Gordon Tells Graduates To Work For Nothing Or Leave Uk

[Guest An Bearin Bui]

There isn't room for young people in the job market. There already is far too many people looking for the jobs, older people with lots of experience. What jobs there are people in India are happy to do the work for a lot less.

The root problem is a lack of real economic growth based on real productivity that relies on the ingenuity of qualified people to generate wealth. Corporations have been engaged not much other than balance-sheet "re-engineering" for the last 10-15 years. These large corporations - oil, automotive, pharma, publishing, media, professional services etc - were the source of the graduate opportunities of the 1970s that still form outdated graduate employment expectations today.

The 1970s and 1980s were a golden age for graduates as the need for managerial 'talent' was growing due to corporate expansion and the pool of graduates was small and generally only available in Europe and the US/Australia/Canada. Government responded to this brief uptick in demand for graduates as if it was something permanent and encouraged everyone to go and get a degree as the magic route to riches. In developing countries it's even worse as governments there (e.g. Egypt) invested heavily in education too as they thought this was the route to economic development - instead they have a massive population under the age of 30 with education but no jobs and no chance of economic growth and now nowhere to emigrate to as the developed world has no need of graduates either.

There are too many young people worldwide all seeking the same opportunities in the same popular sectors and all against a backdrop of poor or negative economic growth. It's ironic because students were more rebellious against the powers that be in the 1960s when jobs were plentiful and being a graduate was a ticket to middle-class easy street: now young people are facing a real deterioration in living standards and a bleak outlook due to economic mismanagement but they have no interest in protest at all. Most political young people I know are focused on saving starving babies in the developing world or protesting human rights abuses in Nigeria but have nothing to say to the erosion of their own living standards at home. The ones who are switched on to what's happening are too busy fighting tooth and nail to get the top-paid jobs out of the view that 'if you can't beat them, join them'.

[billybong]

The government is urging graduates to consider a spell working abroad, whether in internships or volunteering, to avoid the worst of the recession.

Farcical and the recession has only just started. In fact they were saying recently that it would end towards the end of this year.

Keep the dole numbers down by pushing youngsters into university and when they graduate keep the dole numbers down by telling them to do work abroad at cheap rates.

Note the timing of this announcement just before tens of thousands of graduates start to look for work after summer 2009 graduation.

For that matter what's happened to the line that the government as well as employers were pushing recently that the UK didn't have enough qualified/skilled people and that's why they needed to import more skilled workers from overseas to make up the numbers.

Another day another dodgy U turn.

Edited May 24, 2009 by billybong

[Guest BoomBoomCrash]

Just another reason we need a citizens income. The cyclical nature of our economies and the growing mechanisation of the workplace mean that increasing unemployment is inevitable.

[Cogs]

Actual capitalism would provide a situation in which those who design cars, build bridges etc could help others by helping themselves

I don't think the name of the economic philosophy matters, what we need here is a focus on production. Time was this was a key concern of organised labour, capitalists, communists, late feudalists, industrialists, physiocrats and everyone else and was considered so central that it barely needed to be said. I've been reading a lot of old engineering papers recently for various reasons and it is what crops up all the time; how can production be higher, faster, better, more reliable, more efficient. This is considered the only issue that matters.

Production, production, production.

We can worry about ideologies later, they are for people with wealth to allocate.

Edited May 24, 2009 by Cogs

[Guest BoomBoomCrash]

I don't think the name of the economic philosophy matters, what we need here is a focus on production. Time was this was a key concern of organised labour, capitalists, communists, late feudalists, industrialists, physiocrats and everyone else and was considered so central that it barely needed to be said. I've been reading a lot of old engineering papers recently for various reasons and it is what crops up all the time; how can production be higher, faster, better, more reliable, more efficient. This is considered the only issue that matters.

Production, production, production.

We can worry about ideologies later.

The elephant in the room that everyone is ignoring is that production capacity now exceeds consumption capacity in many areas.

[Stars]

The elephant in the room that everyone is ignoring is that production capacity now exceeds consumption capacity in many areas.

Confused nonsense.

Give me something and i can consume like that (clicks fingers) What i can't do is pay for others to produce for me and can't do that because i can't get at my own production because most of it is by passively syphoned by landlordism, other forms of monopoly and governments - it is the same problem the producer i wish to pay faces. The whole system is locvked up by non producing parasites.

[Guest BoomBoomCrash]

Confused nonsense.

Give me something and i can consume like that (clicks fingers) What i can't do is pay for others to produce for me and can't do that because i can't get at my own production because most of it is by passively syphoned by landlordism, other forms of monopoly and governments - it is the same problem the producer i wish to pay faces. The whole system is locvked up by non producing parasites.

You're not making any sense; as usual.

[alexw]

Confused nonsense.

Give me something and i can consume like that (clicks fingers) What i can't do is pay for others to produce for me and can't do that because i can't get at my own production because most of it is by passively syphoned by landlordism, other forms of monopoly and governments - it is the same problem the producer i wish to pay faces. The whole system is locvked up by non producing parasites.

Hes right though if you factor in consumption capacity when the availability of resources is taken into account. Those good old resource limitations of infinite growth.

[Stars]

You're not making any sense; as usual.

Which bit is giving you trouble?

It's pretty important you understand this

[Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz]

Perhaps unemployed graduates should seize land and set up mass self-sufficient communes? I couldn't be bothered scouring the world for the opportunity to pick grapes or clean toilets.

