Margaret Thatcher should not be granted a state funeral

I'm gobsmacked by Pro's concussions. Well, at least close to gobsmacked -- at least 85% I'd say. My worthy opponent does not deny 1) that all of British British society would benefit from having a State funeral for Lady Thatcher, or 2) that Prime Minister Thatcher was a transformative leader who saved Britain from degenerating into a Third World heap of social and economic dysfunction. He did not dispute that Thatcher is the mot popular post war prime minster, that the economy improved dramatically under ther leadership, that even the Unions now recognize that reform was required, and that she is admired by freedom loving people around the world. While disputing none of this, Pro argues that this proves the degeneracy of British society whereby they have come to value prosperity and freedom. My task for this round of the debate is to establish that for Britain to become a Third World heap of dysfunction is not nearly as wonderful as he imagines, and that's the likely the reason socialism doesn't sell so well. Pro claims that all the capitalists in Britain are rich. (Are the rich called "toffs" because of the high price of British toffee? Seems like an odd association. Why not an association with an upper class dessert like spotted dick? But I digress.) Becoming a capitalist is not at all difficult, as all a person must do is believe in free markets. If it equated to riches, more than 3.1% of the population would elct it, so we know that his analysis is wrong.Pro implies that having inequality of wealth is immoral. Dozens of factors naturally affect a person's ultimate wealth. One of the most important factors is age, but intelligence, ambition, chance opportunities, values of hard work, and many other factors are involved. These are unequally distributed by nature.Someone calculated Bill Gates income per minute, and noted that if Gates saw a $5 bill on the sidewalk, it wouldn't pay Gates to take the time to pick it up. Hearing this, a commentator said, "You don't know Gates. He'd fight an orphan for $5." From this we should learn that ambition is not equally distributed to all. Note also that Gates is giving away his vast fortune to charity. The fun for him was making it, not keeping it. That's a common theme among the redundantly rich. As a society becomes more prosperous, inequality of wealth will naturally become greater. It's a distribution like the sizes of trees in a forest. Only a large and prosperous forest grows giant trees. Consider an isolated island nation with only a thousand inhabitants. There is no chance whatsoever that one of them will become a billionaire, because there isn't that much total wealth. If they join the world economy, then one of them might become a billionaire. The point is that inequality of wealth can only be minimized by keeping a society poorer overall than it it otherwise might have been. Mowing the forest to equal height destroys it. Morality in fact favors the freedom that brings the greatest overall wealth. Equality is only achieved by poverty.In the polls measuring the popularity of past prime ministers, Thatcher scores highest among the older people who were mature in the Thatcher era. Pro thinks Thatcher's popularity is due to the press rewriting history, but the data shows just the opposite. Socialists have spent decades demonizing Thatcher, with some success. The British press is diverse, but Guardian and the BBC are pretty much in tune with People's Daily.The way in which the mining industry was sustained before Thatcher was to tax non-miners and subsidize an industry that should have faded away on it's own. Pro did not dispute that. Welfare recipients always convince themselves they are due a handout, and are deeply upset when it disappears. To share in Pro's rage, he needed to explain why the rest of society should be eager to support a class of workers in an industry that is non-competitive. A parallel in the United States were the jobs lost in North Carolina when the business of sewing underwear moved to Mexico. Liberals were outraged, as confident that the future of America was in sewing underwear as British socialists were sure the future of Britain was in mining.My opponent's "socialists don't go looking for trouble" is the knee-slapper of the debate. Socialist-inspired riots plague Western Europe, and Britain. http://www.bbc.co.uk...; For example, Wednesday's student march, which began with 50,000 people protesting peacefully in London against government plans to increase annual tuition fees almost three-fold to £9,000 ($15,000), but quickly turned violent and ended with the ruling Conservative party's HQ trashed by rioters. http://www.time.com...They were "provoked" by having to pay more for the services they received, and nothing more.Pro claims that Thatcher's legacy features the horror of privatizing British Rail, with higher rail fares as a result. "Rail's declining importance in Europe has come about despite onerous taxes on driving. Much of the revenue from those taxes is effectively used to provide large subsidies to rail. French economist Rémy Prud'Homme estimates that taxpayers "pay about half the total cost of providing the service." http://www.downsizinggovernment.org...One of the objectives of privatization was to get rail users to pay 75% of the costs. It's fair that rail users pay more of the cost of their service than the rest of Europe. However, because some fare prices are regulated and some are not, there are routes were prices have more than doubled while others have declined.[The Association of Train Operating Companies] says that in 1994-95 the average cost of a single journey was £4.82 compared with £4.95 in 2011-12. This is a rise of 2.7% when adjusted for inflation, the spokesman says. But combining all journeys both long and short, it doesn't give a breakdown of which journeys are rising in cost and which are falling. http://www.bbc.co.uk...Pro made a proposal worth considering. He suggested that instead of a state funeral, a million pounds be spent on fireworks and four million on beer. That sounds good, but it won't work because the concept is way too American. Celebrating, say, something to do with Ronald Reagan or Lincoln or Washington with nothing but beer and fireworks is 100% compatible with American society. But really, a celebration is Britain sans plumed horses, carriages, drums, and large hats? It's unthinkable, and would never please the 91%. Also, everyone knows that celebrations with fireworks and beer must also have Country Western singers belting out patriotic songs. Britain does not have enough of that type of singer to make it feasible. My honorable opponent has been traveling too much. Britain should honor the passig of one of its great leaders. Pro has only shown that workers in a heavily subsidized industry do not lie it when the subsidies are removed. The tax payers who provided the subsidies are bound to have a different viewpoint, and they do. A state funeral with all the traditional pomp is the only satisfactory way of doing it. Socialists will have a lovely rant, which is all that gives their lives meaning. It's a good deal all around.