Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

[Woodsman]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

Okay, but if it's less than honest of the obese to blame their mothers for serving them ice cream, how is it proper to blame the great, great grandmother?

[Woodsman]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

On this we agree!

[Raz]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

Ah yes, the deserving poor. Pity it's often so hard to make the distinction between the deserving and undeserving.

The Christian theology and Catholic teaching you so often share with us here seems to recognize the challenge of separating the clean from the unclean and finally just throws up its hands and says the heck with it; help anyone who is poor, no matter how they became so:

Deut. 15:7. If there is a poor man among you, one of your brothers, in any of the towns of the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand to your poor brother; but you shall freely open your hand to him, and generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks.

Lev. 19:19ff. Now when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very corners of your field, neither shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest. Nor shall you glean your vineyard, nor shall you gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the needy and for the stranger.

Is. 58:66ff. Is this not the fast which I choose, to loosen the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke? Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into the house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Mt. 5:42. Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you.


This exhortation to help the poor is just all over the testaments, old and new, and it's curious how so many people who identify as Christians (Jews and Muslims, too, as their books demand much the same), can't seem to find these passages.

That's a shame because the approach makes good policy, as we now recognize poverty to have multi-generational component. People who are poor - deserving or otherwise - have a decided tendency to choose poor parents as their host during gestation and childhood. If we were to do as the monotheist religions demand of their disciples, we could probably deal with the worst aspects of poverty in a couple of generations.

Of course, "ye have the poor with you always" and that's also simple common sense. But if we were to abandon moralistic notions of good poor and the evil poor and just do as commanded, we could have far fewer poor of all types and make the condition far less oppressive.

Are you directing these comments to me? IF SO, then what did I do to make you so angry?

We can quote scriptures back and forth all day, but you should know what I was referring to: those who GAME the system.
And first on the list - before the poor - are the corporatists, bankers, the farm lobby, public employee unions, tax lawyers, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But even "workfare" - performing needed infrastructure repairs or simply cleaning up litter - is better than paying years and years of unemployment; better for those in need as well as the taxpayers.

I believe St. Paul said, "He who will not work, neither let him eat". (II Thessalonians: 3:10) (Emphasis mine).
Try reading the Didache to see what the Apostles thought of fraudsters who took charity unjustly - thereby robbing those who had legitimate needs.

BTW, when I can find the time I will address your first post to me. I doubt I can soon find the amount of time necessary to take apart some of Hudson's argument, but the opening salvo of yours is incorrect.

Peace!

[Woodsman]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

Sorry for the confusion, Raz. I can't seem to get around the whole thread thing. But, yes it was written in response to your quip on the "truly indigent and needy" and is a tangent to the discussion on Thatcherism. But angry?

Okay, maybe now I can say I'm coming to the threshold of slightly miffed at feeling the need to write this. But what on Earth makes you think I wrote that in anger or animus? Or, maybe I am angry and just don't have enough insight to know it. But even if that's the case, how could you possibly discern my mood with such scant information as a few lines of text? Talk about scratching one's head in puzzlement? No, Raz. I don't believe I'm angry at you.

And I'm not quoting Bible verses from any perspective of faith or authority. It's simply a fact that the various books are just chock full of references to do well by the poor regardless of how they came to be so. And yes, the old testament writers and Paul were hard hard bunch, we agree. The Gospels seem much more unconditionally accepting of the poor and outcast, but that's Jesus' thing, isn't it? They crucified him for it, among other things.

It's true that your religious tradition informs your moral concept which in turn I also read (btw lines) in your economic and political commentary, erudite and informed as it generally is. That's not an insult and I certainly didn't intend anything as such. It just is and I come to this understanding by reading your posts. You look at the world through a moral prism informed by your conservative traditionalist Catholic perspective and that in turn colors your views on macroeconomics and history. Me, I think that is problematic. But it's your problem and I respect your right to indulge it all you want.

We disagree about the moral dimensions of poverty. We seem to agree that the bible is full of contradictions and can be used to advance almost any argument. I contend that a significant percentage of people who identify as Christians (and Jews, Muslims blah blah blah) take their faith selectively, especially when it comes up against their political ideology and economic interests. Since their faith informs their political decision making, I think that is relevant and deserves to be challenged as appropriate.

