Just an absolute legend of a woman and a PM. One of the two great British PMs in recent history - the other one being Churchill. Both won wars - the Cold War in the case of Maggie.

Economy fixed - check.
Communism destroyed - check
Rampant unionist holding the nation to ransom broken - check
A feminist role model - check
Modernising the Conservative party - check

The Falklands thing is the least important of her achievements - yeah Argentina invaded British territory and the Brits sent a force to defeat it. Nothing to see here.

It's her achievements at home and in Europe that must be lauded.

RIP to one of the greats.

Thatcherism has to do with everybody. Regardless, England is still the closest country to Australia in its governance, its politics and its culture.

Still struggling to understand why the Falklands is an issue.

I don't think you read a word of what I said. Do you respect Hitler because he's dead?

Personally, I don't think Thatcher would've had it any other way. She'd have revelled in the insults. Ding dong the witch is dead is in the top 10 on itunes and amazon at the moment!

Politics is a global game.

TSF to lose his shit in 5...4...3...2...1....

Yeah would be more a minute of booing and jeering :lol:

Even you can see the flaws in those statements. ](*,)

You forgot turning Liverpool in to a free port allowing south American Drug cartels free access to Europe. Pablo Escobre loved Liverpool!.

If you were rich she was great, if you were not you were expendable. You wonder why Hooliganism rose in the 80's, well you can thank Maggie for creating 3.6 million unemployed people with nothing better to do than go join a firm and rob Europe blind.

Again, having lived through it, in one of the worst effected areas, I can't summon the energy to raise the smallest glass in the world in her memory.

:lol:

Gross oversimplification...

In fact, it was more the mix of piecemeal regulation and govt/central bank distortion of credit markets that had more of an impact.

Its more systemic than just saying "deregulation is the problem" ...we have a system that encourages over indebtedness, overleverage and poor money management in general. So yes given the system is so fragile taking away regulation in that context is damaging.

Problem with Maggie is she didnt take her reading of Hayek far enough...should have kept going through to Mises who has plenty to say on sound money and real free markets.

To quote Tom Woods..."why should we be satisfied to regulate a house of cards when we can take the much more sensible step of allowing the free market to establish a far sounder, less crisis-prone system in its place, a system needing no taxpayer bailouts and afflicted by no moral hazard? Shouting matches over regulation versus deregulation necessarily neglect this genuine free-market alternative."

A free market alternative that not even Thatcher tried...hasnt been done yet...we have a Frankenstein mix of state and free markets...

Problem with the Left is they may understand social libertarianism, but fail to comprehend the importance of liberty in economics and markets. The end result of this mixed economy system is what we have now...crony capitalism which entrenches the place of the wealthy, subsequent lack of an entrepreneurial class, theft by inflation which damages the middle class and working people...

Its degenerated now to the point where the whole place of the Western world and its positive legacies are under threat of the weight of its own economic illiteracy and politicised ineptitude...

Deregulation wasn't the problem - rampant deregulation was the problem. Every system needs a safety - the western banking system over the last 30 years steadily had every safety system removed, with those removing them being rewarded for doing so, always safe in the knowledge the so long as everything kept rolling forward they would never be found out.

I'd like a second opinion on that.

It wasnt rampant deregulation though...they picked apart the system leaving enough there to protect vested interests, hence the drift to crony capitalism.

The worse part is the moral hazard created by bailing out large banks.

Thomas Woods makes the point that the Left get over fixated on deregulation. The real issue is that there is systemic failure there ....u cant regulate a house of cards to be safe as it will always inevitably collapse...Austrian school economics does a very good job of explaining this.

I come from the Left and have made the same mistake in my past opinions on this same issue, so without wanting to sound tooooo condescending ...i have made the same mistakes so can see where u are coming from. The Left identifies some of the same issues that libertarians or Austrian school economics does, but misses the point on solutions and root causes.

Thatcher went some of the way and did a lot of necessary things. The problem comes when at its root there is still a Frankenstein hybrid system....a mix of statist and free market concepts that are incompatible. Thus we end up with recurring boom/bust cycles that no one has truly addressed at a mainstream political level.


Edited by blacka: 10/4/2013 04:10:12 PM

And it begins. An entire cavalcade of obsequious, sycophantic wankery celebrating the 'achievements' of one of the most heinous politicians Britain has had in the era of the nation state. I can't wait to see the statues they erect.

I don't see what all the fuss is about with her death. She's been dead inside for decades.

Because she believed in Hayek and rectified economic policies all around the world, along with Reagan. Japan still needs the fix she intrduced. She was to that extent magnificent and her death reminded all once again that how she fixed dead economy neck deep in Keynsian economic malaise.

Edited by Viper 0: 10/4/2013 09:19:39 午後

All of this. I was just too lazy to enter.

She also said she was always happy to be criticised in a personal level as that meant her detractors had nothing else.

One of the greats.

