Enough is enough

[Eric Cartman]

Enough is Enough.
Take Back Control.
Make America Great Again.

Great slogans, what do they mean in practice? The video is just populism, how on earth are the things talked about achieved?

How bad is it going to get if they aren't achieved?

When did it become an unreachable pipe dream for peoples basic needs to be satisfied?

You can call it simplistic but why is the following unachievable in a country like the UK?

A real pay rise
Slash energy bills
End food poverty
Decent homes for all
Tax the rich

[JamesWales]

How bad is it going to get if they aren't achieved?

When did it become an unreachable pipe dream for peoples basic needs to be satisfied?

You can call it simplistic but why is the following unachievable in a country like the UK?

A real pay rise
Slash energy bills
End food poverty
Decent homes for all
Tax the rich

It's not simplistic, because unfortunately it is not simple to achieve. For two key reasons perhaps. Firstly competition, between us and other countries. And I know there is an argument to be had that we should remove that. Utopian stuff, that would require a huge level of authoritarianism, but fair enough. However, in the unlikely event that this is achieved, you still have the second reason.

It isn't simple to do this. Every action has multiple reactions.

A real pay rise. Easy to say, but if you give everyone a real pay rise, then you have effectively given no one a real pay rise. Pay everyone 10% more and more-or-less, prices rise 10% so no one is better off.

Slash energy bills? We all want that, but this stuff does cost money to get out of the ground and delivered. It costs far more because of Putins war and our sanctions on him. How do we make it cheaper? Subsidise it? That requires more taxes that eats into the payrises above.

End food poverty. What does this mean? Absolute food poverty or relative? The country has probably never consumed so many calories in it's history. We all agree that no one should go hungry, but nearly every famine in the last century has occured in socialist countries that tried to forceably eradicate food poverty. There are ways to make this better, but 'end fuel poverty' is not as easy to do as it sounds.

Decent homes for all. I agree, but whats decent? Bigger homes? Where do we build them? On fields? That impacts the environment? On brownfield sites? These cost far more to develop, meaning they need subsidies or become only affordable to the rich. Who is all? Everyone who lives here? Anyone in the world who wants to live here? How do we define decent? Is a two bed flat in a London highrise decent? Is a council estate on the edge of a large city decent?

Tax the rich. I agree, but we already do. We could do more, but the risk is the money goes elsewhere. Do you think we should tax Cardiff City players at 80% for example? If we did that, do you think the chancellor would get more or less money? Maybe more, or most likely less, as they wouldn't want to do their job here.

None of this is easy, which is why simplistic slogans are often unhelpful IMO.

There's always ways to improve things of course but it's not easily done at all and tbh, I don't trust the likes of Zarah Sultana to help us get there.