I look forward to reading your post, but from where I'm standing it seems you feel entirely justified throwing about terms like revisionist, corrupt, foolish, biased, rabid, arrogant, and other less than informative characterizations. But let someone use unequivocal language with you, and it's kid gloves across the face and pistols at 40 paces.

Hudson's piece deals with matters of historical fact. He simply takes Thatcher at her word and recounts the record, but to you he's a revisionist fool.

Harold Wilson was a mild social democrat with technocratic tendencies; an Oxford don who read history, politics and philosophy, but to you he's bastard child of Madam Defarge and Felix Dzerzhinsky.

James Callaghan came from the same humble stock as Thatcher, served honorably as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister and still managed to keep a degree of humanity and humility that Thatcher considered a sort of vestigial organ. We're not clear what you think of him, but you "well remember" him for something ominous.

And you save your sharpest knife for poor old Michael Foot. He was another Oxonian who turned to democratic socialism in response to the crushing poverty in Britain, yet was a patriot who rallied against Chamberlain and appeasement and served as a member of the secret GHQ Auxiliary Units that were to resist the expected Nazi invasion. That Foot was strongly anti-communist, opposed the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia and was a strong supporter of NATO seems outside your consciousness. Maybe that's because to you there's no meaningful distinction between a social democrat and "a rabid little neocommunist" KGB agent. Here's a hint: the British traitors hailed from Cambridge and the smear against Foot (and Wilson) were sourced entirely from the fevered imaginations of paid defector Anatoliy Golitsyn and the criminally paranoid James Jesus Angleton.

These aren't fabrications on my part; they're your words and your point of view. I consider them a bit kooky, yes, but not at all unusual or extreme; just wrong. And you're not alone in persisting with these sorts of views. The breathless and reflexive animus you exhibit to anything with the faintest hint of "leftness" - c.f. Barak Obama as a socialist - is the American Way. It represent the prevailing American opinion since the Eisenhower administration and the people who carry it forward are generally not the sort that question dearly held assumptions and beliefs. The fact that it exists largely outside historical reality is no hindrance whatsoever to its wide acceptance.

Peace to you, Raz.

[flintlock]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

Everyone wants a bogeyman to blame when in fact it took a long and glorious collection of dickheads to get us to this point. The truth is that liberal/conservative labels today have a lot more to do with differences on relatively petty social issues than banking and high finance. Both like to spend other people's money to help themselves stay in power.

[Raz]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

Sorry for the confusion, Raz. I can't seem to get around the whole thread thing. But, yes it was written in response to your quip on the "truly indigent and needy" and is a tangent to the discussion on Thatcherism. But angry?

Okay, maybe now I can say I'm coming to the threshold of slightly miffed at feeling the need to write this. But what on Earth makes you think I wrote that in anger or animus? Or, maybe I am angry and just don't have enough insight to know it. But even if that's the case, how could you possibly discern my mood with such scant information as a few lines of text? Talk about scratching one's head in puzzlement? No, Raz. I don't believe I'm angry at you.

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I detected in your first three sentences that you smelled hypocricy in my "sharing Christian theology and Catholic teaching", while I've [apparently]no sympathy for the poor. Rather insulting, I'd say, if that is what you intended. If not, then please accept my sincere apology. And by the way, I'm NOT Roman Catholic: I'm Orthodox.

And I'm not quoting Bible verses from any perspective of faith or authority. It's simply a fact that the various books are just chock full of references to do well by the poor regardless of how they came to be so. And yes, the old testament writers and Paul were hard hard bunch, we agree. The Gospels seem much more unconditionally accepting of the poor and outcast, but that's Jesus' thing, isn't it? They crucified him for it, among other things.

St. Paul had the experience of being lied to, betrayed, beaten within an inch of his life on several occasions, and jailed among other travails.
He was also familiar with phonies and busybodies who were always ready to eat the food of others while never offering anything of their own.

