Newsflash bobo - we have already reached the stage where some people do not wish to work.

It is generally the least skilled part of the population which has this sense of absolute entitlement - I deserve a free house, free dole payments, free medical card, free childrens allowances, etc etc etc.

Look at the UK - that is where we will be in 20 years. Read a story in the UK Times where some MP went out talking to unemployed kids from his community. They told him that the absolute minimum they would work for was over £300 per week as they got nearly £300 for doing nothing. His response ? "You can't read or write, you've got no qualifications - what job do you expect to get exactly ?". They didn't have a clue.

It was valid 100 years ago. Now proletariat has been mostly converted into middle-class (Lumpenproletariat in Marx defition), it has what to lose, houses, cars etc.
Only minority of society, mostly people, which don’t want to work and looking for excuses can fall into this definitioon.

The Lumpenproletariet are not middle class

And just because working class people were declared middle class in the 80/90s it doesn't make it so.

I don't wish to be rude but I suggest you educate yourself more on the topic at hand.

Capitalism has failed and needs to quickly reinvent itself or god knows what comes next. No point going an a scare rant about commies etc.
The USA has really run into the ground morally, politically, culturally, militarily and now economically. The people who think the current model is the best better start putting some ideas in front of the general public that do not blame everyone else and seek only to make excuses. Otherwise we might have more clare dalys to deal with than would be funny.
Most people are worried about their own situation more that any ideological debate of political loyalty. Thats why cowen keeps getting it wrong, he just does not understand how ordinary people relate to politics. He never even had to get elected in a cumann let alone fight a grass roots local election. Politics better re-connect very quickly or the system will start to fail.

Sorry for confusion, I didn’t read Marx for long time .
Unfortunately it was no middle class, when Marx wrote his The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon and he saw a great danger for revolution from lumpenproletariat.
Anyway, now it is completely changed and lumpenproletariat is the driving force of most revolutions.


Are you sure?
Main difference is that proletariat doesn’t have anything to lose; middle class has what to lose. How many people now in Ireland have nothing to lose now?

I know that FF is working very hard with trade unions to make everybody poor by increasing taxes in order to keep public workers and local lumpenproletariat (professional welfare recipients) happy, but they need some time to do it.

It was good description during Soviet times what is capitalism and what is socialism
Socialism is trying to get rid of rich people, by killing them
Capitalism is trying to get rid of poor, by giving equal opportunities for everybody. Of coarse, there are different starting point for rich and poor, but FYI 4 years ago 31% of Fortune-500 were born in poor families.

Capitalistic cronyism,coroperate welfare,state manipulated capitalism has failed.
Government plays mind games with joe public.Governments love this failure its allows them to blindside, blame and scapegoat ..Now they have created a problem,they hoodwink the population into thinking that they are the only ones that can fix it,eventough they were the ones that caused it.
It allows these parasites to gain more power,restrict liberty,tax ,regulate.spend borrowed money paid for by the people.

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The trifling economy of paper, as a cheaper medium, or its convenience for transmission, weighs nothing in opposition to the advantages of the precious metals... it is liable to be abused, has been, is, and forever will be abused, in every country in which it is permitted." --Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813.

I agree about globalisation...part of the problem is governments seem no longer to be in control and at the mercy of fly by night capitalists...

Too much public wealth delivered into private hands in this country and others, but we have FF and the last 10 years to thank for that.

Protectionism seems to be the only cure now. Outsourcing as I have said before will send us all back to Victorian sweatshops. Our children and grandchildren will live lives little different to those in the sweatshops of Asia or Victorian England as they struggle to compete under the free market. Only the fittest, ie those who can work like slaves without pay will survive. That is the ultimate goal of the capitalists and because many people stay quiet and are afraid to challenge this, it will come to pass.

If there is mass unemployment in the West because of outsourcing to the East, there will be no market for products in the West. This will in time depress both Western and Eastern economies. It is happening already. Unemployment on the rise in the West leading to a fall off in demand for goods manufactured in the East leading to job lay-offs in the East. In the main caused by job outsourcing, a vicious circle that muse be put a stop to.

Only when the last job is lost in the West to oursourcing, will people wake up and say 'hey, maybe free trade isn't that great after all.'

Lthse wrote:
See. If you just wait long enough somebody will put the issue into context.

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"In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia."
George Orwell

fair point, but show me how AIG, Citi, Anglo, and a host of others have been made to pay? In fact, their reckless approach has basically helped them because they got bailouts in return for bad behavior!

the only one really paying in all of this is the taxpayer

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i guess socialists on the scratch have to justify it somehow.

of course, the one thing i noticed with lots of socialists, is they reckon being able to debate politics makes them 'worthwhile' when in fact, that won't even get you a job in McDonalds, but then again, if you were to consider doing that job it might be 'beneath you' and 'lacking in dignity' or 'underpaid'.

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