It seems that wages aren't improving after all

[Will!]

2 hours ago, Notting Hell said:

NMW is way too high relative to skilled roles. What's the point in educating yourself to degree-level when you might as well not have bothered. 3xNMW gross salary is crap when you take into account tax and student loans too. It has become completely ridiculous.

Graduates with so many degrees are effectively unskilled.  I work with someone who has a degree in “Sports Science”.  She has a Wikipedia level of knowledge.

[Trampa501]

8 minutes ago, TheResponsibleHouseBuyer said:

I wouldn't mind the **** conditions, its just we or at least our politicians keep importing 3rd world problem. They need to realise we arent the british empire anymore, just a small island. Heck every small island i see is doing very well for itself.

Singapore option? Far greater migrant labour numbers, but controlled rents and huge spending on housing and infrastructure. Sounds good to me, but suspect GDP would not approve.

[Will!]

2 hours ago, Notting Hell said:

I am educated to PhD (STEM) level.

I’m sure you’ve heard the old joke that a PhD student is someone who foregoes current income in order to forego future income.

[Notting Hell]

2 minutes ago, Will! said:

I’m sure you’ve heard the old joke that a PhD student is someone who foregoes current income in order to forego future income.

I think you might underestimate the number of highly-skilled roles that are pivotal to society that do rely on a high level of education. In any case, there's no need to insult me. I'm not insulting people working on NMW.

Edited April 19 by Notting Hell

[Notting Hell]

48 minutes ago, winkie said:

No don't actually see a problem to be honest......why is an accountant more worthy, their time worth more?.......working in a hot, smelly kitchen repeating same thing over and over again, think would rather be counting numbers doing some book work comfortably at home or office....each to their own.

So, given that a GP has to spend seven years unpaid in training (2 years A-level, 5 years at university), when other people might be earning money, should we in fact be paying them the NMW for 7 years? Or should they somehow train for free (or take on debt) and then only receive "the communist wage" when they start work proper? At the very least, over the lifetime of their career they do have to be compensated for the unavoidable training that is necessary for their career.

I think the main flaw in your argument is that not everyone is capable of highly-skilled jobs. But if there is no incentive to do the highly-skilled work, then people will just do the easiest job possible to get the communist wage. Then, there is no one filling the highly-skilled roles. What do you suggest should be the incentive mechanism to allocate roles to workers? Or do you intend to force people to do work at their true ability?

[Will!]

1 minute ago, Notting Hell said:

I think you might underestimate the number of highly-skilled roles that are pivotal to society that do rely on a high level of education. In any case, there's no need to insult me. I'm not insulting people working on NMW.

Oh, no insult meant.

Personally though I think Higher Education is a waste of money for most people who do it in the UK.  I also think technology is forcing a revaluation of what is called teaching at many universities.  I’m doing a PGCert in Clinical Education at King’s College London at the moment.  The F2F stuff is rubbish: the course is basically a reading list and a good library.

[Nick Cash]

15 minutes ago, Trampa501 said:

The smart accountants do this in reverse. They get accounting staff in India to do the work, and supervise various roles.  This is how certain accountancy firms based in London can be a lot cheaper than established incumbent enterprises. 

Is that because basic low level accountancy roles are actually not that “skilled”? So ripe for automation? I’m old enough to remember bought ledger departments, typing pools, purchasing departments all replaced in the main by ERP IT systems. No one worried then!

[Notting Hell]

2 minutes ago, Will! said:

Oh, no insult meant.

Personally though I think Higher Education is a waste of money for most people who do it in the UK.  I also think technology is forcing a revaluation of what is called teaching at many universities.  I’m doing a PGCert in Clinical Education at King’s College London at the moment.  The F2F stuff is rubbish: the course is basically a reading list and a good library.

Sorry, I misunderstood.

