Is Labour Prepared for Government?

EarthRod

We're not running out of them as such, we keep adding more and more of them.

Toko Black

The UK population is continuously growing, now estimated at nearly 66 million. The population grew by 430,000 between Jan 2016 and Jan 2017.

Yet the graphs showing absolute and relative poverty in the UK do not reflect this. All they show is a nice flat line.

Toko Black

I don't think you understand fundamentally what matter or energy is, because there most definitely is a finite amount available to us.

At present, solar panels or similar devices are not very efficient and can potentially be developed to increase that efficiency, which science and technologists are working on all around the world.
However, there are two limits that we can't go beyond.
Firstly, the limit of the thermodynamic efficiency and the Shockley limits etc for the system being used, which in the case of solar panels is around 33% for single junction devices and around 89% for a theoretical inifinte layer device with light being concentrated upon it.
So we may well get from the current record of around 44% efficiency in the lab to 70-80% efficiency some day.

However, there is the second limit that is the most fundamental, that is the actual amount of energy contained in sun light per meter squared. There only is and will be so much energy in sunlight until the Sun starts to run out of fuel and then expand which for the time being we can ignore.
So for our purposes and the next million years or so, we can expect a maximum average of around 1,000Watts per meter squared. That of course drops as you move away from the point of apogee, ie head North from the equator/further away along the tilt of the earths rotational axis.

For practical purposes currently, we can look and and talk about the amount of solar energy we can potentially access as being so large as to be beyond the limits of any demand we can imagine.
The mistake is confusing the idea of 'for practical purposes' with absolutes and infinite amounts.
It is a mistake, because what is and what we consider 'for practical purposes' changes over time.
Not only does it change over time, but it changes over the scope of our perceptions and views depending on whether we think in terms of the individual, the local, the national or globally.

As an example:
- If I supplied an individual 1 billion eggs, for practical purposes that can be treated like and infinite amount of scrambled egg on toast breakfasts for that individual because it is more than they could ever eat in a life time.
- If I supply 1 billion eggs to a small town of 4,000 people, that's still 8 eggs a day per person for 80 years.
- If I supply 1 billion eggs to the whole planet, that's 1 egg for only one in 7.5 people once.

If your scope of experience and view of the world is limited to thinking in terms of your individual and local demands on resources, then you may well see that or treat 1 Billion Chickens is/as for practical purposes is an unlimited supply of eggs.
Globally however, 1 Billion Chickens could only provide 1 egg per week per person.
If one group or country has greater percentage of those 1 Billion Chickens than another, then they have more eggs to go around per person.
Of course you can say it's a silly analogy because we can simply breed more Chickens, but if the Chickens are merely representative of other resources such as rare earth minerals, land, precious metals etc, then you are left with no options.

mij

Those types of graphs and statistics are often used by those trying to portray equality and poverty being addressed and not being a problem for idealogical/political purposes - without bothering to explain any context or perspective.
It's all well and good showing that less people are 'classed' as being in poverty now than before except for the fact that they are not informing us that what was 'classed' as being in poverty has also changed.
It's like saying unemployment has dropped because they changed what qualifies as being unemployed to exclude additional people.

Those graphs show a reduction and/or stable level of poverty depending how you view them, but what they don't show is that more poor people have not moved out of poverty, but instead the over all average wages/income dropped pushing more people downwards - primarily as a result of the financial crisis and then governments response to it.

Essentially, less people are calculated to be below the average standard of living because the average standard of living became crapper for more people, meaning the crappiest standards of living which remained as crappy as they were, became closer to the to the experience of the average person.

If having a holes in your shoe was classed as being in poverty before, now, because more people have holes in their shoes, only having one hole in your shoe is not classed as being in poverty any more ..... or so some people want us to believe.

Ruperts slippers

We used Danny Dorling a lot last yr and I've watched I Daniel Blake. Relying on the state support is always going to be arbitrary, it's not possible for a government organisation to account for all individual personal circumstances, because of this people will fall through the net, the current Universal Credit fiasco is proof of this.
There are lots of factors that account for income inequality, personally I don't think more state control is the answer.

Cliff

Are you still trying to demonstrate that rich people take the wealth and leave less for the poor?

I think we could all agree, even just for the sake of argument that raw materials and energy are finite.
But usually today, many rich people have created their wealth in other ways. It is not about having more eggs or loaves of bread. It is about a service and finished article or intellectual property.

For instance, rich people like James Dyson and his vacuum cleaner, the people that made Arm or Qualcomm micro processors, a service like Ryan Air- they have not taken anything from the poor. They have become rich without making the poor, poorer. Its about smart ideas these days.
The impact on remaining resources has not affected the poor either.

Does that help show you argument about finite recourses is irrelevant in most cases?

EarthRod

Not a good idea to pick Ryanair as an example of rich/poor. The staff have to pay for their training, pay for their uniform and are poorly paid. In addition they are threatened with punishment if sales targets are missed.

The latest thing is Ryanair tried to reduce pilots holiday schedules.

I won't even go into how Ryanair treat their passengers.

Basically Ryanair service is about making huge profits on the backs of staff and passengers.

Cliff

Maybe Mr Branson and Virgin?

Pacifico

considering that by the time we get technology anywhere close to being 100% efficient to give that 1000 watts per meter, there will be other energy sources which have been developed - there is no practical limit to the resource. There is a theoretical limit but as has been explained, that becomes less relevant as the world progresses.

Pacifico

If you want ten pound flights to spain someone has to pay.