An obvious issue with the governments High Pay Raising Wages strategy is the countries biggest employer, HMG, has a wage freeze for most of its employees. If public sector pay restraint continues, and it probably will, that is a big section of the electorate who will face raising prices and feel very much left out, or worse, of a core part of the government policy and comms.
Time to get a new job then.
Err, we are trying to recruit new police officers (others need replacing anyway), nurses, care staff and many varieties of civil servants.
Political reality is not simple, even if some want it to be.
Can I be the first PB Nat to suggest that the Chinese invasion of Taiwan, and the ensuing global war which will wipe out maybe a third of humanity, rendering much of the globe uninhabitable, can only be good for the cause of Scottish independence? And will actually increase SNP representation at Holyrood?
No, they will still not get indyref2.
Indeed the loss of Taiwanese independence and return to unity with China would suggest a global trend in the opposite direction
"return to unity" amazing scenes
Unity between ROC and PRC is simple
PRC just needs to accept they are rebels and ROC is the true government
ROC invading PRC to achieve that would be one hell of a plot twist.
Got chatting to a couple at the bar last night, didn't even realise WhatsApp was gone!
Interesting overall chatter, they live just down the road from us too. The husband works in import/export which I thought was code for something else but he does have a legitimate company that imports and exports goods. His view on petrol - the failure rests with the government because they didn't have facilities to train adequate tanker drivers from 2017 to now, even without COVID the HGV driver testing capacity is 10k too low.
He thinks salary of £45-50k is where the market will settle for HGV drivers and around £60k for tanker drivers or other special goods haulage. His view is that if it's possible to earn £35k delivering locally for Amazon then delivering nationally or internationally will need a big premium.
The issue exists everywhere in the world because companies have been underinvesting in people because they're trying to cash in today on automated trucks that are at best a decade away. In the UK it's acute because companies are highly dependent on cheap labour.
In the US truck drivers already get paid a lot and there's no real shortage of workers, companies just don't want to pay the going rate so are pushing for the self-driving truck to happen. Across Europe he thinks they're lacking in willing workers because the going rate is too low. A German won't do the work for €30-35k per year and that's led to a huge lack of available people to train.
His biggest worry (and it makes sense given the nature of his business), however, isn't the in country distribution, it's getting the containers off the boats. The US is really struggling from two decades of underinvesting in automation, a lot of their secondary dockyards still rely on people power but it's seen as a dead end job so few to no people want to become stevedores as they expect to be automated out of a job in 10 years. In the here and now that means no people and lots of container ships piling up at those secondary dockyards. Europe (including the UK) doesn't have these issues because most are already highly automated. The Dutch and Brits have led the way with this and the rest of Europe followed.
Wow, £35 k delivering for amazon. That's 5k more than a trained Met police officer.
I chatted to a regional taxi driver the other day. Says he's pulling in over £40k net at the moment and can make it £60k without too much effort. 'As long as you don't mind working evenings and some nights it's easy money.' Takes at least one day off a week and has daytime to himself and the missus.
Told me there's a chronic shortage of drivers: basically lots of them left the UK with Brexit and covid.
An obvious issue with the governments High Pay Raising Wages strategy is the countries biggest employer, HMG, has a wage freeze for most of its employees. If public sector pay restraint continues, and it probably will, that is a big section of the electorate who will face raising prices and feel very much left out, or worse, of a core part of the government policy and comms.
Time to get a new job then.
Err, we are trying to recruit new police officers (others need replacing anyway), nurses, care staff and many varieties of civil servants.
Political reality is not simple, even if some want it to be.
We don’t need them mate - we only need lorry drivers and pig slaughterers.
An obvious issue with the governments High Pay Raising Wages strategy is the countries biggest employer, HMG, has a wage freeze for most of its employees. If public sector pay restraint continues, and it probably will, that is a big section of the electorate who will face raising prices and feel very much left out, or worse, of a core part of the government policy and comms.
Though the public sector pay is higher than private sector pay as it stands, with the public sector budget running at a major deficit.
A rebalancing as private sector wages rise would see HMG gain tax rises as much of the increased pay goes to HMRC in increased NI, Income Tax and potentially reduced welfare. That increased tax revenues can support public sector salaries.
An obvious issue with the governments High Pay Raising Wages strategy is the countries biggest employer, HMG, has a wage freeze for most of its employees. If public sector pay restraint continues, and it probably will, that is a big section of the electorate who will face raising prices and feel very much left out, or worse, of a core part of the government policy and comms.
Though the public sector pay is higher than private sector pay as it stands, with the public sector budget running at a major deficit.
A rebalancing as private sector wages rise would see HMG gain tax rises as much of the increased pay goes to HMRC in increased NI, Income Tax and potentially reduced welfare. That increased tax revenues can support public sector salaries.
More realistically what we are likely to see is industrial action, continued underperformance in parts of the civil service and public sector and recruitment and retention failures.
An obvious issue with the governments High Pay Raising Wages strategy is the countries biggest employer, HMG, has a wage freeze for most of its employees. If public sector pay restraint continues, and it probably will, that is a big section of the electorate who will face raising prices and feel very much left out, or worse, of a core part of the government policy and comms.
Though the public sector pay is higher than private sector pay as it stands, with the public sector budget running at a major deficit.
A rebalancing as private sector wages rise would see HMG gain tax rises as much of the increased pay goes to HMRC in increased NI, Income Tax and potentially reduced welfare. That increased tax revenues can support public sector salaries.
An obvious issue with the governments High Pay Raising Wages strategy is the countries biggest employer, HMG, has a wage freeze for most of its employees. If public sector pay restraint continues, and it probably will, that is a big section of the electorate who will face raising prices and feel very much left out, or worse, of a core part of the government policy and comms.
Though the public sector pay is higher than private sector pay as it stands, with the public sector budget running at a major deficit.
A rebalancing as private sector wages rise would see HMG gain tax rises as much of the increased pay goes to HMRC in increased NI, Income Tax and potentially reduced welfare. That increased tax revenues can support public sector salaries.
More realistically what we are likely to see is industrial action, continued underperformance in parts of the civil service and public sector and recruitment and retention failures.
If there is industrial action while the public sector has a huge deficit then I hope the unions can be taken on and defeated.
The only way for public sector pay rises to be affordable is for tax revenues to increase. The way for tax revenues to increase is to see public sector incomes rise.
Do that and today's public sector pay can be affordable as a first step. As a second step, pay rises could become affordable.
Funny how you see the private sector pay growing, which can pay for public sector pay, as a negative and rather than a positive.
An obvious issue with the governments High Pay Raising Wages strategy is the countries biggest employer, HMG, has a wage freeze for most of its employees. If public sector pay restraint continues, and it probably will, that is a big section of the electorate who will face raising prices and feel very much left out, or worse, of a core part of the government policy and comms.
Though the public sector pay is higher than private sector pay as it stands, with the public sector budget running at a major deficit.
A rebalancing as private sector wages rise would see HMG gain tax rises as much of the increased pay goes to HMRC in increased NI, Income Tax and potentially reduced welfare. That increased tax revenues can support public sector salaries.
More realistically what we are likely to see is industrial action, continued underperformance in parts of the civil service and public sector and recruitment and retention failures.
Our rolling programme of operating theatre cancellations continues, due to staff shortages.
Those waiting lists are not coming down if there are no staff.
An obvious issue with the governments High Pay Raising Wages strategy is the countries biggest employer, HMG, has a wage freeze for most of its employees. If public sector pay restraint continues, and it probably will, that is a big section of the electorate who will face raising prices and feel very much left out, or worse, of a core part of the government policy and comms.
Though the public sector pay is higher than private sector pay as it stands, with the public sector budget running at a major deficit.
A rebalancing as private sector wages rise would see HMG gain tax rises as much of the increased pay goes to HMRC in increased NI, Income Tax and potentially reduced welfare. That increased tax revenues can support public sector salaries.
More realistically what we are likely to see is industrial action, continued underperformance in parts of the civil service and public sector and recruitment and retention failures.
If there is industrial action while the public sector has a huge deficit then I hope the unions can be taken on and defeated.
The only way for public sector pay rises to be affordable is for tax revenues to increase. The way for tax revenues to increase is to see public sector incomes rise.
Do that and today's public sector pay can be affordable as a first step. As a second step, pay rises could become affordable.
Funny how you see the private sector pay growing, which can pay for public sector pay, as a negative and rather than a positive.
What I am trying to point out, as it is a political betting website, is that the politics of putting Higher Pay Rising Wages front and centre of a political campaign when you are responsible for freezing wages of millions, and might have to continue doing so, is perhaps either brave or short sighted chasing only todays headlines.
As for the economy generally, of course where we are is a bad place to start from, so yes I expect pain in the next few years. It will hit many of us in different ways, government policy can choose to an extent who is protected, who gains and who suffers, but compared to average times more will suffer than normal regardless of what decisions government makes.
Got chatting to a couple at the bar last night, didn't even realise WhatsApp was gone!
Interesting overall chatter, they live just down the road from us too. The husband works in import/export which I thought was code for something else but he does have a legitimate company that imports and exports goods. His view on petrol - the failure rests with the government because they didn't have facilities to train adequate tanker drivers from 2017 to now, even without COVID the HGV driver testing capacity is 10k too low.
He thinks salary of £45-50k is where the market will settle for HGV drivers and around £60k for tanker drivers or other special goods haulage. His view is that if it's possible to earn £35k delivering locally for Amazon then delivering nationally or internationally will need a big premium.
The issue exists everywhere in the world because companies have been underinvesting in people because they're trying to cash in today on automated trucks that are at best a decade away. In the UK it's acute because companies are highly dependent on cheap labour.
In the US truck drivers already get paid a lot and there's no real shortage of workers, companies just don't want to pay the going rate so are pushing for the self-driving truck to happen. Across Europe he thinks they're lacking in willing workers because the going rate is too low. A German won't do the work for €30-35k per year and that's led to a huge lack of available people to train.
His biggest worry (and it makes sense given the nature of his business), however, isn't the in country distribution, it's getting the containers off the boats. The US is really struggling from two decades of underinvesting in automation, a lot of their secondary dockyards still rely on people power but it's seen as a dead end job so few to no people want to become stevedores as they expect to be automated out of a job in 10 years. In the here and now that means no people and lots of container ships piling up at those secondary dockyards. Europe (including the UK) doesn't have these issues because most are already highly automated. The Dutch and Brits have led the way with this and the rest of Europe followed.
Wow, £35 k delivering for amazon. That's 5k more than a trained Met police officer.
That’s not far off a teacher on the top of main scale.
I would be sceptical, if that is net £35 000.
Just look at the current advert, where the salary is a bit below Median wage.
Conversations at the bar on holiday are not always accurate about pay rates on the ground.
35k will be gross as that’s how most people think about “earn”. I suspect it’s possible if you work all hours God sends, no failed deliveries and lots of overtime
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Got chatting to a couple at the bar last night, didn't even realise WhatsApp was gone!
Interesting overall chatter, they live just down the road from us too. The husband works in import/export which I thought was code for something else but he does have a legitimate company that imports and exports goods. His view on petrol - the failure rests with the government because they didn't have facilities to train adequate tanker drivers from 2017 to now, even without COVID the HGV driver testing capacity is 10k too low.
He thinks salary of £45-50k is where the market will settle for HGV drivers and around £60k for tanker drivers or other special goods haulage. His view is that if it's possible to earn £35k delivering locally for Amazon then delivering nationally or internationally will need a big premium.
The issue exists everywhere in the world because companies have been underinvesting in people because they're trying to cash in today on automated trucks that are at best a decade away. In the UK it's acute because companies are highly dependent on cheap labour.
In the US truck drivers already get paid a lot and there's no real shortage of workers, companies just don't want to pay the going rate so are pushing for the self-driving truck to happen. Across Europe he thinks they're lacking in willing workers because the going rate is too low. A German won't do the work for €30-35k per year and that's led to a huge lack of available people to train.
His biggest worry (and it makes sense given the nature of his business), however, isn't the in country distribution, it's getting the containers off the boats. The US is really struggling from two decades of underinvesting in automation, a lot of their secondary dockyards still rely on people power but it's seen as a dead end job so few to no people want to become stevedores as they expect to be automated out of a job in 10 years. In the here and now that means no people and lots of container ships piling up at those secondary dockyards. Europe (including the UK) doesn't have these issues because most are already highly automated. The Dutch and Brits have led the way with this and the rest of Europe followed.
Wow, £35 k delivering for amazon. That's 5k more than a trained Met police officer.
That’s not far off a teacher on the top of main scale.
I would be sceptical, if that is net £35 000.
Just look at the current advert, where the salary is a bit below Median wage.
Conversations at the bar on holiday are not always accurate about pay rates on the ground.
35k will be gross as that’s how most people think about “earn”. I suspect it’s possible if you work all hours God sends, no failed deliveries and lots of overtime
I suspect its 35k gross before all fees - van rental is supposedly £220 a week but as that includes insurance it's actually a great deal (courier insurance is expensive for obvious reasons).
Bozza on a “get back to the office” anti-WFH tip for his speech on Wednesday, according to tomorrow’s Mail.