I just think lots of people have uniformed opinions about which degrees are valuable and which are not, when a lot of the time they are oblivious to what they actually involve. There are a lot of crap degrees out there, no doubt about it. They often use this argument: "Because in my (uninformed) opinion your degree is worthless, it's ok for society to pay you nothing, and make me feel better about earning NMW".

[Nick Cash]

The fundamental issue with raising NMW is that the differential will be maintained over time. This is purely inflationary.

 

[Notting Hell]

7 minutes ago, Nick Cash said:

The fundamental issue with raising NMW is that the differential will be maintained over time. This is purely inflationary.

 

Differential to mean unchanging or constant distribution of salaries/earnings, when adjusted for inflation? 

[Nick Cash]

1 minute ago, Notting Hell said:

Differential to mean unchanging or constant distribution of salaries/earnings, when adjusted for inflation? 

Assuming the demand / supply for skilled jobs (whatever they may be in 5 years time) versus demand / supply for unskilled jobs. I don’t think doctors/lawyers/accountants will be replaced within a 5 year period. 

I had a chat with the cleverest bloke I know recently re impact of AI. He (childless) was adamant that the highest paid jobs for the average person in time would be the manual ones. Electricians / Plumbers etc. The very intelligent would be paid huge amounts. Everyone else selling their labour for peanuts.

[The Angry Capitalist]

41 minutes ago, Notting Hell said:

So, given that a GP has to spend seven years unpaid in training (2 years A-level, 5 years at university), when other people might be earning money, should we in fact be paying them the NMW for 7 years? Or should they somehow train for free (or take on debt) and then only receive "the communist wage" when they start work proper? At the very least, over the lifetime of their career they do have to be compensated for the unavoidable training that is necessary for their career.

I think the main flaw in your argument is that not everyone is capable of highly-skilled jobs. But if there is no incentive to do the highly-skilled work, then people will just do the easiest job possible to get the communist wage. Then, there is no one filling the highly-skilled roles. What do you suggest should be the incentive mechanism to allocate roles to workers? Or do you intend to force people to do work at their true ability?

In a capitalist society it usually works that way.

Dentists seem to be earning reasonable wages although seen stories of some emigrating.

In relation to GPs, assuming wages are low what might be the causes?

Are there many immigrant GPs from third world countries?

Are there too many of them in the UK?

Without knowing these details it's difficult to pinpoint why their salaries are low.

[Will!]

34 minutes ago, Notting Hell said:

I just think lots of people have uniformed opinions about which degrees are valuable and which are not, when a lot of the time they are oblivious to what they actually involve. There are a lot of crap degrees out there, no doubt about it. They often use this argument: "Because in my (uninformed) opinion your degree is worthless, it's ok for society to pay you nothing, and make me feel better about earning NMW".

Well, we could chop logic about what it means for a degree to be valuable.  However, the good / bad news is that the wages of graduates are determined by supply and demand, not the uninformed opinions of people on the internet.  I think wage compression just above NMW for graduates is nothing more than high supply of people with poor quality degrees. 

[12345]

4 hours ago, winkie said:

What's the catch.....

Jesus! $100k p/a service charge!?!!!

[regprentice]

17 hours ago, Trampa501 said:

Singapore option? Far greater migrant labour numbers, but controlled rents and huge spending on housing and infrastructure. Sounds good to me, but suspect GDP would not approve.

Singapore is happy with immigration because it sets a high bar for social behaviour and requires a high level of cultural integration on the part of the immigrant. (I used to work "back to back"  with a team of people in singapore, This was back when Banks offshored based on skill not price. my team covered the 12 hours of UK daytime, and the singapore team covered our night time.)

Once i needed the police to remove a violent, threatening, person from outside my home. The police were useless and told us that they couldn't bring any charges, expect possibly harassment, and it might need 7 callouts before they decided this situation was "Harassment". 

the police told me that we were clearly a "nice family" and while the behaviour we were experiencing was threatening and abusive for us as a nice family, it wasn't the standard the police would act on as "threatening and abusive"

Theres the difference between the UK and singapore. The UK lowers its standards to a baseline of behaviours of its current population, and is happy to lower those to take in more immigrants, but countries like singapore hold everyone to a high moral and social standard especially immigrants. 

