Lets just bring back the workhouses. Repurposed for the 21st century. All managed through a phone app with your digital ID. Capita, ATOS, G4S or SERCO can run them and Palantir can take care of the surveillance side of things.
«if we want to have the money to spend on things like health, without self-defeating tax hikes that would simply damage the economy, then we are going to have to deal with the ballooning bill for working age welfare spending.»
What about the ballooning bill for private housing rents and prices? It is a huge and ever rising private tax on lower-class people and drives welfare costs higher directly as to housing benefit but also drives up the cost of living in general and therefore increases public spending on wages and salaries and income support, so it is also a redistribution from taxpayers, but I guess that is politically untouchable.
More realistic seem to be these "pearl clutching" reports by Nick Clegg and Vince Cable of George Osborne's politics which describe how they helped win several general elections:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/sep/05/vince-cable-tories-collectively-could-be-appalling “Some of the greatest pressure came on IDS at the Department for Work and Pensions, whose poor, disabled, unemployed and otherwise vulnerable clients were seen as easy targets for cuts. IDS was a significant figure, and a fundamentally decent man, but he spent much of his time fighting off pubescent advisers and Treasury officials with cruel ideas for saving money.”
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/03/nick-clegg-did-not-cater-tories-brazen-ruthlessness “What I found offputting was the callousness to his political calculations, particularly around welfare. Welfare for Osborne was just a bottomless pit of savings, and it didn’t really matter what the human consequences were, because focus groups had shown that the voters they wanted to appeal to were very anti-welfare, and therefore there was almost no limit to those anti-welfare prejudices.”
«focus groups had shown that the voters they wanted to appeal to were very anti-welfare»
This blog post seems to me to imply that 14 years of Conservative governments have resulted in working-age welfare spending that is so high that even rather modest increases or mere reversals of recent cuts are unaffordable.
So I guess that those "very anti-welfare" voters given that record of overly generous spending on working-age welfare by Conservatives in the past and New Labour now should give a chance to Reform UK, which indeed so many are doing (but mostly because of the stall in property prices that has confiscated much of their after-tax income).
Especially so for retired voters who cannot be directly affected by cuts in working-age welfare (or benefit from such cuts as would help "moderate" wage inflation though greater competition for jobs) so would want spending redirected from working-age welfare to the NHS of which they are big users.
«the increase in youth unemployment, which is now above Euro area levels for the first time in a long time.»
This is great news for "moderating" wage inflation: finally thanks to the BorisWave the supply of young immigrants is large enough to put pressure on the ambitious wage expectation of young british workers who still demand to be paid £10-20/hour when the global market wage is £1-2/hour.
«Those subsidies are pretty big - particularly in London, where about a quarter of households are in social housing.»
As someone observed the subsidy is in effect a boost to the living standards of the "Middle England" classes of London as lower social housing rents mean that wage inflation of their lower-class helpers can be "moderated"; higher private housing costs would result in higher wages as in much of London lower-class people are already doubled-up, often living 4-8 to a room to make the most productive use of space. Without social housing higher wages would make deliveries, gardening, cleaning, etc. services significantly less affordable to "Middle England" people in London.
My work is with young people (from a wide variety of backgrounds) , mainly graduates, who are applying to multiple jobs and finding it very hard to get an interview let alone a job. This is the other side of the coin. These young people are all hungry to support themselves…
«young people (from a wide variety of backgrounds) , mainly graduates, who are applying to multiple jobs and finding it very hard to get an interview»
I was reminded of this post as I got into a chat with some people in their 20s about jobs and degrees. One amusing point raised was instead of spending £80,000-100,000 on a worthless STEM degree it would have been better to put the same money on a buy-to-let and enjoy a good income (and tax-free inasmuch it were cash-in-hand) and good capital gains all pretty much government guaranteed. I guess that there is still hope for conservativism among young british people. :-)
Perhaps the Conservative party could introduce a "Help To AirBnb" loan scheme as alternative to student loans as a vote winner.
«instead of spending £80,000-100,000 on a worthless STEM degree»
Note: why is a STEM degree often worthless?
