Huge jobs loss to follow public sector cuts Half a million private sector jobs are likely to be lost as a result of public sector spending cuts. Predicted public sector cuts could mean 186,000 fewer jobs in business services and 47,000 fewer people employed in transport and communications. Add to that job losses from the construction, manufacturing and hospitality …
Shouldn't be a problem though. Trivially, tax reductions made possible by less gummint spending should leave more money in the private sector, thus those jobs will reappear elsewhere.
What, no tax reductions? Borrowing from the future, were we? Someone ate the cake already, in a sense.
Well then, prices (including prices for labor) will have to go down. Cue union bosses smelling a good occasion to raise their notoriety.
*Profits* can go down. The rich folk who spent several decades borrowing from the future can now pay that money back.
Alternatively, all the old twats who ruined my future so they could have a slightly more luxurious present could be put out on the street. They can then come face to face with /EXACTLY/ what my generation thinks of them. I can’t wait until my generation is in power, because I promise you old age security will be the /first/ thing I vote to be cut.
Unlike supporting my grandfather’s generation – folks who truly contributed to society and tried to leave the world a better place then they found it – my parents’ generation decided they didn’t have enough and so had to reach into the future to steal resources from mine. I have nothing but contempt for the entire lot of them. Greedy bastards every one. I can only hope that my generation will not only be able to cope with this legacy, but repair some of the damage so as to leave the world a better place for our children, and their children yet to come…
No. You can’t have that money back. I consider education – like health care – a basic human right. I can’t speak for your country, but in mine subsidized education and health care are available to individuals of all ages. You will note that I did not in any way imply that we should suspend health care for the aged.
Regardless of their crimes, they are still human beings and they do deserve at least the bare minimum rights that all human beings should have. A concept, by the way, that I don’t remotely expect most of my parents’ generation to comprehend. Let alone agree with. A generation of people raised only to believe in “me, me, me” just wouldn’t get it.
No, what I think is that things like Old Age Security and the Canadian Pension Plan should be eliminated. Instead there should be a fund that provides the absolute bare minimum food/shelter/clothing required for those who were too short-sighed to save for retirement on their own. Pack ‘em high and pack ‘em deep – but keep ‘em alive.
I want my parents’ generation to have long lives. I want them to see the environment fail. I want them to see that because of the social policies they supported the country they no rely on to keep a roof over their heads is bankrupt. I want that entire generation to fully and truly understand what they have wrought.
When these people retire, the high-paying jobs they occupy aren’t “freed up” for younger members of society to move into. The position is terminated upon retirement of the employee and shipped overseas. Thanks to shortsighted and greedy social policy for the past thirty or so years, our society is having to dramatically lower its wages. With it go our standard and quality of living. I want my parents’ generation to experience the effects of this as very deeply and directly as my generation will have to.
This while we are still using up non-renewable resources at non-sustainable rates. (Oil, underground water reserves etc.) Where will we get the plastics we need if all the Oil is gone? How will we feed our people if we must rely only on the amount of water provided by precipitation? We are a hundred years from viable renewable energy technology. We haven’t managed to develop sustainable farming technologies. Still, my parents’ generation demands the god-given right to drive one block in a bloody Canyonero to get a bag of groceries, half of which they will throw out anyways.
We’ve deforested entire nations without replanting those trees; from where then will come the trees future generations need? We’ve pulled out huge amounts of rare elements for use in electronics and other equipment without any care as to enforcing recycling of this gear. These rare elements then are largely left unrecovered; decreasing the total available amount of this material available to future generations to make better equipment. To say nothing of the trend that my parents’ generation pioneered of no longer making equipment of any variety that actually lasts longer than a three-year warrantee!
You can say that noone is entirely blameless and you would be right. The difference here is that my generation (I am not yet thirty) has been TRYING to do well by each other and those who come after us. There simply aren’t ENOUGH of us. There are less than a third of us compared to the number of individuals that make up our parents’ generation.
We don’t have the raw numbers to effect change in political processes. We don’t have the economic might to change the behavior of governments or corporations. When our parents’ generation finally starts dying off and we do rise to power there won’t be anything left with which to enact the change we have fought so long for. The jobs will be gone, the resources depleted and we won’t have any infrastructure – or really much of anything else – to show for it.
Our legacy will be piles of toxic rubbish (shipped to third world countries) crumbling infrastructure, a largely undereducated public and TRILLIONS of dollars in foreign debt. We will be taking power at a point when our nations will have no influence left in the world; it was all bartered away so that our parents could have a “fun time” and a few extra luxuries.
So I may not be perfect – and my generation not entirely blameless – but I still believe wholeheartedly that my generation is largely consists of individuals who are far less self-focused, greedy and shortsighted than our parents.
We have to be. After the mess our parents’ generation left for us, our society wouldn’t survive another like it.
remarkable how those ultimately responsible for this mess, gubermint ministers, financiers and city dross aren't going to feel the pinch in the slightest, not those at the top of the pile anyway.