Singapore is the country that banned chewing gum because it was making a mess of the pavements - punishment is £300 for a first offence of having chewing gum on your person. 

Edited April 20 by regprentice

[bartelbe]

The labour market is splitting in two.

There is a minority of very well paid jobs at the top. Which you generally need a private education and a rich family, with all the social contacts that brings, to get.

At the bottom there are a far larger number of minimum wage jobs.

What have disappeared are the jobs in the middle. 

[Big Orange]

35 minutes ago, regprentice said:

Once i needed the police to remove a violent, threatening, person from outside my home. The police were useless and told us that they couldn't bring any charges, expect possibly harassment, and it might need 7 callouts before they decided this situation was "Harassment". 

the police told me that we were clearly a "nice family" and while the behaviour we were experiencing was threatening and abusive for us as a nice family, it wasn't the standard the police would act on as "threatening and abusive"

Theres the difference between the UK and singapore. The UK lowers its standards to a baseline of behaviours of its current population, and is happy to lower those to take in more immigrants, but countries like singapore hole everyone to a high moral and social standard especially immigrants. 

Singapore is the country that banned chewing gum because it was making a mess of the pavements - punishment is £300 for a first offence of having chewing gum on your person. 

Thing is Singapore is a dictatorship and has rather draconian, even brutal day to day enforcement policies, while the UK's day to day civil enforcement got far too lax and underfunded in recent decades, with tragic incidents with tolerated scumbags happening too often. They're often brazenly ignored by the authorities for many months, even years until they inevitably hurt or kill people:

Wouldn't surprise we'll get vigilante killings on the UK's streets in 5-10-15 years.

[Notting Hell]

2 hours ago, regprentice said:

Theres the difference between the UK and singapore. The UK lowers its standards to a baseline of behaviours of its current population, and is happy to lower those to take in more immigrants, but countries like singapore hold everyone to a high moral and social standard especially immigrants. 

 

There are two ways of looking at things:

A. Compare yourself to the bottom

B. Compare yourself to the top

When you understand which way (A or B ) someone thinks you can understand them much more easily.

Edited April 20 by Notting Hell

[reddog]

22 hours ago, NoHPCinTheUK said:

 

I feel really sorry for the guy.  The fact he is happy about his pay rise is depressing.

 

If he was in the US, you could stick a 1 in front of his salary.  With management responsibility maybe even a 2.

 

Though to be honest, most of Europe isn't any better.

[winkie]

40 minutes ago, reddog said:

I feel really sorry for the guy.  The fact he is happy about his pay rise is depressing.

 

If he was in the US, you could stick a 1 in front of his salary.  With management responsibility maybe even a 2.

 

Though to be honest, most of Europe isn't any better.

Most of Europe is better.....they don't need to earn so much for the same as we do!

Society is healthier, people are happier in particular children, public services are better, seeing infrastructure improving investments made, better roads, better transport, better social cohession......what are WE going to do to make our country better?

[reddog]

26 minutes ago, winkie said:

Most of Europe is better.....they don't need to earn so much for the same as we do!

Society is healthier, people are happier in particular children, public services are better, seeing infrastructure improving investments made, better roads, better transport, better social cohession......what are WE going to do to make our country better?

Don't focus on whether we are slightly better or slightly worse than different European countries, focus on why most skilled professionals in the UK are getting payed well well under half of their US equivalent.

[winkie]

 Are3 minutes ago, reddog said:

Don't focus on whether we are slightly better or slightly worse than different European countries, focus on why most skilled professionals in the UK are getting payed well well under half of their US equivalent.

The US are a power unto themselves, they care little for us unless we are useful to them.....if people want to earn more money and think the US is the place for them they should walk......my point is quality of life not amount of money can earn for less quality.....high earning doesn't always a better prospect or even a better life.

