Quote Originally Posted by JamesWales View Post
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.
Heard it all before.

For me the above entirely relies on a belief that those in positions of power make it their number one priority to improve things for everyday people. They do not. We have spent years eating up any excuse for real terms pay cuts and I am done with it. The richest getting richer isn't an act of god or a scientific inevitability, it is by design.

Campaigns like this intend to alter that design through public pressure. The government will try to isolate and vilify each group individually but collectively we can actually force a change of approach. We are a complete pushover but I think this winter and the desperation that lots of people will feel is going to significantly affect their willingness to join some kind of collective action.

There are things I don't like so much about this campaign e.g. dividing normal people by their income/wealth rather than focussing on multinationals and the super wealthy

We are a high tax, low wage society. Something has to give. Or is it another scam like brexit, 'dont worry guys, we will fix it but you need to wait 50 years to see any improvement'?