The pre-pandemic world really isn’t coming back, as much as the politicians want to see the economy recover quickly.
Not all economic activity is seen as good by the consumers, people don’t *like* spending £5k on their season ticket, or £10 for a coffee and a bacon sandwich.
WFH, at least part of the time, works much better for a lot of people and a lot of companies, over having everyone joining with millions more to trudge to their desk in the city centre for 8:30 or 9am.
Oh, and fewer people commuting means a lot less carbon emitted into the atmosphere. Isn’t that supposed to be the top priority at the moment?
My company (I’m in the US but we also have a big presence in the UK and Sweden) has allowed us to opt for WFH or office, and I’ve gone for the former. I had expected that once the office fully reopened I might go in twice a month or so to attend planning meetings in person as my team were all in the NYC area. However, all my team’s new joiners during the pandemic have been remote, with the closest being in Virginia, so I see no point attending a video meeting from the office rather than home.
It does occur to me that I may never step foot inside our office again. I just filled out a survey for the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority basically saying that.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
It's not a Government scheme. It's basically, very simple economics - if you need staff, as Brexit has limited supply you need to pay more.
Got chatting to a couple at the bar last night, didn't even realise WhatsApp was gone!
Interesting overall chatter, they live just down the road from us too. The husband works in import/export which I thought was code for something else but he does have a legitimate company that imports and exports goods. His view on petrol - the failure rests with the government because they didn't have facilities to train adequate tanker drivers from 2017 to now, even without COVID the HGV driver testing capacity is 10k too low.
He thinks salary of £45-50k is where the market will settle for HGV drivers and around £60k for tanker drivers or other special goods haulage. His view is that if it's possible to earn £35k delivering locally for Amazon then delivering nationally or internationally will need a big premium.
The issue exists everywhere in the world because companies have been underinvesting in people because they're trying to cash in today on automated trucks that are at best a decade away. In the UK it's acute because companies are highly dependent on cheap labour.
In the US truck drivers already get paid a lot and there's no real shortage of workers, companies just don't want to pay the going rate so are pushing for the self-driving truck to happen. Across Europe he thinks they're lacking in willing workers because the going rate is too low. A German won't do the work for €30-35k per year and that's led to a huge lack of available people to train.
His biggest worry (and it makes sense given the nature of his business), however, isn't the in country distribution, it's getting the containers off the boats. The US is really struggling from two decades of underinvesting in automation, a lot of their secondary dockyards still rely on people power but it's seen as a dead end job so few to no people want to become stevedores as they expect to be automated out of a job in 10 years. In the here and now that means no people and lots of container ships piling up at those secondary dockyards. Europe (including the UK) doesn't have these issues because most are already highly automated. The Dutch and Brits have led the way with this and the rest of Europe followed.
Wow, £35 k delivering for amazon. That's 5k more than a trained Met police officer.
Indeed, he said that's where a lot of HGV drivers currently ply their trade, including the Eastern European ones who have got settled status. Delivering parcels for Amazon, DPD, Parcel force etc... became a lot more profitable over the pandemic while driving a truck didn't really. Right now in the UK the two jobs have comparable salary and hours according to him and it will need big, big salary premiums to get them back or get new people into HGV driving.
Also, it's more flexible and fun.
Lots of retired/semi-retired people have moved into this during lockdown as they can choose their shifts, get out of the house and people are generally nice and pleased to see them.
Indeed, that was another thing he mentioned. UK government policy over the pandemic was to push people into online shopping and delivery and this is the consequence, surging pay for local delivery to meet demand for drivers. In other European countries they didn't push the online option as much and people still shopped as normal where they could so the lasting damage to in person retail is much smaller than in the UK. We're now adjusting to a reality where at least 40% of our goods are delivered to our homes, that requires a massive increase in delivery drivers. In Europe that number is back down to 20% and rising much more slowly. The surge has sent wages down and delivery drivers are searching for other jobs again.
He was very, very scathing about the government's inability to think about long term consequences of COVID policy before implementing them. The wife was similarly scathing about furlough. Tbh, so am I, it's lengthened the pandemic measures by 6 months and slowed our economic recovery down with 1.5m people happy to sit on their arses taking 80% rather than go out and get a new job.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
It's not a Government scheme. It's basically, very simple economics - if you need staff, as Brexit has limited supply you need to pay more.
But the government need more staff? Or tell us they do? So what is their plan?
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
It's not a Government scheme. It's basically, very simple economics - if you need staff, as Brexit has limited supply you need to pay more.
Sure, there is one small snag. Can you see it? Look it’s there if you look hard enough.
An obvious issue with the governments High Pay Raising Wages strategy is the countries biggest employer, HMG, has a wage freeze for most of its employees. If public sector pay restraint continues, and it probably will, that is a big section of the electorate who will face raising prices and feel very much left out, or worse, of a core part of the government policy and comms.
Though the public sector pay is higher than private sector pay as it stands, with the public sector budget running at a major deficit.
A rebalancing as private sector wages rise would see HMG gain tax rises as much of the increased pay goes to HMRC in increased NI, Income Tax and potentially reduced welfare. That increased tax revenues can support public sector salaries.
More realistically what we are likely to see is industrial action, continued underperformance in parts of the civil service and public sector and recruitment and retention failures.
Our rolling programme of operating theatre cancellations continues, due to staff shortages.
Those waiting lists are not coming down if there are no staff.
Morning Foxy, just wanted to say what an amazing difference a change of ward makes.. my mother is back.in hospital desperate to get home but with a highly infectious uti is now in isolation (along with other . Serious problems including CGH).. My impression of the staff was amazing, so kind, so patient, so understanding.. . Faith fully restored.
An obvious issue with the governments High Pay Raising Wages strategy is the countries biggest employer, HMG, has a wage freeze for most of its employees. If public sector pay restraint continues, and it probably will, that is a big section of the electorate who will face raising prices and feel very much left out, or worse, of a core part of the government policy and comms.
Though the public sector pay is higher than private sector pay as it stands, with the public sector budget running at a major deficit.
A rebalancing as private sector wages rise would see HMG gain tax rises as much of the increased pay goes to HMRC in increased NI, Income Tax and potentially reduced welfare. That increased tax revenues can support public sector salaries.
More realistically what we are likely to see is industrial action, continued underperformance in parts of the civil service and public sector and recruitment and retention failures.
If there is industrial action while the public sector has a huge deficit then I hope the unions can be taken on and defeated.
The only way for public sector pay rises to be affordable is for tax revenues to increase. The way for tax revenues to increase is to see public sector incomes rise.
Do that and today's public sector pay can be affordable as a first step. As a second step, pay rises could become affordable.
Funny how you see the private sector pay growing, which can pay for public sector pay, as a negative and rather than a positive.
What I am trying to point out, as it is a political betting website, is that the politics of putting Higher Pay Rising Wages front and centre of a political campaign when you are responsible for freezing wages of millions, and might have to continue doing so, is perhaps either brave or short sighted chasing only todays headlines.
As for the economy generally, of course where we are is a bad place to start from, so yes I expect pain in the next few years. It will hit many of us in different ways, government policy can choose to an extent who is protected, who gains and who suffers, but compared to average times more will suffer than normal regardless of what decisions government makes.
Brave and the right thing to do is my opinion. And the sooner it happens, the sooner that public sector pay rises will be affordable. If pay in the private sector doesn't rise then public sector pay will need to continue to be deflated too as it has been for a decade.
If private sector pay is minimum wage jobs that are given in-work benefits like housing benefit and tax credits or universal credit then that's a drain on the Exchequer its not funding it to pay for the public sector.
Low pay earners seeing their pay go up sees the state's benefits bills go down, and tax revenues go up, which affords public sector pay rises. Good riddance to the era of importing people to do minimum wage jobs, then having the state give them benefits to do so.
An obvious issue with the governments High Pay Raising Wages strategy is the countries biggest employer, HMG, has a wage freeze for most of its employees. If public sector pay restraint continues, and it probably will, that is a big section of the electorate who will face raising prices and feel very much left out, or worse, of a core part of the government policy and comms.
Though the public sector pay is higher than private sector pay as it stands, with the public sector budget running at a major deficit.
A rebalancing as private sector wages rise would see HMG gain tax rises as much of the increased pay goes to HMRC in increased NI, Income Tax and potentially reduced welfare. That increased tax revenues can support public sector salaries.
More realistically what we are likely to see is industrial action, continued underperformance in parts of the civil service and public sector and recruitment and retention failures.
If there is industrial action while the public sector has a huge deficit then I hope the unions can be taken on and defeated.
The only way for public sector pay rises to be affordable is for tax revenues to increase. The way for tax revenues to increase is to see public sector incomes rise.
Do that and today's public sector pay can be affordable as a first step. As a second step, pay rises could become affordable.
Funny how you see the private sector pay growing, which can pay for public sector pay, as a negative and rather than a positive.
What I am trying to point out, as it is a political betting website, is that the politics of putting Higher Pay Rising Wages front and centre of a political campaign when you are responsible for freezing wages of millions, and might have to continue doing so, is perhaps either brave or short sighted chasing only todays headlines.
As for the economy generally, of course where we are is a bad place to start from, so yes I expect pain in the next few years. It will hit many of us in different ways, government policy can choose to an extent who is protected, who gains and who suffers, but compared to average times more will suffer than normal regardless of what decisions government makes.
Worth noting too that Public Sector employment is particularly high in Wales, Scotland, NI and "Red Wall" areas of England.
Private sector employment is higher as a percentage in London and SE England.
An obvious issue with the governments High Pay Raising Wages strategy is the countries biggest employer, HMG, has a wage freeze for most of its employees. If public sector pay restraint continues, and it probably will, that is a big section of the electorate who will face raising prices and feel very much left out, or worse, of a core part of the government policy and comms.
Though the public sector pay is higher than private sector pay as it stands, with the public sector budget running at a major deficit.
A rebalancing as private sector wages rise would see HMG gain tax rises as much of the increased pay goes to HMRC in increased NI, Income Tax and potentially reduced welfare. That increased tax revenues can support public sector salaries.
More realistically what we are likely to see is industrial action, continued underperformance in parts of the civil service and public sector and recruitment and retention failures.
If there is industrial action while the public sector has a huge deficit then I hope the unions can be taken on and defeated.
The only way for public sector pay rises to be affordable is for tax revenues to increase. The way for tax revenues to increase is to see public sector incomes rise.
Do that and today's public sector pay can be affordable as a first step. As a second step, pay rises could become affordable.
Funny how you see the private sector pay growing, which can pay for public sector pay, as a negative and rather than a positive.
What I am trying to point out, as it is a political betting website, is that the politics of putting Higher Pay Rising Wages front and centre of a political campaign when you are responsible for freezing wages of millions, and might have to continue doing so, is perhaps either brave or short sighted chasing only todays headlines.
As for the economy generally, of course where we are is a bad place to start from, so yes I expect pain in the next few years. It will hit many of us in different ways, government policy can choose to an extent who is protected, who gains and who suffers, but compared to average times more will suffer than normal regardless of what decisions government makes.
I'm not convinced that the Tories have fully thought through the implications of using a suddenly tightened labour market as their prime policy instrument.
Higher wages in particular sectors don't automatically mean higher productivity or productive investment (which seems to be assumed), and the potential economic disruption is being largely dismissed. It might work; but equally it might be the 1970s redux.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
It's not a Government scheme. It's basically, very simple economics - if you need staff, as Brexit has limited supply you need to pay more.
Sure, there is one small snag. Can you see it? Look it’s there if you look hard enough.
No there's no snag, its the market working as intended.
Strikes were attempts to distort the market. You can't buck the market in the long run.
Robinson doing a robust job of combatting the PM's pitiful bluster on R4 this morning
We may be a few years yet before the public see through the bluster and the jokes and realise they have been totally had. But they will and the fall will be brutal.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
It's not a Government scheme. It's basically, very simple economics - if you need staff, as Brexit has limited supply you need to pay more.
But the government need more staff? Or tell us they do? So what is their plan?
On one level, we know the government's plan, because the public sector spending envelope doesn't contain money for major pay rises.
And while the government is pretty much a monopoly employer of nurses, teachers and police officers etc, they can try "take it or leave it" with a reasonable degree of success.
But yes- the free market, which most Conservatives still acknowledge exists, says that if you don't offer enough pay for the work required, you won't get the quantity or quality of people you want.
Which is already happening at the edges. (There are quite a few schools where you shouldn't enquire too closely about the subject knowledge of your child's maths and science teachers.)
But there's a curious blindspot. People who are normally happy to let the free market set wages as high as necessary (see today's Telegraph) really don't like applying that principle to wages paid by the taxpayer.
It's not that curious. We all want to maximize our income and minimise our expenditure. It's just a bit galling seeing the government do it.
@Casino_Royale Re my comment last night about your 'lived experience', I was trolling you, yes. I wouldn't normally do that, but I was a bit vexed by your mischaracterisation of my comments earlier. I thought it might trigger you, but it was a bit of a low blow as it also masked the serious point that if your experience (I do find the 'lived' redundant - it's just 'experience') is that your political views have led to discrimination at work then that sucks. We can argue about studies as much as we like and whether or not there is a widespread problem, but if it's happened to you then that's bad.