* There are very few industries left in the UK that do engineering or computer work etc.
* Overseas STEM graduates live well on £4,000-£6,000 per year. It would be foolish for UK employers to pay several times that also given how easy it is to do remote working and regardless they can to get immigrant contractors to the UK.
* Currently the pay for an engineer with 2 years experience (not even a fresh graduate) is around £24,000-£30,000 per year which is not so different from a minimum wage job at £24,000 per year.
In practice in the UK most businesses only need a few engineers and computer scientists to do project management and quality control of work done offshore and for those few roles they want only graduates from "top 5" (or at most "top 10") universities and with a first or second-upper class degree. Those do get decent jobs the rest perhaps really would be better off skipping a degree to work for an extra 3-4 years in a minimum wage job and putting the money that would have gone into a degree into a buy-to-let indeed.
C. H. Cameron, J. Wrottesley, and J. W. Cowell "Two reports addressed to his majesty's Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Poor laws", 1834
"New life, new energy is infused in the constitution of the pauper; he is aroused like one from sleep; his relation with his neighbours, high and low, is changed; he surveys former employers with new eyes.
He begs a job -- he will not take a denial -- he discovers that everyone wants something to be done. He desires to make up this man's hedges, to clear out another man's ditches, to grub stumps out of hedgerows for a third; nothing can escape his eye, and he is ready to turn his hand at anything."
«young people (from a wide variety of backgrounds) , mainly graduates, who are applying to multiple jobs and finding it very hard to get an interview let alone a job [...] all hungry to support themselves…»
Look at it from the point of view of a taxpayer:
* In the past 15-20 years the population of the UK has grown from 60 million to 70 million, the 10 millions pretty much all immigrants.
* Most of those 10 millions found jobs even if the unemployed people of 15-20 years ago were complaining that they already were "applying to multiple jobs and finding it very hard to get an interview".
* Our blogger has written some very well illustrated posts here showing how in places like London 40% of residents and 50-60% of employees are immigrants.
* A taxpayer might well think those of the 10 millions got jobs simply by pricing themselves into jobs and if those "young people" do not seem to be so "hungry to support themselves" and may well be pricing themselves out of jobs.
In the global job market where the typical wage is £1-2/hour they may still be expecting to be paid 10 times that and even expect to live large in a bedroom all of their own instead of living 4-8 to a bedroom as immigrants often do.
New Labour's Work and Pensions Secretary J. Hutton already said this long ago:
«He said that benefit claimants needed to compete for jobs with migrant workers, many from Eastern Europe. He went on: “We cannot reasonably ask hard-working families to pay for the unwillingness of some to take responsibility to engage in the labour market.”»
This is what people who are really "hungry to support themselves" do:
«I once worked with a Pole. He was the senior developer on my team. He said when he came to the UK he started as a builder and lived in a studio flat with 10 other eastern european immigrants, all working on the same site as him.»
That youth unemployment graph is striking, not least for how the UK position has deteriorated relative to Europe since 2022 - so it's not just Labour's recent measures, though they may account for the later spike. What's been behind the earlier change?
«millions of migrants in, all on benefits, free housing, meals, etc.»
That is just believing some absurd propaganda as the figures are quite different because:
* Most immigrants are young healthy childless workers who have employment rates higher than those of british natives because they are desperate for jobs even at lower wages and also cost very little in terms of schools, NHS, pensions (at least for now and some decades), keeping government spending lower.
* By "moderating" UK labor cost inflation mass immigration saves a lot of money to the government and specifically to the NHS that has labour costs of £80 billion a year. They also save a lot of money to employers, keeping business incomes higher.
* Not only mass immigration "moderates" UK labor cost inflation but also substantially boosts UK housing incomes in the areas where they have a higher percentage of residents and of the work force.
“One of the biggest names in European private equity said that Brexit will be good for his business, but will mean a 30% wage reduction for UK workers. [...] He added that EU immigration will be replaced with workers from the Indian subcontinent and Africa, willing to accept "substantially" lower pay.”
