Charlottesquare wrote:The catch is people are weak willed, pensions lock money up, but if no perk nobody will lock it up.
Who pays if someone makes no provision for their retirement? Generally, everyone else.
People have allowed themselves to become imprisoned. The UK has one if not the highest number of surveillance cameras per head. Your activities/spending/movements are all tracked/recorded. The amounts and whereabouts of 'your' wealth is all known - which makes that wealth just a loan, potentially called in at any time. There is no need for taxes; Money isn't backed by anything, can just be printed/spent at the cost of devaluing all other notes in circulation - a form of micro-taxation. The BoE used to raise/lower interest rates to redirect economic activity (market valuations). Nowadays it can print money and buy bonds, or sell bonds, in order direct yields (and prices) to particular levels, which in turn adjusts stock prices (as fund managers rebalance out of rising bond prices into stocks for instance). The BoE could just follow that practice for a while and then opt to just state the yield that it desired and that it would buy (sell) bonds to achieve ... and the market would automatically adjust prices to that yield likely without the BoE actually having to buy or sell any bonds itself. The EU/ECB bailed out massive bad pre-2008 German bets, swapped those debts over to the ECB in return for lower risk ECB debts. The ECB printed 2 trillion Euros as part of that, buying up first government bonds, then junk bonds, then even stocks. That conceptually could be extended further, print to buy up all land/houses for instance. The only barrier is that sooner or later faith is lost and large-scale capital out-flight induces hyperinflation.
If you don't comply, for instance consider your savings to be your money that you worked to build up, not the states money available to be confiscated at any time, then the state will consider that money as potentially being the proceeds from illicit activities and could look to lock down/seize that wealth. Or at least put up laws to hinder that freedom.
A consequence of ever increasing controls is that those in a more free position will look to avoid such containment, shift their wealth to where the risks are relatively lower. Even in that aspect however and states are collaborating with each other to hinder such freedoms.
The UK used to be a democratic and relatively free country. No longer is that the case, and even free-speech has been squashed.
Citizen Smith - Power to the peepulllll!!!