Inequality in Britain

[DJKillaQueen]

Poverty is relative because it relates to the cost of living in any particular country, but that might also be better described as hardship as well in wealthier countries. Things are tolerated in poorer countries that wouldn't be tolerated in wealthier countries....like shanty towns for example...because people have to do what they can to survive.

[Laddy Muck]

Poverty is indeed relative, as is - chillingly - the importance (some would say, price) of life itself. I recall being in India many, many, years ago, shortly after a train crash had killed several people. I only found out about the crash coincidentally: trains weren't running to the town I wished to visit. I flicked through the hotel's TV channels: nothing. Asked various hotel staff: had no idea. Scoured the newspapers in shops: a few lines.

Not sure if this is relevant to the discussion, but it sprang to mind. Of one thing I am certain though: had India been a wealthier country at the time, that accident would have been front page news.

[Loz]

I suppose that, to me, poverty is not having the basic necessities for living - food, adequate shelter and basic healthcare. So, to that end, there is very little actual poverty in the UK.

That's not to say there are not lots of poor people in Britain, or people in hardship. But to call it poverty undermines the ones that actually are living in life-threatening poverty and leads to the confusion that vinceayres describes.

[DJKillaQueen]

But there are people unable to afford to eat properly in this country. Ask any of the charities that supply food and they'll tell you they are seeing a threefold increase in the number of people and families being referred to them.

[Laddy Muck]

> But there are people unable to afford to eat

> properly in this country.

Sadly this is true, but nothing new. My own mother used to skip meals in order that we could have something to eat. And it has been a problem amongst - for example - our pensioner population and the homeless for as long as I can remember. However, what is rather alarming is that it would appear that more and more people finding themselves in this position are actually in employment. Seems hard to believe. I mean, this isn't Africa :-S.

[DJKillaQueen]

It's partly because of fuel poverty and rising essential costs (especially rents). People are far too quick to attack those without employment for example but as you rightly say many low waged people in full employment are dependent of some kind of benefit just to make ends meet. And much has been written about the plight of pensioners and rising fuel costs.

More importantly...if you've never been in that situation - or have known someone on a day to day basis in that situation, you can't know how difficult and demoralising it is to get yourself out of it.

It's very easy for those who have everything to think they know how to solve these issues but at the end of the day they are not dealing with the individuals on the ground level. And many of the warnings and appeals by charities to policy makers fall on deaf ears.

[Laddy Muck]

> People are far

> too quick to attack those without employment for

> example...

Sorry to ask such a stupid question, but who has been attacking the unemployed?

[DJKillaQueen]

I was talking in general terms about the recent media and government attacks on those in receipt of benefits....labels such as 'scroungers' and 'dole scum' are not unfamiliar to this forum either.

[Laddy Muck]

Ah! Just give them a smack in the gob your Maj. (The Daily Mail/readers - not the unemployed)!

[Ridgley]

You both made some really good points DJKQ and LM, there will be more people on the bread line as they are more job losses as I wrote in another thread there are different types of poverty I think some people believe just because you have a form of roof over head and in receipt of some benefits that you are not poor not all people on benefits are work shy or scroungers. It is very disheartening when you have worked most of your life to find yourselves on the scrap heap.

[DJKillaQueen]

Yes and for many fifty somethings and over, it will be the last time they'll find full time work. Heartbreaking.

[DJKillaQueen]

Yes and for many fifty somethings and over, it will be the last time they'll find full time work. Heartbreaking.

[Laddy Muck]

To be fair, older people have for years been treated as on the scrapheap by employers - the result of age discrimination. I.e. the problem had little to do with the coalition's spending review and/or cuts, etc. However, unemployment in that sector will of course now be exacerbated as these cuts take effect.

[DJKillaQueen]

That's correct - we have a youth orientated labour market (and usually because too many employers don't value experience nor want to pay for it).

We have also, too many people reliant on state support and not enough people working to pay for it. This is why I can't understand why successive governments aren't more concerned with regeneration than they have been - although tbf New Labour were better on this than the previous Thatcher government.

However did we get into a position where 25% of 16-24 years olds are unemployed ffs?

[Ridgley]

LM wrote

-------------------------------------------------

To be fair, older people have for years been treated as on the scrapheap by employers - the result of age discrimination. I.e. the problem had little to do with the coalition's spending review and/or cuts, etc. However, unemployment in that sector will of course now be exacerbated as these cuts take effect.

But it tends to be a lot worse under the Tories coalition you may call it. On the scrapheap over 50s youth employments is rising but you do have point LM

[Laddy Muck]

I don't know who has the biggest dick LOL! Do tell!

*chuckles*

[Laddy Muck]

Actually Ridgley, did you mean to say: who is the biggest dick?

[david_carnell]

This comment does not have a direct inequality bent, but bear with me and we get there in the end.

Yesterday, the Daily Mail ran an article celebrating the work of the Thatcher government and their overhaul of industrial relations. The headline proclaimed:

Thatcher?s legacy: UK ?is the only nation working harder than in the 1980s?

It told its loyal readers that [my bolds]:

?Britain is the only country whose people work harder than they did in the 1980s, an international study has found. Margaret Thatcher?s workplace revolution has seen Britons working more hours per week than when she was in Number Ten.

?The former Tory prime minister?s success at cracking down on union restrictive practices and freeing the country?s entrepreneurial spirit means we work much harder than we used to. Meanwhile, across Europe, people now work fewer hours than they did in the 1980s.?