He saw the true needs of widows, cripples, lepers and others who couldn't be sutained if the Church gave its goods to indolent, lazy frauds.
(Goods that were given to Her as free-will offerings and not taxes taken by threat of force; BTW, did you know that Catholic Charities receives over 60% of its funding from the Federal Government? And in so doing is forbidden to proselytize in any way while offering that aid? A Roman Catholic friend of mine said that since the source of the money is not from free-will offerings, and the Roman faith cannot be proclaimed to any recipient of that aid, then Catholic Charities is neither catholic or charity.)

And no, Jesus was not crucified for His acts of charity or compassion. He was murdered by way of an unlawful trial of the Sanhedrin because they judged Him guilty of blasphemy.

It's true that your religious tradition informs your moral concept which in turn I also read (btw lines) in your economic and political commentary, erudite and informed as it generally is. That's not an insult and I certainly didn't intend anything as such. It just is and I come to this understanding by reading your posts. You look at the world through a moral prism informed by your conservative traditionalist Catholic perspective and that in turn colors your views on macroeconomics and history. Me, I think that is problematic. But it's your problem and I respect your right to indulge it all you want.

My moral concepts are, I hope, Orthodox. I have a real concern for those who are jobless but want to work, and for the poor who are unable to work as well as those who do work but find it almost impossible to make ends meet. If you could ask my priest what he thought of my views in that regard I'm confident that he'd say actions speak far louder than words, and based upon those you are very mistaken about Raz. As the Irish say, "A wee bit of help is better than a great deal of sympathy".

My views on economics were formed before I converted to Orthodoxy. They were the result of struggle and self-denial while being bled by three levels of government at every turn. They were hardened by the insufferable arrogance of Limousine Liberals who were always ready to raise my taxes to buy votes from their constituents, and while it might well mean that I'd then be forced to return my children to their failing schools, theirs would always have a "voucher" to attend a good one. People like Teddy Kennedy and John Kerry. Warren Buffet can have 75% of his income and assets taxed away and he'll still never have to iron his own shirts; but those like me won't be so fortunate when half of our earnings are taxed away.

We disagree about the moral dimensions of poverty. We seem to agree that the bible is full of contradictions and can be used to advance almost any argument. I contend that a significant percentage of people who identify as Christians (and Jews, Muslims blah blah blah) take their faith selectively, especially when it comes up against their political ideology and economic interests. Since their faith informs their political decision making, I think that is relevant and deserves to be challenged as appropriate.

Please share with me your views on the "moral dimension of poverty". We likely won't agree but hopefully we won't be miles apart either.

The Cannon of Scripture is a collection of writings that that were deemed to be authoritative by the Orthodox and catholic Church. Those that make up the New Testament were produced within Her and by Her and can only be accurately understood within Her life and Her tradition.

And yes, it is appropriate to challenge my views based upon my moral prism; and also for me to challenge yours, whatever they're based upon.

Let me state something that makes me ill: "Christians" who condone the mass-murder of procured abortion and believe that I shouldn't be opposed to the federal government using my tax dollars to pay for those "reproductive health needs" of the poor women who cannot afford to pay the hit man.

I look forward to reading your post, but from where I'm standing it seems you feel entirely justified throwing about terms like revisionist, corrupt, foolish, biased, rabid, arrogant, and other less than informative characterizations. But let someone use unequivocal language with you, and it's kid gloves across the face and pistols at 40 paces.

You have one good point here, Woodsman. I shouldn't have used such harsh terms and I wasn't fair in doing so. You are right in calling me out on that.
But I don't think you're correct in the second accusation: I took an incredible amount of abuse and insult from two members on a thread that was moved to Rant-and-Rave - and you acknowledged it as such. I didn't "challenge them to a duel". I don't believe I attacked you here, but if I offended you I apologize.

Hudson's piece deals with matters of historical fact. He simply takes Thatcher at her word and recounts the record, but to you he's a revisionist fool.

I NEVER called Hudson a fool. And please don't tell me Hudson gave a completely unbiased rendition of facts concerning Thatcher's policies and results. I doubt that anyone would be able to do that coming from so far to the left as Hudson. That doesn't mean he lied, just that he's biased as all of us are. What I didn't like was him giving no background to the situation as it was in the Britain of the late 1970s.

Harold Wilson was a mild social democrat with technocratic tendencies; an Oxford don who read history, politics and philosophy, but to you he's bastard child of Madam Defarge and Felix Dzerzhinsky.

