keith1879 wrote:Post 1 has some pictorial graphics - coming to this thread late it does genuinely look to me as if your computer isn't rendering them properly.
UpTheBeehole wrote: Maybe you missed the day when they taught you to buy a computer which works
Re: Budget 2017MACCA wrote:Yes as I'm using my computer
You are a shining beacon for us all Sidney.Sidney1st wrote:Just going to put this out there, but I agree with a lot of what Macca says.
I've only ever had to sign on twice and I got a job within a few weeks.
When I'm struggling with bills I cut back on other things.
I know people out of work who have better luxury items than I do, but they also have masses of catalogue debts, for example, whereas I don't.
The vouchers thing would work if thought through properly, but let's be honest no government from either party would think it through properly.
My ambition and drive has shown that when accessing the site via a mobile telephone the graphs etc are too large to be shown.Bordeauxclaret wrote:If it makes you feel better everyone else can see it.
I’m sure you are driven enough to work out what’s wrong though.
I must not say too much on the subject as I don't want to bite the hand that feeds me, but I get a paid part of my wages by someone who doesn't work... yes, they pay me to make their lives easier, yet don't have a job.Sidney1st wrote:Just going to put this out there, but I agree with a lot of what Macca says.
I've only ever had to sign on twice and I got a job within a few weeks.
When I'm struggling with bills I cut back on other things.
I know people out of work who have better luxury items than I do, but they also have masses of catalogue debts, for example, whereas I don't.
The vouchers thing would work if thought through properly, but let's be honest no government from either party would think it through properly.
Not really, I've just been on my arse a few times and I've always had a good work ethic.Bordeauxclaret wrote:You are a shining beacon for us all Sidney.
We are a different breed though Sid, i get bored if I don't go away when I take 2 weeks off in the summer.Sidney1st wrote:Not really, I've just been on my arse a few times and I've always had a good work ethic.
Daytime TV is rubbish though, so that also helps.
]"Just because you don't understand graphs"hampsteadclaret wrote:I had decided to stay off the Politics threads for the forseeable, for any number of reasons..this being one of them..
46..RingoM...'Do any of the Lefties have one of their poxy little graphs to show what itd be by now!?'
Just because you don't understand them, is no reason to dismiss them as poxy - if you ask in a reasonable manner I am sure that someone will explain them to you...FWIW the charts/tables/stats on this thread are fine...look at the sources...they are from the Treasury or the ONS..they can be trusted; post 42 is unsourced but must be ONS, the stats look fine but paint a gloomy picture looking forward.
There is some stuff on this thread though, that needs a response.
post 8 - really..what is going on there?..and post 12??
post 15 - it would be a mistake I think to link increases in an unwanted but increasing National Debt, on immigrants.
For example take a random 1000 people entering the UK.
- If this group were working, producing, engaging, contributing, then it is likely that they would be paying Income taxes, VAT, Nat Ins, Council Taxes and other expenditure taxes; similarly it is likely that they would not be placing much of an additional burden on the welfare system, benefits etc.
In my example therefore, for these two reasons the National Debt would be falling not rising.
** IMO the National Debt figures are as poor as they are mainly because of AUSTERITY - a failed economics experiment [it's creator legged it months ago] that we are bizarrely continuing with.
Austerity will not deliver Economic Growth on the appropriate scale - when will those clowns in charge get this? - the projected economic growth figures for the next 5 years [all now downgraded] are truly shocking [and badly out of sync with most of Europe, and most of our major competitors.]
POST 16...dsr...you say - 'That Janet-and-John graph from the Treasury suggests that Sotland's spending is 5% of the total'.
If that's a graph then I'm an Eskimo - there is nothing wrong with the data in the OP, or the way that it is presented. It is highly informative and easy to understand.
caballo..post 44 - Hammond should be hammered for those growth figures..they are abysmal.
1] living wage went up [as it should] because of rising inflation...no REAL increase.
2] personal allowance increase was I believe £350...a quick calculation tells me that it is worth about £70 a year, or slightly more than £1 per week.
Wow.
3] abolition of stamp duty for first time buyers - all commentators today have said the same thing; this will fuel the demand to buy BUT little in the Budget that will directly increase housing supply [there never is] so the main gains go to existing home owners whose houses will increase in value.
[was that the real intention?]
It was a very poor Budget in view of the Chancellor's own comments about growth and productivity and private investment.[priorities surely?]
Hammond's key instruction was 'don't f**k up' and I think he managed that.
He'll be gone soon though [if she had a decent majority he would already be history] God knows who they'll wheel out to replace him.
Hi Hampstead, I think it's worth taking a look at how "productivity" is measured:hampsteadclaret wrote:post 60..mdd2..that is an interesting post.
'productivity' can be seen as the effectiveness of productive effort, especially in industry, as measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input'.
- it is a measure of efficiency in the workplace..[the efficiency of people, machines, factories, systems].
Off the top of my head here are a few reasons why UK productivity may not be as high as we would like, or may lag behind our competitors..
- a lack of investment by owners in the best machinery, best methods.
- a lack of decent quality training and skilling by both private and public sectors..[big debate on this is desirable]
- a transport system which is inefficient, overcrowded and slow.
- insufficient medium/long term investment in education and health care [eg - in the Budget I think health spending increased by £2.9 billion....for months the 'health industry' has been saying that they needed £4 billion just to stand still..]..if we underfund/underprovide education and healthcare do not be surprised if we have poor productivity.
Hammond couldn't afford more because growth is too low/slow.
Growth is too low/ slow because the economic policy [Austerity] is rubbish and will never work in it's present form...something I [and many others] have been saying for 6/7 years.
