb]

Public money is not socialism, where d'you get that impression? QE money was printed, not borrowed. Cost to the treasury was the printing cost. Greed and inadequate regulation led to 2008, it threatened to break the Western banks which would have been catastrophic for the global economy. China was largely unaffected because their banking system didn't have the same exposure to mainly volume bad debt risk however today their economy has developed so quickly they have a massive exposure to both commercial bad debt and home owner mortgage risk. The next banking crisis may well start in China and it would smash the global banking system forever so QE was a necessary evil to provide liquidity, effectively forgive banks their debts and pretend to the public the problem was far smaller than it really was. However... no one went to jail which was a mistake..... Yakka, forget this right/left, socialism thing, when Blair left power his policies were more right wing to quote you, than the Tories were under Thatcher. Remember the book 'Thatcher & Sons'?    Thatcher’s legacy has continued down to the present. Not just John Major, but Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are her heirs and acolytes. so the traditional left/right wing stances have long since disappeared like shifting sands.

I was thinking about Corbyn this morning, a relic from Harold Wilson's government. I chuckled when I thought in football terms that Corbyn getting into power would be like Woy Hodgson becoming Liverpool manager again and Diane Abbot would be equivilent to Paul Konchesky's mother.....

Oh no it's not socialism when public money is used to bale out the banks but funny how it's called exactly that when it's used to help out say the coal industry or shipbuilding industry.
The economy and the country needs seriously recalibrating, over the past 40 it's gone too far to the right, I don't want to live in Victorian England Reg, you may not have a problem with people sleeping in shop doorways or old people being left to rot in hospital corridors or kids going to school hungry but i and many others do.

[Lallana in Pyjamas]

As I posted in another thread

No self respecting Liverpool fan should ever vote for a party that attempted to destroy our city - those disgusting words - managed decline


London centric tories - the rich get richer whilst the poor go to food banks

[Boocity]

Public money is not socialism, where d'you get that impression? QE money was printed, not borrowed. Cost to the treasury was the printing cost. Greed and inadequate regulation led to 2008, it threatened to break the Western banks which would have been catastrophic for the global economy. China was largely unaffected because their banking system didn't have the same exposure to mainly volume bad debt risk however today their economy has developed so quickly they have a massive exposure to both commercial bad debt and home owner mortgage risk. The next banking crisis may well start in China and it would smash the global banking system forever so QE was a necessary evil to provide liquidity, effectively forgive banks their debts and pretend to the public the problem was far smaller than it really was. However... no one went to jail which was a mistake..... Yakka, forget this right/left, socialism thing, when Blair left power his policies were more right wing to quote you, than the Tories were under Thatcher. Remember the book 'Thatcher & Sons'?    Thatcher’s legacy has continued down to the present. Not just John Major, but Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are her heirs and acolytes. so the traditional left/right wing stances have long since disappeared like shifting sands.

I was thinking about Corbyn this morning, a relic from Harold Wilson's government. I chuckled when I thought in football terms that Corbyn getting into power would be like Woy Hodgson becoming Liverpool manager again and Diane Abbot would be equivilent to Paul Konchesky's mother.....

Oh no it's not socialism when public money is used to bale out the banks but funny how it's called exactly that when it's used to help out say the coal industry or shipbuilding industry.
The economy and the country needs seriously recalibrating, over the past 40 it's gone too far to the right, I don't want to live in Victorian England Reg, you may not have a problem with people sleeping in shop doorways or old people being left to rot in hospital corridors or kids going to school hungry but i and many others do.

But they dont use it for that, they use public money to increase welfare state. The last Labour government could have saved Rover but Blair said the country couldn't afford it  instead they sold it to the Chinese who boxed it up and shipped it to China.

Also are you describing the Wales NHS that is run by the Labour controlled assembly. The NHS needs reform, there are far too many administrative people and not front line doctors and nurses, again Labour did this and also the massive debt on the NHS with the PIP.

[Reg]

Oh no it's not socialism when public money is used to bale out the banks but funny how it's called exactly that when it's used to help out say the coal industry or shipbuilding industry.
The economy and the country needs seriously recalibrating, over the past 40 it's gone too far to the right, I don't want to live in Victorian England Reg, you may not have a problem with people sleeping in shop doorways or old people being left to rot in hospital corridors or kids going to school hungry but i and many others do.

