Dr_Pangloss Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 (edited) 7 minutes ago, Davkaus said: The private school restrictions are firmly in the "politics of envy" category. That 32 hour work week, though, I can get on board with that! Not clear how it can implemented such that people's pay will not be impacted, especially those who are paid a wage derived from an hourly rate, which is a lot of people. Strikes me a pie in the sky. From a business perspective, for companies who rely on staff working e.g. a standard 35-40 hour week this is going to impart a lot of cost pressures that may send some firms under. I think it's unfeasible and electioneering. Edited September 23, 2019 by Dr_Pangloss 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 I believe the minimum wage was also going to close a lot of businesses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xann Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 Fabulous idea, but trying to do it everywhere over a Parliamentary term, or even two, would be a disaster. It would require a ground up rethink, and probably a decade or two of inspired social engineering to raise parenthood standards in deprived boroughs. You've got to start somewhere though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davkaus Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 1 minute ago, chrisp65 said: I believe the minimum wage was also going to close a lot of businesses. And weekends. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sam-AVFC Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 4 minutes ago, Dr_Pangloss said: Not clear how it can implemented such that people's pay will not be impacted, especially those who are paid a wage derived from an hourly rate, which is a lot of people. Strikes me a pie in the sky. From a business perspective, for companies who rely on staff working e.g. a standard 35-40 hour week this is going to impart a lot of cost pressures that may send some firms under. I think it's unfeasible and electioneering. This clearly isn't evidence, but I personally think I'd get just as much if not more done. That said if we had a 4 day working week I doubt very much I'd be doing less than 40 hours anyway though. You're right that the hourly wage market is where it really struggles as you'd need to increase the minimum wage to make up the time shortfall which would probably bust a whole bunch more retailers. It would be compunded by having to pay them 20% more for their 4 days and still having to cover the 5th. Maybe this only becomes workable once a universal basic income are brought it (which I think is inevitable). Sweden have been looking into it though and the early tests suggest it might be doable. No idea if this has come to anything - any Swedes that can help us out? The having more energy and flexible working arguments still don't work for hourly wage jobs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blandy Posted September 23, 2019 Moderator Share Posted September 23, 2019 59 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said: I guess I'm a bit lost. Like Jeremy on Brexit Quote I'm a bit unclear what your objection is here. If you dislike having 'poshos' running the place, then leaving private schools alone seems like a bad idea. If your complaint is that people who went to selective or private schools shouldn't become Labour politicians, then all I can say is that everybody has the right to come to their own politics, and nobody chooses the financial situation they are born into. If your complaint is that politicians shouldn't tell people what they can and can't have, well politics is simply the method through which scarce resources are allocated, so that seems like an objective to democratic politics in itself. Objection? I'm not sure I'm making an objection. More a (slightly satirical, albeit oblique) comment that people who went to Private schools include almost the entire Tory cabinet, a place filled with liars, incompetents and hypocrits and that on the other side Corbyn, Seamus Milne and Lansman etc are also ex-public school pupils. And the absolute lot of them are a shower of words removed. Utterly unfit, for multiple reasons to hold any kind of office. Not a good advert for posho, paid for, education. i.e. if Corbz "the absolute (public school) boy" is really against public schools, because they gave us Johnson and Rees Mogg and Cummins and "look what those frightful chaps are doing to our Country, we can't have public schools producing all our Political leaders" - then he, as an ex-public schoolboy (a dim one, true) ought to make himself redundant. But anyway, here they all are, all the public schoolboys, telling us what we can and can't do, with their sense of superiority and entitlement and a "the rules don't apply to us" outlook. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickster Posted September 23, 2019 Moderator Share Posted September 23, 2019 Anybody know if Dianne Abbot has worked out that her party are attacking her lifestyle choices? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NurembergVillan Posted September 23, 2019 Moderator Share Posted September 23, 2019 4 minutes ago, bickster said: Anybody know if Dianne Abbot has worked out that her party are attacking her lifestyle choices? Don't tell me they've voted for a Bacon Tax too?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KentVillan Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 1 hour ago, chrisp65 said: I believe the minimum wage was also going to close a lot of businesses. Could the explosion in disguised employment (e.g. Uber drivers, Deliveroo riders) be partly a consequence of the minimum wage? Also stuff like outsourced call centres, not separating tips from pay packets, etc.? I know the govt has clamped down on some of this, but businesses are always finding new loopholes. In some sectors, it seems to just benefit multinationals who are able to outsource and find legal loopholes, undercutting small domestic businesses through lower wage bills, without really improving the employment situation in the UK. Or small businesses who are willing to break the law. It's almost impossible now to run an independent high street shop profitably. You can blame that on Amazon, but part of Amazon's competitive advantage is precisely what I describe above. This is why I incline more towards unconditional cash handouts to spend as they wish (e.g. universal basic income, or the one-off handout the Australian government paid in 2008). Sure, some people will just spend it on booze and fags, but if it helps some people educate their way up the ladder, escape exploitative jobs, look after their children better, etc. then surely in the long run it will make us a happier and more productive economy. It would in effect allow you to have a minimum wage without legislating for it, since employees would have more bargaining power. I might be wrong about all this which is why I'm writing it on VT and not in a peer reviewed economics journal. But it made sense as I was writing it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xann Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 Corbyn went to a voluntary aided Grammar school and they're usually majority state funded. That ain't no Eton. