I think we are just using different terminology. By underclass I meant those not in mainstream employment. The people working in minimum wage jobs for big corporations I would call working class. The underclass (according to Murray who seems to have coined the phrase) are defined by benefit dependency, petty crime, substance abuse, unplanned pregnancies and intermittent untaxed working in the black economy.fishertrop wrote:I
1) The low-wage, low-tax-payer underclass are working for big corporations, producing what they need, making these corporations profitable and low-cost
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Unfortunately the poor wretches working in taxed, low wage, low skill jobs are often lumped together with the underclass, but there are important differences.
Immigration is important here because it increases the pool of low-skill workers and prevents labour shortages from bidding up wage levels. Because illegal migrants are willing to work in the black economy at well below minimum wage levels and without on-costs like NI they tend to undermine legal, minimum wage employment and drive working class people into the underclass.
In fairness to migrants, the impact they have had on low-skill employment is small compared to the loss of jobs through relocation of manufacturing to low-wage economies. There's a sort of irony that so many economic migrants are coming to western europe looking for low-skill work just as most of that work is disappearing east!
I have no doubt that Labour are responding to the agenda set by big business. A large pool of cheap labour is obviously to their advantage to fill the few jobs they can't export.
) does. This reflects my fears on Peak Oil, not so much the phenomenon itself, but peoples' reaction (and resistance) to it. "I'm amazed how desperate can one get to save one's lifestyle" puts that in a nutshell.