Yakka, if QE hadn't been created = flooding the markets with money, the banks would have started to fold, there would have been a run on banks globally and it would have led to complete social unrest worldwide as all debts were called in, savings lost and everything else. It was the greatest scam ever, smoke and mirrors 'there's no problem'. Call it socialism or whatever you like but without it the world would have gone t!ts up.

It's impossible to recalibrate the economy, without a war or crisis for 70+ years there's simply too much cash in circulation. Companies on the FTSE worth 300 million are valued at 750 million simply because the fund managers have to park this fantastic amount of money they have under management somewhere. It's not going away unless we have a 1929 again and god help us if we do. It'd be interesting if the supermarkets went bust as hopefully the small retailers would come back.. but no, Chinese investors would buy them cheap and it'd be business as usual.

I do have a problem with people sleeping in shop doors Yakka, of course I do. But lets analyse where the education system let them down, the modern failure of parents to both set a good example and make kids study and build a future for themselves. It's also a failure of local economies, smashed by globalisation... a Chinese/Vietnamese factory produces goods cheaper than a UK factory can with more expensive electricity, pension and social costs, higher wages etc..

What would be your solution Yakka? Look at it globally, in light of real economic restrictions. What would you do to change the course of the economy in the next 20 years?

[Reg]

As I posted in another thread

No self respecting Liverpool fan should ever vote for a party that attempted to destroy our city - those disgusting words - managed decline


London centric tories - the rich get richer whilst the poor go to food banks

You're living in the past, today's problems need solutions now... you build for the future now, stop crying into your milk about 40 years ago. 

[Reg]

But they dont use it for that, they use public money to increase welfare state. The last Labour government could have saved Rover but Blair said the country couldn't afford it  instead they sold it to the Chinese who boxed it up and shipped it to China.

Also are you describing the Wales NHS that is run by the Labour controlled assembly. The NHS needs reform, there are far too many administrative people and not front line doctors and nurses, again Labour did this and also the massive debt on the NHS with the PIP.

+1, well said.

The NHS budget is already 137 BILLION, anyone who thinks that giving it more money is the solution clearly doesn't understand the problem.

By the way my pinko friends, you know how much an NHS GP earns?

Britain's highest earning GP paid at least £700,000 a year

By Paul Gallagher
Friday, 29th December 2017, 10:47 am

Britain's highest paid GP was paid at least £700,000 in a year, it has emerged. The unidentified doctor from Kent earned over £505,000 more than the chief executive of NHS England, according to a Freedom of Information request. They are believed to be reaping the benefits of a contract that allows doctors to run several surgeries that can earn more money for providing extra treatment.

This could include minor surgery to remove cysts or ingrowing toenails, treatment for drug addicts or alcoholics or screening for cervical cancer.
"The tiny number of individuals listed as earning extremely high incomes are likely to be... managing large businesses."
A second doctor in Birmingham has been found to be earning an annual sum of £665,000, while another in Essex was paid £412,400.

The average GP earns an average salary of £90,000, but doctors can earn more by linking up surgeries, making record earnings by managing tens of thousands of patients. Figures revealed more than 200 'Super GPs' in the NHS earned more than £200,000 a year in 2015/16. Four were on salaries between £400,000 and £450,000 while 11 were paid between £300,000 and £350,000 a year.

Family doctors have to provide details of their salaries to their Primary Care Trust every year so the NHS can calculate how much to pay into their pension pots. Many GPs earn just £56,000, while partners can earn up to double their basic pay as they are acting as small business owners.

'Badly wrong'
Alex Wild, of the Taxpayer's Alliance, told the Times it was "clear something is going badly wrong" with GPs' salaries.

[ycsatbjywtbiastkamb]

Public money is not socialism, where d'you get that impression? QE money was printed, not borrowed. Cost to the treasury was the printing cost. Greed and inadequate regulation led to 2008, it threatened to break the Western banks which would have been catastrophic for the global economy. China was largely unaffected because their banking system didn't have the same exposure to mainly volume bad debt risk however today their economy has developed so quickly they have a massive exposure to both commercial bad debt and home owner mortgage risk. The next banking crisis may well start in China and it would smash the global banking system forever so QE was a necessary evil to provide liquidity, effectively forgive banks their debts and pretend to the public the problem was far smaller than it really was. However... no one went to jail which was a mistake..... Yakka, forget this right/left, socialism thing, when Blair left power his policies were more right wing to quote you, than the Tories were under Thatcher. Remember the book 'Thatcher & Sons'?    Thatcher’s legacy has continued down to the present. Not just John Major, but Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are her heirs and acolytes. so the traditional left/right wing stances have long since disappeared like shifting sands.