Consider the case of London where 40% of residents and 50-60% of workers have immigrant backgrounds: if those people had never arrived then housing and business incomes in London would be much lower and labor costs for both government and private employers would be much higher. London would still be like in the 1970s and 1980s a place blighted by stingy housing incomes and unaffordable labor costs.
The British Government prioritises unskilled and frankly illegal migration over skilled people.Third worlders in your words, want to spend triple and sometimes even quadruple of the fees that a British student would pay and come study there , spend there , work there and pay taxes are put through extensive screening but so called refugees and illegal immigration is coddled.
PPS(?) Take a look at local council spending, especially those spreadsheets showing all 3rd party expenditure over £500. The enormous cost of "care in the community". Lots of "need" for sure, but an enormous and growing cost - from young parents (the commitment to pay for early years childcare), through to kids in foster care, to 16-18 year olds in care plus young "asylum" seekers, to challenged young adults, to old people getting care at home or in care homes (some actually needy, some spendthrift, some have "given" away assets early).
Lets just bring back the workhouses. Repurposed for the 21st century. All managed through a phone app with your digital ID. Capita, ATOS, G4S or SERCO can run them and Palantir can take care of the surveillance side of things.
«if we want to have the money to spend on things like health, without self-defeating tax hikes that would simply damage the economy, then we are going to have to deal with the ballooning bill for working age welfare spending.»
What about the ballooning bill for private housing rents and prices? It is a huge and ever rising private tax on lower-class people and drives welfare costs higher directly as to housing benefit but also drives up the cost of living in general and therefore increases public spending on wages and salaries and income support, so it is also a redistribution from taxpayers, but I guess that is politically untouchable.
More realistic seem to be these "pearl clutching" reports by Nick Clegg and Vince Cable of George Osborne's politics which describe how they helped win several general elections:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/sep/05/vince-cable-tories-collectively-could-be-appalling “Some of the greatest pressure came on IDS at the Department for Work and Pensions, whose poor, disabled, unemployed and otherwise vulnerable clients were seen as easy targets for cuts. IDS was a significant figure, and a fundamentally decent man, but he spent much of his time fighting off pubescent advisers and Treasury officials with cruel ideas for saving money.”
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/03/nick-clegg-did-not-cater-tories-brazen-ruthlessness “What I found offputting was the callousness to his political calculations, particularly around welfare. Welfare for Osborne was just a bottomless pit of savings, and it didn’t really matter what the human consequences were, because focus groups had shown that the voters they wanted to appeal to were very anti-welfare, and therefore there was almost no limit to those anti-welfare prejudices.”
«focus groups had shown that the voters they wanted to appeal to were very anti-welfare»
This blog post seems to me to imply that 14 years of Conservative governments have resulted in working-age welfare spending that is so high that even rather modest increases or mere reversals of recent cuts are unaffordable.
So I guess that those "very anti-welfare" voters given that record of overly generous spending on working-age welfare by Conservatives in the past and New Labour now should give a chance to Reform UK, which indeed so many are doing (but mostly because of the stall in property prices that has confiscated much of their after-tax income).
Especially so for retired voters who cannot be directly affected by cuts in working-age welfare (or benefit from such cuts as would help "moderate" wage inflation though greater competition for jobs) so would want spending redirected from working-age welfare to the NHS of which they are big users.
«the increase in youth unemployment, which is now above Euro area levels for the first time in a long time.»
This is great news for "moderating" wage inflation: finally thanks to the BorisWave the supply of young immigrants is large enough to put pressure on the ambitious wage expectation of young british workers who still demand to be paid £10-20/hour when the global market wage is £1-2/hour.
«Those subsidies are pretty big - particularly in London, where about a quarter of households are in social housing.»
As someone observed the subsidy is in effect a boost to the living standards of the "Middle England" classes of London as lower social housing rents mean that wage inflation of their lower-class helpers can be "moderated"; higher private housing costs would result in higher wages as in much of London lower-class people are already doubled-up, often living 4-8 to a room to make the most productive use of space. Without social housing higher wages would make deliveries, gardening, cleaning, etc. services significantly less affordable to "Middle England" people in London.