Now where on earth did you get that? I only mentioned that I remembered Harold Wilson term as Prime Minister during the 1960s.

He was a well respected man but I see the extravagance in his policies just as I see those among some on the right side of the spectrum.
Economics is the balancing (rationing) of limited resources against [almost] unlimited demands for those resources. Labour overspent, overpromised and instilled unrealistic expectations among the electorate. Heath and the Tories (they are not now and have never been "conservative") did much the same.

James Callaghan came from the same humble stock as Thatcher,

Good for him.

...served honorably as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister and still managed to keep a degree of humanity and humility that Thatcher considered a sort of vestigial organ. We're not clear what you think of him, but you "well remember" him for something ominous.

I "well remember him" as a failed Prime Minister. Labour allowed the Unions to run the whole country; that works no better than allowing bankers to run the whole country.

And you save your sharpest knife for poor old Michael Foot. He was another Oxonian who turned to democratic socialism in response to the crushing poverty in Britain, yet was a patriot who rallied against Chamberlain and appeasement and served as a member of the secret GHQ Auxiliary Units that were to resist the expected Nazi invasion. That Foot was strongly anti-communist, opposed the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia and was a strong supporter of NATO seems outside your consciousness. Maybe that's because to you there's no meaningful distinction between a social democrat and "a rabid little neocommunist" KGB agent. Here's a hint: the British traitors hailed from Cambridge and the smear against Foot (and Wilson) were sourced entirely from the fevered imaginations of paid defector Anatoliy Golitsyn and the criminally paranoid James Jesus Angleton.

I remember a Stalinist thug named Leonid Brezhnev who was funding communist parties in Italy, France and the United Kingdom; who was expanding the Soviet military beyond any and all reasonable bounds while installing a new and massive force of IRBMs in Eastern Europe, all in an attempt to "Finlandize" NATO countries at a minimum.

And I remember Michael Foot opposing any attempt to offset this Soviet posture even when the United States offered to build the necessary IRBMs and place them under NATO command. He didn't want any of them based in Britain. He was one of those men who never seemed to realize that you cannot pet a Rattlesnake. Talk meant NOTHING to men like Brezhnev unless you offered real consequences if they didn't listen to reason.

Michael Foot only saw the needs of his constituents and was never able to see that there would never ever be sufficient resources for all he wanted to "give" them. Perhaps you're right that I shouldn't have been so harsh; if so then I retract my tone and use of words. But I listened to Mr. Foot many times on C-Span during the "Prime Minister's Question and Answer Session" and he was rather harsh, to say the least. He gave every bit as good as he got.

It is my recollection that Anatoliy Golitsyn was highly credible in his furnishing of secret informationto MI6. Whether he told the truth about Michael Foot I don't know, and for that reason alone I shouldn't have brought the epidode up. Michael Foot was perhaps a kind and decent man, but in my opinion he was a radical and his policies were wrong. Every bit as wrong to me as you believe mine are to you.
He believed that the Trade Unions should run Britain. I don't think any unions should run any country any more than bankers or lawyers or farmers.

These aren't fabrications on my part; they're your words and your point of view. I consider them a bit kooky, yes, but not at all unusual or extreme; just wrong. And you're not alone in persisting with these sorts of views. The breathless and reflexive animus you exhibit to anything with the faintest hint of "leftness" - c.f. Barak Obama as a socialist- is the American Way. It represent the prevailing American opinion since the Eisenhower administration and the people who carry it forward are generally not the sort that question dearly held assumptions and beliefs. The fact that it exists largely outside historical reality is no hindrance whatsoever to its wide acceptance.

Barack Obama is a Statist - with clear socialist tendencies. General Motors is now Government Motors. And the GSEs Fannie and Freddie are now the entire mortgage market in the United States. A Welfare State is where everyone contributes to a government sponsored or actual government entity to provide basic necessities to those in the population that rightly deserve and qualify. It becomes an unworkable mess as soon as an "entitlement" mentality is deeply rooted within a majority of the population and demands far exceed resources available without bleeding the goose that lays the eggs. And I've had my opinions about health care changed over the past five years as a result of some people here on iTulip - so how about your ability to "question dearly held assumptions and beliefs"?

