The banker loving, baby-eating Tory party thread (regenerated)

[blandy]

1 hour ago, snowychap said:

you appear to making the mistake that Timoney mentions in the piece quoted above by @HanoiVillan of 'fighting the last war'.

I suggest that article that HV quoted is a load of ill thought through rubbish. It's factually incorrect in so many aspects. I suggest (respectfully) that you are making the mistake of falling for some of the gibberish this Timoney has written.

Here's an example "We have now reached a point in history where capital, the inventory of surplus value, is so large it struggles to find opportunities for further productive investment. Simultaneously, the number of people needed to keep growing that inventory is declining due to continuing productivity gains"

Basically saying there's so much money available to be invested, but not enough to invest it in. Now that's utter rubbish, isn't it? If we think about the prospects for the planet, the need to transition away from fossil fuels, the need for renewable energy, efficiency, new forms of transport, new technology, adapting to climate change, the internet of things, medicine, finding resources, defending ones resources and people, combatting nutters - there's an endless list of opportunities. Then there's rebuilding creaking infrastructure, more people om the planet means more homes....

The second part of that para I quoted is economically illiterate. He says because of productivity gains (the amount of value created per worker, simplistically) the number of people needed to keep growing the amount of money is fewer. But it's blatantly not - it's based on a false, closed assumption. In the real world, if 1 man has gone from creating £10 of Capital to now making £15, wouldn't business think "well if I had 2 men I could create £30"? of course it would. It's why businesses expand into new areas and build new factories and buy new tools and so on.

Furthermore, with regard to the UK, where we live, productivity is lagging behind many other nations.  And again, when he says that  "an increasing minority are denied the opportunity of a job" that's not true. There are more people working than ever before, and fewer unemployed.

It's a load of old bunkum.

[OutByEaster?]

26 minutes ago, blandy said:

Basically saying there's so much money available to be invested, but not enough to invest it in. Now that's utter rubbish, isn't it? If we think about the prospects for the planet, the need to transition away from fossil fuels, the need for renewable energy, efficiency, new forms of transport, new technology, adapting to climate change, the internet of things, medicine, finding resources, defending ones resources and people, combatting nutters - there's an endless list of opportunities. Then there's rebuilding creaking infrastructure, more people om the planet means more homes....

Broadly I agree with you on this, but I think in this paragraph there's a bit of hopeful thinking on the money that needs to be invested - not many of the things on this list are going to make a big return in a single fiscal year and money doesn't care much for things that aren't so immediate. We desperately need to invest in long term, renewable, integrated, sustainable erm...stuff - but the markets aren't going to do that and society such as it exists through government doesn't have access to that money.

 

[peterms]

36 minutes ago, blandy said:

Here's an example "We have now reached a point in history where capital, the inventory of surplus value, is so large it struggles to find opportunities for further productive investment. Simultaneously, the number of people needed to keep growing that inventory is declining due to continuing productivity gains"

Basically saying there's so much money available to be invested, but not enough to invest it in. Now that's utter rubbish, isn't it?

He's saying "productive investment", ie what the firm regards as profitable, not what we would think of as socially worthwhile.  He's right - firms have been described as being on an "investment strike", and many have been buying back their own shares instead of investing.  Quite a few commentators have written about the problem of firms sitting on a cash mountain and not investing.

37 minutes ago, blandy said:

The second part of that para I quoted is economically illiterate. He says because of productivity gains (the amount of value created per worker, simplistically) the number of people needed to keep growing the amount of money is fewer. But it's blatantly not - it's based on a false, closed assumption. In the real world, if 1 man has gone from creating £10 of Capital to now making £15, wouldn't business think "well if I had 2 men I could create £30"? of course it would. It's why businesses expand into new areas and build new factories and buy new tools and so on.

He's right again.  The amount of people required to produce the same amount falls as productivity rises.  Yes, at certain points companies may decide to ramp up production and employ more people as a consequence, but that is wholly dependent on them perceiving profitable invest,ent opportunities - see first point.  Why don't Nissan triple the capacity of the Sunderland plant?  Probably they don't see a prospect of selling that many cars.  But if they did, they would probably end up employing twice the number of people, not three times the number.

So the sectors most prone to productivity gains, those most subject to automation, progressively lose jobs.  The jobs lost are higher skilled and higher paid than those that replace them, typically.  So we end up with fewer car plant workers and more people doing telesales and selling fried chicken.  Meanwhile the gains of increased productivity are taken by the owners of capital, not shared with the workforce, hence the rapid growth of wealth gaps.