I was thinking about Corbyn this morning, a relic from Harold Wilson's government. I chuckled when I thought in football terms that Corbyn getting into power would be like Woy Hodgson becoming Liverpool manager again and Diane Abbot would be equivilent to Paul Konchesky's mother.....

Oh no it's not socialism when public money is used to bale out the banks but funny how it's called exactly that when it's used to help out say the coal industry or shipbuilding industry.
The economy and the country needs seriously recalibrating, over the past 40 it's gone too far to the right, I don't want to live in Victorian England Reg, you may not have a problem with people sleeping in shop doorways or old people being left to rot in hospital corridors or kids going to school hungry but i and many others do.

But they dont use it for that, they use public money to increase welfare state. The last Labour government could have saved Rover but Blair said the country couldn't afford it  instead they sold it to the Chinese who boxed it up and shipped it to China.

Also are you describing the Wales NHS that is run by the Labour controlled assembly. The NHS needs reform, there are far too many administrative people and not front line doctors and nurses, again Labour did this and also the massive debt on the NHS with the PIP.

Blair couldn't have saved Rover because there are EU rules on state intervention so I haven't a clue what you are waffling on about there. Under EU rules the only way a government can own a company (like say the way the German government owns their own railways) is if that company makes a profit, governments can own assets but they can't subsidise loss making entities. Btw the NHS gets an exemption.
As for the NHS it needs a massive overhaul, Thatcher started this mess when she created seperate health trusts and created an internal market, she sent in her army of accountants and middle managers to undermine the health service, the creeping privatisation continued under the likes of Major, Blair and Cameron etc.
What Blair did with those PFI deals was particularly pernicious, say a new hospital was going to cost £100m to build, instead of the government borrowing the money at low interest he went to the city and borrowed the money from private investors, suddenly that new hospital didn't cost £100m it cost the taxpayer £300m with all the money going into the pockets of rich investors in the city. What made it worse was that Blair basically handed these 'mortgages' to the health trusts themselves and said "there, you pay for that out of your own budget". Thatcher created the trusts and Blair hung millstones around their necks.
A huge amount of our NHS budget now goes directly into the pockets of rich investors. Blair said the reason he did it was to not spook the city by loading the government with huge amounts of debt but that debt is still there, in fact that debt is 3 times bigger than it needed to be, it's just creative accounting to say that debt is not on the government's books.
Cynics say that PFI was Tony Blair's way of saying to the city when he first got in - "hey you guys can trust me, don't pull your money out of the country, here's a nice little earner for you".
The NHS is being systematically destroyed by accountants, 50% of NHS services are now carried out by private firms, if any extra investment does get pumped in a lot of it goes on paying back the investors which is why the Tories are suddenly keen to increase funding, they love nothing more than shovelling taxpayers money into the pockets of their rich mates.
Corbyn has promised if he gets in to rid the NHS of privatisation, that's the only thing that can save it now.

[ycsatbjywtbiastkamb]

Oh no it's not socialism when public money is used to bale out the banks but funny how it's called exactly that when it's used to help out say the coal industry or shipbuilding industry.
The economy and the country needs seriously recalibrating, over the past 40 it's gone too far to the right, I don't want to live in Victorian England Reg, you may not have a problem with people sleeping in shop doorways or old people being left to rot in hospital corridors or kids going to school hungry but i and many others do.

Yakka, if QE hadn't been created = flooding the markets with money, the banks would have started to fold, there would have been a run on banks globally and it would have led to complete social unrest worldwide as all debts were called in, savings lost and everything else. It was the greatest scam ever, smoke and mirrors 'there's no problem'. Call it socialism or whatever you like but without it the world would have gone t!ts up.

It's impossible to recalibrate the economy, without a war or crisis for 70+ years there's simply too much cash in circulation. Companies on the FTSE worth 300 million are valued at 750 million simply because the fund managers have to park this fantastic amount of money they have under management somewhere. It's not going away unless we have a 1929 again and god help us if we do. It'd be interesting if the supermarkets went bust as hopefully the small retailers would come back.. but no, Chinese investors would buy them cheap and it'd be business as usual.