[regprentice]

1 hour ago, Notting Hell said:

There are two ways of looking at things:

A. Compare yourself to the bottom

B. Compare yourself to the top

When you understand which way (A or B ) someone thinks you can understand them much more easily.

I'm in an interesting position in that sense. 

When I accepted my current job I just scraped into the top 2% of income in the UK. I live in a council estate and, when i bought my house 20 years ago, a 3 bed ex council semi was the absolute max i could stretch to. during that time ive worked challenging finance jobs and occasionally worked a 14 hour day,doing a days unpaid overtime in a day. So ive worked hard, and i'm paid fairly well.

At work i've been surrounded by "rich" people. at one point i sat at a bank of 4 desks and my 3 colleagues all owned brand new flash cars (an X5, a 435i and a Velar). at that time I owned a £750 10 year old clio. Any 2 of my colleagues cars taken together cost more than my house. i joined the bank too late for any of the good benefits, which all stopped that year, one was being able to buy a Rolex via salary sacrifice - effectively getting a 40% discount . I also missed out on qualifying for the final salary pension by months.

At home i'm surrounded by "poor" people. 3 of my immediate neighbours live in exactly the same kind of house as me but have never worked a day in their lives. free mobility cars, free bathrooms and kitchens and house maintenance, even free taxis to school for their kids. 

I can legitimately compare myself to both ends of the spectrum of wealth in the UK in any given day and feel worse off than any of them. But that's what they say is happening to the middle class as a whole. 

Edited April 20 by regprentice

[winkie]

41 minutes ago, regprentice said:

I'm in an interesting position in that sense. 

When I accepted my current job I just scraped into the top 2% of income in the UK. I live in a council estate and, when i bought my house 20 years ago, a 3 bed ex council semi was the absolute max i could stretch to. during that time ive worked challenging finance jobs and occasionally worked a 14 hour day,doing a days unpaid overtime in a day. So ive worked hard, and i'm paid fairly well.

At work i've been surrounded by "rich" people. at one point i sat at a bank of 4 desks and my 3 colleagues all owned brand new flash cars (an X5, a 435i and a Velar). at that time I owned a £750 10 year old clio. Any 2 of my colleagues cars taken together cost more than my house. i joined the bank too late for any of the good benefits, which all stopped that year, one was being able to buy a Rolex via salary sacrifice - effectively getting a 40% discount . I also missed out on qualifying for the final salary pension by months.

At home i'm surrounded by "poor" people. 3 of my immediate neighbours live in exactly the same kind of house as me but have never worked a day in their lives. free mobility cars, free bathrooms and kitchens and house maintenance, even free taxis to school for their kids. 

I can legitimately compare myself to both ends of the spectrum of wealth in the UK in any given day and feel worse off than any of them. But that's what they say is happening to the middle class as a whole. 

Lived and worked with the very wealthy and poor.......some really good eggs in both......seen addicted mainly alcohol and/or cocaine and traumatised wealthy that are stressed highly unsatisfied with their lives and relationships, seen sick and lonely poor..money have found does not bring happiness.....people, community and health does....

 

[Greater Fool]

On 19/04/2024 at 19:46, Nick Cash said:

Assuming the demand / supply for skilled jobs (whatever they may be in 5 years time) versus demand / supply for unskilled jobs. I don’t think doctors/lawyers/accountants will be replaced within a 5 year period. 

I had a chat with the cleverest bloke I know recently re impact of AI. He (childless) was adamant that the highest paid jobs for the average person in time would be the manual ones. Electricians / Plumbers etc. The very intelligent would be paid huge amounts. Everyone else selling their labour for peanuts.

But no one will have the money to pay the plumbers and electricians top dollar to work on their houses if they are skint working for peanuts. They will just try their hand at doing DIY jobs themselves or get a mate of a mate to do it.

Edited April 21 by Greater Fool