General Election 2017

[Dr_Pangloss]

1 hour ago, PaulC said:

I agree in theory what you are saying but what happens if by increasing minimum wage to £10 increase on corporation tax  either drives a lot of small busineses under or forces them to cut their staff. It could be counter-productive. I think govts need to tackle the problem of people buying property to let and charging exorbitant rent prices. Cut rent prices.

A higher minimum wage flies in the face of the law of demand that 'governs' labour supply, higher the price of the labour, the lower the demand that firms have for it. Under these conditions, firms will either hire less people or retain the same amount at reduced hours.That's the basic microeconomcs 101 argument. Corbyn's counter is that with more people having more money in their pockets demand for good and services will rise, which could more than offset the cost channel implications for companies (i.e. they will in principle sell more stuff therefore make more money and thus be able to hire more people at a higher wage rate). But of course, if demand for goods increase prices will rise thus by definition being inflationary. 

That's the theory, the actual empirical evidence for this is few and far between. 

Edited May 30, 2017 by Dr_Pangloss

[darrenm]

2 minutes ago, PaulC said:

It all sounds fantastic but when Corbyn doesn't know what it will cost to provide free childcare you have to question the realism of it all. I don't think he knows what he doing. 

Like May knows how much the social care cap will be

Like Hammond knows how much HS2 will cost

Like they know how much breakfasts for kids cost

Like May knows how much she's cutting from schools

Interviewers think it makes them look good to catch somebody out on something pointless

[villa4europe]

1 hour ago, PaulC said:

I agree in theory what you are saying but what happens if by increasing minimum wage to £10 increase on corporation tax  either drives a lot of small busineses under or forces them to cut their staff. It could be counter-productive. I think govts need to tackle the problem of people buying property to let and charging exorbitant rent prices. Cut rent prices.

from what ive heard discussed on site and down the pub (the political hot bed that it is...) its not the owners of small businesses that he needs to worry about, the rate in the UK for skilled labour is currently £10.50 but the minimum rate for unskilled will increase to £10? the people who worked their bollocks off doing college courses and apprenticeships to get that "skilled" tag dont consider it fairer for all thats for sure

i think labour might be surprised at the demographic that dont agree with it happening

 

[Dodgyknees]

4 minutes ago, darrenm said:

Like May knows how much the social care cap will be

Like Hammond knows how much HS2 will cost

Like they know how much breakfasts for kids cost

Like May knows how much she's cutting from schools

Interviewers think it makes them look good to catch somebody out on something pointless

It only matters when it is Corbyn or Labour. Tories could tell us they are buying the moon and not know a cost, but that is fine.

[Dodgyknees]

1 minute ago, villa4europe said:

from what ive heard discussed on site and down the pub (the political hot bed that it is...) its not the owners of small businesses that he needs to worry about, the rate in the UK for skilled labour is currently £10.50 but the minimum rate for unskilled will increase to £10? the people who worked their bollocks off doing college courses and apprenticeships to get that "skilled" tag dont consider it fairer for all thats for sure

i think labour might be surprised at the demographic that dont agree with it happening

 

A lot of people in shops have worked their arses off, long hours, dealing with angry and vulgar people, being spat at, shouted at, called all the names under the sun, but making sure shelves are stocked, they work bank holidays, christmases and more... but don't deserve to be equal because they didn't choose to go to college?

[Delphouneso]

52 minutes ago, darrenm said:

From £7.50 an hour to £10 will drive small businesses under? If they have to exploit their staff to survive they're not a viable business.

I'll preface this by saying I'm in favour of an increased living wage, however the cynical side of me is concerned that due to how business owners will react to it a lot of people won't actually feel the benefit.

A 25% increase on for what most businesses is one of their biggest expenses is huge, whether they're exploiting their staff or not.

I'm the manager (not the owner) of a small business that employs five staff, the three of those that aren't salaried are earning £8/hr, so not exactly being exploited. Doing some quick calculations the quoted increase of the living wage would cost the business ~£10,000/year. This is a business which last year took a net profit of £38,000.

It's possible I'm being too cynical but all I can see happening in response to this is prices going up massively and staff getting shafted. The cost of the goods we buy will increase as the people we buy from will compensate for their increased staff costs, and therefore the price we sell at will increase so we can continue to make our margins. We'll also have to compensate for our own increase in staff costs by putting the prices up further. On top of that staff on hourly wage will no doubt have their hours reduced, and salaried staff (like myself) will have to make up the difference.

 

[Xann]

Quote

The General Election on the 8th June is one of the most important elections in our time.

Like the BDA’s Manifesto, many Political parties have made sure their Manifestos are accessible in BSL.

