A World Without Thatcher (penned by an Englishman).
Posted by JossAmbrose 11 years ago to Politics
I've heard all kinds of negatives about Margaret Thatcher over the past week, & threats of angry protest at her funeral. The protests turned out to be minimal & any jeering & booing was drowned out by applause of appreciation.
The cold reality is Thatcher did what she thought was necessary to improve the quality of life for the majority in the UK. Her concern was for Great Britain but alas, she had no control over what was happening in the rest of the world: in the late 70s - early 80s the UK mining industry was as good as dead because of competition from overseas. As I understand it, despite the unfortunate fact that thousands of UK citizens found themselves out of work & suffered terribly, she pulled the plug on the mining industry in recognition of it no longer being viable & concentrated on what WAS making money. From a business point of view, she had the right idea at least.
As for the Winter of Discontent, Thatcher clamped down on the power the trade unions had, as they were holding the entire UK to ransom because their workers wanted pay rise after pay rise. I have to ask, where was that money supposed to come from?
A company boss spends much time researching & building a business out of nothing. He buys necessary tools & equipment to carry out the work to sustain his business & no doubt carries on working late into the night, long after his employees have gone home to their families. Without such a man, there would be no jobs yet his workers seem to think they're entitled to earn the same money as him, regardless of profit, business expenses, maintenance & repairs, taxes etc etc.
Without Thatcher, I think it's likely the trade unions would've won the day & the government would have given in to their demands. New legislation would've been passed, essentially giving union members an unfair advantage over non-union members (some are more equal than others - this happened to my Dad). In time, because of increased demands by the unions, wages for the workers would be tripled (it has happened), resulting in zero chance of 'sustainability™' for any industry, short of greatly increasing the price of the products of industry. Despite huge wage increases, nobody would be able to afford anything. £30 per hour would become the new minimum wage. Hundreds of businesses would fold, leading to mass unemployment & there would be further uproar in the unions as a result. They would be demanding jobs that didn't exist. Needless jobs would have to be invented & subsidised by the government in order to keep the unions sweet. This would result in greatly increased taxes to make up for increased government spending, making the cost of living completely unmanageable. For the thousands still out of work, welcome to the queue for the bread line, the coffee line, the soup line... The country would be completely broke. There would be no money left to take care of the sick or elderly, education etc.
For industry to survive at all, it would be necessary to ensure that everyone was pulling their weight. As happened in Soviet Russia, it would likely become an imprisonable offence for anyone to take time off work. Maximum input would be required at all times. There would be no pride, hope or purpose for being alive other than to barely survive. Rights would be non existent, depression would be rife. Sooner or later, all private property would have to be seized & redistributed in an attempt to restore some sort of quality of life for all. Who knows where we'd be once all that money had gone? Thank God that lot didn't happen!
Just sayin'.
The cold reality is Thatcher did what she thought was necessary to improve the quality of life for the majority in the UK. Her concern was for Great Britain but alas, she had no control over what was happening in the rest of the world: in the late 70s - early 80s the UK mining industry was as good as dead because of competition from overseas. As I understand it, despite the unfortunate fact that thousands of UK citizens found themselves out of work & suffered terribly, she pulled the plug on the mining industry in recognition of it no longer being viable & concentrated on what WAS making money. From a business point of view, she had the right idea at least.
As for the Winter of Discontent, Thatcher clamped down on the power the trade unions had, as they were holding the entire UK to ransom because their workers wanted pay rise after pay rise. I have to ask, where was that money supposed to come from?
A company boss spends much time researching & building a business out of nothing. He buys necessary tools & equipment to carry out the work to sustain his business & no doubt carries on working late into the night, long after his employees have gone home to their families. Without such a man, there would be no jobs yet his workers seem to think they're entitled to earn the same money as him, regardless of profit, business expenses, maintenance & repairs, taxes etc etc.
Without Thatcher, I think it's likely the trade unions would've won the day & the government would have given in to their demands. New legislation would've been passed, essentially giving union members an unfair advantage over non-union members (some are more equal than others - this happened to my Dad). In time, because of increased demands by the unions, wages for the workers would be tripled (it has happened), resulting in zero chance of 'sustainability™' for any industry, short of greatly increasing the price of the products of industry. Despite huge wage increases, nobody would be able to afford anything. £30 per hour would become the new minimum wage. Hundreds of businesses would fold, leading to mass unemployment & there would be further uproar in the unions as a result. They would be demanding jobs that didn't exist. Needless jobs would have to be invented & subsidised by the government in order to keep the unions sweet. This would result in greatly increased taxes to make up for increased government spending, making the cost of living completely unmanageable. For the thousands still out of work, welcome to the queue for the bread line, the coffee line, the soup line... The country would be completely broke. There would be no money left to take care of the sick or elderly, education etc.
For industry to survive at all, it would be necessary to ensure that everyone was pulling their weight. As happened in Soviet Russia, it would likely become an imprisonable offence for anyone to take time off work. Maximum input would be required at all times. There would be no pride, hope or purpose for being alive other than to barely survive. Rights would be non existent, depression would be rife. Sooner or later, all private property would have to be seized & redistributed in an attempt to restore some sort of quality of life for all. Who knows where we'd be once all that money had gone? Thank God that lot didn't happen!
Just sayin'.
While it's all hypothetical, history (esp. Russian history) teaches us that this would've been the outcome had Thatcher not been voted in. The UK was in a terrible state under Callahan's Labour government The trade unions had serious muscle & things got completely out of hand. Callahan was forced into calling an early election & Thatcher won a landslide victory & turned this country around.
In my opinion, she's the closest thing to Dagny Taggart this world's ever seen.