[snowychap]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

I suggest (respectfully) that you are making the mistake of falling for some of the gibberish this Timoney has written.

The manner of the post belies this parenthetical aside.

If you're going to accuse other people of gibberish then you shouldn't go on to fill the rest of your post with your own.

Edit: I see Peter MS has made the point about productive investment so I've deleted what I wrote.

Edited November 20, 2016 by snowychap

[HanoiVillan]

4 hours ago, blandy said:

I suggest that article that HV quoted is a load of ill thought through rubbish. It's factually incorrect in so many aspects. I suggest (respectfully) that you are making the mistake of falling for some of the gibberish this Timoney has written.

Here's an example "We have now reached a point in history where capital, the inventory of surplus value, is so large it struggles to find opportunities for further productive investment. Simultaneously, the number of people needed to keep growing that inventory is declining due to continuing productivity gains"

Basically saying there's so much money available to be invested, but not enough to invest it in. Now that's utter rubbish, isn't it? If we think about the prospects for the planet, the need to transition away from fossil fuels, the need for renewable energy, efficiency, new forms of transport, new technology, adapting to climate change, the internet of things, medicine, finding resources, defending ones resources and people, combatting nutters - there's an endless list of opportunities. Then there's rebuilding creaking infrastructure, more people om the planet means more homes....

The second part of that para I quoted is economically illiterate. He says because of productivity gains (the amount of value created per worker, simplistically) the number of people needed to keep growing the amount of money is fewer. But it's blatantly not - it's based on a false, closed assumption. In the real world, if 1 man has gone from creating £10 of Capital to now making £15, wouldn't business think "well if I had 2 men I could create £30"? of course it would. It's why businesses expand into new areas and build new factories and buy new tools and so on.

Furthermore, with regard to the UK, where we live, productivity is lagging behind many other nations.  And again, when he says that  "an increasing minority are denied the opportunity of a job" that's not true. There are more people working than ever before, and fewer unemployed.

It's a load of old bunkum.

With respect blandy, I think you're way off on this one. 

The idea that companies are not investing, but choosing to sit on their profits, is not some kind of radical, 'out there' thought, it's observable reality. The concept is called 'secular stagnation' and is the idea that a greater propensity to save profits rather than investing them is acting as a drag on demand. You've produced a 'wishlist' of investment ideas but there is nothing preventing companies from investing in these areas now, except a belief that they won't achieve a worthwhile ROI. What's more, most of them will/would require very little in the way of labour to develop. There aren't going to be masses of people designing 'smart' fridges or constructing wind farms, no matter how socially desirable they might be. 

Your second argument is just refuted by history. The reason is because technological advancement is a better bet for productivity increases than an increased workforce. If 1 man has gone from creating £10 of capital to now making £15 because he's working with better software, that suggests investing in upgraded computer systems is a better bet than hiring more men, because it simply isn't the case that the worker has become 50% more efficient without help from technology. We can see that your model fails on first contact with the real world - if it were true that it made more sense to hire more people as a result of increased productivity, we would expect those areas of business which have experienced the most massive increases in productivity over the last 50 years to have massively increased their workforce as well. Has that happened in, say, commercial shipping? I think we can agree it has not. 

Finally, you keep falling back on the fact that Britain currently has very little unemployment, which is true, but what Britain has is a large amount of *under*employment. If you just look at the employment figures, the economy looks in great shape, but if you were to compare the total number of hours desired by the workers of Britain to the total number of hours available to employees, you would see a very different picture. There has been a massive increase in self-employment over the last decade, with most of those workers struggling to find hours. The reason so many people need their wages topped up with tax credits is because for many people employment is increasingly precarious. This idea of 'the gig economy' didn't just get made up out of nowhere. 

Edited November 20, 2016 by HanoiVillan

[blandy]

13 hours ago, peterms said:

He's saying "productive investment", ie what the firm regards as profitable, not what we would think of as socially worthwhile.  He's right - firms have been described as being on an "investment strike", and many have been buying back their own shares instead of investing.  Quite a few commentators have written about the problem of firms sitting on a cash mountain and not investing.

He's right again.  The amount of people required to produce the same amount falls as productivity rises.  Yes, at certain points companies may decide to ramp up production and employ more people as a consequence, but that is wholly dependent on them perceiving profitable invest,ent opportunities - see first point.  Why don't Nissan triple the capacity of the Sunderland plant?  Probably they don't see a prospect of selling that many cars.  But if they did, they would probably end up employing twice the number of people, not three times the number.