It used OECD data that has recently been published on working hours in developed countries. It shows that, compared to almost all other developed nations where working hours have been falling, in Britain both rich and poor are working more hours than in the mid-1980s.

Further data from the EU from two years ago verifies this:

http://www.leftfootforward.org/images/2011/05/European-working-hours.gif

So, the facts cannot be argued. Britain is working harder. Excellent news, right? We should all be raking it in and be richer and more prosperous. And that is where the interesting stuff starts.

First, the OECD report shows that inequality is rising in Britain over the same period and makes us the fourth most unequal country behind Mexico, the USA and Israel. To give the benefit of the doubt, only 5 nations show a decrease in inequality however (Table on page 6 for those interested).

Of more interest to me at least, as a ex-student of labour relations, is the prosperity of countries in relation to the hours worked. Private business organisations such as the CBI would have you believe that Britain is a nation of shirkers and to compete globally we must be shackled to our desks. Today's Evening Standard reports 1 in 3 employees made to feel guilty by taking their legally obligated lunch break.

All things being equal, this would make us (with Romania and Malta), the richest people in Europe. Unfortunately, our productivity lags far behind our main northern and western European neighours, according to this OECD data:

http://www.leftfootforward.org/images/2011/05/Productivity.jpg

Those lazy Finns, who work the fewest hours of all EU nations have exactly the same figure as us hard working Brits. In fact, 2 out the top 3 nations in terms of GDP per hour are the ones who work the fewest hours.

Now, I'm sure the are anomolies and inconsistencies that will be highlighted by those who have vested interests in keeping workers in fear of their jobs and supressing employment rights. The fact that the economic basket case that is Ireland performs well is strange. But overall I think the facts speak for themselves.

Now, back to Thatcher. When did the UK fall behind? Well a big chunk of the ?productivity gap? fell into place in the 1980s, under Thatcher. Lets compare changes in productivity since 1979 between blessed economically liberated Britain and that union-infested tyranny of unreconstructed statism, France (Again, sourced from the OECD):

http://www.leftfootforward.org/images/2011/05/Uk-V-France.jpg

As you can see, France sped ahead with productivity gains in the late 80s, just as Thatcher?s reforms kicked in. After the UK took a productivity hit in the mid-80s, the gap stabalised and finally closed under Labour. While Thatcherite reforms may not have been responsible for the loss of relative UK productivity, lack of them did not appear to hold back France. In fact, unsuprisingly, shorter working hours can be a spur to productivity. As an ETUC paper puts it::

?Protecting workers from excessive long working hours can be a driver for productivity. It prevents unproductive employers being ?bailed out? at the expense of workers? time, instead forcing them to invest in a more productive organisation of the work place.?

So there you are ? the Thatcher revolution: Longer hours, lower productivity.

[Huguenot]

'Productivity' has been touted by the French for many years as an example of their industrial prowess.

However, it's far from that: it's simply calculated by dividing the GDP by worked hours.

The fact is that UK social strategies have long focused on reducing unemployment whereas the French have not - even at the moment our rate is 20% less than France, for the majority of the last decade we have been 50% of that in France.

French productivity 'gains' in the mid eighties were anything but - in fact the gap was a reflection of Thatcherite strategies that reduced unemployment from 11.3% to 6.7%

This volatile area of economic activity - the people who move into and out of employment - are invariably at the low productivity blue collar end of the spectrum. They're very rarely in the white collar wealth generation sphere. They're mostly jobs in industrial sectors with tightly regulated hours. There's no 3 hour lunches when you're working in a paint factory. Hence worked hours can appear to rise.

As a result all countries who have full employment strategies, as the UK usually does, and Thatcher did in the mid eighties, are the whipping boys of the 'productivity' tables. But it's all bollocks, as are, frequently, the French ;-)

[david_carnell]

But surely a full employment strategy would lead to higher GDP thus negating the lower productivity?

[????]

Not if the jobs aren't real jobs, say Head of Diversity for Southwark Council

[Huguenot]

Yes d_c that's right, but it's about productivity and efficiency.

If you have a bank with 1 employee that makes $1m, then it makes $1m per head. If social conscience leads them to employ a cleaner then productivity drops to $500k per head.

The rival bank doesn't employ the cleaner and claims that they are twice as productive.

QED full employment strategies lead to apparent drops in productivity.

[????]

er, banks don't employ cleaners out of social conscience, they employ them becuase customers and employees don't like being surrounded by dirt anyway they largely outsource cleaning ...you still think they have 'tea ladies' hey Huge how quaint.

Incidentally and related - if the great "NO Chief Executive should earn more than 10x the lowest paid employee" ever got made law you'd see even more outsourcing of low paid jobs to third part agencies (often employing the lowest paid under horrendous low security terms)probably increasing poverty.... another cause and effect that the lefty 'brains' of 'equality' seem incapable of thinking about......

[Huguenot]

*sighs*

I didn't think they did Quids, I was just trying to illustrate that employing more people doesn't take the GDP up correspondingly, and can drag 'productivity per employee' down.

Totally agree on your second point. The next thing people will campaign for is legislation to prevent that oputsourced scenario, and then 5 years later people will start talking about a nanny state and bureaucracy holding back the nation.

Circles.

[Brendan]

Clean your own fucking bank.