However, the Conservative party, to date, have declined, even after repeated requests to have a BSL interpretation of their Manifesto, thus denying Deaf people who use sign language the right to be informed and to have full access to information on what the Tory policies are on a wide range of issues they are presenting to the COUNTRY

This is a clear breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD)

British Deaf Association

[darrenm]

1 minute ago, Delphouneso said:

I'll preface this by saying I'm in favour of an increased living wage, however the cynical side of me is concerned that due to how business owners will react to it a lot of people won't actually feel the benefit.

A 25% increase on for what most businesses is one of their biggest expenses is huge, whether they're exploiting their staff or not.

I'm the manager (not the owner) of a small business that employs five staff, the three of those that aren't salaried are earning £8/hr, so not exactly being exploited. Doing some quick calculations the quoted increase of the living wage would cost the business ~£10,000/year. This is a business which last year took a net profit of £38,000.

It's possible I'm being too cynical but all I can see happening in response to this is prices going up massively and staff getting shafted. The cost of the goods we buy will increase as the people we buy from will compensate for their increased staff costs, and therefore the price we sell at will increase so we can continue to make our margins. We'll also have to compensate for our own increase in staff costs by putting the prices up further. On top of that staff on hourly wage will no doubt have their hours reduced, and salaried staff (like myself) will have to make up the difference.

 

The Tories are putting it up to £9 an hour. Would that make much difference? Everyone knows it needs to go up, just to keep up with general costs (which seems far higher than inflation). It's the economy stalling that caused the problem of businesses getting in trouble. Unfortunately they've saved themselves by paying staff too little and making people further down the chain take the pain and have to use the food banks. I'd say £8 an hour is exploiting people in the current climate. Giving people more money will drive the economy and create better conditions all around.

[peterms]

4 minutes ago, Delphouneso said:

I'll preface this by saying I'm in favour of an increased living wage, however the cynical side of me is concerned that due to how business owners will react to it a lot of people won't actually feel the benefit.

A 25% increase on for what most businesses is one of their biggest expenses is huge, whether they're exploiting their staff or not.

I'm the manager (not the owner) of a small business that employs five staff, the three of those that aren't salaried are earning £8/hr, so not exactly being exploited. Doing some quick calculations the quoted increase of the living wage would cost the business ~£10,000/year. This is a business which last year took a net profit of £38,000.

It's possible I'm being too cynical but all I can see happening in response to this is prices going up massively and staff getting shafted. The cost of the goods we buy will increase as the people we buy from will compensate for their increased staff costs, and therefore the price we sell at will increase so we can continue to make our margins. We'll also have to compensate for our own increase in staff costs by putting the prices up further. On top of that staff on hourly wage will no doubt have their hours reduced, and salaried staff (like myself) will have to make up the difference.

 

It's worth remembering that exactly these arguments were made against the introduction of a minimum wage, and the predicted consequences didn't happen.  Many people, including tories, who argued against minimum wage in good faith later changed their mind.

[villa4europe]

8 minutes ago, DK82 said:

A lot of people in shops have worked their arses off, long hours, dealing with angry and vulgar people, being spat at, shouted at, called all the names under the sun, but making sure shelves are stocked, they work bank holidays, christmases and more... but don't deserve to be equal because they didn't choose to go to college?

you should try working in construction...sorry but having spent time doing both you wont bother me with that argument

people on site arent happy that unqualified, unskilled workers should get £10 an hour whilst qualified skilled workers get £10.50

as one said to me last week "whats the point in getting qualified" you might as well just be a labourer

[Dodgyknees]

4 minutes ago, Xann said:

British Deaf Association

This is 'poor'.

[Dodgyknees]

1 minute ago, villa4europe said:

you should try working in construction...sorry but having spent time doing both you wont bother me with that argument

people on site arent happy that unqualified, unskilled workers should get £10 an hour whilst qualified skilled workers get £10.50

as one said to me last week "whats the point in getting qualified" you might as well just be a labourer

And those who have done retail qualifications, which there are plenty. Do they also not deserve the rise?

[Demitri_C]

If corbyn wins he better kerp his promise with the 1% pay increase fir nhs staff 

[Dodgyknees]

2 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

If corbyn wins he better kerp his promise with the 1% pay increase fir nhs staff 

He will. Unlike May, he doesn't flip-flop. 

I don't think Corbyn will destroy your lives, but Theresa May. 

[peterms]

58 minutes ago, MakemineVanilla said:

Some people think that there is about to be a robotics revolution which will mean jobs will disappear; there has to be a point where increasing labour costs make investing in robotics increasingly viable.

I heard somewhere that Foxconn's solution to the suicide problem was not to improve the jobs but to bring in more automation.

There are plenty of speeches from Labour suggesting that minimum-wage jobs are an evil which should be eradicated and Corbyn has gone as far as to promise every new job will be a good one.

These perorations are always greeted with cries of hallelujah and a round of applause but so does the claim that the lamb will lie down with the lion.