On Kaufmann, I can offer you a more detailed critique of one of his studies in this area, if you like. I'll only do so if you would be genuinely interested - please tag me if so, so I don't miss it. Given the above, maybe it's not that relevant. Discrediting a study does not prove there is no problem any more than a poor quality study proves there is one.
I would, genuinely, like to see good research in this area. However, I think that would need a comprehensive survey of attitudes and experiences in academia and it would be expensive and take a lot of time and effort and could still fail* - I'm not sure who would fund that. It would look a bit like the extreme navel gazing in the ivory towers...
*Even the best planned and funded studies can really struggle with recruitment and a representative sample.
Seismic times in Thatcher's old party. I think we may be witnessing an incredible sea change.
It’s not that sophisticated. It’s simply a populist government discovering that it can win headlines and short term votes if it says we can all award ourselves a massive pay rise.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
It's not a magic money tree. If the money is there in a free market then the money is there. If it isn't, it doesn't exist so pay can't sustainably rise regardless of industrial action or anything else.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
Seismic times in Thatcher's old party. I think we may be witnessing an incredible sea change.
It’s not that sophisticated. It’s simply a populist government discovering that it can win headlines and short term votes if it says we can all award ourselves a massive pay rise.
Typical Champagne Socialist. You're just disgusted that people poorer than you may get a pay rise.
If the plebs get a pay rise and can look after themselves they'd have no reason to vote for socialism. Oh dear, what a shame.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
In the big picture higher wages in London meaning that firms open up elsewhere is a classic example of free markets working. London already relies over heavily on the indirect protectionism of the assumption that all sorts of activities must have headquarters based in London.
Also, the UK population is now about 67m. In 30 years it has increased by 10m, without the birthrate being at or above replacement levels. Despite the increase loads of employers are saying 'we can't get the staff'.
When large numbers of people come in from elsewhere to fill those gaps, they then need the services of still more as demands on society increase with a larger population (ask the NHS).
As a model this is potentially without limit. Which means that at some point either the model explodes through recession and poverty, forcing the reverse process, or the politics means that someone like Boris has to apply a brake.
An obvious issue with the governments High Pay Raising Wages strategy is the countries biggest employer, HMG, has a wage freeze for most of its employees. If public sector pay restraint continues, and it probably will, that is a big section of the electorate who will face raising prices and feel very much left out, or worse, of a core part of the government policy and comms.
Though the public sector pay is higher than private sector pay as it stands, with the public sector budget running at a major deficit.
A rebalancing as private sector wages rise would see HMG gain tax rises as much of the increased pay goes to HMRC in increased NI, Income Tax and potentially reduced welfare. That increased tax revenues can support public sector salaries.
More realistically what we are likely to see is industrial action, continued underperformance in parts of the civil service and public sector and recruitment and retention failures.
Our rolling programme of operating theatre cancellations continues, due to staff shortages.
Those waiting lists are not coming down if there are no staff.
Morning Foxy, just wanted to say what an amazing difference a change of ward makes.. my mother is back.in hospital desperate to get home but with a highly infectious uti is now in isolation (along with other . Serious problems including CGH).. My impression of the staff was amazing, so kind, so patient, so understanding.. . Faith fully restored.
Part of the problem with the NHS is the belief that a perfectly uniform service is possible, or even likely.
Contact with the actual NHS shows wildly varying levels of service. Because humans.
Robinson doing a robust job of combatting the PM's pitiful bluster on R4 this morning
We may be a few years yet before the public see through the bluster and the jokes and realise they have been totally had. But they will and the fall will be brutal.
I totally agree, that when the reckoning happens to the Tory party, it will be brutal, and they will go down to a drubbing, we have never seen before, but I have to add a but first, they need to win the next election first. Then the one after that they will be turned on, anyone but Tory party will walk it
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
It's not a magic money tree. If the money is there in a free market then the money is there. If it isn't, it doesn't exist so pay can't sustainably rise regardless of industrial action or anything else.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
You’ll get more Amazon drivers, but the high skilled, higher paid Amazon development work will go elsewhere. The reverse of your plans.
Meanwhile locally you’ll stoke inflation. In the end can’t get something for nothing.
Seismic times in Thatcher's old party. I think we may be witnessing an incredible sea change.
It’s not that sophisticated. It’s simply a populist government discovering that it can win headlines and short term votes if it says we can all award ourselves a massive pay rise.
Typical Champagne Socialist. You're just disgusted that people poorer than you may get a pay rise.
If the plebs get a pay rise and can look after themselves they'd have no reason to vote for socialism. Oh dear, what a shame.
Ironically the people who agree with your economic view are the far left. Strange times. I’m still a stickler for the idea you can’t get something for nothing. Boris is selling snake oil.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
It's not a magic money tree. If the money is there in a free market then the money is there. If it isn't, it doesn't exist so pay can't sustainably rise regardless of industrial action or anything else.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
You’ll get more Amazon drivers, but the high skilled, higher paid Amazon development work will go elsewhere. The reverse of your plans.
Meanwhile locally you’ll stoke inflation. In the end can’t get something for nothing.
No-one is suggesting that the cost of labour at the top end will rise, the Amazon engineers are competing in a global employment market.
What we will see, is a narrowing of the gap between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile of wages across the economy. “Levelling Up”, if you want a catchy way of saying it.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
In the big picture higher wages in London meaning that firms open up elsewhere is a classic example of free markets working. London already relies over heavily on the indirect protectionism of the assumption that all sorts of activities must have headquarters based in London.
Also, the UK population is now about 67m. In 30 years it has increased by 10m, without the birthrate being at or above replacement levels. Despite the increase loads of employers are saying 'we can't get the staff'.
When large numbers of people come in from elsewhere to fill those gaps, they then need the services of still more as demands on society increase with a larger population (ask the NHS).
As a model this is potentially without limit. Which means that at some point either the model explodes through recession and poverty, forcing the reverse process, or the politics means that someone like Boris has to apply a brake.
Yes.
The issue is (and was), I think, that an equilibrium wasn't reached. The UK model worked as long as there were large numbers of relatively low skilled people available to "conveyer" through the low paid/poor condition jobs.
What was interesting was the reaction when you asked things such as "what should the population of the UK be?"
Robinson doing a robust job of combatting the PM's pitiful bluster on R4 this morning
We may be a few years yet before the public see through the bluster and the jokes and realise they have been totally had. But they will and the fall will be brutal.
I totally agree, that when the reckoning happens to the Tory party, it will be brutal, and they will go down to a drubbing, we have never seen before, but I have to add a but first, they need to win the next election first. Then the one after that they will be turned on, anyone but Tory party will walk it
I've been thinking along these lines too. I reckon the next election will be a good one to lose, as I can see the Tories managing to kick most of the cans far enough down the road to get re-elected. Then the chickens will all come home to roost. (Sorry for mixed metaphors).
If Labour win, they will get no credit from the actions they will have to take to clear up the mess (a bit like 1974).
Got chatting to a couple at the bar last night, didn't even realise WhatsApp was gone!
Interesting overall chatter, they live just down the road from us too. The husband works in import/export which I thought was code for something else but he does have a legitimate company that imports and exports goods. His view on petrol - the failure rests with the government because they didn't have facilities to train adequate tanker drivers from 2017 to now, even without COVID the HGV driver testing capacity is 10k too low.
He thinks salary of £45-50k is where the market will settle for HGV drivers and around £60k for tanker drivers or other special goods haulage. His view is that if it's possible to earn £35k delivering locally for Amazon then delivering nationally or internationally will need a big premium.
The issue exists everywhere in the world because companies have been underinvesting in people because they're trying to cash in today on automated trucks that are at best a decade away. In the UK it's acute because companies are highly dependent on cheap labour.
In the US truck drivers already get paid a lot and there's no real shortage of workers, companies just don't want to pay the going rate so are pushing for the self-driving truck to happen. Across Europe he thinks they're lacking in willing workers because the going rate is too low. A German won't do the work for €30-35k per year and that's led to a huge lack of available people to train.
His biggest worry (and it makes sense given the nature of his business), however, isn't the in country distribution, it's getting the containers off the boats. The US is really struggling from two decades of underinvesting in automation, a lot of their secondary dockyards still rely on people power but it's seen as a dead end job so few to no people want to become stevedores as they expect to be automated out of a job in 10 years. In the here and now that means no people and lots of container ships piling up at those secondary dockyards. Europe (including the UK) doesn't have these issues because most are already highly automated. The Dutch and Brits have led the way with this and the rest of Europe followed.
Wow, £35 k delivering for amazon. That's 5k more than a trained Met police officer.
That’s not far off a teacher on the top of main scale.
I would be sceptical, if that is net £35 000.
Just look at the current advert, where the salary is a bit below Median wage.
Conversations at the bar on holiday are not always accurate about pay rates on the ground.
The Amazon (other delivery companies are available) driver also likely has pretty much unlimited overtime available to him, which unlike the teacher will be paid.
A guy working in my office was previously a multi-drop driver for an Amazon contractor. He left when his per drop rate had been cut which was giving him a daily rate of, on average, £85 instead of slightly in excess of £100. So basically less than £25k a year, accounting for holidays. I know there is a significant premium for HGV qualified drivers but overtime is limited to drivers hours restrictions which are rigorously policed with punitive penalties for breaches.
There is rather a large crock talked about on here by people who wouldn't get out of bed for less than £100k a year.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
It's not a magic money tree. If the money is there in a free market then the money is there. If it isn't, it doesn't exist so pay can't sustainably rise regardless of industrial action or anything else.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
You’ll get more Amazon drivers, but the high skilled, higher paid Amazon development work will go elsewhere. The reverse of your plans.
Meanwhile locally you’ll stoke inflation. In the end can’t get something for nothing.
No-one is suggesting that the cost of labour at the top end will rise, the Amazon engineers are competing in a global employment market.
What we will see, is a narrowing of the gap between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile of wages across the economy. “Levelling Up”, if you want a catchy way of saying it.
Inflation will give the illusion of levelling up. The perfect Boris policy when you think about it.
Robinson doing a robust job of combatting the PM's pitiful bluster on R4 this morning
We may be a few years yet before the public see through the bluster and the jokes and realise they have been totally had. But they will and the fall will be brutal.
I totally agree, that when the reckoning happens to the Tory party, it will be brutal, and they will go down to a drubbing, we have never seen before, but I have to add a but first, they need to win the next election first. Then the one after that they will be turned on, anyone but Tory party will walk it
I've been thinking along these lines too. I reckon the next election will be a good one to lose, as I can see the Tories managing to kick most of the cans far enough down the road to get re-elected. Then the chickens will all come home to roost. (Sorry for mixed metaphors).
If Labour win, they will get no credit from the actions they will have to take to clear up the mess (a bit like 1974).
As it happens, Labour have too big a mountain to climb to win in 2023/4. They might deprive the Tories of majority. That is entirely possible especially if the economic shit coming is as dire as I think it will be. So a minority Labour administration gets the blame for failing to clear up the mess. I can see some of the more thoughtful Tories thinking that might be a better way to go.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
It's not a Government scheme. It's basically, very simple economics - if you need staff, as Brexit has limited supply you need to pay more.
But the government need more staff? Or tell us they do? So what is their plan?
On one level, we know the government's plan, because the public sector spending envelope doesn't contain money for major pay rises.
And while the government is pretty much a monopoly employer of nurses, teachers and police officers etc, they can try "take it or leave it" with a reasonable degree of success.
But yes- the free market, which most Conservatives still acknowledge exists, says that if you don't offer enough pay for the work required, you won't get the quantity or quality of people you want.
Which is already happening at the edges. (There are quite a few schools where you shouldn't enquire too closely about the subject knowledge of your child's maths and science teachers.)
But there's a curious blindspot. People who are normally happy to let the free market set wages as high as necessary (see today's Telegraph) really don't like applying that principle to wages paid by the taxpayer.
It's not that curious. We all want to maximize our income and minimise our expenditure. It's just a bit galling seeing the government do it.
In a free market you would not be able to look up pay scales for teachers, NHS workers etc, each person would negotiate their own like a self employed IT expert does. We are miles from that in many fields.
An educated guess suggests that in that state led fields a decent proportion could, in a real free market (which would include unfettered sackability), negotiate more, a decent proportion, less; and a non insignificant minority could negotiate nothing at all.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
In the big picture higher wages in London meaning that firms open up elsewhere is a classic example of free markets working. London already relies over heavily on the indirect protectionism of the assumption that all sorts of activities must have headquarters based in London.
Also, the UK population is now about 67m. In 30 years it has increased by 10m, without the birthrate being at or above replacement levels. Despite the increase loads of employers are saying 'we can't get the staff'.
When large numbers of people come in from elsewhere to fill those gaps, they then need the services of still more as demands on society increase with a larger population (ask the NHS).
As a model this is potentially without limit. Which means that at some point either the model explodes through recession and poverty, forcing the reverse process, or the politics means that someone like Boris has to apply a brake.