Socialism - al la Michael Foot - is where the government through the will of the masses takes over complete ownership and operation of the means of production. I've yet to see anywhere that has worked out well but perhaps you can show me examples. I'm not at all afraid or unwilling to admit it when I'm shown to be wrong.

Peace to you, Raz.

[shiny!]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

This:

Everyone wants a bogeyman to blame when in fact it took a long and glorious collection of dickheads to get us to this point. The truth is that liberal/conservative labels today have a lot more to do with differences on relatively petty social issues than banking and high finance. Both like to spend other people's money to help themselves stay in power.

and this:

FIRE, however, has become a criminal enterprise. Unless it goes there won't be a pie to fight over.

This is the truth.

[ProdigyofZen]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

More like the crack dealer offering the first hit for free...



As was noted by others, it is far from clear Thatcher was what 'saved' England - as opposed to the discovery of the North Sea oil.

Hudson himself notes clearly that the unionist/statists in England had gone too far, so to say that he's blindly ideological is an incorrect statement.

Equally so is the notion that the only alternative (credit to Mrs. TINA herself) was Hayekian downsizing.

Wasn't Thatcher the one who promoted Pinochet and denounced Mandela?

That didn't turn out too well but I wasn't even born when she was elected so what do I know......

[Chris Coles]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

First of all to Raz and Woodsman, I do enjoy watching people battle with words that, eventually, open the door to a better understanding of each others point of view. So I personally, have no wish to see such moved to Rant and Rave; strong debate is the very essence of iTulip; we who are privileged to read such learn much from the encounter.

Some of you may know that I left school here in the UK in 1960 and became an industrial apprentice to learn every aspect of industrial production within a company that was set up to deliver the equipment for the nuclear industry; yes, including the bomb casings. So my viewpoint is cast upon watching all that Hudson describes from the very fulcrum of those events. I left the apprenticeship to become a trainee Forrester, won the only place granted that following year but found that to be unsatisfactory and spent a year working at temporary jobs for Manpower. A wonderful experience; which led me right back into industry setting Multi-spindle lathes, which in turn again, led me to (with the able assistance of the now late Alan Drake) to create Drake and Coles Containers Limited in 1970.

So it is fair to say, I can relate to the reality of what seemed to be wrong with the UK economy at that moment in time.

Hudson is spot on; I have no option but to agree with his description of the political realities; except that, as with everyone else he does not touch upon the underlying problem of class.

It is only now, in what one might call my "old age", I'm coming up to 69, that it is possible to look back and understand things that seemed both illogical and beyond understanding at the time.

Here in the UK, as a skilled artisan, trained in absolute industrial precision, with a total understanding of the principles of design, technical drawing, industrial mathematics, industrial manufacturing equipment and tooling, workplace industrial employment relationships...... I AM an underclass, blue collar, less than acceptable person; to be treated as cannon fodder for those "better" than me.

In the post WW2 years, the industrial engineers, NOT trade unionists, NOT Government managers, NOT City "Gents"; created some of the most successful engineering concepts imaginable. The underclass of such engineering skills were by far and away the very best at manufacturing, aviation, nuclear, marine, space ...... led by fools concerned more with, on the one hand executive control over the entire nation; or on the other hand; a war against the unions.

It was the executive government that had been built upon vast colonies throughout the world that had ultimate control, indeed still has absolute control; certainly here in the UK. It was they that drove the national economy into the desperate state it was in by the late 1970's ..... but as today, they are deemed untouchable by the politicians, who fear their backlash more than they fear their own electorate.

THAT is the underlying problem we face; a group who stand at the top of society; demand payment and respect regardless that their policies repeatedly fail; regardless that they refuse to take any real responsibility for the true nature of their ongoing failures. They are a feudal remnant from a bygone age that refuses to accept their role in the ongoing repeated failures.

They sit themselves right at the top of the "Class", ensure their continuation without any respect for the wider nation. It was this group that set into motion the ongoing failure of the industrial base of the UK because it became a battle of who held control of the funding. Either the executive had control and could fund their ongoing control of the nation; or they would have had to hand control of the success to the industrial engineers.

They thus started to sell out the industrial base of the nation; either giving away significant industrial advantage to others; such as the design of jet engines to the Soviets and the USA, or again, simply abandoning projects as they became visibly successful. Black Arrow being an excellent example.

