Common sense or ethically wrong

[allblackcitizen]

Shall we let unelected companies who are hell bent on profit decided how to run the country?

Oh, but they do already ...

 

[allblackcitizen]

Every PM has advisers, Campbell was the brains behind Blair.

Wrong. Campbell was the brains behind the presentation of Blair.

 

[Ban-jani]

Oh, but they do already ...

Was waiting for someone to say this.

 

[bluethrunthru]

Make sure you wash your hands before you serve me a Greggs sausage roll won't you? And no lip.

 

[bluethrunthru]

My "opinion" is that cheap labour is morally unethical and needs to end.

That's all my argument has been.

But you do have to acknowledge that expensive labour means things cost more. I'd like people on the lowest pay to get more. When that was suggested at the GE with an increased minimum wage all you got from the I'm Alright Jack's on here was you push wages up at the bottom then those at the top for experienced or qualified labour go up too. It was the old pay differentials argument from back in the day - they sounded like Trades Union delegates which is funny because one thing they are not are left wing Trades Unionists lol.

Its not just about money its about a state of mind. If you look at Scandanavia most economies pay higher wages things cost more and people pay more taxes - but that happens because everyone accepts its for the greater good. Here people want more pay but for things to miraculously cost less whilst simultaneously reducing taxation - as a state of mind that is simply perverse but many many people hold it out as their Holy Grail.

 

[I'm With Stupid]

Well the Government writes off half of all student loans and I'm guessing it's mainly the students who study subjects like the above who fail to repay their debts. There's also the grants given to universities that account for about a quarter of their funding and probably go some way to subsidising the teaching of those subjects. That's potentially a lot of money thrown at people who will be competing for jobs where there's no skills shortages (and no need for subsidy) and where a degree isn't always necessary to work in those sectors anyway.

I'd argue that a lot of those subjects are actually relatively cheap to run, and therefore often subsidize the more expensive ones. There's no requirement in tuition fees to link the price the student pays to the actual spending on education, so many universities used this extra funding to pay for expensive improvements and research in their science education. It's one thing to say that humanities students should fund their own education, but they're quite often subsidizing the education of students studying more expensive courses, which is what the government should be doing. If a degree is, as you put it, less valuable, then it should be cheaper, but we don't see that, because student loans create a market where universities will almost always simply charge the maximum allowed.

Also just to point out, it's not this government that writes off half of student loans. That cost has been passed on to a future government.

If we're going to fill the skill shortages that exist in this country and reduce our reliance on migrant labour, money would be better spent on courses specifically aimed at those jobs.

So what courses in particular would you identify as needing subsidizing? I mean there's the obvious like medicine, nursing and other public sector jobs (interesting you point to sociology as an unworthy course when we have 122,000 unfilled vacancies in social care in the NHS, and that's often the first step to getting a professional licence). But there are plenty of others where it's far more difficult to predict, because you're looking five years into the future to decide what is worth studying, but ignoring the fact these individuals are choosing something that's hopefully going to provide them with an income for the next 40-odd years of their life. And the reality is that none of us know what that will look like.

It's also worth mentioning that often you don't have a shortage because you don't have an industry. In Sweden, for example, all youngsters are entitled to 230 hours of publicly-funded music education and out-of-school education is subsidized too. And nowadays, American singers and bands are falling over themselves to record in Stockholm and are increasingly getting produced by Swedish producers. They're only behind the US and UK in the size of their music industry, despite a population of just 10 million. But then you combine this with high levels of education in technical fields and you get things like Spotify, that are able to work with Swedish musicians to further grow the industry. It's only through this collaboration of a range of highly educated people from a range of disciplines that you can build successful industries. They didn't fund music education because they identified shortages in a music industry and needed to fill them, they have a music industry because they decided to fund music education.

When I was choosing subjects for university in the early 2000s, no-one would have suggested linguistics as a degree choice. It was all computing, technology and engineering (when isn't it?). And yet now technology companies are falling over themselves to hire trained linguists because it turns out that a background in programming and engineering doesn't help when you're trying to create technology that understand's people voices and can communicate effectively with people. It wasn't IT engineering that turned Apple into the behemoth it is today, it was industrial design and business acumen combined with good engineering. It's at that intersection between the disciplines that you often see the best innovation.

 

[blueish swede]

Trust me, a lot of young people did, and with attitudes like that, they will continue to do so.

You want to do away with "Corbynomics" and Momentum, you need to work out a way of paying younger people enough, not "more", ENOUGH, so that they can live comfortably.

The answer is to pay the lowest paid more - and nobody else. Increase the minimum wage to say £12/hr but don't increase wages for people on £12.50/hr. It will have a positive effect on the economy, but be unpopular with too many people.

 

[bluethrunthru]

The answer is to pay the lowest paid more - and nobody else. Increase the minimum wage to say £12/hr but don't increase wages for people on £12.50/hr. It will have a positive effect on the economy, but be unpopular with too many people.

Or just call students, the sick, those caring for family members, those lucky enough to have been able to afford to have retired early the "economically inactive". Reassign them like its North Korea or China or something. Then shame or force them to take the low paid jobs that there is nobody here to do. You do have to recall Raab, Patel, Truss and others think we British workers are idlers and lazy - its taken nearly 10 years but the sinister hard right have won

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/51560120

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19300051

 

[Chippy_boy]

Nah it'll be fine, it doesn't affect you, so we're all in denial of reality because we highlight how our position isn't great and advocate for things to change.

Fuck me, right?

Edit: why did you change your wording?

I was being polite. Perhaps foolish of me.

 

[Ban-jani]

Make sure you wash your hands before you serve me a Greggs sausage roll won't you? And no lip.

What’s wrong with working in Greggs?

I have the utmost respect for anyone doing their jobs, whether it’s cleaning toilets or serving chips.

I left school at 15 and in between jobs I delivered leaflets for a curry house. I took pride in what I did and felt good earning my money. I’d do the same now, rather than being on the dole.