Yes.
The issue is (and was), I think, that an equilibrium wasn't reached. The UK model worked as long as there were large numbers of relatively low skilled people available to "conveyer" through the low paid/poor condition jobs.
What was interesting was the reaction when you asked things such as "what should the population of the UK be?"
A generation if disposable workers being exploited and local people being displaced with each side being pitted against the other. There was a time when the left would have bitchslapped any businesses turning this into a net positive.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
In the big picture higher wages in London meaning that firms open up elsewhere is a classic example of free markets working. London already relies over heavily on the indirect protectionism of the assumption that all sorts of activities must have headquarters based in London.
Also, the UK population is now about 67m. In 30 years it has increased by 10m, without the birthrate being at or above replacement levels. Despite the increase loads of employers are saying 'we can't get the staff'.
When large numbers of people come in from elsewhere to fill those gaps, they then need the services of still more as demands on society increase with a larger population (ask the NHS).
As a model this is potentially without limit. Which means that at some point either the model explodes through recession and poverty, forcing the reverse process, or the politics means that someone like Boris has to apply a brake.
Yes.
The issue is (and was), I think, that an equilibrium wasn't reached. The UK model worked as long as there were large numbers of relatively low skilled people available to "conveyer" through the low paid/poor condition jobs.
What was interesting was the reaction when you asked things such as "what should the population of the UK be?"
Why would your average citizen have an instinctive good view of what the population of the UK should be.
If you asked it in 1520, 1720, 1820, 1920 and 2020 you would get very different answers. The only common bit being the average would probably be a bit below whatever the current population is.
I am unconvinced someone dedicating their lives to studying planning and demographics can come up with a "right" answer, let alone that we all somehow know it inately.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
It's not a magic money tree. If the money is there in a free market then the money is there. If it isn't, it doesn't exist so pay can't sustainably rise regardless of industrial action or anything else.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
You’ll get more Amazon drivers, but the high skilled, higher paid Amazon development work will go elsewhere. The reverse of your plans.
Meanwhile locally you’ll stoke inflation. In the end can’t get something for nothing.
No-one is suggesting that the cost of labour at the top end will rise, the Amazon engineers are competing in a global employment market.
What we will see, is a narrowing of the gap between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile of wages across the economy. “Levelling Up”, if you want a catchy way of saying it.
To understand the difference in experience between the credentialed professions and those at the bottom, you have to understand the following.
In most credential professions (Engineers, Doctors, IT etc) there is a world wide shortage. A number of former "developing" countries are moving to larger and larger service sectors.
This means, that despite almost frantic efforts to expand the education system, worldwide, there will be a shortage of such skilled people for the foreseeable future.
So fo people in these groups, unlimited immigration is a positive - it means they can get enough colleagues to do the job...
There is no world wide shortage of people in lower skilled jobs.
So for people in those groups, unlimited immigration meant downward wage pressure.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
To be fair, I think Heath's government tried something like this in 1972. I am sure it must have gone brilliantly.
Seismic times in Thatcher's old party. I think we may be witnessing an incredible sea change.
It’s not that sophisticated. It’s simply a populist government discovering that it can win headlines and short term votes if it says we can all award ourselves a massive pay rise.
My point was that I certainly can't remember the last time a senior Tory questioned markets being the God of all things.
Do most of them believe any of this stuff? Or just parroting Johnson's latest gamble in hope of promotion?
I mean John Redwood must be close to combusting looking at the comments in that Telegraph piece.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
It's not a magic money tree. If the money is there in a free market then the money is there. If it isn't, it doesn't exist so pay can't sustainably rise regardless of industrial action or anything else.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
You’ll get more Amazon drivers, but the high skilled, higher paid Amazon development work will go elsewhere. The reverse of your plans.
Meanwhile locally you’ll stoke inflation. In the end can’t get something for nothing.
No-one is suggesting that the cost of labour at the top end will rise, the Amazon engineers are competing in a global employment market.
What we will see, is a narrowing of the gap between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile of wages across the economy. “Levelling Up”, if you want a catchy way of saying it.
Inflation will give the illusion of levelling up. The perfect Boris policy when you think about it.
Those at the bottom of the scale, drivers and waiters, can expect their wages to rise well above inflation, for any plausible value of inflation.
Seismic times in Thatcher's old party. I think we may be witnessing an incredible sea change.
It’s not that sophisticated. It’s simply a populist government discovering that it can win headlines and short term votes if it says we can all award ourselves a massive pay rise.
My point was that I certainly can't remember the last time a senior Tory questioned markets being the God of all things.
Do most of them believe any of this stuff? Or just parroting Johnson's latest gamble in hope of promotion?
I mean John Redwood must be close to combusting looking at the comments in that Telegraph piece.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
It's not a magic money tree. If the money is there in a free market then the money is there. If it isn't, it doesn't exist so pay can't sustainably rise regardless of industrial action or anything else.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
You’ll get more Amazon drivers, but the high skilled, higher paid Amazon development work will go elsewhere. The reverse of your plans.
Meanwhile locally you’ll stoke inflation. In the end can’t get something for nothing.
No-one is suggesting that the cost of labour at the top end will rise, the Amazon engineers are competing in a global employment market.
What we will see, is a narrowing of the gap between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile of wages across the economy. “Levelling Up”, if you want a catchy way of saying it.
To understand the difference in experience between the credentialed professions and those at the bottom, you have to understand the following.
In most credential professions (Engineers, Doctors, IT etc) there is a world wide shortage. A number of former "developing" countries are moving to larger and larger service sectors.
This means, that despite almost frantic efforts to expand the education system, worldwide, there will be a shortage of such skilled people for the foreseeable future.
So fo people in these groups, unlimited immigration is a positive - it means they can get enough colleagues to do the job...
There is no world wide shortage of people in lower skilled jobs.
So for people in those groups, unlimited immigration meant downward wage pressure.
This is basic supply and demand economics. And when we train an excess of HGV drivers, supply and demand will dictate that salaries are reduced. That is the simplified version, find me the suitable candidates for training first.
Robinson doing a robust job of combatting the PM's pitiful bluster on R4 this morning
We may be a few years yet before the public see through the bluster and the jokes and realise they have been totally had. But they will and the fall will be brutal.
I totally agree, that when the reckoning happens to the Tory party, it will be brutal, and they will go down to a drubbing, we have never seen before, but I have to add a but first, they need to win the next election first. Then the one after that they will be turned on, anyone but Tory party will walk it
I've been thinking along these lines too. I reckon the next election will be a good one to lose, as I can see the Tories managing to kick most of the cans far enough down the road to get re-elected. Then the chickens will all come home to roost. (Sorry for mixed metaphors).
If Labour win, they will get no credit from the actions they will have to take to clear up the mess (a bit like 1974).
As it happens, Labour have too big a mountain to climb to win in 2023/4. They might deprive the Tories of majority. That is entirely possible especially if the economic shit coming is as dire as I think it will be. So a minority Labour administration gets the blame for failing to clear up the mess. I can see some of the more thoughtful Tories thinking that might be a better way to go.
Yes. The next GE has only two options: Tory win, or no winner (except a rainbow). The chances of that are looking higher. I still put it at 40%+. The politics of how that would work out will entertain PBers quite a bit between now and the next GE (this prediction is 100% certain).
Boris wasn't all that good this morning on R4. OTOH he is in the middle of taking a risky and unsafe course with the public fed up by Covid, politics, weather, economics and crimes. So there isn't much he can do except ride the storm.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
To be fair, I think Heath's government tried something like this in 1972. I am sure it must have gone brilliantly.
Heath's government did not restrict immigration however, in fact it even welcomed thousands of Ugandan Asians, correctly, fleeing Idi Amin.
Johnson's government however has restricted immigration compared to previous governments by ending free movement from the EEA and ensuring all migrants to the UK have to meet the skills criteria of the points system. That will in turn reduce the supply of labour, especially of low skilled workers and thus increase wages, which is what Leavers voted for in 2016 and Tory voters voted for in 2019. It will also force businesses to invest more in their workers to improve their productivity and get more out of their higher wages
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
In the big picture higher wages in London meaning that firms open up elsewhere is a classic example of free markets working. London already relies over heavily on the indirect protectionism of the assumption that all sorts of activities must have headquarters based in London.
Also, the UK population is now about 67m. In 30 years it has increased by 10m, without the birthrate being at or above replacement levels. Despite the increase loads of employers are saying 'we can't get the staff'.
When large numbers of people come in from elsewhere to fill those gaps, they then need the services of still more as demands on society increase with a larger population (ask the NHS).
As a model this is potentially without limit. Which means that at some point either the model explodes through recession and poverty, forcing the reverse process, or the politics means that someone like Boris has to apply a brake.
Yes.
The issue is (and was), I think, that an equilibrium wasn't reached. The UK model worked as long as there were large numbers of relatively low skilled people available to "conveyer" through the low paid/poor condition jobs.
What was interesting was the reaction when you asked things such as "what should the population of the UK be?"
Why would your average citizen have an instinctive good view of what the population of the UK should be.
If you asked it in 1520, 1720, 1820, 1920 and 2020 you would get very different answers. The only common bit being the average would probably be a bit below whatever the current population is.
I am unconvinced someone dedicating their lives to studying planning and demographics can come up with a "right" answer, let alone that we all somehow know it inately.
Apparently, we have plans for the roads to be built, plans for the trains, plans for the hospitals.
For population we scratch our heads, and shrug. Then ban building more houses.....
Population isn't an unconstrained free market item.
Most of the other parameters in our lives are constrained and regulated.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
It's not a magic money tree. If the money is there in a free market then the money is there. If it isn't, it doesn't exist so pay can't sustainably rise regardless of industrial action or anything else.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
You’ll get more Amazon drivers, but the high skilled, higher paid Amazon development work will go elsewhere. The reverse of your plans.
Meanwhile locally you’ll stoke inflation. In the end can’t get something for nothing.
No-one is suggesting that the cost of labour at the top end will rise, the Amazon engineers are competing in a global employment market.
What we will see, is a narrowing of the gap between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile of wages across the economy. “Levelling Up”, if you want a catchy way of saying it.
Inflation will give the illusion of levelling up. The perfect Boris policy when you think about it.
Those at the bottom of the scale, drivers and waiters, can expect their wages to rise well above inflation, for any plausible value of inflation.
That’s not what happened last time a government deliberately stoked inflation. Anyway let’s say you’re right, where’s the money coming from? Let’s say a small firm pays its drivers more, how will it fill the gap in its budget? It’s probably paying increased costs already.
Robinson doing a robust job of combatting the PM's pitiful bluster on R4 this morning
We may be a few years yet before the public see through the bluster and the jokes and realise they have been totally had. But they will and the fall will be brutal.
I totally agree, that when the reckoning happens to the Tory party, it will be brutal, and they will go down to a drubbing, we have never seen before, but I have to add a but first, they need to win the next election first. Then the one after that they will be turned on, anyone but Tory party will walk it
Even if they did win the next election but lost the one after I doubt it would match the landslide defeat of 1997.
Last night's programme on BBC2 on Blair and Brown showed quite clearly that while John Smith and Brown would have beaten Major's Tories too in 1997 they would not have won the landslide Blair did for Labour in 1997 as they would not have made the changes from Labour to New Labour needed to convince enough centrist Tories to vote Labour for the first time.
Blair was a once in a century Labour leader with appeal to Tories and swing voters I doubt I will see again in my lifetime
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
It's not a magic money tree. If the money is there in a free market then the money is there. If it isn't, it doesn't exist so pay can't sustainably rise regardless of industrial action or anything else.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
You’ll get more Amazon drivers, but the high skilled, higher paid Amazon development work will go elsewhere. The reverse of your plans.
Meanwhile locally you’ll stoke inflation. In the end can’t get something for nothing.
No-one is suggesting that the cost of labour at the top end will rise, the Amazon engineers are competing in a global employment market.
What we will see, is a narrowing of the gap between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile of wages across the economy. “Levelling Up”, if you want a catchy way of saying it.
Inflation will give the illusion of levelling up. The perfect Boris policy when you think about it.
Yes. The overall effect of making labour more expensive (by restricting movement from abroad) and imposing additional trading costs on businesses will be to make our economy less globally competitive and, utimately, all of us poorer. This will manifest itself as inflation outpacing wages for most of us.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
In the big picture higher wages in London meaning that firms open up elsewhere is a classic example of free markets working. London already relies over heavily on the indirect protectionism of the assumption that all sorts of activities must have headquarters based in London.
Also, the UK population is now about 67m. In 30 years it has increased by 10m, without the birthrate being at or above replacement levels. Despite the increase loads of employers are saying 'we can't get the staff'.
When large numbers of people come in from elsewhere to fill those gaps, they then need the services of still more as demands on society increase with a larger population (ask the NHS).
As a model this is potentially without limit. Which means that at some point either the model explodes through recession and poverty, forcing the reverse process, or the politics means that someone like Boris has to apply a brake.
Yes.
The issue is (and was), I think, that an equilibrium wasn't reached. The UK model worked as long as there were large numbers of relatively low skilled people available to "conveyer" through the low paid/poor condition jobs.