The UK was crippled, remains crippled, by a mindset that refuses to permit the wider nation to succeed; because to do so will, inevitable, crimp the absolute control of the executive; who never have succeeded; AND THEY KNOW IT!

So industry had to be crimped and the obvious target was the trade unions. But the trade unions were nothing more than a side effect of the very tribe that was already in control of industry; the executive. So they handed the politicians and local "intellectuals" all the ammunition they needed to ensure the survival of the executive; regardless of the need to reduce the destructive power of the over manning of all those nationalised industries.

The one group that always survived is the senior executive; they moved sideways into the "City" and thus became in control of both sides of the very same pie; government spending.

So what was going on within the maelstrom created and so very well illustrated by Hudson; was an absolute intent to continue the absolute control by and for the feudal remnant from a bygone age.

Thatcher and her friends climbed the wrong hill and thus came to the battle from the wrong viewpoint. What should have occurred was free competition with the existing industrial base. No small business worth it's salt has any truck with trade unions, they are simply an irrelevance to employees that are well paid and appreciated by their employer. But as I have done my best to illustrate in The Road Ahead from a Grass Roots Perspective, the means to compete, available equity capital for new start ups, PARTICULARLY, if you wished to compete against entrenched "City" owned companies; or even wanted to create new "Industry" .... blue collar employment employing "Engineers" was depreciated. We were an underclass, riven with trade unions; Not to be invested into.

THAT is the underlying problem; an ongoing intent to prevent any return to any possibility of an engineering "class" gaining superiority over the feudal remnant; for every time they are let loose ..... they succeed.

End result, we are today an impoverished nation; almost all our once world beating heavy industry has been completely destroyed. Today, there is no understanding of the power of industrial value adding, stage by stage, product by product; to create true enduring prosperity. NONE!

If I sound angry, you can bet that is true. I am; Very Angry.

At the grass roots, we are a fine nation of hard working people; keen to attain the highest standards; led by a feudal remnant of fools whose only real interest is in their ongoing control of the nation for their own purposes.

Hudson's unpublished book should have been published and I for one hope that it soon will be.

[don]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

In the US, despite a somewhat different ruling elite, the de-industrialization nuclear option was also employed and continues to be.

For Silicon Valley, a day of ritual disappointment came on June 12: The U.S. announced that the slots for 2013 H-1B visas had all been filled.


On the first business day in April, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services opens the rounds of petitioning for these coveted visas for highly skilled foreign workers. The agency awards the 85,000 visas on a first-come, first-served basis and companies scramble to get in their applications for foreign hires as quickly as they can.

On January 25, India-based Infosys, a so-called body shop, or placement firm that sends talent to American companies, revealed that it and some of its employees are targets of a Texas criminal investigation into fraud and abuse of United States visa laws.

Critics complain that the H-1B engineers (heavily from India and greatly under age 30) are paid less than their United States counterparts, thus depriving Americans of jobs and depressing the general technology wage level. Under United States law, this is not supposed to happen, but studies have shown that it does.

Infosys was first sued in a whistle-blower civil suit in Alabama. An employee said he suffered retaliation after complaining that Infosys engaged in large-scale visa and tax fraud. In particular, he charged, Infosys got around the H-1B limitations by using the B-1 visa program. B-1 visas are only for nonproductive purposes, such as attending a convention; people with B-1 visas cannot receive wages from American employers. The whistle-blower charged that Infosys deposited the workers’ pay in their Indian bank accounts and gave them bank debit cards to cover living expenses in the United States. The workers’ names weren’t on the books, and state and federal withholding taxes were not paid.

A few years ago, the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer informed hundreds of tech workers at its Connecticut R&D facilities that they'd soon be laid off. Before getting their final paychecks, however, they'd need to train their replacements: guest workers from India who'd come to the United States on H-1B visas. "It's a very, very stressful work environment," one soon-to-be-axed worker told Connecticut's The Day newspaper. "I haven't been able to sleep in weeks."

all well known here on the 'tulip . . .

[raja]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

Sorry for the confusion, Raz. I can't seem to get around the whole thread thing.