What do u think about the chances of Japan ever embracing a more libertarian economic philosophy, Viper?

I am interested as im studying japanese and had some delusions about taking over a uni economics dept there one day if i can ever master the language! :lol:

Is the culture too collectivist and inherently Keynesian? Or with the ageing population will this demographic nightmare spur the younger folks into some revolutionary, anti hierarchical thoughts?

Could Murray Rothbard inspired economics ever take hold? They do seem to be a very private sector orientated society...although more toward large companies than real entrepreneurism. Maybe they will be the first to collapse so the first post Keynesian society...

I love seeing this forum try and discuss politics and it becomes apparently how out of touch with reality some forumites actually are :lol:

Is thupercoach Clive Palmer in disguise?

looking at britians gdp per capita over their history and if you asked someone who had been told about "thatchers miracle" (or reagans "miracle" ) they would never know where to point.

There was nothing remarkable about the gdp per capita during the thatcher years. Calculate the change in gdp per capita for the bottom 80% or the bottom 50% are you do see something remarkable...but not in a flattering way for thatcher*

track the unemployment and you see the same unflattering problem

I have no idea how conservative economics survives without evidence (I mean i can understand why rich people are celebrating a thatcher miracle but the rest of the population?) ce la vie

no way I'm gonna celebrate a death though. Even if the north korean dictator died I'd have a moment of reflection for him

*use the change in gini and assume a exponential income distribution which is approximately right whether you are in sweden or usa

Edited by grazorblade: 11/4/2013 05:01:28 AM

Got me there afro. Now pass me my third plate of bacon and eggs, turbo.

Depends which "conservative economists" i guess...problem with modern economists is its more about econometrics than an actual understanding of free markets and Human Action, to borrow a title of Ludwig von Mises.

Structural reforms always involve an inevitable period of adjustment...if you're suggesting the pre Thatcher years were any sort of picnic...

Problem with both Thatcher and Reagan is they only ever went part of the way. The world is still run by Keynesian dunces who would rather the world continue to sink further into a mire of indebtedness and zombie economics.

I mean by all means if the world wants socialism then it can continue merrily on the path its heading. The whole narrative that "capitalism won" is rubbish considering we dont actually have real capital based economies anymore...its all about money creation via central bank QE and the fractional reserve system...the default inflationary environment does nothing to help people who actually want to build wealth, rather than being debt slaves forever. The current system is completely debt slavery based...

As Republican political prisioners starved to death for their human rights, her government was colluding with, and funding UVA and UDA hit squads resulting in the 19080s escalation of the troubles impact on civillians. Civillian murders like that of Pat Finucane, shot in his home in front of his wife and 3 kids are a direct result of her "leadership".

There is a special place in Hades reserved for Thatcher.

Edited by Mr: 11/4/2013 01:49:39 PM

Why, because no one here agrees with your 'globally excepted political philosophies'? I bet you'd wank to your own reflection.

I'm not exclusively left-wing. Some right wing ideals I believe. However, Thatcher's right wing policies are almost single-handedly responsible for exacerbating the british aristocratic society we see today.

And yeah, I do wank to my own reflection. But I pit on a wig and lipstick so shit doesn't get weird.

Edited by afromanGT: 14/4/2013 05:39:25 AM

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

I think politics (right or left) always fuck the people but Thatcher fucked the people the hardest. And to get a 10 million dollar or whatever tax paid funeral is a farce.

Yeah man, gotta be centerist. Don't commit to anything lest you upset someone :lol:

Honestly, Thatcher was brilliant for two reasons. One, she demanded change and galvanised the population. And two, she gave the people someone to hate - and hate with a passion. She was the best thing that could have happened to a politically stagnated Britain.

I can only hope that we don't have to go through the same three elections of socio-economic dark-ages to come to the same realisation in Australia some three decades later.

There's an argument to be made that people should be voting for policies not parties, but obviously that'd be inefficient. It grates me when leftists talk about protecting rights and the right talk about expanding their power for security or economic reasons (like how the Liberals have removed the right to silence in NSW). Looking at it like this, right and left, conservative and progressive, are not good labels on parties that regularly contradict those labels.

By its nature, a broad limit on power - a negative right, is conservative and right-wing in nature.

I want the positive rights espoused by the left: welfare, education and health. With the negative rights from the right: free press, free speech, the right to silence, protection against unwanted intrusions to property and person.

When I first heard that judge-made law accounted for a lot of our law, I was a little put off. Yet, the more I learn about that law, and the more I learn how governments have deprived long-standing common law rights meticulously developed over centuries of English jurisprudence, it just makes me angry. These rights have formed the basis of human rights law across the world.

Take the right to silence I mentioned earlier, we had that for centuries; it was a fundamental part of English justice - we created the idea. It's now part of human rights laws across the planet. They changed it in 1994 in the UK and now in NSW a few weeks ago so juries can now draw "adverse inferences" from failing to answer a question by police which the defendant later relies on. Fucking sad.