So the sectors most prone to productivity gains, those most subject to automation, progressively lose jobs.  The jobs lost are higher skilled and higher paid than those that replace them, typically.  So we end up with fewer car plant workers and more people doing telesales and selling fried chicken.  Meanwhile the gains of increased productivity are taken by the owners of capital, not shared with the workforce, hence the rapid growth of wealth gaps.

The productive investment thing. No he's wrong. It's correct that there's currently a reluctance to invest by many businesses. But that's not through lack of opportunity, or lack of prospects for profit, which is what he claims and then goes on to use as a basis for the universal income. The reason for the reluctance, currently, to invest, by some businesses is caution and uncertainty about political climates and outcomes. Brexit  being one such example of that. And on Nissan, you'll note they have, after being given, cough, assurances by the Govt decided to invest in their factory in Sunderland so they can make a new model of car there and build more cars.

It's absolutely true that automation has been both taking jobs and increasing productivity for the past 50 years and that it will keep on doing so.

Universal income is neither a solution to that, nor a logical outcome or palliative for that, nor is it justified by the articles spurious claims and analysis, nor is it remotely credible as a genuinely tenable mechanism.

I don't believe that you, or snowy, or HV would argue that employers wouldn't just use it as a subsidy for their wage bills, as an excuse to pa lower wages, or that you'd argue that paying it to the wealthy is economically sensible, or that bluntly the sums add up.

The article is poorly argued, logically weak, and makes absolutely no viable case for universal income. It takes a situation about current investment by businesses (some) and misdiagnoses the reasons for that situation, claims no opportunity where there is massive opportunity and then uses all that to leap to universal income. It's a weak minded load of drivel.

[blandy]

13 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

With respect blandy, I think you're way off on this one. 

The idea that companies are not investing, but choosing to sit on their profits, is not some kind of radical, 'out there' thought, it's observable reality. The concept is called 'secular stagnation' and is the idea that a greater propensity to save profits rather than investing them is acting as a drag on demand. You've produced a 'wishlist' of investment ideas but there is nothing preventing companies from investing in these areas now, except a belief that they won't achieve a worthwhile ROI. What's more, most of them will/would require very little in the way of labour to develop. There aren't going to be masses of people designing 'smart' fridges or constructing wind farms, no matter how socially desirable they might be...

I think there' a lot that's right in what you've written. However I don't think in any way it makes any kind of case for universal income. I also disagree with parts of your analysis as follows:

The idea that companies are not investing, but choosing to sit on their profits, is not some kind of radical, 'out there' thought, it's observable reality. The concept is called 'secular stagnation' and is the idea that a greater propensity to save profits rather than investing them is acting as a drag on demand. You've produced a 'wishlist' of investment ideas but there is nothing preventing companies from investing in these areas now, except a belief that they won't achieve a worthwhile ROI. What's more, most of them will/would require very little in the way of labour to develop. There aren't going to be masses of people designing 'smart' fridges or constructing wind farms, no matter how socially desirable they might be. 

The first sentence is definitely true. However the reason for it is (temporary) political uncertainty, not any long term change or structural thing which means it will be ever thus, and so we need Universal income. It is to a degree location specific as well - i.e the UK is particularly affected at the moment. The political environment needs changing, not the introduction of 25 grand a year for everyone.

My list of investment areas is not a "wishlist" it's a genuine national need for which business is declining to meet at the moment. Again political decisions are to an extent holding business back in some of the areas. The current Govt in being anti Green energy, in the way it is implementing and has been implementing austerity is choking off what would be a natural level of investment by business in many areas. Again the solution is not the intro of UI, it's changes to gov't policy. The opportunities to invest and get a return are there and would be there much more widely with different political decisions. caution in the face of an uncertain government and regulatory situation and the ease by which directors can sit of their hands, buy back shares, raise the share price, get a bonus is a root cause also of inaction.

On technology/productivity, again I disagree with the conclusion. While it's true that technology has meant fewer people working in some industries, it's created new industries and will continue to do so. From TV, to Computers, to smart phones and a myriad other tech investions, these have created huge employment. Now the fact that Samsung and Apple and Nokia and whoever outsources the labour to China rather than keeping it in their own Countries is a different aspect - but tech has created jobs, and will continue to do so.

