Well done Harriet Harman

[vtsnowedin]

Andysir? Is that chart showing total wages paid in aggregate or individual average wage vs. GDP? I'm trying to understand it in light of the advent of robotic assembly lines and the shift of manufacturing to offshore labor markets.

[AndySir]

Total wages/GDP. I think average wages have held steady/declined but it depends how you calculate them (I think it's declined against export prices but steady against GDP - don't trust me on that one though).

[biffvernon]

...for biff to believe it was some form of clandestine gov' policy to transfer wealth from taxation to private landlords, I'll try again.

Over,the last twenty years we the workers of Britain, have produced less and less as a country.

Clandestine in as much as few people realise that this policy DOES transfer wealth from the exchequer to the landlords. Most folk. I guess, think of Housing Benefit as a payment to the tenants, feckless or otherwise.

As for we the workers of Britain, personally I have been earning a living for the last decade by manufacturing stuff in Britain using virtually 100% British grown raw materials. (I've retired now.)

[biffvernon]

And being honest about the hidden subsidy that Housing Benefit brings.

Ah! changed the word policy to subsidy

Good use of linguistics there Biff, like it, like it.

Thankyou. It's a policy that is well hidden, as explained above.

[Little John]

And being honest about the hidden subsidy that Housing Benefit brings.

Ah! changed the word policy to subsidy

Good use of linguistics there Biff, like it, like it.

Thankyou. It's a policy that is well hidden, as explained above.

He's playing with pedantics B, as we both know, to avoid having to deal with the substantive issue.

[vtsnowedin]

So for the labor as victims crowd did it go something like this?
In the 70’s labor managed to negotiate a pretty nice contract with good wages and retirement benefits and you had, lets say ten workers working on an assembly line. Then competition from Japan and elsewhere drove prices down and squeezed profits. Not being able to renegotiate the labor contract management retrofitted the line with robotic machines and they achieved an increase of productivity while reducing the number of workers from ten to three and perhaps these three were technicians and non union.
As labor did not invest in the robots they get no payment for the robot’s production. They are miffed that management will not pay the seven laid off workers to sit around and watch the robot’s do their former jobs.
Is that correct?

[AndySir]

You've missed that the average wages are holding steady(-ish), so those 10 low paid workers have morphed into 3 higher paid workers (management, programming, design... not technicians) but notably their combined wages are a lower proportion of the output than the 10.

You now have 3 people producing more per capita but 7 people sitting around - coldly put - as wasted resources. What are you going to do with them? Vote for Snowball and the four day week? Or wait for them to get all Steve on you and invoke lamp-post and rope based solutions?

[AndySir]

Oh, and to preempt the obvious retort that it's the differentiation in wages that drove higher prices:



The gap between house prices and GDP has been shooting up since the 80's so house prices have also been rising much faster than average wage growth (or wage stagnation/GDP if you prefer).

[vtsnowedin]

If you plot house prices "If house prices stay static" would it not be a straight level line?

[AndySir]

No sir - not the most intuitive graphic - but that is house prices relative to GDP so so 'price rise=GDP' is a straight line and 'house price static' is a negative gradient.

[vtsnowedin]

I see it as poorly set up and atrociously labeled. If you were to plot inflation adjusted GDP as one line and inflation adjusted wages second and inflation adjusted house prices on a third you might get something that was instructive.

[vtsnowedin]

You've missed that the average wages are holding steady(-ish), so those 10 low paid workers have morphed into 3 higher paid workers (management, programming, design... not technicians) but notably their combined wages are a lower proportion of the output than the 10.

You now have 3 people producing more per capita but 7 people sitting around - coldly put - as wasted resources. What are you going to do with them? Vote for Snowball and the four day week? Or wait for them to get all Steve on you and invoke lamp-post and rope based solutions?

A very serious question, the answer to which our leaders seem to be coming up short on. The rope and lamp post solution won't work in the US as those the Stevie’s might want to string up all have guns. The chances of union leaders realizing the limits of their power and making their members competitive in the world market place seem remote. Look at the city of Detroit and see the future.

[AndySir]

...guns.

Thought you might bring that up. Of course even if you're morally okay with living in your gated community, probably by demonizing the people on the other side of your high walls (hey, look at that we're back on topic), you're now left with the situation where you're spending more and more of your GDP on security while your taxes are going down as a percentage of GDP.

That trend has an obvious breaking point.

[vtsnowedin]

Probably means we are just going around in circles.
I don’t have any gate and the last ones I had kept the cows in the pasture.
Little need to spend any significant money on security as long as you keep the beer and cigarettes available and a bennies card handy.
I see one US Congressman proposing to require all gun owners to carry liability insurance on each gun with a $10,000 fine for non compliance. Net effect would be to disarm all poor and most minorities but they haven’t noticed that as yet. It goes right along with having strict gun laws in the cities and looser restrictions in the suburbs and countryside. Wouldn’t want the wrong sort of people to be knocking about legally armed don’t you know.

[biffvernon]

Why would you want a gun in a city? Have the moose and bears moved into town?

Oh, hang on. Americans kill their fellow humans don't they?

I gather they killed eleven children in Afghanistan on Saturday so at least they don't regard their own schools as anything special.