The global system is also paying for your pension.
One the problems of the double-edged sword of American politics is that the world sees us as a two-party system, when each encompasses several ideologies. One of the reasons many don’t like Trump is that he is not a career political insider. That attribute appealed to many. Like it or not, he is the head of the party and the soon-to-be President, so we have to work within that framework (like my preparing a team to prevent one of his nominees from becoming a cabinet member).
Beware that much of the drama you see is media-driven, which is now a giant propaganda machine. The previous administration prioritized issues that were not at the heart of the fiscal and geopolitical issues but the whims of far left groups - or prioritized nothing at all. That meant a lot of massive issues piled up on the To Do list and historically unmatched issues.
The UK needs to stop blaming Covid, Brexit, and being what I have strangely heard self-identify as a “A small island nation” and stop sounding like a victim. Seize the opportunities before it - fintech, education, manufacturing, banking, culture while trade, immmigration, and global spending and financing are on the forefront. You have told the world that you want to be self-determining nation in all things, and there is no other nation in the world that understands that more than the U.S. If I were the UK powers that be, I would be rounding up the entrepreneurial hard-hitters and get to work.
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It’s telling that you read that as an insult…
I was trying to get your perspective since you confusingly speak of “we” as the UK, France, and now the US…
but now that you mention it, it is - France 
.
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Baloney. That pension was paid by the taxes from decades of hard work.
You do, however, bring up a good point about the risk of workers being forced to put a portion of their hard-earned money into the “sage” hands of government to decide how it will be “invested.”
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Well it shouldn’t Annie. It should be the hard work of the citizens and the wealth that is still buried underground like coal, oil and gas. It’s not saving the planet by leaving it there, we just purchase it from somewhere else on the same planet, including exploiting people in faraway lands in the mining of lithium. As long as it’s not in our back yard ay?
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Better to exploit our own?
Anyway the British empire was no different.
Better to lift up your own.
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By ‘exploit’ do you mean provide work and a purpose in life for the unemployed and zero hour contract workers?
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There are currently plenty of jobs in the Uk but people don’t want to do them.
Politicians make a lot of promises which give people hope. People don’t always check whether anything was actually achieved.
I did not take it as an insult at. I’m very content in France.
My comment back was a joke; the premise of which was that I view your ideas as unrealistic and your support for Trump and his policies as misplaced. Do you see, a joke using your geographical question and turning it into a metaphysical question? Well I had a quiet laugh.
Absolutely; all in in the spirit of thought-provoking, good-humored rhetorical debate, L.
For the umpteenth time, while I am no fan of Trump, I am for (most of) the policies in the Republican platform. When facing big problems, it’s wise stay open-minded enough to consider innovative ideas that may solve intransigent - even when you don’t care for the source.
Off to stir the literal pots.
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In the Uk the state pensions is not paid out of a long term tax receipt savings pot. It’s budgeted every year along with everything else from current year tax & other receipts.
With no international trade we wouldn’t have much in the piggy bank at the Treasury to pay pensioners. We are not able to be self-sufficient like the US. It’s like living off-grid. Some very determined people do it, but they have to give a lot up to make it work.
Trump is planning a nation of isolationism and tariffs, and tariffs have side effects (none of them good). They make domestic industries less efficient and innovative by reducing competition. They hurt domestic consumers since a lack of competition tends to push up prices. They also generate tensions by favoring certain industries, or geographic regions, over others. Donald Trump is a businessman (and convicted criminal), his only interest is to cut taxes for the rich, and create more business opportunities with less competition for Corpocrisy (and the affluent), there by throwing the burden of taxes, along with higher prices, on working class Americans. Working class America, the elderly, and lower income America will pay the price for this election.
Annie, I appreciate you helping me with the clarification on this:
Are you saying that the employee has no say in whether that work contribution is protected or not? There is a potential that the worker could lose everything despite a career of contributions?
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As far as being self-sufficient, Ms. Annie, you are both right and wrong, and we Americans are about to learn that lesson, no nation can be an island unto it’s self.
Actually Australia is.
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it depends on government policy as to how much you see of your contributions during your lifetime. They change policy depending on how much they can afford. I have to wait until I am 67 to access the state pension. When I was signed up to that the terms were that I would access the benefits at age 60. Those much younger than me will likely have to wait until 70 +. They also have something called the “triple lock” that is meant to keep the pension in line with inflation, but Labour would like to get rid of that. So they are always raiding our pensions.
If you have a private pension that should be safe, but the funds are always reliant on world financial markets being stable and generating a rate of return. There is no escape from globalisation. Our entire economy and way of life is underpinned by the reliance on the system working. For ordinary people the alternative is unthinkable. It might benefit the very wealthy, but only in the short term.
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And why do you think nobody wants to pick fruit or do manual farm work, serve burgers in McDonalds or KFC, pick items in an Amazon warehouse, serve behind the counter in Sports Direct etc. etc. etc…When they have good qualifications and didn’t leave University until they were 21 and too old to be taking orders from someone with no qualifications. I don’t blame the students, I blame the system…
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So why do you think these young people who don’t want to pick fruit, will want to build things in the UK?
There is no system stopping home-grown entrepreneurs setting up shop here and providing jobs to people who want to work in a factory. Unfortunately people don’t want to work in a factory earning the sort of wages paid to keep our goods affordable for the ordinary customer in the UK. So it’s just not profitable to sell most domestically produced goods here. I can’t see how that can be changed. If you want to pay people a decent wage for working in a factory then the product would have to be a luxury good to be viable in the UK.
Maybe it’s different in the US. I was surprised when I returned to the US in 2002 to see a dearth of the beautiful US produced cars I had seen there in 1988. Everyone was driving Japanese cars. Apparently no car sold in the US is now 100% US produced. There was a discussion about Trump’s Mexico tariff stance on LBC recently and the point was made that it’s ironic that Mexico have a large Ford manufacturing plant put there by the US which exports finished cars to the US.
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What do you mean Bruce?
We in Australia are as entangled in the global mesh too - we export things, we import things.