Margaret Thatcher

[Odin]

Originally posted by Drogue
No, neo-liberalism is the belief that a theory being coherant is more important than it standing up to empirical evidence.

I'll take the stuff that's backed by empirical evidence rather than Voodoo Economics.

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by Drogue
With regards to privatisation, you may have a point. Most of those you mentioned are natural monopolies, and IMHO work better therefore as state owned monopolies, rather than regulated private monopolies.

Well my beef is against the monopoly public services in particular! As for other privatisations, I'm fairly ambivalent as they are not so indispensible to the public - however it is interesting to note that what was at issue was the poor performance of those industries, not whether they needed to be sold off or not...

So yes, the unions did need to be dealt with as many of them were run by men so extreme in their views that there was no getting through to them - but that did not warrant the wholesale destruction of the coal industry in this country just because things got personal between the b1tch and Scargill...

Things started with the Miners Strike and got worse from there - the UK has about 50% of European coal reserves and the mining industry was efficient and competitive at a world level...

But no, let's privatise the Electricity industry into a gigantic monopoly that wants to buy subsidised gas from overseas whilst we hung our coal industry out to dry unprotected, and that effectively shut down the majority of the coal industry...

Interesting how the massive gas prices have come home to roost (British Gas: 22% price rise announced just yesterday, which also affects all those gas power station that switched from coal!), our gas energy crisis can have its origins traced from those twin thatcherite policies...

So PA/Drogue, blame your gas/electricity bill on the b1tch (and the Labour govt's blindness in failing to see this looming crisis by relying too few suppliers of too few energy resources!)...

However many other privatised (British Steel for example) are not monopolies, and as such should have been privatised.

And many of those still aren't doing particularly well - unless you count Rover (another spectacular case of public assets being raped by the thatcherite govt!) as a success...

Moreover, by standing firm on the unions, something no labour government of the time would have done, she did a great service to restoring the balance of power in favour of the government.

I agree, but only up to a point.

We did need to close mines and we did need to lose jobs. We had oversupply.

We needed to close some of the mines - now we have chronic undersupply especially in light of the energy crisis in this country that is purely of our making...

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Socialism

Yeah, your one word answer and the fact that that word is 'Socialism' proves you don't have a clue either...

When we can turn the world into selfless automatons, get back to me - until that time STFU.

[Lazerus]

Overall definately one of the better prime ministers we've had

[MOBIUS]

QED.

[Drogue]

Originally posted by Odin
I'll take the stuff that's backed by empirical evidence rather than Voodoo Economics.

As I said, if you're looking for empirics, then you#re correct. If you're in academia, trying to further models so we can get one that's more realistic, it's very useful. It's not about using a neo-classical model or one that better fits the data, there is no better model, empirically. The only other option is to use intuition, which can be wrong very often.

[Drogue]

Originally posted by MOBIUS
So yes, the unions did need to be dealt with as many of them were run by men so extreme in their views that there was no getting through to them - but that did not warrant the wholesale destruction of the coal industry in this country just because things got personal between the b1tch and Scargill...

It's the other way around. The coal industry was inefficient, importing coal was much cheaper than mining it ourselves. That caused the closure of the mines, not the other way around. Without the inefficiency, we wouldn't have closed them and there wouldn't have been a personal issue.

Originally posted by MOBIUS
Things started with the Miners Strike and got worse from there - the UK has about 50% of European coal reserves and the mining industry was efficient and competitive at a world level...

Really? Surely having that many reserves suggests an overproduction?

Originally posted by MOBIUS
But no, let's privatise the Electricity industry into a gigantic monopoly that wants to buy subsidised gas from overseas whilst we hung our coal industry out to dry unprotected, and that effectively shut down the majority of the coal industry...

It should have been unprotected! Why waste money subsidising an inefficient industry? But yes, privatising the electricity was a bad idea, IMHO.

Originally posted by MOBIUS
Interesting how the massive gas prices have come home to roost (British Gas: 22% price rise announced just yesterday, which also affects all those gas power station that switched from coal!), our gas energy crisis can have its origins traced from those twin thatcherite policies...

No, our energy crisis can be traced back to us using too much of it and global prices having risen hugely. You realise the price BG are paying for their gas is 400% higher than it used to be? That's why theres a 22% hike, to pass some of that onto consumers. High gas prices, high electricity prices too, are a result of increased world demand, and thus increased world prices. Nothing Thatcher can do about the emergence of China and India as world economic powers.

Originally posted by MOBIUS
And many of those still aren't doing particularly well - unless you count Rover (another spectacular case of public assets being raped by the thatcherite govt!) as a success...

Good idea we got out of them when we did, then

Originally posted by MOBIUS
We needed to close some of the mines - now we have chronic undersupply especially in light of the energy crisis in this country that is purely of our making...

At the time, we needed to close all of the mines to equate supply to demand. The emergence of China changed a lot of things, as US and Chinese energy demands continue to skyrocket. Soon opening them again may be feasible, economically. I doubt it though. Also burning coal is hideously bad for the environment, and new regulations, things like Kyoto, play a big part in making coal mining not the best idea. It pollutes more than oil.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Drogue
Really? Surely having that many reserves suggests an overproduction?

Since when did reserves equal production? The production has declined significantly in the past decades, but the level of reserves is roughly the same.

I think you omitted something from your point, or at least I've taken it the wrong way.

[Colonâ„¢]

Originally posted by Drogue

Nope, lump sum taxes don't distort the market mechanism, as the same steps happen, the same equilibrium, but at the end money is taken from everyone. It only distorts the market mechanism if a different amount is paid by different people.

It's true is that lump sum taxes don't create any distortions that wouldn't also exist with other forms of taxations. However, the underlying assumption is that a poll tax does not affect the composition expenditures and that's not correct, since a decrease or an increase in disposable income leads people to spend proportionally more or less on certain goods.

[Drogue]

Originally posted by Dauphin


Since when did reserves equal production? The production has declined significantly in the past decades, but the level of reserves is roughly the same.

I think you omitted something from your point, or at least I've taken it the wrong way.

The UK havign 50% of Europe's reserves suggests that we're producing and stockpiling too much, since I can't imagine nations like Germany have that much less of a need for it. We were stocking a much larger proportion of the coal we were using than the rest of Europe, which suggests overproduction, otherwise it wouldn't be economical to stockpile that much.

[Dauphin]

Is that what he meant by reserves? I thought he meant reserves in the sense of the amount in the ground and technically viable to extract.

The 50% figure seems high in either case, but its not the figure that piqued my interest as much as your reasoning.

[Drogue]

Ahhh, if he did, then my bad I presumed he meant mined but stockpiled, like foreign currency reserves, or food reserves.