What was interesting was the reaction when you asked things such as "what should the population of the UK be?"
Why would your average citizen have an instinctive good view of what the population of the UK should be.
If you asked it in 1520, 1720, 1820, 1920 and 2020 you would get very different answers. The only common bit being the average would probably be a bit below whatever the current population is.
I am unconvinced someone dedicating their lives to studying planning and demographics can come up with a "right" answer, let alone that we all somehow know it inately.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
It's not a magic money tree. If the money is there in a free market then the money is there. If it isn't, it doesn't exist so pay can't sustainably rise regardless of industrial action or anything else.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
You’ll get more Amazon drivers, but the high skilled, higher paid Amazon development work will go elsewhere. The reverse of your plans.
Meanwhile locally you’ll stoke inflation. In the end can’t get something for nothing.
No-one is suggesting that the cost of labour at the top end will rise, the Amazon engineers are competing in a global employment market.
What we will see, is a narrowing of the gap between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile of wages across the economy. “Levelling Up”, if you want a catchy way of saying it.
To understand the difference in experience between the credentialed professions and those at the bottom, you have to understand the following.
In most credential professions (Engineers, Doctors, IT etc) there is a world wide shortage. A number of former "developing" countries are moving to larger and larger service sectors.
This means, that despite almost frantic efforts to expand the education system, worldwide, there will be a shortage of such skilled people for the foreseeable future.
So fo people in these groups, unlimited immigration is a positive - it means they can get enough colleagues to do the job...
There is no world wide shortage of people in lower skilled jobs.
So for people in those groups, unlimited immigration meant downward wage pressure.
This is basic supply and demand economics. And when we train an excess of HGV drivers, supply and demand will dictate that salaries are reduced. That is the simplified version, find me the suitable candidates for training first.
Until an equilibrium is reached. Given the statements from HGV drivers about conditions being a big factor, industry will have to adapt to not treating them like shit, as well as paying them more than local delivery drivers.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
It's not a magic money tree. If the money is there in a free market then the money is there. If it isn't, it doesn't exist so pay can't sustainably rise regardless of industrial action or anything else.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
You’ll get more Amazon drivers, but the high skilled, higher paid Amazon development work will go elsewhere. The reverse of your plans.
Meanwhile locally you’ll stoke inflation. In the end can’t get something for nothing.
No-one is suggesting that the cost of labour at the top end will rise, the Amazon engineers are competing in a global employment market.
What we will see, is a narrowing of the gap between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile of wages across the economy. “Levelling Up”, if you want a catchy way of saying it.
To understand the difference in experience between the credentialed professions and those at the bottom, you have to understand the following.
In most credential professions (Engineers, Doctors, IT etc) there is a world wide shortage. A number of former "developing" countries are moving to larger and larger service sectors.
This means, that despite almost frantic efforts to expand the education system, worldwide, there will be a shortage of such skilled people for the foreseeable future.
So fo people in these groups, unlimited immigration is a positive - it means they can get enough colleagues to do the job...
There is no world wide shortage of people in lower skilled jobs.
So for people in those groups, unlimited immigration meant downward wage pressure.
This is basic supply and demand economics. And when we train an excess of HGV drivers, supply and demand will dictate that salaries are reduced. That is the simplified version, find me the suitable candidates for training first.
Until an equilibrium is reached. Given the statements from HGV drivers about conditions being a big factor, industry will have to adapt to not treating them like shit, as well as paying them more than local delivery drivers.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
To be fair, I think Heath's government tried something like this in 1972. I am sure it must have gone brilliantly.
Barber was printing money like there was no tomorrow....
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
It's not a magic money tree. If the money is there in a free market then the money is there. If it isn't, it doesn't exist so pay can't sustainably rise regardless of industrial action or anything else.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
You’ll get more Amazon drivers, but the high skilled, higher paid Amazon development work will go elsewhere. The reverse of your plans.
Meanwhile locally you’ll stoke inflation. In the end can’t get something for nothing.
No-one is suggesting that the cost of labour at the top end will rise, the Amazon engineers are competing in a global employment market.
What we will see, is a narrowing of the gap between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile of wages across the economy. “Levelling Up”, if you want a catchy way of saying it.
To understand the difference in experience between the credentialed professions and those at the bottom, you have to understand the following.
In most credential professions (Engineers, Doctors, IT etc) there is a world wide shortage. A number of former "developing" countries are moving to larger and larger service sectors.
This means, that despite almost frantic efforts to expand the education system, worldwide, there will be a shortage of such skilled people for the foreseeable future.
So fo people in these groups, unlimited immigration is a positive - it means they can get enough colleagues to do the job...
There is no world wide shortage of people in lower skilled jobs.
So for people in those groups, unlimited immigration meant downward wage pressure.
Absolutely.
Which is why Air China are still paying £300k for airline pilots, even with thousands made redundant elsewhere.
You’ll need to be a five-year wide-body Captain though, with at least 10,000 hours in your log book. Type rating examiner preferred. Oh, and you’ll have to live in China, where professionals are not allowed to ever make a mistake.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
It's not a magic money tree. If the money is there in a free market then the money is there. If it isn't, it doesn't exist so pay can't sustainably rise regardless of industrial action or anything else.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
You’ll get more Amazon drivers, but the high skilled, higher paid Amazon development work will go elsewhere. The reverse of your plans.
Meanwhile locally you’ll stoke inflation. In the end can’t get something for nothing.
No-one is suggesting that the cost of labour at the top end will rise, the Amazon engineers are competing in a global employment market.
What we will see, is a narrowing of the gap between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile of wages across the economy. “Levelling Up”, if you want a catchy way of saying it.
To understand the difference in experience between the credentialed professions and those at the bottom, you have to understand the following.
In most credential professions (Engineers, Doctors, IT etc) there is a world wide shortage. A number of former "developing" countries are moving to larger and larger service sectors.
This means, that despite almost frantic efforts to expand the education system, worldwide, there will be a shortage of such skilled people for the foreseeable future.
So fo people in these groups, unlimited immigration is a positive - it means they can get enough colleagues to do the job...
There is no world wide shortage of people in lower skilled jobs.
So for people in those groups, unlimited immigration meant downward wage pressure.
This is basic supply and demand economics. And when we train an excess of HGV drivers, supply and demand will dictate that salaries are reduced. That is the simplified version, find me the suitable candidates for training first.
Coming down the line is this: we live in a world increasingly moving to mass demand for very high skills, from surgeons to civil engineers etc.
If you ask any (truthful) educationist they will tell you that though education is a fantastic tool of improvement and advance is just is not the case that everyone could be a neuro surgeon, top entrepreneur, Obama and all sorts of other things. Cognitive aptitude places limits on what is humanly possible.
Suppose that as a matter of evolutionary fact there just isn't in the human population enough of those top talents to fill demand? It is a demand there is no reason to think evolution thought it needed to meet.
The fact that the UK has imported, directly or indirectly, a massive proportion of our NHS staff may be more than a terrible moral error (we should be exporting to poorer countries instead), it may be a sign of limits.
I learn so much from PB. Until this morning, I'd never heard of Cranleigh, let alone Cranleigh East. Catching up on the thread, I feel ignorant. The place is so important that I gather China postponed invading Taiwan so as not to disrupt a local election there.
I feel a bit like Dom Raab: "I hadn't quite realised the importance of Cranleigh...."
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
It's not a magic money tree. If the money is there in a free market then the money is there. If it isn't, it doesn't exist so pay can't sustainably rise regardless of industrial action or anything else.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
You’ll get more Amazon drivers, but the high skilled, higher paid Amazon development work will go elsewhere. The reverse of your plans.
Meanwhile locally you’ll stoke inflation. In the end can’t get something for nothing.
No-one is suggesting that the cost of labour at the top end will rise, the Amazon engineers are competing in a global employment market.
What we will see, is a narrowing of the gap between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile of wages across the economy. “Levelling Up”, if you want a catchy way of saying it.
To understand the difference in experience between the credentialed professions and those at the bottom, you have to understand the following.
In most credential professions (Engineers, Doctors, IT etc) there is a world wide shortage. A number of former "developing" countries are moving to larger and larger service sectors.
This means, that despite almost frantic efforts to expand the education system, worldwide, there will be a shortage of such skilled people for the foreseeable future.
So fo people in these groups, unlimited immigration is a positive - it means they can get enough colleagues to do the job...
There is no world wide shortage of people in lower skilled jobs.
So for people in those groups, unlimited immigration meant downward wage pressure.
This is basic supply and demand economics. And when we train an excess of HGV drivers, supply and demand will dictate that salaries are reduced. That is the simplified version, find me the suitable candidates for training first.
Until an equilibrium is reached. Given the statements from HGV drivers about conditions being a big factor, industry will have to adapt to not treating them like shit, as well as paying them more than local delivery drivers.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
It's not a Government scheme. It's basically, very simple economics - if you need staff, as Brexit has limited supply you need to pay more.
But the government need more staff? Or tell us they do? So what is their plan?
On one level, we know the government's plan, because the public sector spending envelope doesn't contain money for major pay rises.
And while the government is pretty much a monopoly employer of nurses, teachers and police officers etc, they can try "take it or leave it" with a reasonable degree of success.
But yes- the free market, which most Conservatives still acknowledge exists, says that if you don't offer enough pay for the work required, you won't get the quantity or quality of people you want.
Which is already happening at the edges. (There are quite a few schools where you shouldn't enquire too closely about the subject knowledge of your child's maths and science teachers.)
But there's a curious blindspot. People who are normally happy to let the free market set wages as high as necessary (see today's Telegraph) really don't like applying that principle to wages paid by the taxpayer.
It's not that curious. We all want to maximize our income and minimise our expenditure. It's just a bit galling seeing the government do it.
In a free market you would not be able to look up pay scales for teachers, NHS workers etc, each person would negotiate their own like a self employed IT expert does. We are miles from that in many fields.
An educated guess suggests that in that state led fields a decent proportion could, in a real free market (which would include unfettered sackability), negotiate more, a decent proportion, less; and a non insignificant minority could negotiate nothing at all.
Yes, I have no problem paying public sector workers more where we need to to attract good (or indeed any) people. That's just the free market working. (I'd pay teachers more, for example, to attract better ones and drive out the worse ones. And I'd also make it easier to pay better or more difficult-to-attract teachers more. I have no idea how this would work in practice, except to note that less monolithic professions don't seem to find it impossible to reward the best employees or most scarce skills in given fields.)
What I don't support is public sector pay being driven up by politics rather than economics.
Public sector pay is generally pretty comfortable - generally to a much greater extent than is realised. I reckon my public sector pension would need a 20% pay rise or more to compensate its loss if I moved into the private sector; I reckon I would also need 5-10% on top of that to compensate the additional hours I would, from experience, in practice end up working. There's also rather better job security in the public sector.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
It's not a Government scheme. It's basically, very simple economics - if you need staff, as Brexit has limited supply you need to pay more.
But the government need more staff? Or tell us they do? So what is their plan?
On one level, we know the government's plan, because the public sector spending envelope doesn't contain money for major pay rises.
And while the government is pretty much a monopoly employer of nurses, teachers and police officers etc, they can try "take it or leave it" with a reasonable degree of success.
But yes- the free market, which most Conservatives still acknowledge exists, says that if you don't offer enough pay for the work required, you won't get the quantity or quality of people you want.
Which is already happening at the edges. (There are quite a few schools where you shouldn't enquire too closely about the subject knowledge of your child's maths and science teachers.)
But there's a curious blindspot. People who are normally happy to let the free market set wages as high as necessary (see today's Telegraph) really don't like applying that principle to wages paid by the taxpayer.
It's not that curious. We all want to maximize our income and minimise our expenditure. It's just a bit galling seeing the government do it.
An even more curious blind spot of the pb free marketeers is that in the past they have objected to payoffs for sacked football managers. As with the police, I think there are some who instinctively dislike big money going to the working class made good, and Pep never went to Oxbridge.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
It's not a magic money tree. If the money is there in a free market then the money is there. If it isn't, it doesn't exist so pay can't sustainably rise regardless of industrial action or anything else.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
You’ll get more Amazon drivers, but the high skilled, higher paid Amazon development work will go elsewhere. The reverse of your plans.
Meanwhile locally you’ll stoke inflation. In the end can’t get something for nothing.
No-one is suggesting that the cost of labour at the top end will rise, the Amazon engineers are competing in a global employment market.
What we will see, is a narrowing of the gap between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile of wages across the economy. “Levelling Up”, if you want a catchy way of saying it.
To understand the difference in experience between the credentialed professions and those at the bottom, you have to understand the following.
In most credential professions (Engineers, Doctors, IT etc) there is a world wide shortage. A number of former "developing" countries are moving to larger and larger service sectors.
This means, that despite almost frantic efforts to expand the education system, worldwide, there will be a shortage of such skilled people for the foreseeable future.
So fo people in these groups, unlimited immigration is a positive - it means they can get enough colleagues to do the job...
There is no world wide shortage of people in lower skilled jobs.
So for people in those groups, unlimited immigration meant downward wage pressure.
