You do realise that the scarcity of labour is actually a good thing? Demand outstrips supply, wages and conditions improve, businesses invest to make their staff more productive and we all become richer as a result? The food and drink industry in particular has been punch drunk on an unlimited supply of cheap (and very hard working I might add) labour for years. There has been a lack of training and investment in the existing workforce and that has resulted in stagnating productivity. Our wealth as a country is directly related to the productivity of our people - literally nothing else matters. The more productive we are the greater the tax income to pay for all of the things we care about. Wages must go up and as labour becomes more expensive business will be forced to invest to make them generate more value. That will cause some inflation (lorry drivers can’t be automated - yet!) but the stagnation in wages during the last 15 years has allowed the BoE to hold rates at obscenely low levels thus making the rich richer (asset boom) and leaving the poor (or even average paid) chasing the impossible. If rates tick up to control inflation that will be good a thing. Money needs to have value again.
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Panic buying!
- Thread starter Dilly
- Start date
You do realise that the scarcity of labour is actually a good thing? Demand outstrips supply, wages and conditions improve, businesses invest to make their staff more productive and we all become richer as a result? The food and drink industry in particular has been punch drunk on an unlimited supply of cheap (and very hard working I might add) labour for years. There has been a lack of training and investment in the existing workforce and that has resulted in stagnating productivity. Our wealth as a country is directly related to the productivity of our people - literally nothing else matters. The more productive we are the greater the tax income to pay for all of the things we care about. Wages must go up and as labour becomes more expensive business will be forced to invest to make them generate more value. That will cause some inflation (lorry drivers can’t be automated - yet!) but the stagnation in wages during the last 15 years has allowed the BoE to hold rates at obscenely low levels thus making the rich richer (asset boom) and leaving the poor (or even average paid) chasing the impossible. If rates tick up to control inflation that will be good a thing. Money needs to have value again.
I'm sure that anyone unable to get fuel over the weekend will be a keen subscriber to your theory.
I drove past 5 petrol stations yesterday. 2 were completly closed. The remaining three had most pumps out of use with no diesel at any of them.
There isn't a scarcity of labour. What we have is the absurd creation of pointless jobs and a workforce not prepared to do the jobs that need doing. Economic activity is meaningless if it's made up of people selling coffee to each other. Two aspects are important - balance of trade is the only real measure of economic success along with 'happiness'. Happiness isn't measured by how much tat one accumulates and whether your phone is the latest overpriced product along with your house full of entrainment subscriptions and facebook likes. It's measured by being able to make a doctor's appointment without wasting time hanging on the phone listening to recorded messages. It's made by not having to pratt about checking utility prices every month to avoid another rip-off. It's made by a household having enough income so one parent can actually do some parenting and a society that is safe enough the kids can go out and play without our police force sitting in offices ticking boxes. It’s made by not having overpaid ball-kickers or paper pushers flaunting their greed or a society that persuades people they need to spend silly money on grandiose weddings instead of looking to their future.
A minimum wage that is so low the workers are subsidised by tax credits and housing benefits effectively subsidies all those sectors that use them. It'd be far better that those sectors shrink, pay properly, charge accordingly and dump those excess staff to do more practical things - dealing with our lack of food security, energy security, border control and education.
Folk of my vintage knew that when we bought our first house we wouldn't be having a holiday for some years, we'd be stripping woodchip and wire brushing gutters and sitting on deckchairs and using second-hand washing machines and using our holidays to take locum jobs to pay for furniture - and paying into pension planning and savings. Road trip planning included making the sandwiches and thermos and borrowing a book from the library and talking to our kids.
A minimum wage that is so low the workers are subsidised by tax credits and housing benefits effectively subsidies all those sectors that use them. It'd be far better that those sectors shrink, pay properly, charge accordingly and dump those excess staff to do more practical things - dealing with our lack of food security, energy security, border control and education.
Folk of my vintage knew that when we bought our first house we wouldn't be having a holiday for some years, we'd be stripping woodchip and wire brushing gutters and sitting on deckchairs and using second-hand washing machines and using our holidays to take locum jobs to pay for furniture - and paying into pension planning and savings. Road trip planning included making the sandwiches and thermos and borrowing a book from the library and talking to our kids.