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 6 minutes ago, KentVillan said: Could the explosion in disguised employment (e.g. Uber drivers, Deliveroo riders) be partly a consequence of the minimum wage? Also stuff like outsourced call centres, not separating tips from pay packets, etc.? I know the govt has clamped down on some of this, but businesses are always finding new loopholes. In some sectors, it seems to just benefit multinationals who are able to outsource and find legal loopholes, undercutting small domestic businesses through lower wage bills, without really improving the employment situation in the UK. Or small businesses who are willing to break the law. It's almost impossible now to run an independent high street shop profitably. You can blame that on Amazon, but part of Amazon's competitive advantage is precisely what I describe above. This is why I incline more towards unconditional cash handouts to spend as they wish (e.g. universal basic income, or the one-off handout the Australian government paid in 2008). Sure, some people will just spend it on booze and fags, but if it helps some people educate their way up the ladder, escape exploitative jobs, look after their children better, etc. then surely in the long run it will make us a happier and more productive economy. It would in effect allow you to have a minimum wage without legislating for it, since employees would have more bargaining power. I might be wrong about all this which is why I'm writing it on VT and not in a peer reviewed economics journal. But it made sense as I was writing it. I think the explosion in disguised / gig work was simply a case of an american model being rolled out to other countries of similar culture. I don't think Uber, Deliveroo or Amazon were ever going to be anything different. The reality with minimum wage of course, is that even now, I'm currently subsidising Amazon, which feels a little unfair. So the more we can tilt Amazon's wage bill towards being paid by Amazon, the more local shops and me will like it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KentVillan Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 1 minute ago, chrisp65 said: I think the explosion in disguised / gig work was simply a case of an american model being rolled out to other countries of similar culture. I don't think Uber, Deliveroo or Amazon were ever going to be anything different. The reality with minimum wage of course, is that even now, I'm currently subsidising Amazon, which feels a little unfair. So the more we can tilt Amazon's wage bill towards being paid by Amazon, the more local shops and me will like it. But one of the competitive advantages it gave them was their lower staffing costs versus traditional employers, so perhaps minimum wage played a role? I mean it's noticeable that gig work was most disruptive in sectors that paid a lot of people minimum wages. Gig work ideas in higher paid sectors has been far less disruptive - stuff like mobile GPs, high-skill freelancing apps, etc. It's only in the low-skill, low-pay sectors where this model has completely upended everything. That offers some clues about what's really happening? The model is to circumvent all the traditional employee protections (not just minimum wage, but holiday pay, protection from unfair dismissal, etc.) and then undercut businesses that abide by all those rules. So unless you enforce employee protections more strictly, the minimum wage becomes a competitive advantage for the disruptors. It's like we're caught between two stools. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted September 23, 2019 VT Supporter Share Posted September 23, 2019 3 hours ago, chrisp65 said: bunch of **** toffs being outed in this thread (I moved house to be in the catchment area of the best state school in the area) Being devil's advocaat for a moment, is there much difference between being sufficiently well-off to be able to afford school fees and being sufficiently well-off to be able to afford a house in a 'nice' area with a good state school? (We did the same thing, btw - not specifically for the school, but that was a nice side effect). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xann Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villa4europe Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 2 hours ago, Dr_Pangloss said: Not clear how it can implemented such that people's pay will not be impacted, especially those who are paid a wage derived from an hourly rate, which is a lot of people. Strikes me a pie in the sky. From a business perspective, for companies who rely on staff working e.g. a standard 35-40 hour week this is going to impart a lot of cost pressures that may send some firms under. I think it's unfeasible and electioneering. working in construction I don't see it as feasible, the demands don't go away, most projects already run over and end up being 7 days a week, a big part of the working rule agreement is having to enforce holidays on some construction workers who just don't take days off a 52 week project with say £1m worth of prelims now becomes a 63 week project with £1.2m worth, that can break projects such as schools etc then you throw in say a brickie, he's on a measure, £35 per m2, a gang lays 100m2 a week so £3,500, extra day off he's now at 80m2 and £2,800, I can tell you now mid summer when the suns shining that brickie wants the money I think they might be surprised how many workers don't want it, they'd prefer the cash and would probably prefer an extra 4/5 bank holidays a year Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted September 23, 2019 VT Supporter Share Posted September 23, 2019 4 hours ago, tonyh29 said: It's like every time Labour get close to having a chance at power they think ..**** we don't actually want to be in government , quick come up with a bonkers plan to sabotage it Not often I agree with you, but yes, this. It's not so much the plans that piss me off, it's the infighting and factionalism. It's small comfort that the Tories (for a change) have the same problem. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mic09 Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 2 hours ago, HanoiVillan said: 'The masses' who attend private school? Even if it's 0.5%, they have their rights. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xann Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 10 minutes ago, mjmooney said: Being devil's advocaat... What sort of eggs are in that? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wazzap24 Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 A 32 hour working week you say? With no loss of pay? I’m joining momentum and backing this Unicorn. Or if we can have a unicorn combo deal, I’ll take this with a side of Bojo’s tax cut for the 40%’ers, please and thank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mic09 Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 (edited) 22 minutes ago, mjmooney said: Being devil's advocaat for a moment, is there much difference between being sufficiently well-off to be able to afford school fees and being sufficiently well-off to be able to afford a house in a 'nice' area with a good state school? (We did the same thing, btw - not specifically for the school, but that was a nice side effect). It's all relative isn't it. Even people on minimal wage can go to the shops to buy food, buy some clothes and go on a holiday once in a while. UK isn't a place where people starve on the street, and even the poorest have places to turn to and jobs to apply for. Not that we shouldn't aim for much better - we always have to - but we live in one of the best places in the world in the best time in history. I feel that Labour is overplaying the "class war" card with the school policy, and voters don't really buy into that as much as they would have done 20/30 years ago. Reason why they were successful under Blair is that he moved away from that rhetoric to an extent. Edited September 23, 2019 by Mic09 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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