Off Topic Politics Thread

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I Sorry I Ruined The Party said:
If Morris Chang at TSM isn’t pushing the envelope and making chips smaller and more powerful, then the iPhone might be twice the size. If Samsung isn’t pioneering OLED touchscreen technology, the iPhone might look like ****. If Foxconn isn’t assembling iPhones at a ridiculously cheap cost, the iPhone might cost twice as much.

And if the iPhone was that crappy, would anyone buy it? So really, aren’t we, the consumers the one actually keeping those companies and therefore their employees afloat? Did Apple create the job of someone in China building iPhones? Or was it Foxconn, the company that actually employs them and pays their (very meager) wages?

Tim Cook is not doing any of this out of the goodness of his heart. After all, those Foxconn jobs are so ****ty workers were throwing themselves off buildings. He NEEDS those components to be competitive. He isn’t creating jobs, he using the cheapest and best labor possible. He is bidding on TSM’s services, otherwise they sell chips to someone else. Of course TSM goes with Apple because they offer the best deal, so they need Apple as well.

That is how the market works. No one specific entity creates a job. Jobs (along with everything else) are created by the laws of supply and demand and parties acting in partnership while serving their own interests.

There was a time when conservatives understood that. They abandoned those principle long ago. In the US, basically since Reagan. UK has never been as gung-ho about free markets and efficiency over equity, but the right over there seems to have forgotten basic economic principles as well.

I do not know how pro-capitalist I am. But I mean, if you’re going to be all free market about stuff, then at least do it right. Job creation is a myth through which they try to sell you on crony capitalism, supply side economics and other BS.
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This is so correct :)

Jobs at Nissan in Sunderland. Bought and paid for with favourable tax arrangements and sweetheart deals with wages subsidised by tax credits and other in work benefits. So we are employing those workers and paying them. What is all the fuss about.
 
greensaint said:
My wife wrote to our MP, M. Tomlinson, regarding Nurse recruitment and pay a while back. Reply arrived yesterday. It completely ignored the questions she asked and repeated the same (some very inaccurate) selective stats claiming there are more nurses in post and more in training than ever before.

I know these replys are 99% formulaic bollocks but it was almost dismissive, she felt she was being treated like an idiot.

I, not very kindly, responded that by continuing to work in the NHS politicians think she is. Ho hum.
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I wrote a letter to my MP back in 2008. Same as your description. Reply just gave out a broad scripted "Thank you for your letter but [insert the government line]"

I wrote another letter to my MP in about 2013. On the same subject. Reply was almost identical word for word as the 2008 reply.

My MP was Labour's Gillian Merron in 2008. It was Conservative's Karl McCartney in 2013. Makes me wonder if it is the civil service that do these replies and thus the same people no matter the government.
 
Onionman said:
Not quite so. Not everything is as painted.

"The most notorious example was when, in 2010, 10 workers at a Foxconn electronics factory in China killed themselves – a shocking fact that tarnished Foxconn’s most famous customer, Apple, and caused millions of iPhone owners to feel faintly guilty. But the factory employed an astonishing 400,000 people; so the reported suicide rate, rather than being shockingly high, was implausibly low, a sixth of the Chinese average."

From http://timharford.com/articles/sya/page/3/

Vin
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Hurrah for all the jobs FIFA has created in Qatar.
 
St Badger said:
I agree with your comments, but the most important issue for me is anyone who is/was/aspires to be in a position of influence, within a political party and the government, needs to eliminate the possibility of being coerced into trying to influence decisions, not on merit but for self preservation.
As I referred to in an earlier comment, the Tory whips have been exposed as using confidential information to ensure obedience at the ballot box, so heaven knows how much damage could be caused by people who aren’t even on his own team, pushing him or any other MP, to influence decision making, for fear of exposure.

Denying having watched the porn, when he appears to have been caught bang to rights (another report I read refers to his laptop also having been used for watching porn) further taints his character.
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All parties do this. If Labour get in they will do it. The EU will do it. Power players in powerful positions not directly political will do this. Big contracts will be signed off because high people in high places close to big companies "know things." "Give us that £20bn contract or we'll tell everyone you make smutty jokes and touch people's knees."
 
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So with the little bit of fun there I move onto what interests me about this in political terms.

The link at the end was a brief breakdown of "Quorans" results who took the test. Of course Quora is like most of the internet more left leaning than the average on the street however not as much as this chart would suggest. It was also quite a small sample size of 200 as well The actual results of that gave:
5.6% = Populism/Fascism
8.0% = Conservatism
4.2% = Right Liberalism
7.0% = Centrism
75.1% = Left/Social Liberalism

Why this interests me is because even allowing for the small sample size and of course the slight skew towards the left on the internet it does not account for voting patterns in recent elections across the Western World (apart from Canada. lol)

It shows that a chunk of that 75.1% in the "Left/Social Liberalism did not vote left, did not vote Remain, and even voted Trump.

If we assume Centrism (the reality not the salespitch) is right wing (it is) then the right only has 24.9% of core voteshare (+10% to allow for the internet skew) making 34.9% whereas the left is then left with 65.1% core voteshare yet is still unable to win elections!!

It also goes to show how silly all these terms are (or these tests are) when I am called alt-right by Ides yet we both came out of this test as Social Liberalism.

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https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-common-political-affiliation-of-Quorans/answer/Lucius-Kristo
 
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