Don't we get 550,000 graduates coming through unis each year - surely a massive impact on the unemployment statistics - GULP.

[Stars]

Perhaps unemployed graduates should seize land and set up mass self-sufficient communes? I couldn't be bothered scouring the world for the opportunity to pick grapes or clean toilets.

Now, that makes sense

You have no moral duty to observe the ownership of land, unless you are paid to do so.

[Guest BoomBoomCrash]

Which bit is giving you trouble?

It's pretty important you understand this

No. It's very important to you that you force your Injinesque psychosis onto me. I think you've already outed yourself as a total cretin given your belief that the demand curve for goods and services can increase infinitely.

Edited May 24, 2009 by BoomBoomCrash

[Guest BoomBoomCrash]

Now, that makes sense

You have no moral duty to observe the ownership of land, unless you are paid to do so.

Yet you disagree with the citizens income concept, how very inconsistent of you.

[Stars]

Yet you disagree with the citizens income concept, how very inconsistent of you.

I think we have some crossed wires

To be just a citizen's income must be funded exclusively by the owners of land. So people are paid to observe the ownership of land BY the owners of land - and no one else.

[Guest BoomBoomCrash]

I think we have some crossed wires

To be just a citizen's income must be funded exclusively by the owners of land. So people are paid to observe the ownership of land BY the owners of land - and no one else.

Right, but most people own land of some description. The problem we have at the moment is that they pay far too much for it. ONe of the ideas with a citizens income is a land tax which would discourage land barons for keeping hold of large tracts of land with which they do nothing useful.

[Stars]

No. It's very important to you that you force your Injinesque psychosis onto me. I think you've already outed yourself as a total cretin given your belief that the demand curve for goods and services can increase infinitely.

people's capacity to consume is infinite; people's actual consumption is limited by price

[Tonkers]

The thing is, I'm not sure how gullable the average person in the UK is - would they actually work for nothing?

More so, can they?

[Guest BoomBoomCrash]

people's capacity to consume is infinite; people's actual consumption is limited by price

Would you be interested in this perpetual motion device I've just invented?

[Stars]

Right, but most people own land of some description. The problem we have at the moment is that they pay far too much for it. ONe of the ideas with a citizens income is a land tax which would discourage land barons for keeping hold of large tracts of land with which they do nothing useful.

The high price is part of the same problem

Because the owner does not have to compensate those who have lost their liberties as a result of his ownership, he gets to charge others for those lost liberties and privately pocket the value of other people's liberties. This turns land ownership into a gargantuan economic privilege; people have to pay you to do things they would otherwise be able to without you. This privelige is then sold on a 'market' - I call it a kelpto-market, a market in theft privileges - and this market struggles to give the ownership of such privilege a finite price; how do you price being able to passively benefit from other people's production and effort? Well, the price rises to encompass the surpluses produced and so everyone who is involved in production struggles to buy enough real estate to continue producing.

I'm a geolibertarian, btw, i advocate land taxation.

[billybong]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8065615.stm

Universities minister David Lammy:

"And volunteering is always something that's attractive to employers."

You don't say

[hilltop]

Read pls ---> http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/stor...;sectioncode=26

Re: internships. They are a good, traditional approach to barring the oiks from good jobs. Mummy and daddy don't own a flat in London for you to borrow? Daddy can't bank roll you for a year of working for nothing? Oh dear, I guess you won't be writing for The Guardian after all, you'll be stacking shelves instead.

I don't often agree with you cogs, but you have got this right. Funny how the Middle Class manage to find the levers to the drawbridge isn't it? At the same time this is being said, there is a Number 10 'Think Tank' deliberating on how to make access to the professions more accessible. Joined up thinking Gordon?

[aa3]

Why not just drop the monopolies on everything and teach actual capitalism to the young?

I would very much like to see that solution. For example regulators say houses are not allowed to be built. Then wonder why there is no jobs for construction workers.

[godless]

too late.

The laws were put into place last year (& over the last few years) to stop exactly that.

You go & try to have your free speech & see what happens.

Try taking a photo of a policeman & see what happens.

The majority have been the walking dead on hpi & greed for a decade. In this time every freedom you had has now gone.

YOU can't do a thing.

yep!

[three pint princess]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/...Mao-policy.html

China sends unemployed graduates to teach countryside peasants in 'Mao policy'

China is sending tens of thousands of unemployed graduates into the countryside to teach peasants, in a repeat of one of Chairman Mao's most controversial policies.

By Malcolm Moore at East China Normal University, Minhang

Last Updated: 4:23PM GMT 26 Dec 2008

The scheme continued until 1980, but was criticised as a means of expelling "class enemies", or anyone who dared to dissent, from the centres of Chinese power.

Next year, however, the government "will recruit over 30,000 college graduates to go to rural and western regions to teach," said the ministry of Education, adding that it had rapidly expanded the scheme in order to cope with the rising levels of unemployment.

Not only is the jobs market stuttering, but the flow of students is greater than ever before. Between 1999 and 2006, the number of graduates quintupled, flooding the labour market and depressing wages

.

They weren't be protesting if they aren't here, good move Gordon.

[Jack's Creation]

May not have to travel too far soon......

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8065504.stm

Well, they've tried twice, I'm sure they'll be having another go soon.