No, it's quite clear why it is failing. It's that and the general inability of massively expanded State sectors in liberal democracies to actually get things done. That's a result of grossly inefficient structures and the general inefficiency of large organisations. We in those liberal democracies have already tried far left governments. They have been, without exception, an economic and social disaster. The only left wing party in Ireland which wants to tax wealth is the Labour Party and they are a political irrelevance.
You can hardly claim that FF and FG are anything other than left wing. They have increased taxes on high earners and reduced taxed on low incomes while massively increasing welfare and pensions and increasing the size of the State. Those policies of the (centre) left governments in this country were supported by the parties who purport to be further to the left; no tax on wealth, increases in the State pension way beyond inflation, and a narrowing of the tax base so that work was taxed more and wealth was taxed even less. All the populist pseudo-left opposition parties will do is increase spending and increase taxes on higher earners but disingenuously call that a wealth tax. That'll just make things worse.
Yep, as the real value of labour relative to capital drops faster than incomes increase governments tinker around the edges with income taxes.
Better than nothing, if only slightly.
Probably.
The kind of thing which brought us, free education, an end to emigration, full employment, and an increase in our standard of living from about 70% of the EU average to 120% over those decades.
Of course Starmer is an ideologue, unlike Corbyn he doesn’t proclaim his ideaology as he knows it wouldn’t attract votes. He, a former public prosecutor, is a Zionist (see the Proscription of Palestine Action) for the power of the state over society (see the Proscription of Palestine Action), for the power of the centre, see the blocking of Andy Burnham’s return to Parliament and a vindictive little man, see title of this thread.
Joining the EU and using the IDA to leverage that membership by becoming a tax haven did most of that. I accept that Charlie Haughey had a road to Damascus type conversion to the science of economics towards the end of his career, and that George Colley as Minister for Industry and Commerce created the IDA as we know it (incorporating it into an independent body with the 1969 Commerce Act) but for most of the rest of the last 50 years they have been pro-cyclical and populist, as have the other left wing parties in Ireland (we have no right wing parties).
When people start using the word Zionist as a pejorative term I stop listening to them. And that's exactly what you are doing. The same applies to people who refer to drug addicts as Junkies, rag heads etc to describe Arabs, and use the N word to describe black people.
Is certainly intended as a pejorative term. It does not mean Jewish, it means holding the belief that Israel has the right to behave as it does in Gaza, and in the West Bank. There are many Jewish people who abhor that.
www.youtube.com
Okay, but that's not what Zionist means. A Zionist is someone who believes in the right of the State of Israel, as a Jewish homeland, to exist. I don't think that Israel should have been created in the way that it was but I support its right to continue to exist. That makes me a Zionist. I abhor the behaviour of the current Israeli government, as do many Zionists including the Israeli opposition.
There's no reason to bring Putin into every thread
I meant it as a joke!
Yes, in that they support the existence of the State of Israel.
Israel has 1.8 million Muslim citizens. They also have just under 200,00 Christian citizens.
Yes, but over the last 80 years they haven't expelled their Muslim population whereas in 20 years Hamas have expelled or murdered everyone who isn't them.
No, I support a two State solution, roughly as outlined in the Camp David Accords. That makes me a Zionist. Ideally there's be no religion anywhere but we have to deal with reality and reality is that hundreds of millions of people still believe in Bronze Age cults (billion pay lip service to them but they don't actually believe in them).
Have you next weeks lotto numbers as well?
I had you pegged for a Guardian Reader or are they too anti Russian for you?
That's beneath you. Have you a link to a black person doing something appalling so that we can think all black people are the same?
Yep, the whole region has an over supply of fundamentalist nutters.
You keep suing that word incorrectly. No matter how many times you say it Zionism is not anything other than a belief that the State of Israel has the right to exist.