This is basic supply and demand economics. And when we train an excess of HGV drivers, supply and demand will dictate that salaries are reduced. That is the simplified version, find me the suitable candidates for training first.
Until an equilibrium is reached. Given the statements from HGV drivers about conditions being a big factor, industry will have to adapt to not treating them like shit, as well as paying them more than local delivery drivers.
This is a remarkable volte face from the Conservatives. They'll be advocating the promotion of trade unions next.
If you want to see the flip side to this "we are on the side of the peasants nonsense" catch JRM's confrontation with the guy with cerebral palsy. He had a job, he wants a job but government cuts via LA austerity removed his job. Poor old Jacob was wonderfully polite, but had no understanding of what was going on. Until I saw that clip, I had desensitised myself as to the utter bollocks Conservatives spout. Unfortunately the alternatives are all witheringly useless too.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
It's not a Government scheme. It's basically, very simple economics - if you need staff, as Brexit has limited supply you need to pay more.
But the government need more staff? Or tell us they do? So what is their plan?
On one level, we know the government's plan, because the public sector spending envelope doesn't contain money for major pay rises.
And while the government is pretty much a monopoly employer of nurses, teachers and police officers etc, they can try "take it or leave it" with a reasonable degree of success.
But yes- the free market, which most Conservatives still acknowledge exists, says that if you don't offer enough pay for the work required, you won't get the quantity or quality of people you want.
Which is already happening at the edges. (There are quite a few schools where you shouldn't enquire too closely about the subject knowledge of your child's maths and science teachers.)
But there's a curious blindspot. People who are normally happy to let the free market set wages as high as necessary (see today's Telegraph) really don't like applying that principle to wages paid by the taxpayer.
It's not that curious. We all want to maximize our income and minimise our expenditure. It's just a bit galling seeing the government do it.
An even more curious blind spot of the pb free marketeers is that in the past they have objected to payoffs for sacked football managers. As with the police, I think there are some who instinctively dislike big money going to the working class made good, and Pep never went to Oxbridge.
Actually, if you studied in Oxford in the late 80s or early 90s (when I was growing up there), there was evidence right in front of your face that either the police were in collision with criminals or on the payroll.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
In the big picture higher wages in London meaning that firms open up elsewhere is a classic example of free markets working. London already relies over heavily on the indirect protectionism of the assumption that all sorts of activities must have headquarters based in London.
Also, the UK population is now about 67m. In 30 years it has increased by 10m, without the birthrate being at or above replacement levels. Despite the increase loads of employers are saying 'we can't get the staff'.
When large numbers of people come in from elsewhere to fill those gaps, they then need the services of still more as demands on society increase with a larger population (ask the NHS).
As a model this is potentially without limit. Which means that at some point either the model explodes through recession and poverty, forcing the reverse process, or the politics means that someone like Boris has to apply a brake.
Yes.
The issue is (and was), I think, that an equilibrium wasn't reached. The UK model worked as long as there were large numbers of relatively low skilled people available to "conveyer" through the low paid/poor condition jobs.
What was interesting was the reaction when you asked things such as "what should the population of the UK be?"
Why would your average citizen have an instinctive good view of what the population of the UK should be.
If you asked it in 1520, 1720, 1820, 1920 and 2020 you would get very different answers. The only common bit being the average would probably be a bit below whatever the current population is.
I am unconvinced someone dedicating their lives to studying planning and demographics can come up with a "right" answer, let alone that we all somehow know it inately.
Apparently, we have plans for the roads to be built, plans for the trains, plans for the hospitals.
For population we scratch our heads, and shrug. Then ban building more houses.....
Population isn't an unconstrained free market item.
Most of the other parameters in our lives are constrained and regulated.
On housing. If so many Europeans have left UK recently why isnt there an abundance of empty accommodation? Have they just been occupied by Brits at half the density?
For those celebrating the idea of pay freezes in the public sector this morning, go and look in to the point I raised recently about planning officers.
Current wage as public sector employee - £40k per year. Current wage as contractor to public sector - over £100k per year.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
In the big picture higher wages in London meaning that firms open up elsewhere is a classic example of free markets working. London already relies over heavily on the indirect protectionism of the assumption that all sorts of activities must have headquarters based in London.
Also, the UK population is now about 67m. In 30 years it has increased by 10m, without the birthrate being at or above replacement levels. Despite the increase loads of employers are saying 'we can't get the staff'.
When large numbers of people come in from elsewhere to fill those gaps, they then need the services of still more as demands on society increase with a larger population (ask the NHS).
As a model this is potentially without limit. Which means that at some point either the model explodes through recession and poverty, forcing the reverse process, or the politics means that someone like Boris has to apply a brake.
Yes.
The issue is (and was), I think, that an equilibrium wasn't reached. The UK model worked as long as there were large numbers of relatively low skilled people available to "conveyer" through the low paid/poor condition jobs.
What was interesting was the reaction when you asked things such as "what should the population of the UK be?"
Why would your average citizen have an instinctive good view of what the population of the UK should be.
If you asked it in 1520, 1720, 1820, 1920 and 2020 you would get very different answers. The only common bit being the average would probably be a bit below whatever the current population is.
I am unconvinced someone dedicating their lives to studying planning and demographics can come up with a "right" answer, let alone that we all somehow know it inately.
My answer: Zero
There is no chance of a right answer. There is politics and economics and the laws of reality. The continuous population growth picture, with supply creating demand, and demand creating supply (which has been around as a possibility since the invention of farming) is a fact, not an answer. It is, in itself, of course an excellent thing.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
It's not a Government scheme. It's basically, very simple economics - if you need staff, as Brexit has limited supply you need to pay more.
But the government need more staff? Or tell us they do? So what is their plan?
On one level, we know the government's plan, because the public sector spending envelope doesn't contain money for major pay rises.
And while the government is pretty much a monopoly employer of nurses, teachers and police officers etc, they can try "take it or leave it" with a reasonable degree of success.
But yes- the free market, which most Conservatives still acknowledge exists, says that if you don't offer enough pay for the work required, you won't get the quantity or quality of people you want.
Which is already happening at the edges. (There are quite a few schools where you shouldn't enquire too closely about the subject knowledge of your child's maths and science teachers.)
But there's a curious blindspot. People who are normally happy to let the free market set wages as high as necessary (see today's Telegraph) really don't like applying that principle to wages paid by the taxpayer.
It's not that curious. We all want to maximize our income and minimise our expenditure. It's just a bit galling seeing the government do it.
In a free market you would not be able to look up pay scales for teachers, NHS workers etc, each person would negotiate their own like a self employed IT expert does. We are miles from that in many fields.
An educated guess suggests that in that state led fields a decent proportion could, in a real free market (which would include unfettered sackability), negotiate more, a decent proportion, less; and a non insignificant minority could negotiate nothing at all.
Yes, I have no problem paying public sector workers more where we need to to attract good (or indeed any) people. That's just the free market working. (I'd pay teachers more, for example, to attract better ones and drive out the worse ones. And I'd also make it easier to pay better or more difficult-to-attract teachers more. I have no idea how this would work in practice, except to note that less monolithic professions don't seem to find it impossible to reward the best employees or most scarce skills in given fields.)
What I don't support is public sector pay being driven up by politics rather than economics.
Public sector pay is generally pretty comfortable - generally to a much greater extent than is realised. I reckon my public sector pension would need a 20% pay rise or more to compensate its loss if I moved into the private sector; I reckon I would also need 5-10% on top of that to compensate the additional hours I would, from experience, in practice end up working. There's also rather better job security in the public sector.
There also appears to be little understanding within the public sector, of how private sector employment has developed over the past dozen or so years, since the last recession. Millions of private sector workers have seen their pay stagnate for a decade, for many people in money terms rather than real terms.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
It's not a magic money tree. If the money is there in a free market then the money is there. If it isn't, it doesn't exist so pay can't sustainably rise regardless of industrial action or anything else.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
You’ll get more Amazon drivers, but the high skilled, higher paid Amazon development work will go elsewhere. The reverse of your plans.
Meanwhile locally you’ll stoke inflation. In the end can’t get something for nothing.
No-one is suggesting that the cost of labour at the top end will rise, the Amazon engineers are competing in a global employment market.
What we will see, is a narrowing of the gap between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile of wages across the economy. “Levelling Up”, if you want a catchy way of saying it.
To understand the difference in experience between the credentialed professions and those at the bottom, you have to understand the following.
In most credential professions (Engineers, Doctors, IT etc) there is a world wide shortage. A number of former "developing" countries are moving to larger and larger service sectors.
This means, that despite almost frantic efforts to expand the education system, worldwide, there will be a shortage of such skilled people for the foreseeable future.
So fo people in these groups, unlimited immigration is a positive - it means they can get enough colleagues to do the job...
There is no world wide shortage of people in lower skilled jobs.
So for people in those groups, unlimited immigration meant downward wage pressure.
This is basic supply and demand economics. And when we train an excess of HGV drivers, supply and demand will dictate that salaries are reduced. That is the simplified version, find me the suitable candidates for training first.
Coming down the line is this: we live in a world increasingly moving to mass demand for very high skills, from surgeons to civil engineers etc.
If you ask any (truthful) educationist they will tell you that though education is a fantastic tool of improvement and advance is just is not the case that everyone could be a neuro surgeon, top entrepreneur, Obama and all sorts of other things. Cognitive aptitude places limits on what is humanly possible.
Suppose that as a matter of evolutionary fact there just isn't in the human population enough of those top talents to fill demand? It is a demand there is no reason to think evolution thought it needed to meet.
The fact that the UK has imported, directly or indirectly, a massive proportion of our NHS staff may be more than a terrible moral error (we should be exporting to poorer countries instead), it may be a sign of limits.
My impression is that other similar countries to the UK (Germany or France, say) have much higher per capita numbers of domestically trained doctors and nurses.
I think rationing of training spaces due to Treasury penny-pinching is a better explanation for our imports of healthcare workers, than reaching an intrinsic limit on the number of people with the necessary potential.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
It's not a magic money tree. If the money is there in a free market then the money is there. If it isn't, it doesn't exist so pay can't sustainably rise regardless of industrial action or anything else.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
You’ll get more Amazon drivers, but the high skilled, higher paid Amazon development work will go elsewhere. The reverse of your plans.
Meanwhile locally you’ll stoke inflation. In the end can’t get something for nothing.
No-one is suggesting that the cost of labour at the top end will rise, the Amazon engineers are competing in a global employment market.
What we will see, is a narrowing of the gap between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile of wages across the economy. “Levelling Up”, if you want a catchy way of saying it.
To understand the difference in experience between the credentialed professions and those at the bottom, you have to understand the following.
In most credential professions (Engineers, Doctors, IT etc) there is a world wide shortage. A number of former "developing" countries are moving to larger and larger service sectors.
This means, that despite almost frantic efforts to expand the education system, worldwide, there will be a shortage of such skilled people for the foreseeable future.
So fo people in these groups, unlimited immigration is a positive - it means they can get enough colleagues to do the job...
There is no world wide shortage of people in lower skilled jobs.
So for people in those groups, unlimited immigration meant downward wage pressure.
This is basic supply and demand economics. And when we train an excess of HGV drivers, supply and demand will dictate that salaries are reduced. That is the simplified version, find me the suitable candidates for training first.
Coming down the line is this: we live in a world increasingly moving to mass demand for very high skills, from surgeons to civil engineers etc.
If you ask any (truthful) educationist they will tell you that though education is a fantastic tool of improvement and advance is just is not the case that everyone could be a neuro surgeon, top entrepreneur, Obama and all sorts of other things. Cognitive aptitude places limits on what is humanly possible.
Suppose that as a matter of evolutionary fact there just isn't in the human population enough of those top talents to fill demand? It is a demand there is no reason to think evolution thought it needed to meet.
The fact that the UK has imported, directly or indirectly, a massive proportion of our NHS staff may be more than a terrible moral error (we should be exporting to poorer countries instead), it may be a sign of limits.
Your last point is too simplistic - people are not things that are imported and exported. In reality, the NHS staff who come here from other countries often continue to be involved with their country of origin. I personally know a Indian doctor who came to the UK a couple of decades ago and has recently returned to India to use the skills and connections he acquired here to help establish a new hospital there.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
In the big picture higher wages in London meaning that firms open up elsewhere is a classic example of free markets working. London already relies over heavily on the indirect protectionism of the assumption that all sorts of activities must have headquarters based in London.
Also, the UK population is now about 67m. In 30 years it has increased by 10m, without the birthrate being at or above replacement levels. Despite the increase loads of employers are saying 'we can't get the staff'.
When large numbers of people come in from elsewhere to fill those gaps, they then need the services of still more as demands on society increase with a larger population (ask the NHS).
As a model this is potentially without limit. Which means that at some point either the model explodes through recession and poverty, forcing the reverse process, or the politics means that someone like Boris has to apply a brake.
Yes.
The issue is (and was), I think, that an equilibrium wasn't reached. The UK model worked as long as there were large numbers of relatively low skilled people available to "conveyer" through the low paid/poor condition jobs.
What was interesting was the reaction when you asked things such as "what should the population of the UK be?"