I do have a problem with people sleeping in shop doors Yakka, of course I do. But lets analyse where the education system let them down, the modern failure of parents to both set a good example and make kids study and build a future for themselves. It's also a failure of local economies, smashed by globalisation... a Chinese/Vietnamese factory produces goods cheaper than a UK factory can with more expensive electricity, pension and social costs, higher wages etc..

What would be your solution Yakka? Look at it globally, in light of real economic restrictions. What would you do to change the course of the economy in the next 20 years?

I'll reply when I've got more time but you do realise that after the banks were bailed out the earnings of those who actually caused the crisis went through the roof whilst everyone else got a decade of austerity shoved down their throats?
CEO's etc took the public bail out money and bought their own companies shares to inflate the stock price which essentially meant they were giving themselves huge, huge bonuses. That's why there was still a liquidity crisis years after the crash, the money wasn't getting pumped back into the system, it was getting pumped into their pockets!
Even after they nearly brought down western civilisation they were still taking the pi$$, meanwhile back in Main Street the Tories were cutting benefits to severely disabled people, blind people and people with learning difficulties etc.
I'm a leftie but I'm not a communist Reg, I believe in regulated capitalism, but what we have now is not even capitalism or crony capitalism it's a system of flat out corruption.

[Lallana in Pyjamas]

As I posted in another thread

No self respecting Liverpool fan should ever vote for a party that attempted to destroy our city - those disgusting words - managed decline


London centric tories - the rich get richer whilst the poor go to food banks

You're living in the past, today's problems need solutions now... you build for the future now, stop crying into your milk about 40 years ago. 

You go and tell that to people who got screwed over by the Tories during those years - and build for the future ?!! Only if you live in London - Tory *****

[Boocity]

Oh no it's not socialism when public money is used to bale out the banks but funny how it's called exactly that when it's used to help out say the coal industry or shipbuilding industry.
The economy and the country needs seriously recalibrating, over the past 40 it's gone too far to the right, I don't want to live in Victorian England Reg, you may not have a problem with people sleeping in shop doorways or old people being left to rot in hospital corridors or kids going to school hungry but i and many others do.

Yakka, if QE hadn't been created = flooding the markets with money, the banks would have started to fold, there would have been a run on banks globally and it would have led to complete social unrest worldwide as all debts were called in, savings lost and everything else. It was the greatest scam ever, smoke and mirrors 'there's no problem'. Call it socialism or whatever you like but without it the world would have gone t!ts up.

It's impossible to recalibrate the economy, without a war or crisis for 70+ years there's simply too much cash in circulation. Companies on the FTSE worth 300 million are valued at 750 million simply because the fund managers have to park this fantastic amount of money they have under management somewhere. It's not going away unless we have a 1929 again and god help us if we do. It'd be interesting if the supermarkets went bust as hopefully the small retailers would come back.. but no, Chinese investors would buy them cheap and it'd be business as usual.


I do have a problem with people sleeping in shop doors Yakka, of course I do. But lets analyse where the education system let them down, the modern failure of parents to both set a good example and make kids study and build a future for themselves. It's also a failure of local economies, smashed by globalisation... a Chinese/Vietnamese factory produces goods cheaper than a UK factory can with more expensive electricity, pension and social costs, higher wages etc..

What would be your solution Yakka? Look at it globally, in light of real economic restrictions. What would you do to change the course of the economy in the next 20 years?

I'll reply when I've got more time but you do realise that after the banks were bailed out the earnings of those who actually caused the crisis went through the roof whilst everyone else got a decade of austerity shoved down their throats?
CEO's etc took the public bail out money and bought their own companies shares to inflate the stock price which essentially meant they were giving themselves huge, huge bonuses. That's why there was still a liquidity crisis years after the crash, the money wasn't getting pumped back into the system, it was getting pumped into their pockets!
Even after they nearly brought down western civilisation they were still taking the pi$$, meanwhile back in Main Street the Tories were cutting benefits to severely disabled people, blind people and people with learning difficulties etc.
I'm a leftie but I'm not a communist Reg, I believe in regulated capitalism, but what we have now is not even capitalism or crony capitalism it's a system of flat out corruption.

Hang on Yakka, why are you blaming the tories for the financial crisis and aftermath. It was labour who bailed out the banks, it was Labour who didn't throw those who caused it into Jail in fact Labour even let Goodwin keep his knighthood (it was taken away under the Tories but I agree they should have gone further and jailed the c*nt). It was Labour who left the country so much in debt we ended with the Tories having to clear up the financial mess again and what we had isn't austerity, if you want to see austerity look at Greece.