- low paid workers
- workers receiving 0% or 1% pay rises when inflation is 3%
- workers on zero hour contracts with little employment certainty
- workers NOT working with modern sophisticated equipment/tools/machinery
- workers suffering from low morale because of a particular situation in their workplace [how many examples do you want?]
ARE ALL unlikely to deliver improvements in productivity.
** Bullying can sometimes deliver productivity improvements..eg - the much publicised working practices at Mike Ashley's 'Sports Direct' warehouses..
- not the way forward though is it.
In terms of the points you mention in your post, I have covered some of them.
- you mention 'immigrants'...lots of them work in low skill activities where it is difficult to improve productivity.
you say..'A lot of jobs are low paid-so tax take from those jobs is low but "benefits" like child benefit, cost of health and education may be high
if families migrate and not just a worker- more may be taken out of the national pot than is put in.
This is a decent point [and important] but not really related to a discussion about 'productivity'.
you say..GDP will rise but not per capita GDP as more people work but the extra workers produce no more per worker than existing workers''
This is at the root of our productivity problems.
We used to dig coal, make steel, make cars, textiles, electrical goods [see the Burco-Belling thread earlier this week]pottery, clothing, furniture, warships, planes and much more - much of this production has gone or seriously cut back. All these industries had potential for decent productivity improvements, working with sophisticated equipment and tooling.
The Government keep bragging about the zillions of jobs they have created..examples include
shoeshine-boys in the City of London
home and office cleaners
hotel staff
high street retailing
mobile hairdressers
personal trainers
fast food outlets
leaflet/junk mail deliverers
taxi drivers
interior designers
''consultants' [?]
Ocado and similar..
car washes
garden landscapers
deliveroo
children's indoor play areas [many many more]
beauticians/false plastic fingernail fitters [..
Look no further for UK productivity problems.
Two things to finish with..
[1] a lack of public and private decent quality investment in the UK is a BIG problem.
[2] globalisation..many of our competitors [China, India, E Europe, Brazil, Turkey, Phillipines, Indonesia, Taiwan and dozens more] have lower labour costs than us, and it will therefore always be difficult to get ahead of them in the 'productivity game'...not a level playing field.
King of the swingers Lancs!Lancasterclaret wrote:You've come out swinging today Ringo!
That only normally happens after loads of really bad Brexit news.......
Well, Collins describes a graph as "a mathematical diagram which shows the relationship between two or more sets of numbers or measurements.", which I could argue fits the definition. But on this matter probably "chart" might be a more accurate description and I concede that you have made a mighty political point.hampsteadclaret wrote: POST 16...dsr...you say - 'That Janet-and-John graph from the Treasury suggests that Sotland's spending is 5% of the total'.
If that's a graph then I'm an Eskimo - there is nothing wrong with the data in the OP, or the way that it is presented. It is highly informative and easy to understand.
Thank you for granting me an audience your eminence. Might one pry for a moment. That lofty position that you hold. Does it provide your superiorness with unmatched signal on your bejewelled mobile phone device?hampsteadclaret wrote:69..McCartney...this was a stupid thing to say earlier on this thread.
''Do any of the Lefties have one of their poxy little graphs to show what itd be by now!?'
It still is despite your bleating and whining.
You say...
'suggests you may want to reconsider'..I will never need to reconsider anything that you suggest, ever.
You refer to me...'self appointed role of UTC political, economic and intellectual tsar,...
Why don't you look at post 60 by mdd2, who says two relevant things..
'The productivity problem is what needs sorting and as a non-economist can [an] economist confirm or refute the following..'
AND
' discuss please and correct the falsehoods'..
That's what I've done.
You finish by saying..'Think about it while you're on your self-imposed message board exile.....'
Wake up, that's not what I said...[misquote..not unusual on here]
I said I was avoiding the interminable Political threads inhabited by a few people like you, who say the same thing, month after month, without pause for thought.
One of the biggest nutters on here, and it's a competitive field.
spot on that.aggi wrote:I'd say one of the other factors in low productivity is the culture. I've probably worked in a dozen or so European countries and many of them have a culture of working quite fixed hours and that's it.
In the UK there seems to be more of a culture that working longer hours is impressive, rather than what is achieved in those hours.
I'd say partly that. I'm not really sure why the difference has arisen to be honest but once the culture has set in then it becomes self-perpetuating with people who worked long hours then moving up to manager and judging new staff by the same standards.If it be your will wrote:In your view, is that culture due to fear of looking uncommitted? If so, why are our workers more frightened than everyone else's?
(Even more depressing, a lot of this overtime is unpaid. I assume unpaid overtime is not counted in the 'hours worked' part of the calculation, so our 'real' productivity figures could be even worse than they appear.)
First guy I worked with, a miserable old Yorkshire b***tard, always used to finish bang on 5 o'clock. 'It's not the hours you put in lad, it's what you put in the hours'. Quite right too.aggi wrote:In the UK there seems to be more of a culture that working longer hours is impressive, rather than what is achieved in those hours.
I agree. Shirley Williams (then Labour minister for Education) still seems to think that the 'phasing out' of Burnley Grammar School and Burnley High school was the right thing to do. These were two of the best schools in N W England, regularly sending the very brightest academic minds to Oxford or Cambridge universities.thatdberight wrote:And I'd say one reason is that we are failing to educate our kids properly. 40-50 years of deliberately devaluing intellectual and academic achievement while the hungrier nations looked on and picked up the baton is coming home to roost. People might not like how South Korean and Chinese kids work to achieve and that's fine but there's a choice to be made. Either try to keep up or let them have the material gains. If we are happy that our kids are poorer but have some other benefits in their worldview or life, fine; but it's a fallacy, brought home earlier than many expected by technology and the interconnectivity of the world, that you can have both.
The continued decline of our academic achievement is real and independently measured. End result - it's one factor contributing to less material wealth.