Why would your average citizen have an instinctive good view of what the population of the UK should be.
If you asked it in 1520, 1720, 1820, 1920 and 2020 you would get very different answers. The only common bit being the average would probably be a bit below whatever the current population is.
I am unconvinced someone dedicating their lives to studying planning and demographics can come up with a "right" answer, let alone that we all somehow know it inately.
Apparently, we have plans for the roads to be built, plans for the trains, plans for the hospitals.
For population we scratch our heads, and shrug. Then ban building more houses.....
Population isn't an unconstrained free market item.
Most of the other parameters in our lives are constrained and regulated.
On housing. If so many Europeans have left UK recently why isnt there an abundance of empty accommodation? Have they just been occupied by Brits at half the density?
Anecdotally, a lot of empty multi-person garden sheds.....
There’s no such thing as an economy with just high skilled high paid workers . And this latest guff from Bozo is just the new mantra from the government which has decided this is the best way of deflecting from their mess .
Effectively what will happen is prices will go up , firms will invest less and you could end up with a period of high inflation and wage growth never managing to overcome that .
The Cons have made this an all or nothing argument re what they perceive as low skilled immigration . They are simply ignoring the fact that there’s a section of the public who are unemployable and some Brits look down on certain jobs .
F1: Turkey's markets are up. Sadly, the weather forecast is dry.
I see there's talk of VW entering the sport in the next couple of years. Would make sense, as F1 is transitioning to carbon neutral fuels - which in the medium term will mean synthetic fuels.
Porsche is building a pilot plant in Chile (home of the world's most plentiful and cheapest wind power). https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/2021/company/porsche-construction-begins-commercial-plant-production-co2-neutral-fuel-chile-25683.html ...The Haru Oni project takes advantage of the perfect climatic conditions for wind energy in Magallanes province in southern Chile to produce the virtually carbon-neutral fuel using low-cost green wind power. In the first step, electrolysers split water into oxygen and green hydrogen using wind power. CO2 is then filtered from the air and combined with the green hydrogen to produce synthetic methanol, which in turn is converted into eFuel. The pilot plant is scheduled to start production in mid-2022. In addition to Siemens Energy, Porsche and HIF, Enel, ExxonMobil, Gasco and ENAP are participating in the Haru Oni project.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
In the big picture higher wages in London meaning that firms open up elsewhere is a classic example of free markets working. London already relies over heavily on the indirect protectionism of the assumption that all sorts of activities must have headquarters based in London.
Also, the UK population is now about 67m. In 30 years it has increased by 10m, without the birthrate being at or above replacement levels. Despite the increase loads of employers are saying 'we can't get the staff'.
When large numbers of people come in from elsewhere to fill those gaps, they then need the services of still more as demands on society increase with a larger population (ask the NHS).
As a model this is potentially without limit. Which means that at some point either the model explodes through recession and poverty, forcing the reverse process, or the politics means that someone like Boris has to apply a brake.
Yes.
The issue is (and was), I think, that an equilibrium wasn't reached. The UK model worked as long as there were large numbers of relatively low skilled people available to "conveyer" through the low paid/poor condition jobs.
What was interesting was the reaction when you asked things such as "what should the population of the UK be?"
Why would your average citizen have an instinctive good view of what the population of the UK should be.
If you asked it in 1520, 1720, 1820, 1920 and 2020 you would get very different answers. The only common bit being the average would probably be a bit below whatever the current population is.
I am unconvinced someone dedicating their lives to studying planning and demographics can come up with a "right" answer, let alone that we all somehow know it inately.
Apparently, we have plans for the roads to be built, plans for the trains, plans for the hospitals.
For population we scratch our heads, and shrug. Then ban building more houses.....
Population isn't an unconstrained free market item.
Most of the other parameters in our lives are constrained and regulated.
Well indeed, goods are a commodity to be moved.
Some people seem to have formed a view that people are a commodity too. They view it as incomprehensible that its OK to be shipping goods, but not people.
A concept that should have died with the death of the triangular trade.
So Keir Starmer thought the best way of getting more HGV drivers was to offer 100k visas not improve pay and conditions.
Has there ever been a Labour politician so far out of touch with working class reality ?
Yes, Jeremy Corbyn. But your boys, the new working class political warriors are equally away with the fairies. I cite the JRM confrontation with the cerebral palsy guy again.
£52,000 for wallpaper, as an asdide, is not exactly down with the peasants now is it. Time to go and earn my shilling with the rest of the hoi polloi.
P.S. Johnson also went along with the temporary visas thing, and now only 127 have applied he's a soothsaying genius?
For those celebrating the idea of pay freezes in the public sector this morning, go and look in to the point I raised recently about planning officers.
Current wage as public sector employee - £40k per year. Current wage as contractor to public sector - over £100k per year.
True but very much a southern issue.
Equally £40k a lot isn't much after a 5 year (well 4+ gap year) degree with 5+ years of experience.
Time for a full frontal attack by Starmer on Brexit and those responsible for it. I'm sensing from vox pops and various news programs that there is not only a feeling that we made a grave error but a fear that it's going to do us irreparable damage
Already it seems no one remembers why we did it. It's time for Starmer to remind them. It doesn't have to be a drive to return to full membership but it has to re-expose the bullshit. There's a lot of open discontent and Starmer has the perfect opportunity to pin the blame where it belongs.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
It's not a magic money tree. If the money is there in a free market then the money is there. If it isn't, it doesn't exist so pay can't sustainably rise regardless of industrial action or anything else.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
You’ll get more Amazon drivers, but the high skilled, higher paid Amazon development work will go elsewhere. The reverse of your plans.
Meanwhile locally you’ll stoke inflation. In the end can’t get something for nothing.
No-one is suggesting that the cost of labour at the top end will rise, the Amazon engineers are competing in a global employment market.
What we will see, is a narrowing of the gap between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile of wages across the economy. “Levelling Up”, if you want a catchy way of saying it.
To understand the difference in experience between the credentialed professions and those at the bottom, you have to understand the following.
In most credential professions (Engineers, Doctors, IT etc) there is a world wide shortage. A number of former "developing" countries are moving to larger and larger service sectors.
This means, that despite almost frantic efforts to expand the education system, worldwide, there will be a shortage of such skilled people for the foreseeable future.
So fo people in these groups, unlimited immigration is a positive - it means they can get enough colleagues to do the job...
There is no world wide shortage of people in lower skilled jobs.
So for people in those groups, unlimited immigration meant downward wage pressure.
This is basic supply and demand economics. And when we train an excess of HGV drivers, supply and demand will dictate that salaries are reduced. That is the simplified version, find me the suitable candidates for training first.
Coming down the line is this: we live in a world increasingly moving to mass demand for very high skills, from surgeons to civil engineers etc.
If you ask any (truthful) educationist they will tell you that though education is a fantastic tool of improvement and advance is just is not the case that everyone could be a neuro surgeon, top entrepreneur, Obama and all sorts of other things. Cognitive aptitude places limits on what is humanly possible.
Suppose that as a matter of evolutionary fact there just isn't in the human population enough of those top talents to fill demand? It is a demand there is no reason to think evolution thought it needed to meet.
The fact that the UK has imported, directly or indirectly, a massive proportion of our NHS staff may be more than a terrible moral error (we should be exporting to poorer countries instead), it may be a sign of limits.
My impression is that other similar countries to the UK (Germany or France, say) have much higher per capita numbers of domestically trained doctors and nurses.
I think rationing of training spaces due to Treasury penny-pinching is a better explanation for our imports of healthcare workers, than reaching an intrinsic limit on the number of people with the necessary potential.
FREE POLICY FOR STARMER
During the COVID epidemic, due to EvulToryStupidity, many universities increased their course sizes by 20%. In the medical courses, this means that in 3 years time there will be more medical graduates than training places in the NHS. We will literally be throwing doctors and nurses away. And there is a staff shortage in the NHS.
So...
1) Keep the expanded medical courses. 2) Fund the training places to match 3) Going forward, promise to create places for at least 95% of the predicted demand for NHS staff.
Watching the contortions on that one from opponents would be.... interesting.
For those celebrating the idea of pay freezes in the public sector this morning, go and look in to the point I raised recently about planning officers.
Current wage as public sector employee - £40k per year. Current wage as contractor to public sector - over £100k per year.
The contractor being self-employed, possibly inside IR35, having to pay their own Employer NI, with no holidays, pension and on short-term contracts so often without income.
In my field (IT), double the employee rate is a good ballpark, but IR35 effects are widening the gap.
So Keir Starmer thought the best way of getting more HGV drivers was to offer 100k visas not improve pay and conditions.
Has there ever been a Labour politician so far out of touch with working class reality ?
Not just that, a 100,000 agricultural workers and 100,000 hospitality workers and as many as needed elsewhere
It is the freedom of movement story all over again and I think any party going down that route will find itself struggling for votes
However, I do maintain there is a place for the lib dems to come out openly and say they will rejoin the EU, as it is their longer term aim, but then that would require honesty from them
There’s no such thing as an economy with just high skilled high paid workers . And this latest guff from Bozo is just the new mantra from the government which has decided this is the best way of deflecting from their mess .
Effectively what will happen is prices will go up , firms will invest less and you could end up with a period of high inflation and wage growth never managing to overcome that .
The Cons have made this an all or nothing argument re what they perceive as low skilled immigration . They are simply ignoring the fact that there’s a section of the public who are unemployable and some Brits look down on certain jobs .
It’s not just about what salary is offered .
As always you've got this totally backwards.
If costs for people (wages) go up then firms are incentivised to invest more, not less. It becomes cheaper to have one person with a professional tool do the job, instead of four people with manual labour.
And as time goes on skills do go up. As much as some people think its fine to look down their noses at the "low skilled" in this country, the literacy rate in this nation is 99% and once upon a time every single one of those 99% would have been considered "skilled".
That's the reason we have universal education. There isn't really a section of the country that is employable, the people who are generally unemployable are a teeny tiny proportion of the sort living at care homes etc - and if people look down on certain jobs then those jobs will need to improve their pay and conditions to attract workers.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
It's not a Government scheme. It's basically, very simple economics - if you need staff, as Brexit has limited supply you need to pay more.
But the government need more staff? Or tell us they do? So what is their plan?
On one level, we know the government's plan, because the public sector spending envelope doesn't contain money for major pay rises.
And while the government is pretty much a monopoly employer of nurses, teachers and police officers etc, they can try "take it or leave it" with a reasonable degree of success.
But yes- the free market, which most Conservatives still acknowledge exists, says that if you don't offer enough pay for the work required, you won't get the quantity or quality of people you want.
Which is already happening at the edges. (There are quite a few schools where you shouldn't enquire too closely about the subject knowledge of your child's maths and science teachers.)
But there's a curious blindspot. People who are normally happy to let the free market set wages as high as necessary (see today's Telegraph) really don't like applying that principle to wages paid by the taxpayer.
It's not that curious. We all want to maximize our income and minimise our expenditure. It's just a bit galling seeing the government do it.
In a free market you would not be able to look up pay scales for teachers, NHS workers etc, each person would negotiate their own like a self employed IT expert does. We are miles from that in many fields.
An educated guess suggests that in that state led fields a decent proportion could, in a real free market (which would include unfettered sackability), negotiate more, a decent proportion, less; and a non insignificant minority could negotiate nothing at all.
Yes, I have no problem paying public sector workers more where we need to to attract good (or indeed any) people. That's just the free market working. (I'd pay teachers more, for example, to attract better ones and drive out the worse ones. And I'd also make it easier to pay better or more difficult-to-attract teachers more. I have no idea how this would work in practice, except to note that less monolithic professions don't seem to find it impossible to reward the best employees or most scarce skills in given fields.)
What I don't support is public sector pay being driven up by politics rather than economics.
Public sector pay is generally pretty comfortable - generally to a much greater extent than is realised. I reckon my public sector pension would need a 20% pay rise or more to compensate its loss if I moved into the private sector; I reckon I would also need 5-10% on top of that to compensate the additional hours I would, from experience, in practice end up working. There's also rather better job security in the public sector.
I think they should allow public sector workers to opt out of the pension scheme and the government up their pay by what it's worth. That might highlight the difference.
NHS anecdote. My wife took handover from the night nurse yesterday morning. She asked her if she was back in that night. "I'm meant to be but I'm not coming in". So that's a massive agency nurse bill for the NHS.
There’s no such thing as an economy with just high skilled high paid workers . And this latest guff from Bozo is just the new mantra from the government which has decided this is the best way of deflecting from their mess .
Effectively what will happen is prices will go up , firms will invest less and you could end up with a period of high inflation and wage growth never managing to overcome that .
The Cons have made this an all or nothing argument re what they perceive as low skilled immigration . They are simply ignoring the fact that there’s a section of the public who are unemployable and some Brits look down on certain jobs .
It’s not just about what salary is offered .
If so, explain why, in every single job category that data is available for, "Brits" are the vast majority of the workforce. Especially those jobs that they are supposed not to want to do....
PS. 'Blair and Brown' on TV was excellent. If Stamer needs a template it's there in plain sight. Be modern. Be outward looking and leave the Corbyns and the Johnsons in your wake.