It's not so much about robotics or Foxconn responding to suicides - these are opportunities and triggers respectively for further automation, but it's been happening for hundreds of years anyway.  Automation, ie the substitution of capital for labour, is the central driver of capitalism.  Which is why Trump can bring as many car plants as he likes to the rustbelt, and the jobs still won't come back.  That's not a bad thing - most factory jobs down the years have been miserable, as have many other jobs.

So what do we do?  Nothing, apart from hoping to stave off revolution by as little social security as we can get away with and tougher social control to repress dissent?  Basic income, to keep people at a slightly higher level than bare subsistence?  Or create jobs that bring social value - education and health care, renewable energy and small-scale growing, science and technology providing clean jobs in developing things we need, not telesales and accident claim chasing? 

It's clear we can't leave it to the market to solve this.  We need a social vision and some bold action.

[Demitri_C]

10 minutes ago, DK82 said:

He will. Unlike May, he doesn't flip-flop. 

I don't think Corbyn will destroy your lives, but Theresa May. 

Time will tell. He also wants to create four extra bamk holidays. Cant say i don't like either of those policies.

Mays been a awful leader she has no one but herself to blame for this loss. Her arrogance has been quite astonishing.

Edited May 30, 2017 by Demitri_C

[darrenm]

8 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Time will tell. He also wants to create four extra bamk holidays. Cant say i don't like either of those policies.

Mays been a awful leader she has no one but herself to blame for this loss. Her arrogance has been quite astonishing.

You work in the NHS Dem? Honestly, if you're NHS and don't vote Labour you need your head looking at

But you wouldn't be able to get an appointment

[LondonLax]

57 minutes ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

A higher minimum wage flies in the face of the law of demand that 'governs' labour supply, higher the price of the labour, the lower the demand that firms have for it. Under these conditions, firms will either hire less people or retain the same amount at reduced hours.That's the basic microeconomcs 101 argument. Corbyn's counter is that with more people having more money in their pockets demand for good and services will rise, which could more than offset the cost channel implications for companies (i.e. they will in principle sell more stuff therefore make more money and thus be able to hire more people at a higher wage rate). But of course, if demand for goods increase prices will rise thus by definition being inflationary. 

That's the theory, the actual empirical evidence for this is few and far between. 

The minimum wage in Australia is $17.70 which works out as £10.25 at current exchange rates. 

It would be an interesting study on the effects of minimum wage on employment and inflation. 

A number of U.S states have no minimum wage but they also have workers working 2-3 jobs for 60hrs per week who still need government assistance to make ends meet. 

That is a totally forign concept in Australia. 

Edited May 30, 2017 by LondonLax

[Dr_Pangloss]

Just now, LondonLax said:

The minimum wage in Australia is $17.70 which works out as £10.25 at current exchange rates. 

It would be an interesting study on the effects of minimum wage on employment and inflation. 

A number of U.S states have no minimum wage but they also have workers working 2-3 jobs for 60hrs per week who still need government assistance to make ends meet. 

 

That is a totally forign concept in Australia 

There have been some studies done in the US on state level impacts of minimum wages (where they have been introduced) and have found no effects e.g. http://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/njmin-aer.pdf. It's hard to talk generally though, clearly the impacts will differ across sector, and clearly there's a ceiling on how high it could go.

[peterms]

This article is quite interesting, and should give pause for thought for undecideds.

Quote

If May conducts Brexit like she has this election we're all in serious trouble

What kind of Brexit campaign can we expect from May's election campaign

By Ian Dunt Tuesday, 30 May 2017 10:04 AM

The polls are behaving like a wild horse trying to fling off a rider, but let's presume that on June 9th Theresa May wakes up as prime minister. What have we learned about how she'll handle Brexit negotiations from this campaign?

After all, she supposedly held the election to consolidate her negotiating position. Last night's debate she won healthy applause for her standard-issue Brexit mottos, like 'we're going to make a success of it' and 'no deal is better than a bad deal'. And she's right in highlighting how tough the talks will be. We are the junior partner, working to an impossible timetable, with limited negotiating capacity, on talks which cover almost every aspect of the economy and society, from how planes criss-cross in the sky, to drug laws, to veterinary practice, to customs checks. It is one of the single greatest endeavours ever undertaken by a British prime minister. So how will she do, on the evidence of the last few weeks?

Badly.

The most troubling aspect of May's election campaign is the way that she is responsible for her own errors. They have not been due to forces beyond her control. They are entirely self-created. She called the election, out of the blue, after having seemingly made the decision on a walking holiday. Since then, it has appeared horribly rushed and mismanaged. 