Regarding productivity and workforce levels where there is a limit to demand for a service or product, (such as shipping of goods) then productivity increases will lead to reductions in workforce. However, were the opposite is true, where new demand is created, or demand grows, then the two can go hand in hand - businesses growing, employing more people and driving innovation in technology. Currently it's tending to be investors from overseas who are doing this in the UK. There's been the japanese, then India then China. Once more though, whatever the diagnosis, UI doesn't address or solve or contribute in any positive way, or seem to be any kind of logical follow-on from the situation as either of us analyse it. British businesses are making short term "safe" or cautious investment (or non-investment) decisions also in part due to the way directors are remunerated, over-rewarding inaction and making them overly averse to "going for it".

You mention that I "keep falling back on the fact that Britain currently has very little unemployment, which is true" - well yes, exactly - it's true and the writer of the article implies the opposite is true in order to part justify UI. Yes there is arguably under-employment - people who'd like to work more, or earn more perhaps and security of employment is a big issue as is exploitation of workers. Is that better addressed by UI or by reversing the changes made particularly by the tories? Is it in giving more rights to workers, in reducing these kind of on-call "gig" contracts where there's no guarantee of getting work on any particular day?

[peterms]

58 minutes ago, blandy said:

The productive investment thing. No he's wrong. It's correct that there's currently a reluctance to invest by many businesses. But that's not through lack of opportunity, or lack of prospects for profit, which is what he claims and then goes on to use as a basis for the universal income. The reason for the reluctance, currently, to invest, by some businesses is caution and uncertainty about political climates and outcomes. Brexit  being one such example of that. And on Nissan, you'll note they have, after being given, cough, assurances by the Govt decided to invest in their factory in Sunderland so they can make a new model of car there and build more cars.

The reluctance to invest has been there for several years, and it's not caused by either Brexit or the US elections.  Those things add to the problem, but it was there anyway.  Where firms see an opportunity to make money from investment, they will do so.  In a situation where demand overall has been weak, people are more in debt, and a further recession looks possible, there will appear to be fewer opportunities for profitable investment.  He's saying that businesses struggle to find profitable opportunities to invest, and that broad claim seems correct.  Nissan were bribed not to relocate (possibly unlawfully, and we'll see if there is a challenge on the grounds of "state aid").  Their decisions about the number of cars they produce will be driven (sorry) by their reading of likely demand, as usual.

On productivity, he says "the number of people needed to keep growing that inventory is declining due to continuing productivity gains", which again seems a simple statement of fact.

You might disagree with the conclusions he reaches from these premises, but I don't get why you say the premises are wrong.

The core of the issue is this: if enough people don't have enough to live on, at some point there will be violent uprisings.  In the past few decades, the combination of jobs and social security has been enough to avoid that.  The assumption has been that for most people of working age, jobs would be available and social security would be a safety net between jobs - unemployment was a transitional and temporary state of affairs.  If in future there won't be enough jobs arising through the market, that assumption won't hold, and we will either have to create jobs in another way, or else recognise that people will need to be paid whether they can find work or not.  The DWP requirement that people demonstrate they are "actively seeking employment" assumes there are enough jobs, and the payment of in-work benefits recognises that many jobs don't pay enough to live on.  At some point, we have to recognise that a rethink will be required.

UBI is one possible approach to that.  I don't think it's the best answer - it would be better to create useful and fulfilling jobs with some social purpose.  But we do need to think about how we deal with the changes that are likely to happen.

[blandy]

2 hours ago, peterms said:

The reluctance to invest has been there for several years, and it's not caused by either Brexit or the US elections.  Those things add to the problem, but it was there anyway.  Where firms see an opportunity to make money from investment, they will do so.  In a situation where demand overall has been weak, people are more in debt, and a further recession looks possible, there will appear to be fewer opportunities for profitable investment.  He's saying that businesses struggle to find profitable opportunities to invest, and that broad claim seems correct.  Nissan were bribed not to relocate (possibly unlawfully, and we'll see if there is a challenge on the grounds of "state aid").  Their decisions about the number of cars they produce will be driven (sorry) by their reading of likely demand, as usual.

On productivity, he says "the number of people needed to keep growing that inventory is declining due to continuing productivity gains", which again seems a simple statement of fact.

You might disagree with the conclusions he reaches from these premises, but I don't get why you say the premises are wrong....

UBI is one possible approach to that.  I don't think it's the best answer - it would be better to create useful and fulfilling jobs with some social purpose.  But we do need to think about how we deal with the changes that are likely to happen.