Click on Reply with Quote when you are replying to a post. That will quote the previous poster's words and identify the poster.
You can edit the poster's words if you do not want to quote their entire post . . . .

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

The Economic Case For and Against Thatcherism

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...atcherism.html

[Chris Coles]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

The Economic Case For and Against Thatcherism

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...atcherism.html

Thanks, another very good description of the overlaying factors that have led the UK to here as described in the above link:

"Today, though, there are big questions about the future of the U.K. economy. For a long time, some of its underlying weaknesses were masked by the tremendous growth in financial services, and the City of London, which, together with a housing bubble, generated enough tax revenue to fund education, health, and redistribution programs. The financial crash of 2008-2009 gravely undermined this economic model, which seems unlikely to be revived anytime soon. In recent years, output growth and productivity growth have become almost non-existent, and tax revenues have fallen sharply."

In my previous comment, I was back in the thick of it during the Thatcher years and my anger came to the fore; but like much here on the internet, afterwards one does sometimes feel the urge to clarify.

Thatcher was a very strong leader at a time when, on the surface, we desperately need such; where she went wrong is the story of the last century on both sides of the Atlantic, as Don has also illustrated.

Looking back to 1940, we succeeded in our defeat of the air power of Germany by taking the basic designs of the now familiar aircraft and handed them out as small piece part orders to quite literally tens of thousands of tiny private companies all over the nation. Many with no previous experience of such work; but each holding a skilled labour force that could at a moments notice; take the drawings and materials and produce accurate parts for fast delivery; in turn producing thousands of fully operation aircraft.

During the period between end WW2 and 1979, we abandoned the idea of small private business success. It was as though all that expertise was now an embarrassment; and in fact it was ...... to someone that had been forced to return to good old Blighty, having been an "emperor" (deliberate small e) in a British "Colony". It seems unimaginable that anyone would be so unable to see the value of all those small companies and so determined to believe that by taking many small companies into one conglomerate, one can make a much more successful national business structure. But that is the exact mindset of someone that always has seen their success in creating ever larger "operations" within a colony.

So, from that moment on; those that were leading the nation forward could not conceive of any form of small business success; all their attention was on the concept of ever larger holdings; British Rail, British Leyland; British Steel, British Coal - all became clones of their previous colonial success.

When these vast totally noncommercial structures, (now repeated as "Welfare" agencies; same people leading, same mindset), became so unwieldy that the money could not be found to support their balance sheets, (again, exactly the same today with welfare), they still stick to the idea that there is always a grand solution to be found; QE being a wonderful example of the ongoing failure of the mindset.

What we have today is simply a repeat of the failed mindset; a belief in; big always wins!

Create big industry, but then, get rid of big industry, we could not "control" it and it bred unions; so then they moved to "Big Bang" of financial services; that in turn brought the problem of people who normally worked within the "Old" skills base being out of work; cure that by distorting the facts and grow big welfare.

We have come full circle.

As I see it, we have to step back from anger at past experience, (such as my own), and keep to the task of getting the message across that big simply does not work for a nation; on my part which is why I continue to address the need to re-capitalise the underlying prosperity of the grass roots by simply getting back to the creation of millions of very small, free enterprise based, private businesses.

Here in the United Kingdom, we must find a way forward that addresses the need to replace the "Big" mindset of the executive government with one that truly believes in the power of investment into the small.

The United States has an advantage of a national culture that accepts small. There, as I see it, your problem is the same big mindset right at the top. How the two play out will become an interesting experience resulting hopefully in better success for both nations.

[Raz]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

... And you save your sharpest knife for poor old Michael Foot. He was another Oxonian who turned to democratic socialism in response to the crushing poverty in Britain, yet was a patriot who rallied against Chamberlain and appeasement and served as a member of the secret GHQ Auxiliary Units that were to resist the expected Nazi invasion. That Foot was strongly anti-communist, opposed the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia and was a strong supporter of NATO seems outside your consciousness. Maybe that's because to you there's no meaningful distinction between a social democrat and "a rabid little neocommunist" KGB agent. Here's a hint: the British traitors hailed from Cambridge and the smear against Foot (and Wilson) were sourced entirely from the fevered imaginations of paid defector Anatoliy Golitsyn and the criminally paranoid James Jesus Angleton. ...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/c...ful-idiot.html

[Woodsman]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

Hi Raz, thanks for sharing. It might be relevant to give a bit of background here, just so you know where I'm coming from.