Comments
Political reality is not simple, even if some want it to be.
Told me there's a chronic shortage of drivers: basically lots of them left the UK with Brexit and covid.
A rebalancing as private sector wages rise would see HMG gain tax rises as much of the increased pay goes to HMRC in increased NI, Income Tax and potentially reduced welfare. That increased tax revenues can support public sector salaries.
F1: Turkey's markets are up. Sadly, the weather forecast is dry.
The only way for public sector pay rises to be affordable is for tax revenues to increase.
The way for tax revenues to increase is to see public sector incomes rise.
Do that and today's public sector pay can be affordable as a first step. As a second step, pay rises could become affordable.
Funny how you see the private sector pay growing, which can pay for public sector pay, as a negative and rather than a positive.
Those waiting lists are not coming down if there are no staff.
As for the economy generally, of course where we are is a bad place to start from, so yes I expect pain in the next few years. It will hit many of us in different ways, government policy can choose to an extent who is protected, who gains and who suffers, but compared to average times more will suffer than normal regardless of what decisions government makes.
It does occur to me that I may never step foot inside our office again. I just filled out a survey for the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority basically saying that.
He was very, very scathing about the government's inability to think about long term consequences of COVID policy before implementing them. The wife was similarly scathing about furlough. Tbh, so am I, it's lengthened the pandemic measures by 6 months and slowed our economic recovery down with 1.5m people happy to sit on their arses taking 80% rather than go out and get a new job.
If private sector pay is minimum wage jobs that are given in-work benefits like housing benefit and tax credits or universal credit then that's a drain on the Exchequer its not funding it to pay for the public sector.
Low pay earners seeing their pay go up sees the state's benefits bills go down, and tax revenues go up, which affords public sector pay rises. Good riddance to the era of importing people to do minimum wage jobs, then having the state give them benefits to do so.
Private sector employment is higher as a percentage in London and SE England.
Higher wages in particular sectors don't automatically mean higher productivity or productive investment (which seems to be assumed), and the potential economic disruption is being largely dismissed.
It might work; but equally it might be the 1970s redux.
Strikes were attempts to distort the market. You can't buck the market in the long run.
Free markets can fail say senior tories.
Who knew?
Seismic times in Thatcher's old party. I think we may be witnessing an incredible sea change.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
And while the government is pretty much a monopoly employer of nurses, teachers and police officers etc, they can try "take it or leave it" with a reasonable degree of success.
But yes- the free market, which most Conservatives still acknowledge exists, says that if you don't offer enough pay for the work required, you won't get the quantity or quality of people you want.
Which is already happening at the edges. (There are quite a few schools where you shouldn't enquire too closely about the subject knowledge of your child's maths and science teachers.)
But there's a curious blindspot. People who are normally happy to let the free market set wages as high as necessary (see today's Telegraph) really don't like applying that principle to wages paid by the taxpayer.
It's not that curious. We all want to maximize our income and minimise our expenditure. It's just a bit galling seeing the government do it.
Re my comment last night about your 'lived experience', I was trolling you, yes. I wouldn't normally do that, but I was a bit vexed by your mischaracterisation of my comments earlier. I thought it might trigger you, but it was a bit of a low blow as it also masked the serious point that if your experience (I do find the 'lived' redundant - it's just 'experience') is that your political views have led to discrimination at work then that sucks. We can argue about studies as much as we like and whether or not there is a widespread problem, but if it's happened to you then that's bad.
On Kaufmann, I can offer you a more detailed critique of one of his studies in this area, if you like. I'll only do so if you would be genuinely interested - please tag me if so, so I don't miss it. Given the above, maybe it's not that relevant. Discrediting a study does not prove there is no problem any more than a poor quality study proves there is one.
I would, genuinely, like to see good research in this area. However, I think that would need a comprehensive survey of attitudes and experiences in academia and it would be expensive and take a lot of time and effort and could still fail* - I'm not sure who would fund that. It would look a bit like the extreme navel gazing in the ivory towers...
*Even the best planned and funded studies can really struggle with recruitment and a representative sample.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
If the plebs get a pay rise and can look after themselves they'd have no reason to vote for socialism. Oh dear, what a shame.
Also, the UK population is now about 67m. In 30 years it has increased by 10m, without the birthrate being at or above replacement levels. Despite the increase loads of employers are saying 'we can't get the staff'.
When large numbers of people come in from elsewhere to fill those gaps, they then need the services of still more as demands on society increase with a larger population (ask the NHS).
As a model this is potentially without limit. Which means that at some point either the model explodes through recession and poverty, forcing the reverse process, or the politics means that someone like Boris has to apply a brake.
Contact with the actual NHS shows wildly varying levels of service. Because humans.
Meanwhile locally you’ll stoke inflation. In the end can’t get something for nothing.
What we will see, is a narrowing of the gap between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile of wages across the economy. “Levelling Up”, if you want a catchy way of saying it.
The issue is (and was), I think, that an equilibrium wasn't reached. The UK model worked as long as there were large numbers of relatively low skilled people available to "conveyer" through the low paid/poor condition jobs.
What was interesting was the reaction when you asked things such as "what should the population of the UK be?"
If Labour win, they will get no credit from the actions they will have to take to clear up the mess (a bit like 1974).
There is rather a large crock talked about on here by people who wouldn't get out of bed for less than £100k a year.
An educated guess suggests that in that state led fields a decent proportion could, in a real free market (which would include unfettered sackability), negotiate more, a decent proportion, less; and a non insignificant minority could negotiate nothing at all.
If you asked it in 1520, 1720, 1820, 1920 and 2020 you would get very different answers. The only common bit being the average would probably be a bit below whatever the current population is.
I am unconvinced someone dedicating their lives to studying planning and demographics can come up with a "right" answer, let alone that we all somehow know it inately.
In most credential professions (Engineers, Doctors, IT etc) there is a world wide shortage. A number of former "developing" countries are moving to larger and larger service sectors.
This means, that despite almost frantic efforts to expand the education system, worldwide, there will be a shortage of such skilled people for the foreseeable future.
So fo people in these groups, unlimited immigration is a positive - it means they can get enough colleagues to do the job...
There is no world wide shortage of people in lower skilled jobs.
So for people in those groups, unlimited immigration meant downward wage pressure.
Do most of them believe any of this stuff? Or just parroting Johnson's latest gamble in hope of promotion?
I mean John Redwood must be close to combusting looking at the comments in that Telegraph piece.
Boris wasn't all that good this morning on R4. OTOH he is in the middle of taking a risky and unsafe course with the public fed up by Covid, politics, weather, economics and crimes. So there isn't much he can do except ride the storm.
Johnson's government however has restricted immigration compared to previous governments by ending free movement from the EEA and ensuring all migrants to the UK have to meet the skills criteria of the points system. That will in turn reduce the supply of labour, especially of low skilled workers and thus increase wages, which is what Leavers voted for in 2016 and Tory voters voted for in 2019. It will also force businesses to invest more in their workers to improve their productivity and get more out of their higher wages
For population we scratch our heads, and shrug. Then ban building more houses.....
Population isn't an unconstrained free market item.
Most of the other parameters in our lives are constrained and regulated.
Last night's programme on BBC2 on Blair and Brown showed quite clearly that while John Smith and Brown would have beaten Major's Tories too in 1997 they would not have won the landslide Blair did for Labour in 1997 as they would not have made the changes from Labour to New Labour needed to convince enough centrist Tories to vote Labour for the first time.
Blair was a once in a century Labour leader with appeal to Tories and swing voters I doubt I will see again in my lifetime
Which is why Air China are still paying £300k for airline pilots, even with thousands made redundant elsewhere.
You’ll need to be a five-year wide-body Captain though, with at least 10,000 hours in your log book. Type rating examiner preferred. Oh, and you’ll have to live in China, where professionals are not allowed to ever make a mistake.
If you ask any (truthful) educationist they will tell you that though education is a fantastic tool of improvement and advance is just is not the case that everyone could be a neuro surgeon, top entrepreneur, Obama and all sorts of other things. Cognitive aptitude places limits on what is humanly possible.
Suppose that as a matter of evolutionary fact there just isn't in the human population enough of those top talents to fill demand? It is a demand there is no reason to think evolution thought it needed to meet.
The fact that the UK has imported, directly or indirectly, a massive proportion of our NHS staff may be more than a terrible moral error (we should be exporting to poorer countries instead), it may be a sign of limits.
I feel a bit like Dom Raab: "I hadn't quite realised the importance of Cranleigh...."
What I don't support is public sector pay being driven up by politics rather than economics.
Public sector pay is generally pretty comfortable - generally to a much greater extent than is realised. I reckon my public sector pension would need a 20% pay rise or more to compensate its loss if I moved into the private sector; I reckon I would also need 5-10% on top of that to compensate the additional hours I would, from experience, in practice end up working. There's also rather better job security in the public sector.
Has there ever been a Labour politician so far out of touch with working class reality ?
If you want to see the flip side to this "we are on the side of the peasants nonsense" catch JRM's confrontation with the guy with cerebral palsy. He had a job, he wants a job but government cuts via LA austerity removed his job. Poor old Jacob was wonderfully polite, but had no understanding of what was going on. Until I saw that clip, I had desensitised myself as to the utter bollocks Conservatives spout. Unfortunately the alternatives are all witheringly useless too.
Current wage as public sector employee - £40k per year.
Current wage as contractor to public sector - over £100k per year.
I think rationing of training spaces due to Treasury penny-pinching is a better explanation for our imports of healthcare workers, than reaching an intrinsic limit on the number of people with the necessary potential.
Effectively what will happen is prices will go up , firms will invest less and you could end up with a period of high inflation and wage growth never managing to overcome that .
The Cons have made this an all or nothing argument re what they perceive as low skilled immigration . They are simply ignoring the fact that there’s a section of the public who are unemployable and some Brits look down on certain jobs .
It’s not just about what salary is offered .
Would make sense, as F1 is transitioning to carbon neutral fuels - which in the medium term will mean synthetic fuels.
Porsche is building a pilot plant in Chile (home of the world's most plentiful and cheapest wind power).
https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/2021/company/porsche-construction-begins-commercial-plant-production-co2-neutral-fuel-chile-25683.html
...The Haru Oni project takes advantage of the perfect climatic conditions for wind energy in Magallanes province in southern Chile to produce the virtually carbon-neutral fuel using low-cost green wind power. In the first step, electrolysers split water into oxygen and green hydrogen using wind power. CO2 is then filtered from the air and combined with the green hydrogen to produce synthetic methanol, which in turn is converted into eFuel. The pilot plant is scheduled to start production in mid-2022. In addition to Siemens Energy, Porsche and HIF, Enel, ExxonMobil, Gasco and ENAP are participating in the Haru Oni project.
Some people seem to have formed a view that people are a commodity too. They view it as incomprehensible that its OK to be shipping goods, but not people.
A concept that should have died with the death of the triangular trade.
£52,000 for wallpaper, as an asdide, is not exactly down with the peasants now is it. Time to go and earn my shilling with the rest of the hoi polloi.
P.S. Johnson also went along with the temporary visas thing, and now only 127 have applied he's a soothsaying genius?
Equally £40k a lot isn't much after a 5 year (well 4+ gap year) degree with 5+ years of experience.
Already it seems no one remembers why we did it. It's time for Starmer to remind them. It doesn't have to be a drive to return to full membership but it has to re-expose the bullshit. There's a lot of open discontent and Starmer has the perfect opportunity to pin the blame where it belongs.
During the COVID epidemic, due to EvulToryStupidity, many universities increased their course sizes by 20%. In the medical courses, this means that in 3 years time there will be more medical graduates than training places in the NHS. We will literally be throwing doctors and nurses away. And there is a staff shortage in the NHS.
So...
1) Keep the expanded medical courses.
2) Fund the training places to match
3) Going forward, promise to create places for at least 95% of the predicted demand for NHS staff.
Watching the contortions on that one from opponents would be.... interesting.
In my field (IT), double the employee rate is a good ballpark, but IR35 effects are widening the gap.
It is the freedom of movement story all over again and I think any party going down that route will find itself struggling for votes
However, I do maintain there is a place for the lib dems to come out openly and say they will rejoin the EU, as it is their longer term aim, but then that would require honesty from them
If costs for people (wages) go up then firms are incentivised to invest more, not less. It becomes cheaper to have one person with a professional tool do the job, instead of four people with manual labour.
And as time goes on skills do go up. As much as some people think its fine to look down their noses at the "low skilled" in this country, the literacy rate in this nation is 99% and once upon a time every single one of those 99% would have been considered "skilled".
That's the reason we have universal education. There isn't really a section of the country that is employable, the people who are generally unemployable are a teeny tiny proportion of the sort living at care homes etc - and if people look down on certain jobs then those jobs will need to improve their pay and conditions to attract workers.
Keir Starmer opposes those.
NHS anecdote. My wife took handover from the night nurse yesterday morning. She asked her if she was back in that night. "I'm meant to be but I'm not coming in". So that's a massive agency nurse bill for the NHS.