Yes, the reluctance has been there a while, and Brexit etc. has made it worse. The way businesses leaders are over- rewarded in the US and UK in particular has led to the stagnation, or at least compounded it. There are needs for huge investment in some of the things, or all of them, that I listed, plus many others. A combination of politicians, Brexit stuff, lack of incentive for business leaders to "take a chance" are holding back on that need being addressed. That's what has to be sorted out, not giving everyone 20 grand or however much a year "because technology and productivity".

The difficulty I have with his productivity argument is that it is rubbish. He's claiming that the number of people needed to grow a business's income and profit is declining due to productivity. But that just isn't a fact. If you take a business in a tech industry - Apple or Samsung say - they've grown their workforces and profits haven't they? same with Google. WIthout checking the exact numbers year by year, I'd say that Toyota and Nisan and Mini in the UK have grown their workforces over time (sure they will go up and down as demand for models changes, or recession hits and then growth hits). All these examples are industries with tech and skilled labour and levels of automation, but they seem to be doing well and employing more people over the long term. Now you could argue that we are making more cars than ever before but the numbers of people working in the car industry are fewer than 50 years ago, or whenever and that this is because technology, and I'd agree in part. Though I susepct a biggr reason is because the Japanese and Germans made better cars and they grew while we declined, but I'm not denying technology and productivity improvements happen, or that they ALWAYS mean more people making more profit, I'm saying its not necessarily true that it always leads to fewer workers producing stuff.

Businesses build new factories in places where there is skilled, eager, flexible labour and where the Gov't is cognissant of their "needs" - that might be Poland, or it might be China or it might be the UK. Paying everyone UI isn't going to make them choose the UK - it'll make things worse. The argument that article makes is just really poor, IMO.

Having now had time to look at the numbers, not only have Mini, Toyota and Nisan grown their UK businesses, but here's a graph of BMW employee numbers and of Toyota numbers (global figures)

figures for shipping (seeing as that was mentioned earlier)

Quote

 

In 2015:

the total number of UK seafarers active at sea was estimated to be 23,380, an increase of 2% compared to 2014

there were 10,930 certificated officers active at sea, a similar level to 2014, while the number of uncertificated officers increased by 4%, to 1,710

the number of UK ratings increased by 5% (compared to 2014) to 8,830, the first increase since 2011

there were 820 new entrants under the SMarT1 scheme, a 4% increase on the previous year

 

Other years the numbers also fluctuate up and down  - it seems it's not just a case of decline due to productivity and tech.

[HanoiVillan]

I wish I wasn't at work as I have much to add. It'll have to wait for tonight. 

[TrentVilla]

16 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

I wish I wasn't at work as I have much to add. It'll have to wait for tonight. 

That's the problem with working, it gets in the way of being productive

[peterms]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

I'm not denying technology and productivity improvements happen, or that they ALWAYS mean more people making more profit, I'm saying its not necessarily true that it always leads to fewer workers producing stuff.

His point was that productivity gains mean we can have increasing output and also employ less people.  That's clearly true, and the fact of Apple or Toyota employing more people than they used to does not contradict that.  They are doing more than they used to, and they have increased their market share.  He's talking about the macro level, not about individual firms' response to growing demand.  In (for example) the car industry as a whole, the number of people required to produce a car is clearly less than it used to be - surely that is a simple statement of fact?  Farming is another example.  We produce more food than a century ago, using far fewer people.  You're surely not disagreeing with that?

When people are displaced from jobs, they look for others.  If the job they find is in a lower skilled, lower paid, low productivity sector, we will have at the same time productivity gains from the factory displacing that person, and productivity losses from employing more people in a less productive sector.  This is why we see declining productivity in the UK, alongside obvious productivity improvements.

But we don't want legions of people doing pointless, unproductive jobs, delivering junk mail, making nuisance telesales calls, washing cars.  The central point is that because we can each year produce a little more with slightly fewer people, we need to find ways of dealing with the surplus labour that results.  If we just leave it to the market, we will have lots of bullshit jobs on zero hours.

[blandy]

19 minutes ago, peterms said:

His point was that productivity gains mean we can have increasing output and also employ less people

I don't think it was. I think his point was that more and more people are "surplus to requirements" as workers ( because of productivity improvements and tech. ) and that more people therefore don't have jobs... so we need to pay everyone a Universal income.

And it's wrong. it's factually incorrect. It's not an opinion thing, it's just wrong. The argument is invalid on the basis that what he's claiming is untrue.

