On Feb 14, 12:56*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:31:56 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

You may recall that I stated that a return to the traditional
one-worker family is IMO highly *desirable*, but I then lamented that
unfortunately present economics will not allow that to take place for
many/most families.

You also said that the problem was one of "expectations", asserting
your belief that the nanny state had caused or enabled this shift to
"irresponsibility", and then went on to say that you think it would be
beneficial to make close relatives strictly liable for the care of
family members. I hardly think people can be blamed for a state of
affairs where, by your own assertion, they cannot afford to be
"responsible".

Only in the case of supporting a fairly severely disabled relative
would one person need to stay at home. *If the person needed support
simply because they were unemployed, there is no reason why anyone
would have to give up their job. *The additional expense in supporting
such a family member is little more than the cost of food for that
person.

Perhaps I was confused (and I'm not inclined to go back and check),
but I thought you were advocating full liability for "care", not just
financial liability for the unemployed. How exactly would your
proposal work where most or all family members are out of work?



in addition, the premise is that were such a scheme adopted, the state
would save money and would lower taxes, thus giving every working
family more disposable income - hopefully sufficient to allow one
partner to be able to give up employment.

Lol. Do you really think that the savings would be so manifest?



Whilst physical resources are necessarily finite, economic resources
are an artificial construct. =A0We presently have a situation in which
there are sufficient of many resources (especially all the essentials)
to supply everyone with as much as they would take if the resource was
completely free. =A0The very rich do not consume more food, for example,
than the poor in this country - and IME the quality is not
significantly different either (even though the rich person may pay
more for better presentation, preparation or packaging). =A0You will
find that physical comfort in the homes of the vast majority of people
in the UK is equal to the physical comfort in the homes of the very
wealthy in terms of temperature, air quality, the comfort of beds &
furniture etc.
It is easy to talk of what they have in common. Less easy, but
actually more interesting and relevant, to talk of what they do not
have in common.

What do you need that you do not have?

What I need depends largely on what other people have.



Whilst the wealthy may have larger homes, the average
person does not feel particularly short of room in their home.
If they have a home - and aren't paying an arm and a leg for it.

There are very few people above the age of 25 in the UK who do not
have their own home (rented or mortgaged).

I suspect the taxpayer will actually be paying, in part or whole, for
quite a few of those.



*The cost of that home has
nothing to do with how comfortable it is.

Of course it does. If homes are costly, then by and large poorer
people will be in smaller homes than would otherwise be suitable. And
so too, unless you own your home outright, then it can be difficult to
make that home particularly comfortable, without the risk of
forfeiting the cost of any improvements.



=A0Whilst
the wealthy may have leisure and luxury facillities in their own home,
those same facillities are available and affordable to most people as
public facillities, and the real increase that having such facillities
in the home afford to a person's standard of living is largely one of
perception than reality.
Having facilities in one's home typically means more ability to
partake at the convenience of your own moods, and without spending an
inordinate amount of the day travelling elsewhere.

Sure, wealth has advantages and gives you convenience and flexibility.
But that additional flexibility and convenience provides only a minor
increase in a person's quality of life

It seems to me Cynic that if wealth provides so few advantages for the
wealthy which are of minor benefit only, then why on Earth are they so
keen to retain those advantages, and so keen to maintain disadvantage
for others?

I'm sure I had this one with Ricardo I think the other week, where for
all his claimed view on wealth and poverty, his political
prescriptions and personal behaviour suggested quite the opposite view
to the one claimed.



- and my point is not that a
wealthy person does not have a better quality of life than the average
non-wealthy person, but that the difference is not nealy as great as
the perception.

It really depends on what perception we're talking about, since we
seem to be talking about the perceptions of unidentified third parties
rather than our own.

I would certainly assert that, between more equal and more unequal
*societies as a whole*, the differences in quality of life are quite
significant, although I am quite content to concede to you that
inequality erodes the QoL of the rich as well as the poor - but it
erodes the QoL of the poor moreso, and so in any given society, it is
always better to be rich.



=A0In fact in many cases people *prefer* to
indulge in such activities in a public place than in their own home
because of the increased social interaction of the former.
Presupposing that you want such social interaction - either in
general, or at that instant. Quite regularly, I find myself wanting to
be left alone so that I can dedicate and maintain my mental resources
on some other important task, without having either undesirable
interruption from those in proximity, and without having to maintain
social nicety with those I might encounter.

Sure - and I suspect that you have a home where you can do exactly
that in just as much comfort as Bill Gates can in his home.

I do, but I am reasonably satisfied with the standard of comfort in my
own home, and generally speaking I have the money to rectify any
deficit.



*In many
cases a wealthy person has *less* privacy than the average person,
because they will have various non-family members in the house most of
the day.

I'm not sure that is necessarily the case, nor does it necessarily
follow that the presence of such people is unwanted.



Anyway, the point is that the rich can choose whether they want social
interaction or not - the poor it seems must accept interaction whether
they want it or not.