The Tory manifesto is almost completely uncosted. It is like a parody of what the Conservatives say Labour manifestos are like. Then, at its heart, was a catastrophic misjudgement on the dementia tax. This will have partly been the result of tight time constraints - albeit ones she has only herself to blame for. But it is also indicative of how May works. The party has no role. Not even Cabinet has a role. Otherwise relatively interesting political figures like Amber Rudd, David Davis and Philip Hammond have been turned into puppets of the leader's will. Only May and her two advisers have any role. You can sense the absence of all the people she fired, in a mad and arrogant rush, when she first became prime minister. All decisions are made in Downing Street. No-one else is consulted.

This type of control freakery has driven other prime ministers round the bend, the most recent being Gordon Brown. It is ineffective in terms of management, but it also creates bad policy on its own terms. It seems Nick Timothy, one of May's two chiefs of staff, inserted the dementia tax policy at the last minute without briefing Cabinet. And what happened then? A series of utterly predictable reactions from the press, from the parliamentary party and from core Tory voters. It was exactly the kind of repercussion you would expect if you had stress-tested the policy behind closed doors.That's why ideas get batted around before publication - to spot the weak points. May has sealed herself in her own echo chamber, with all the functional consequences which follow from that.

But then, mistakes happen. They will invariably happen during the Brexit negotiations, no matter who conducts them. It's how you respond that counts.

May responded catastrophically. Her press conference on Monday was one of the worst we've seen from a British prime minister in some time. She kept insisting that there had been no U-turn when it was obvious there had been. Her body language and tone were doing her terrible damage as she insisted, ever more desperately, that "nothing has changed". She had U-turned on a cap without being able to specify the level of the cap, all but guaranteeing that the issue would not be closed down and more punishing questions would follow. It was amateur hour.

She made other unforced errors. Promising a vote on fox hunting did not win her any voters who weren't already going to vote for her, but it will have reminded wavering Labour voters of what the Tory party used to be and sent many back into the arms of Jeremy Corbyn. The policy on free school meals may not have enjoyed as much press coverage as the dementia tax, but it causes outrage among some voters. You could see that much from the strong crowd reaction to comments on school funding during the debate last night. The manifesto policy to scrap a total ban on the ivory trade didn't get much coverage in the mainstream media, but received huge traffic on social media, among what we must presume are the types of voters most likely to respond to it.

May also managed to directly make European negotiations more difficult and bad-tempered during the campaign. It started with her absurd claim that she had to hold the election to stop British Remainers blocking Brexit. It was almost pantomime in its silliness. She had literally just triggered Article 50, after passing a bill through parliament without any amendments. Little was made of this obvious lie at the heart of the election by the British press, who loved her authoritarian turn, but it was recognised in Brussels for what it was - an almost Trump-like statement of childishness and self-interest.

She did the same thing when she emerged from Downing Street to gravely warn the British people that sinister European forces were trying to undermine the election. Again, it was absurd. Again, the British press loved it. Again, it turned her into a laughing stock on the continent.

May wanted an election because she thought Corbyn was easily beatable. That was a completely reasonable decision for a prime minister to come to. But she did not have to deliver it in a way which poisoned relations with the negotiating partner she was about to enter into talks with. Nor, for that matter, did she have to time it so that it reduced our time for negotiation. If it was so important to strengthen her position with an election, she should have done it before Article 50 had been triggered and the clock started ticking.

And then, finally, there is the general tone and messaging of the campaign. May wanted to run as 'strong and stable' next to Corbyn. But she was not prepared to live up to the slogan. She dodged TV debates. She avoided the press. When confronted with angry voters or hostile journalists her face quivered. You could see it affect her. You could see how desperately she wanted to be somewhere - anywhere - else. She is simply not strong or stable enough to be pursuing an election strategy defined by those terms. What was effective at the start of the campaign has now become a stick with which to beat her. Strong and stable is her version of John Major's 'back to basics' slogan. It's a permanent unhelpful comparison to her day-to-day behaviour.

May still retains public support, but people know nothing about her. So when the headline description starts to disintegrate she has no other relationship with the public on which to fall back. That partly explains the speed of the disintegration of the Tory poll lead.

So what can we learn about May's negotiating tactics over Brexit from the way she has handled this election? She makes spur-of-the-moment decisions for which she has not prepared. She is a control freak who receives too little advice from outside her immediate circle. She pays insufficient attention to limitations in her operational capacity. She does not stress-test ideas before implementing them. When the ideas then fall apart she quickly capitulates, but even then is unable to halt the bleeding. She U-turns in a way which maximises the humiliation but does not close down the issue. She makes promises which will do little to benefit her but which make her disproportionately vulnerable in other areas. She diminishes her reputation with the very people she most needs on side in order to placate those who she already has on side. She adopts a strategy upon which she is unable to deliver.

Theresa May's election campaign has been a collection of unforced errors. What's most concerning is that this is how she performed against Corbyn. The entire reason this election is taking place right now is because he is such a weak candidate. How will she do when she is facing a much larger, more powerful, better prepared opponent? On the evidence of what we've seen so far, there is ample reason for concern.