NO, it's not remarkable in the slightest - the majority at the bottom of the pile always end up paying the most, having the largest proportional tax burden etc etc.
All that sh*te from Mr G Brown about how wonderful it is that the price of your property keeps going up and you should really take advantage of it by borrowing increasingly unsustainable sums to fund the holidays, cars and home improvements that you know your neighbours are already indulging themselves in. The "we can make maths make the money" speak from the analysts and their hedge-fund bosses, it's all been enough to make me sick over the past ten years and more.
FFS, the private sector is the area most likely to gain from this mess and the cuts as more and more public services are put into their hands, where the drivers are profit and shareholders dividends, not the customer or service levels.
So do we have to take some of the blame ourselves then - having fallen for that old trick again, the bight lights and the adverts and the peer presure etc etc ? Will we never learn !
Or should those who are elected into office and are meant to represent us be brought down a peg or two and made to live lives closer to the coalface in order that they cannot escape the consequences of their actions quite so easily.
I know we need markets and capital - but there IS a way to achieve steady growth and think long-term, as opposed to just partying-on like there's no tomorrow. Or is that 'so' last century and not exciting enough for you.
Laslty, Mr & Mrs Smith's hard earned savings and pension have got to be spared the vagaries of the city banks excesses next time they screw up. They have to be isolated from further madmen's follies. Bring back the Victorian system of mutuals that's what I say.
$$ IF (var)=rant over THEN goto end
apologies for my blatherings - I'm having a bad day right now.
Cameron must know by now that what Clegg said before the election is true. There is not enough 'inefficiency' in the public sector to make the kind of savings required, a lot maybe, but not enough. They have been shedding jobs for decades. He made too many pledges to ring fence certain public sector services like NHS, front line Police jobs and defence. There is simply nowhere left to cut money from. Watch as more and more ridiculous schemes are put forward and shot down in a vain attempt to warp reality to fit the pre-election promises.
What is more worrying is the blatant scapegoating going on; it's all the immigrants fault, it's all the fault of large families on the dole, it's all the fault of civil service pensions. It's getting a bit too ' fledgling fascist state' for my liking. bring on the next election I say.
It's all an illusion. Unemployed civl servants stay on the public purse, and the private sector layoff's get to join them.
You should also remember that a lot of 'work' formerly done by government employees was switched to the private sector so a form of balancing is taking place. The wonders of government maths.
to outsourced to India, maybe?
Governments are soon going to have to require any company that does work or provides a service in a country to employ all the people for that work in the place where the work is being done and be locals/citizens, so that the taxes stay in said country/province/state. It should also be required that companies working in any country have a head office there so that the company pays the appropriate taxes on income, if the big corporations have to lower their profit margins TOO BLOODY BAD. Remember, it is big business that is ruining the economies of the developed countries with the help of government, whether consciously or not.
I know, sorry, government and conscious in the same sentence. That's very confusing.
Everyone knows what the mechanics of a Tory government are (lower taxes, lower rates of employees paid for through taxation, ... ) but they don't really explain the spirit of Tory mindset.
Hence we can rightfully conclude: they just like to be miserable and put people on the dole.
Maybe a Tory aspiration is to encourage a society where people are able to use creative talents with business foresight as a means of disabling an all to powerful state sponsoring of employment through taxes?
Maybe even to create an evolution of talent driven by talent itself rather than a publicly funded utopia that exists merely in the minds of beholders and upholders?
(I don't know - just asking that's all)
Well, it's a good job that 4% of the workforce being slung into poverty won't impact any other economic sector, because that could have a bit of knock-on effect, and that would be bad. I sure am glad our Lords and Masters have their fingers on the pulse.
By the way, anyone else notice that Wall St. posted a new record high earnings total this afternoon? $144 billion this year, if Disinfo is to be believed. I'm glad that the bankers and financiers are doing so well out of ensuring that the mega-rich keep all their wealth in these troubled times. Gives us all something to aspire to, eh?
Do you need some sharpened pitchforks, Trevor_Pott?
Hmmm, unless I am mistaken jobs/work completed by civil servants subsequently transferred (tyranisferred?) to private sector (really psuedo-private sector) tends to have privileges and entitlements protected.
So, for example, take local authority libraries.
Suppose these libraries are put into the public sector.
There are two main models in use:
(a) an identified private company with suitable experience is identified/approached or the libraries docket goes out to tender
(b) local authority creates a wholly owned subsidiary company with one shareholder (the local authority silly!) and a deceptive or misleading Board (it probably has no Board of Directors status?)
Whichever model is used the employees jobs are safe as they have to be transferred to the new service provider under TUPE
This is in fact a shortform of two different politcal manovers.
1. 'Transfer services to the private sector in preparation for their inevitable collapse so that government can wash their hands of the whole redundancy/guilt thing'
2. 'Transfer services to the private sector at a massively marked down price to a specially created private company with a board that is composed entirely of party sponsors and relatives of ministers.'
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