PITA
Model 3 Performance
All fine and good, and maybe you are right that we should enact wholesale changes to our economy. However that would require a careful plan over a large number of years to avoid economic stagnation, mass poverty and the resultant huge political disruption. Instead we have populist lies which are now unraveling the country, while apologists blame 'panic buyers'.
Jason71
Well-Known Member
Washing machine you say? when I had my first house.......no stop must resist.
And the generation before you would be saying "road trips? What are those?". The generation before that would be saying "pensions? What are those?"
Every generation has a tale about how hard it was in their times and how easy the modern generation has it.
This generation, and the following ones, might just be the ones that break that trend. Climate change might just the thing that does it for them.
The point wasn't about road trips per se - road trips have been available forever: barefoot, clogs or perhaps a donkey. My point was about wasteful self-indulgence and greedy expectation. 100yrs ago Karel Čapek made the point in his insect play about the difference between living for the now and planning for harder times. We're reaping our profligacy
Jason71
Well-Known Member
I know that the point wasn't road trips.....it was the point that up until now, every generation did just as you have done- complained that you had it ever so hard and the younger generation have it ever so easy.
As for this piece "Economic activity is meaningless if it's made up of people selling coffee to each other." I'm sorry, but that's a crock. Selling stuff to one another is the very basis of our economy and capitalism as a whole. What exactly do you think drives our economy if it's not businesses buying products and services, adding value to those goods and selling them on? Or is it that there has to be an approved list of worthy products to sell?
My suggestion would be to expand your reading beyond the Daily Mail.
Cnixon
Member
The wealth of a country doesn't come from internal sales. It comes from a positive balance of payments by selling good and services abroad and avoiding buying stuff for the sake of it. Building works and utilities should be managed (as best possible) with domestic resources. Of course there will be internal sales - can't be avoided but using that as a marker for wealth is hiding from reality. The only other wealth forms are the health and education of the population, what remains of mineral type resources and what can be gained by invention.
I had hoped this forum would stay with civilised discussion, but I shan't engage further with rude people.
Jason71
Well-Known Member
tomorrowman
Member
Fake News
(I am only kidding)though apparently UK searches for EV's have gone up 1600% in the last few days, so one minor silver lining to this chaos is it may help the transition to EV's that bit quicker (yes I know the charging infra is not ready, there is a shortage of 'affordable' EV's, there are not enough EV's produced full stop, electricity costs sky rocketing due to an electric grid that can't handle overcast low wind days etc etc etc - but we need to start somewhere)
Help a neighbour get to work and do the EV sales pitch while you have a captive audience
When set this thread off, I didn’t realise what a can of worms it might be!
It would appear that this crisis is here for a while yet and will no doubt lead to other shortages and more panic buying as Christmas approaches.
Our family cancelled Christmas last year and found that it was best Christmas we’d all had in many a year. All doing our own relaxed thing with nothing to bother or panic about.
We are very tempted to do the same again. We can live without a turkey and a Christmas pud, and a handful of toilet rolls will last a day or two.
there is some extraordinary irony that CO2 is in short supply. I assume that we’ll be working on a plan to suck it back out of the atmosphere!
It would appear that this crisis is here for a while yet and will no doubt lead to other shortages and more panic buying as Christmas approaches.
Our family cancelled Christmas last year and found that it was best Christmas we’d all had in many a year. All doing our own relaxed thing with nothing to bother or panic about.
We are very tempted to do the same again. We can live without a turkey and a Christmas pud, and a handful of toilet rolls will last a day or two.
there is some extraordinary irony that CO2 is in short supply. I assume that we’ll be working on a plan to suck it back out of the atmosphere!
Expand that one step, as a planet we export no goods or service to other planets, so by your definition the planet and therefore every country has no wealth.
This isn't really how the economy functions, the vast majority of all GDP is from internal trade between people within one country. We have a massive trade deficit, and have had for decades if not centuries. Doesn't stop us being 'wealthy'.
We did put a post on our Facebook page for friends who might be stuck with no fuelFake News
though apparently UK searches for EV's have gone up 1600% in the last few days, so one minor silver lining to this chaos is it may help the transition to EV's that bit quicker (yes I know the charging infra is not ready, there is a shortage of 'affordable' EV's, there are not enough EV's produced full stop, electricity costs sky rocketing due to an electric grid that can't handle overcast low wind days etc etc etc - but we need to start somewhere)
Help a neighbour get to work and do the EV sales pitch while you have a captive audience
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