alexw

That rate is much much worse than it looks. It's contract work so no pension, no holiday/sick pay, and during the winter months you spend half your time out of work due to the weather. It's no wonder noone wants to do it.

The problem is youngsters have no chance of a viable future on the wages of these lorry driver etc jobs. There's no housing at 3x income. No inflation +2% pay rises. It's all drive down the wages as much as possible now. So if you have no chance of a future doing this type of work you set your sights on higher skilled higher income work. Photography no doubt pays more *if* you are one the fortunate ones who makes it. The question is what happens if you are one of the ones who don't....

The thing is, there seems to be an innate limit to the rate at which modern socities can do that innovation, or at least implement the results. We just don't see super-innovative socities that move ahead in leaps and bounds (outside of catch up societies copying already implemented ideas and innovations). That being the case then there must also be a limit to the rate at which capital can be effectively employed and my previous statement holds true.

Partly right. The other bit is that wages for the average citizen have become completely disconnected from productivity. If you are producing more goods and services as long as wages rise in line with productivity then consumers can afford to consume based on their wages. But since that has not been happening for decades, some other method has had to be found to fill the gap, that is why our betters have been loading us down with debt. The problem is though, they didn't ask what happens when debt saturation is reached....

+1 Here's someone who appears to get it. There is a vast global surplus of capital vs the need for capital. As with all things if supply outstrips demand the price goes down....

The thing is societies expect their betters to lead by example. There is a reason the saying "the fish rots from the head down" exists - its because its true. Our upper strata's set the tone for the rest of society, and if they act in god-awful ways then everyone else will too as it sets the tone for them to follow. Honestly, do you know of any societies where the top couple percent are completely corrupt, and where the average folk are law abiding citizens? I'm betting you don't. So if you want and expect those at the lower end of society to make the shift/change that you appear to want them to, it will not happen unless it can be seen that our societies leaders are willing to start that reform at the top. This is why we need reform to start at the top. Not because it's fair or anything but because reform won't work otherwise. Any changes at the bottom will just be quickly swamped by more corruption at the top. I know my own views on right and wrong have changed. I used to be extremely moralistic, always do the right thing, but given how total utter scum our elite class are I increasing question why I should do the right thing when they don't. I am much more morally ambivalent than I used to be.

No they don't. Wherever did you get this daft idea from? They get paid whatever they are willing to accept. Thus if you have extremely high unemployment, have loads of desperate migrant workers competing against you, and have the jobcenter breathing down your neck, you will accept exceedingly little.

It doesn't work that way. It would be the paradox of thrift and fallacy of composition in action. If everyone tried to save more it would either simply push asset prices up, cause bubbles, or crash the system as demand collapsed, or some combination of all three (does this sound at all familiar?). Economies can only absorb so much capital (savings) profitably. More, and you are just pushing on a string.

Reeves is playing it smart politically. If we here know UC is an absolute disaster in the process of unfolding, then as close to the center of power as Rachel Reeves is, she will know it too. So show concern and promise an audit, wait till you win the general election, then pretend to be shocked at the audit results and hammer the tories with 100% of the blame. IDS does not want it to fall apart before the GE and hopes to pass the smelly bag to labour. Reeves is countering that. Smart. Oh and IDS is a psychopathic lying piece of s**t.

Errr no. Potential hardship does not make people work harder at relationships. It may trap them in a relationship that they want to leave but thats an even worse outcome than single parenthood. We've all been in relationships of one type or other, has anyone here ever thought I must work harder at it because I'll be poorer if I don't? I'm expecting deafening silence on this one.

+1 For the US from what I gather the major cause of single parenthood is the break-up of relationships, and the main cause of that is the poverty these families live in. It causes all sorts of social stresses and behaviours that strongly disfavour stable family units. It is why for example, 72% of all black children are raised in single parent households.

It's a pity it will never happen.

The thing is switzerland is a very small county, and it has already mightily pissed the rest of mainland europe off, with its endemic support by law for tax evasion. The UK is a whole other story, our finance industry has certainly pissed off much of mainland europe, but we are simply too big for them to say do it our way or else. Switzerland has a population of 8 million ours is 63 million.

Err no. Google's "global profit" IS in reach of the UK exchequer. If it were not in reach then changing to unitary taxation would do nothing to solve the avoidance problem. But then if that's true why do corporations loathe it? In reality just as taxing capital gains required putting in the correct laws so does taxing corporations. And just because something is not taxed properly currently, whether that be land or corporations does not mean it cannot be, which is what you appear to be arguing.

No surprise, the property lobby donations correlate near-perfectly with the degree, or likelihood thereof, of nimbyism -

Its easy to evade because the elites want it to be easy to evade. Not because it's hard to properly tax global corporations. Here's a simple fix for the UK - unitary taxation. Add together the percentage of a global corporations sales, assets, and payroll that occur in the UK and divide by 3. That is the percentage of a corporations global profit that is taxable in the UK. So for example if for google that number is 6%, then we tax 6% of google's global profit at whatever rate we choose (the 30-32% rate we had in the 1990's and 2000's sounds perfect to me). We do this for all the global corporations and use the resulting income to get rid of (as much as possible) national insurance taxation. Problem solved. It's a simple effect method that is based on physical realities that can't be shifted around on paper. But it's not happening because the global corporations absolutely loathe the idea.

The thing with child related benefits is that we do need some, since it would not be fair to expect those raising children via their child related costs, to effectively pay the pensions of those that don't have children. But as with most things balance is key. You want some but not too much. Whether we now have too much is something the nation needs a public discussion about.

Ok then, so you think people scrounging via a legal entity (a corporation) is ok, yes or no?

That's another thing you always see with benefit claimants - whenever you try and discuss them out of the woodwork pops some apologist who tries to rationalize their scrounging, or tries to lay the blame elsewhere. Here we see that process in action yet again.

I read the first half of it then realized it was a fact free gold-bug article and could not bother with the rest. The article basically implies correlation equals causation with nothing to back it up. If correlation and causation worked that way then me waking up in the morning causes the sun to rise. The article has no depth, no analysis, and basically cheerleads for the gold-bugs. It's infantile in the extreme. If you want counters then re-read my previous post where I discuss some of the problems of the gold-standard, if you want more info google the terms I used.

The tories will copy it and call it help to owl.

This one is even worse. £11.6million of corporation tax on an income of £3billion. And no fines or punishment whatsoever so not even a slap on the wrist. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2549379/Fresh-questions-raised-Googles-tax-avoidance-tech-giant-announces-profits-3-4-billion.html There's loads of these welfare-queen benefit scroungers at it taking from the public purse.... http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/jul/19/oecd-tax-reform-proposals-amazon http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20022365 http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/20/apple-accused-tax-avoidance-billions-scheme It's frankly disgusting.

Don't worry the telegraph and daily mail comments sections (full of comments about ipads and such from well off boomers) will more than make up for us.

A lower cost of living is exactly the same as a real terms wage rise. If your cost of living falls then the cost of goods/services must fall relative to your income. Since the income of companies selling those goods/services must also fall, then to keep average workers wages constant (i.e. give them a lower cost of living), returns to shareholders and managerial staff wages must fall. Thus, overall, a lower cost of living is exactly the same as a real terms wage rise, the only difference being the former is acheived via deflation, while the latter via inflation. Moreover, there will be no difference in terms of pricing workers out of the labour market. If we want higher levels of employment we will have to continually lower the minimum wage (note that zero hours is akin to this in that it reduces labour costs), and have workers accept ever lower living standards, so as to have labour be competitive with automating those jobs away as the cost of automation continually falls.