I served as a Wikipedia editor for a few years before life interfered and forced me to give it up. It was fun, kept me at my interests (writing and history) and taught me a thing or two about maintaining the discipline of objectivity and a neutral point of view. I came up in academic publishing and the news business, so I went in thinking I had made my bones and could teach these guys a thing or two. But it was me who was schooled, as these unpaid volunteers were far more scrupulous in maintaining the discipline of fairness and objectivity than any rag that ever paid me by the word or week. I used to joke with my fellow Wikipedians that if we ran a monthly the way the way we did the wiki, we'd get January's issue out not later than July.

You might want to check out their editorial standards or any good journo stylebook or ethics handbook. There's also plenty of excellent texts on historiography I could recommend. If you read them, you'd learn as I did that discovering the truth requires a commitment to accuracy, fairness, completeness, honesty and impartiality that's hard for most people achieve consistently even when applying proven methods and practices. In the end, the point of it all is to internalize in the writer a sense of fairness as the best means to reach the truth of what actually happened. That and avoiding libel actions.

This means giving equal attention to the best arguments for and against. It requires attention to nuance and clarity. Fundamentally, it requires an independence of thought that puts getting to the truth as more desirable a goal than than either "winning" an argument or proving that your perspective is "right." Clearly things have changed in the news business and publishing, but you did nothing to honor truth here.

And so it seems to me that you really care about getting to the truth except when it threatens your long cherished beliefs; in this case the Cold War as a Manichean struggle between the godless, evil Sovs and the good Christian West. Here it seems you have no real interest in basic fairness and getting to the truth, because if you did you might have also taken the additional 30 seconds to post sources that both support and detract from the claim of alleged treachery.

The Wikipedia article is good enough, but I saved you the trouble of reading it again and just posted some money quotes:

"Under a settlement read out in open court, the paper offered Mr Foot 'substantial' damages - which with legal costs are believed to run to at least pounds 100,000 - and an assurance that it had never intended to suggest that he had been a spy."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/su...m-1590325.html

"The former MI6 double-agent, Oleg Gordievsky, yesterday distanced himself from the article in the Sunday Times at the weekend which claimed that the Soviets regarded Michael Foot, the veteran Labour leader, as one of their spies."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/ex...y-1574080.html

"It seems extraordinary that such an unreliable figure should now be allowed, given the lack of supporting evidence, to damage the reputation of figures such as Mr Foot. His claim that money changed hands should have been substantiated before publication."
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...r-1573992.html

And from the article you posted:

"There is no evidence that he passed on state secrets."

Those who promulgated the smear against Foot were first and foremost professional liars, the polite name for which is "intelligence agent." The man your story relies on as the sole source is a sight worse than that, being an unemployed intelligence agent and looking for his next paycheck. I'd point out also that he was a double-agent, meaning that he was working both sides against the middle for himself. That the Telegraph was so confident of its sources (and fearful of having to pay an embarrassing settlement like The Times) it waited for Foot to die before publishing this so-called "full account" is instructive enough, except of course for you. Honestly, the final sentence from the piece you posted is probably enough for most people to judge the fairness and objectivity of this writer:

"Luckily, his defects meant that let his own party split, and made this country safe with Margaret Thatcher."

Citing articles written by conservative hatchet men sourcing disinformation from down and out spies on the take like Gordievsky hardly makes for compelling evidence, Raz.

Bush called off the Cold War in 1989 and we've had 25 years of scholarship since then. You should check some of it out, as even court historians like John Gaddis and Melvyn Leffler are walking away from the old propaganda. Of course they're just now catching up to the conclusions that William A. Williams, Gar Alperovitz and Gabe Kolko came to in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

You're an accomplished and intelligent man, Raz, and it's a shame that you can't seem to understand that these credulous lapses into confirmation bias are largely due to your conservative ideology. It's preventing you from seeing the world as it actually is. Which is sort of curious as that's the very raison d'etre of iTulip and presumably why all of us are drawn to it and EJ's incomparable work in the first place.