That divide is in fact probably more on the side of the average person
than most wealthy people. *I would go so far as to say that the
average person is socially more secure than a wealthy person, because
theiy can be reasonably sure that their friends and lovers are with
them because they enjoy their company rather than because they want to
enjoy their money.

Yes you may well be correct, but once again, the rich have the
*unilateral choice* to give up their money, if it becomes an
inordinate burden. The poor do not have the unilateral choice to
become rich. Once again, it seems to me that you're in danger of
arguing in support of redistribution, when it does not seem to be your
general intention to do so.



I have a
fridge containing drinks, tables and chairs in my house, for example,
but I still visit pubs on occassion even though the same activity in
my own home would, if anything, be more comfortable.
Quite, but that for you is a matter of choice. You can choose what you
want to do.

It is a matter of choice for the vast majority of average working
people in the UK.

Indeed, most people can still choose to go the pub, but I'm making a
more general point there are lots of basic choices that are
increasingly enjoyed only in proportion to one's wealth.



*Again, it is the very wealthy who are often trapped
into a situation where they cannot indulge in such things, because
wealth brings with it quite a bit of undesirable baggage.

Why don't they give it up then? That is the question that your line of
argument seems to raise.



Having experienced both camps, it is my belief that in fact there is a
relatively small difference between the actual quality of life of the
rich and the actual quality of life of the average person in the UK.
A person sipping a =A315 cocktail at the poolside of a =A31000 per night
hotel on an exotic tropical island is not gaining significantly more
pleasure from that activity than someone drinking a Barcardi Breezer
at the side of a hotel pool in Spain or Portugal - which is an
activity that the majority of the UK population is able to afford to
do at least once a year.
There is a certain point at which extra money does not buy extra
quality of life, I agree. Personally the most valuable thing to me is
*time* - and perhaps mental energy. It is these things that I too
often find I do not have enough of - indeed, the point about mental
energy is probably why I routinely find myself infuriated by the
workings of the free market which levy a constant high tax on this,
leaving less remaining for those things in life that are actually
interesting and productive.

Extreme wealth would in that case probably be very frustrating for you
unless you refrained from using it (in which case why would you want
it?)

I *don't* want extreme wealth. And it is not that I begrudge material
goods to others who do want them - the point is that economic wealth
is a source of power, and what I do not want is for that excess power
to be used against my interests, and the powerful almost invariably do
use power against the powerless.



*You will find that a great deal of time is taken up *managing*
all the various things that your wealth has brought to you. *You can
mitigate that to an extent by hiring people to manage your money and
assets - but even then you will be required to make a myriad decisions
every week - and also spend time ensuring that your managers are doing
their job satisfactorily and that nobody is taking advantage of you
(which they certainly will if it becomes known that you are not
keeping an eye on all your affairs).

I find it quite funny how you can refer to the wealthy fearing being
"taken advantage of", when taking advantage is what most of the
wealthiest are doing.



Anyway, the point is that for those who cannot afford a foreign
holiday at all, while others can, that causes a disconnect in common
experience and culture. If there is no culturally accepted alternative
to a holiday, then that is likely to cause a degree of both boredom
and stress directly, and its likely to cause a loss of closeness with
friends.

Almost everyone in the UK has been capable of achieving sufficient
income to afford a foreign holiday once a year for some considerable
time.

The point about holidays is that one has the power to afford them *in
addition to* other normal cultural activies, not instead of them. I'm
not sure that "almost everyone" can - and indeed, where the vast
majority can afford something, the deprivation becomes even more harsh
on the minority who cannot, because there are less likely to be
socially acceptable alternatives where only a minority cannot afford
to participate in the mainstream activity.



*Albeit that the present economic downturn might have seen a
temporary blip in that situation for a significant number of people.

I would say so, although I'm not so sure that it's going to be that
temporary.



Shared interests and experience are central to human relationships -
I'm again touching on the point about continuity in human
relationships, and how lacking this often is in today's society.

I believe that the level to which our social welfare state has risen
has played a very large part in causing the decline in social
interaction within the larger community.

No, it is the level to which market forces and inequality have risen,
that have played the largest part in causing that decline.



=A0And having dined fairly often at places
where meal prices are in the 3 figure bracket per person, I can say
that if anything I enjoy a =A310 meal at Weatherspoons just as much if
not more. =A0And I can completely honestly state that I get no more
pleasure or satisfaction from washing my hands in a marble sink with
gold taps than I do in the typical batroom of an average home.
I'm not too bothered whether the sink is marble or ceramic. However, I
do prefer to wash my hands in bathrooms that are clean and
aesthetically pleasing, and I've been in plenty of bathrooms in poor
households that are neither, and at the end of the day the only remedy
usually is to spend money on improving the fittings (money that such
people do not have). Generally, old fittings are both harder to clean
(making people less like to clean them, other things being equal), and
harder to make look clean.

Oh come off it! *Given that poor households are the ones most likely
to have unemployed adults living in them, the only reason for dirty
bathrooms is that the person is too lazy to clean.

