Apples and oranges. While our low-paid workers go on strike, if need be, to obtain a higher wage, we are exploiting the third world to keep wages down. By keeping wage slow, we lose staff in key positions, who do not find working for a pittance very attractive. Thus the third world loses thrice. They lose their staff, their workers are paid low wages when they arrive in Britain, and the money that it cost to train those workers in their home country is wasted. That country's tax payers are thus out of pocket because we in Britain have (a) not paid high enough wages to attract more of the indigenous population into, say, nursing or midwifery, and (b) take advantage of third world workers who, you're right, are only too keen to want to improve their position. It's not the indivudual workers either at home or abroad you need to apportion blame to, it's the Government, or rather, successive governments.
But the banks could easily lose all their customers - it's a free choice. The housing market is now effectively being driven by the buy- to-let market. Great, everyone goes to Bristol & West BS and is allowed to borrow enough to buy 5 houses for their portfolio - what happens to house prices ?.
Do you believe, then, that it is morally justified to take advantage of tax payers in the third world and poach their workers to fulfil our needs when we have been unable or unwilling (through greed, lack of planning, lack of investment for the future, and other causes) to entice enough of our own workforce into such jobs? How come Chinese migrants can come here all the way from China, earn 11 pence an hour, get drowned, the local MP warned the Government beforehand, yet all in authority turn a blind eye and try to pass the buck on to gang masters?
I am not blaming the people, but this Government. And the previous Tory Government. And probably the Labour one before Thatcher came to power. These problems go back decades.
Sorry, what I meant was we should fix our own problems instead of relying on cheap labour from countries that can ill afford to let their workers leave en masse. It's one thing for individual workers of their own volition and in their own time and according to personal circumstances to make a decision to live and work in a foreign country. It is quite another for the Government out of desperation to actively recruit workers abroad in their thousands and persuade them to come to Britain. This is a panic measure, not joined-up Government. There was a documentary some while ago about two Australian teachers, a man and a woman, who had been thus persuaded to work in Britain, but they both left after a short time because they found that British schoolchildren so lacked discipline it was impossible to teach them. This is all part of the attitude we have.
Isolated case. I'm talking about the whole country here! Look how desperate we were to have won the rugby. Anything we do achieve is hyped to the heavens because we know there won't be anything else along to cheer about any time soon. No wonder the British went crazy over Diana when she died. The public *need* to focus on something that binds them as a nation, they *want* Britain to succeed. So why don't we? Who stole the blueprints?
Well, someone has the responsibility! Or is it just some weird continental magic which makes other countries work better, their populations more cohesive, their prisons emptier, their productivity higher? Maybe it's because we are without any effective leadership and only nominally have it in the monarchy that we are becoming so totally directionless and apathetic.
The state influence you refer to is prescriptive. I want the Liberal Democrats in government because they are less prescriptive and more presumptive. But I also want to live in a Britain which doesn't have to continually hand out anti-social behaviour orders, or send ministers abroad to preempt soccer hooliganism, or spend a fortune each and every Friday night policing the streets as the drunken youths and their girls stumble homewards. A decent society, that's all, as is evident in many other countries - and, indeed, in some isolated parts of Britain. You probably think I am exaggerating, don't you?
Other countries are far more generous to their citizens and yet there is a buzz in the air in those countries. Why is that?
Well, we can't spend our way out of the problems, else we'd be paying so much tax, there'd be no take-home pay left. We need to change our attitude.
NO. Because the objective has been to grow the capital worth of the company. The company is worth many times its original capitalisation.ie the shares are worth many times what the shareholders invested. Being unprofitable when the capital worth is increasing, is not losing money, purely a a step in growth, whilst increasing employment and gaining market share. Many internet companies are similarly superficially unprofitable on their company accounts, but worth a lot of money. If you take the risks, sometimes you get the rewards. It's called capitalism!
Please explain your fancy excuses to the workers who go on strike because they are being ripped off by greedy employers. I'm sure they'll be all ears. Not!
But that's what the Libdems want to do!! Also they want to join the worthless Euro and be ruled by Brussels!
What a choice!
I don't disagree with your desire to have a responsible, hard working well paid population, but the only economy I've seen which rewards effort and efficiency and controls taxes is the US. No, it's not perfect, but apart from lacking universal healthcare, it's probably the best there is.
Shareholder risk their money every time that they buy shares. Some you lose, some you win, as I know too well. They provide the initial cash that pays the workers etc. If you want a well capitalised company to grow, then you need shareholders prepared to take the risk of losing their money. Perhaps like IMM, you think that Cuba is the the model economy?
I suppose you think "businessmen" are our saviours, our gods, our reason for living. Well, I do not. "Businessmen" have got out of hand in a very big way and they need to be reined in. The public do not realise what an Achilles' Heel consumers represent in terms of buying power. If a company were boycotted for just a week, things would start to look shaky. For a month, and it would be applying for Chapter 11. This *is* actually starting to happen, but only in a fledgling manner so far, with more and more people shopping on the internet, fed up with being ripped off. Also, in Britain at least, consumers are waiting until *after* Christmas to take advantage of the sales. They are becoming wise to the wily ways of the "businessmen". And when the company goes out of business because consumers became fed up with its greed, its rip offs, its bad service, and its don't care attitude, the company's workers will have something to say about it, too, because they will be without a job. The free market rules, okay?
I am totally in favour of workers withdrawing their labour. I've done it myself. However, the choice to become unemployed by striking is down to the individual. If you don't like the terms, decide if you are prepared to take the hard decisions. Going on strike is normally a function of a situation where the employer is not adequately profitable. It is rarely productive. Look at coal, steel and cars if you want to see the results. Employers are not normally primarily motivated by greed, but by the necessity to control costs against their competitors and keep the workforce employed. When a business collapses because it is unprofitable, the shareholders also lose out as well as the workers. We live in a capitalist world, because this has proved to be the best way of advancing the living standards of most of the people.
I well recall a MD friend saying to me, that he dreaded going into work on Monday mornings, because he knew the figures would show that he had to make even more workers redundant. (1989)
Employees who do not want to work are probably infinitely more common than employers who want to rip off their employees.
That's an extrapolated comparison which has little to do with the original example. Again it depends on perspective. There are, and always have been sweat shops or their equivalent. The issue is over where the line lies. For example, the hours and conditions for a junior hospital doctor aren't exactly great either, but the NHS views them as legitimate.
I don't view it as a problem.
It's still ultimately their choice. They are not being press ganged and herded onto slave ships.
That can be laid fairly and squarely at the door of creating large, faceless one size fits all schools.
Media hype. You may need it in order to feel good about yourself. I don't and tend to avoid it.
Media hysteria.
I feel pretty successful, don't you?
I'm not sure that they do
that's desirable?
is it?
I think you are describing a personal angst that comes from wanting a collectivist society and system of government that does things for you and are not finding it.
Personally I don't want it, so I don't have that angst.
It's very easy to appear nice (not that I think they are) when you don't have the responsibility of government and can have the luxury of pontificating.
Yes I do. I've seen the same antisocial behaviour in many other countries.
Can't come soon enough for those of us like me who believe in Europe and want Europe to be a strong bulwark against American hegemony.
You're right. Fantastic! What a choice!
Not perfect? The US economy is dire! Look at the jobs situation! Look at the enormous deficit that the Bushies have wrought when Clinton left a surplus behind him! The state of the US economy is likely to cost Dubya the election, along with all the lies told over Iraq.
Chile killed its own citizens for daring to have different beliefs. I personally know a political exile from Chile. He and his family literally had to run with just the clothes they had on their backs, otherwise they would be no more.
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