Where there is some truth is that the nature of many people's employment has changed (and will carry on changing). The solution to the change in the UK to the gig economy isn't however UI, which, as was exposed in the last GE as economically not credible, as well as being a way to give Big Corp. a means to pay people lower wages.

Going back to the nature of people's employment. Currently we (society, business) place a value on skilled workers which is higher than that for unskilled. We value directors way more than we value clerks or tool-fitters or accountants or cleaners or widget punchers. The Market decides, and the market lets directors pay themselves 140 times the average wage, whereas it used to be 30 times the average. a re-adjustment of the various levels of pay and the value we place on different jobs is much needed. 

[snowychap]

11 minutes ago, blandy said:

was exposed in the last GE as economically not credible

No, it wasn't.

[TrentVilla]

Good to see May is planning to reduce the level of corporation tax that companies aren't paying. 

It should help to show they've reduced the cost of tax evasion at least!

 

[blandy]

15 minutes ago, snowychap said:

No, it wasn't.

Fair enough. Economically not credible in the form as proposed by the Green Party is more precise, I suppose.

[TrentVilla]

16 minutes ago, blandy said:

Economically not credible in the form as proposed by the Green Party

Hold the front page!

[HanoiVillan]

46 minutes ago, blandy said:

I don't think it was. I think his point was that more and more people are "surplus to requirements" as workers ( because of productivity improvements and tech. ) and that more people therefore don't have jobs... so we need to pay everyone a Universal income.

And it's wrong. it's factually incorrect. It's not an opinion thing, it's just wrong. The argument is invalid on the basis that what he's claiming is untrue.

This is an enormous over-simplification, and it's not a surprise you're finding fault with it. His point is that labour surplus now is structural rather than cyclical, ie that there isn't going to be a massive recovery as there has been from previous recessions (this is observably true - it's nearly a decade since the financial crisis). You cannot prove this point wrong by pointing at the raw numbers of people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance. There are a variety of reasons why these don't tell the full story, such as the growth in self-employment, the growth in zero-hours contracts, the increasing use of 'gigs' instead of jobs and the sheer hell of signing on at the JobCentre these days. 

[blandy]

7 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

This is an enormous over-simplification, and it's not a surprise you're finding fault with it. His point is that labour surplus now is structural rather than cyclical, ie that there isn't going to be a massive recovery as there has been from previous recessions (this is observably true - it's nearly a decade since the financial crisis). You cannot prove this point wrong by pointing at the raw numbers of people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance. There are a variety of reasons why these don't tell the full story, such as the growth in self-employment, the growth in zero-hours contracts, the increasing use of 'gigs' instead of jobs and the sheer hell of signing on at the JobCentre these days. 

It is a simplification, sure, otherwise I'd be simply quoting his article in full. I would say this but I don't think I've over simplified in terms of missing out some step of logic or leap of reasoning. That simplification is pretty much what his article says, boiled right down to the thread of logic he tries to use/claim.

No one can accurately predict the future, and we may well be in a long period of little recovery (certainly if the tories stay in power). In terms of the UK specifically, I don't agree that pointing out that facts contradict his claims "cannot prove him wrong". It's not just me pointing out people on JSA - the measures for people in employment show record levels and have done for a few years. There simply is not "surplus labour" - we're having to get immigrants to do many jobs (which is a good thing, in many ways). Not all jobs are a bed of roses, I totally agree, not all work is rewarding or as well paid as we'd like. These are genuine difficulties for people -as are the things you mention. But again, UI is no solution to any of it. and no one has addressed the massive drawbacks of it, some of which I've outlined.

[peterms]

3 hours ago, blandy said:

Having now had time to look at the numbers, not only have Mini, Toyota and Nisan grown their UK businesses, but here's a graph of BMW employee numbers and of Toyota numbers... Other years the numbers also fluctuate up and down  - it seems it's not just a case of decline due to productivity and tech.

Never mind the numbers changing firm by firm, year by year.  This is the overall picture for the UK car industry:

Quote

Looking at the past five-year period, 11.5 vehicles were produced a year for each person employed in the industry. For the period from 2005 to 2009, the figure was 9.3 vehicles produced per employee per year.

Do you really doubt that there is a long-term trend that more can be produced with less people?

That is the point of departure for the piece you criticise.  You obviously dislike his proposed course of action, but surely the simple fact of productivity improvements meaning less requirement for staff is indisputable?