I didn't say the unemployed lacked the time to clean them. I said that
they were *harder* to clean, and harder to make *look* clean. In other
words, you will put more effort into cleaning older fittings, and they
will look comparatively dirtier even after having put that effort in -
I've seen plenty of bathrooms that look worse when clean, than mine
does when moderately dirty, and I can only assume that the vast
majority of people (including those who are forced to accept old
fittings) make a similar assessment as I do of bathroom quality.

And whilst you may assume that the unemployed poor by virtue of their
lifestyle have plenty of effort and willpower to spare, the reality is
likely to be quite the opposite, that increased financial stress,
increased consequential demands on physical and psychological effort
across the board with everyday activies, and fewer pleasant everyday
experiences, are likely to leave them sorely depleted of willingness
to exert effort.

I know when I feel stressed, even if I otherwise have a surfeit of
time, I find myself *less* inclined to do unpleasant tasks or
difficult chores, not moreso. I have no reason to think other people
generally behave any differently - nobody I have ever known, has ever
said to me "cor, I feel extremely tired and stressed at the moment, I
think I'll go and do a few hours of unpleasant work". More often, they
either say that they do not want to do anything at all, or else they
say they want to engage in activities that they find recreational -
and indeed that is exactly how I think too.



*Perhaps you should
consider the probability that it is the person's laziness that is
responsible for both the dirty bathroom *and* their poverty

I don't observe that. This seems to be an instance of how all this
imaginary work abounds in the economy, and how, since the recession, a
million people suddenly got lazier (for reasons that are never made
entirely apparent by the people who offer this line of reasoning).



rather
than trying to argue that economic inequality makes a person incapable
of picking up a cloth and applying a bit of elbow-grease.

Of course, I did not say anything so simplistic.



And I can assure you that expensive ornate fittings are often far more
difficult to clean than an ordinary chromed bath tap,

I accept that, but garishly ornate fittings are increasingly less
popular these days - especially in working households where money is
available but time is at a premium.

Personally, I was recently looking at commercial-quality hands-free
taps for my bathroom sink (so as to completely do away with moving
parts and intricate details where muck tends to accumulate and which
are particularly difficult to clean), and next time I'm tempted to
have the tap and pipework wall-mounted instead of sink-mounted - so
that you do not get the unpleasant accumulation of water and scale
around the base of the taps, and wiping the sink clean can be done in
pretty much one swoop of the hand.



and that even
people living on benefits can get sufficient money to make basic
improvements and decorations to their home - in poorer households the
council will even do that for them completely free of charge.

I know several people who have struggled to get repairs done by
private landlords. Even so, it is one thing to throw up some wallpaper
or lash on some cheap paint, another to fit a high-quality kitchen to
a property in which you have no real security of tenure.



I've been to the homes of people who are earning enough to spend on a
restaurant meal once a week and a foreign holiday twice a year, but
are living in a filthy pig sty. *Conversely I have visited OAPs who
are struggling to get by on a state pension, but who have spotless
tidy houses. *Cleanliness in the UK has very little connection with
wealth.

I certainly agree there is no perfect correlation - some people will
always be content with dirt, and others will always try to polish mud
floors, meanwhile the standards of the vast majority of people are
sensitive to the physical and mental effort required to maintain those
standards. It wasn't all about cleanliness anyway - I also mentioned
aesthetic (and unfortunately no amount of cleaning makes a worn green
or brown bathroom suite look acceptable), and I don't know about you
but I really do prefer to use modern, quality bathrooms.



Probably the biggest difference wrt quality of life is the ability of
the wealthy to employ servants to carry out the boring chores that
most people have to put up with - though again, having been in such a
position myself, there are plenty of downsides to having servants that
are not necessarily compensated for by losing the need to clean the
floors or do the washing-up. =A0And these days many onerous tasks are
made a lot easier with affordable machines - heck, choose your clothes
wisely and you don't even have to use an iron all that often.
Indeed, labour-saving appliances are the key to eliminating boring
chores today. Though frankly, I find that just having a sink that is
big enough to fully submerge all items being cleaned (a grill pan
particularly), and store them on the draining board without careful
(i.e. mentally demanding) stacking, often makes the operation seem so
much easier - but again, it means having a sufficiently large kitchen,
and the money to buy a big sink, and the spare mental resources to
analyse that particular problem as I have done, and the power (either
as owner or secure tenant) to fit such a sink and get enough use out
of it to make it worth the investment.

But honestly - just how much would the quality of your life improve if
you had a big sink?

If I was using the sink several times a day for cooker fittings, or
draining a high number of items on the draining board, it would make a
significant difference I think to have a sink area that was of a
commensurate size.



*I find that with most limitations, I only have to
figure out a solution once, and then make trivial changes to my
work-habits to accomodate it with little or no disadvatage. *And if
such a change would, for you, make a significant improvement to the
quality of your life, I have little doubt that you would find a way to
get yourself a bigger sink (or a smaller grill pan!)

I'm not quite sure I understand your point.