Hi Neil,
My work is with young people (from a wide variety of backgrounds) , mainly graduates, who are applying to multiple jobs and finding it very hard to get an interview let alone a job. This is the other side of the coin. These young people are all hungry to support themselves…
Hope this finds you well
Alix
«young people (from a wide variety of backgrounds) , mainly graduates, who are applying to multiple jobs and finding it very hard to get an interview»
I was reminded of this post as I got into a chat with some people in their 20s about jobs and degrees. One amusing point raised was instead of spending £80,000-100,000 on a worthless STEM degree it would have been better to put the same money on a buy-to-let and enjoy a good income (and tax-free inasmuch it were cash-in-hand) and good capital gains all pretty much government guaranteed. I guess that there is still hope for conservativism among young british people. :-)
Perhaps the Conservative party could introduce a "Help To AirBnb" loan scheme as alternative to student loans as a vote winner.
«instead of spending £80,000-100,000 on a worthless STEM degree»
Note: why is a STEM degree often worthless?
* There are very few industries left in the UK that do engineering or computer work etc.
* Overseas STEM graduates live well on £4,000-£6,000 per year. It would be foolish for UK employers to pay several times that also given how easy it is to do remote working and regardless they can to get immigrant contractors to the UK.
* Currently the pay for an engineer with 2 years experience (not even a fresh graduate) is around £24,000-£30,000 per year which is not so different from a minimum wage job at £24,000 per year.
In practice in the UK most businesses only need a few engineers and computer scientists to do project management and quality control of work done offshore and for those few roles they want only graduates from "top 5" (or at most "top 10") universities and with a first or second-upper class degree. Those do get decent jobs the rest perhaps really would be better off skipping a degree to work for an extra 3-4 years in a minimum wage job and putting the money that would have gone into a degree into a buy-to-let indeed.
«These young people are all hungry to support themselves»
This is the traditional comment from a previous period of "welfare reform":
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ToYBAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA117
C. H. Cameron, J. Wrottesley, and J. W. Cowell "Two reports addressed to his majesty's Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Poor laws", 1834
"New life, new energy is infused in the constitution of the pauper; he is aroused like one from sleep; his relation with his neighbours, high and low, is changed; he surveys former employers with new eyes.
He begs a job -- he will not take a denial -- he discovers that everyone wants something to be done. He desires to make up this man's hedges, to clear out another man's ditches, to grub stumps out of hedgerows for a third; nothing can escape his eye, and he is ready to turn his hand at anything."
«young people (from a wide variety of backgrounds) , mainly graduates, who are applying to multiple jobs and finding it very hard to get an interview let alone a job [...] all hungry to support themselves…»
Look at it from the point of view of a taxpayer:
* In the past 15-20 years the population of the UK has grown from 60 million to 70 million, the 10 millions pretty much all immigrants.
* Most of those 10 millions found jobs even if the unemployed people of 15-20 years ago were complaining that they already were "applying to multiple jobs and finding it very hard to get an interview".
* Our blogger has written some very well illustrated posts here showing how in places like London 40% of residents and 50-60% of employees are immigrants.
* A taxpayer might well think those of the 10 millions got jobs simply by pricing themselves into jobs and if those "young people" do not seem to be so "hungry to support themselves" and may well be pricing themselves out of jobs.
In the global job market where the typical wage is £1-2/hour they may still be expecting to be paid 10 times that and even expect to live large in a bedroom all of their own instead of living 4-8 to a bedroom as immigrants often do.
New Labour's Work and Pensions Secretary J. Hutton already said this long ago:
https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/main-topics/local-stories/crackdown-on-benefits-scroungers-1-2412296
«He said that benefit claimants needed to compete for jobs with migrant workers, many from Eastern Europe. He went on: “We cannot reasonably ask hard-working families to pay for the unwillingness of some to take responsibility to engage in the labour market.”»
This is what people who are really "hungry to support themselves" do:
https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/v3uks9/renters_squeezed_by_higher_housing_costs_and/ib1egjz/
«I once worked with a Pole. He was the senior developer on my team. He said when he came to the UK he started as a builder and lived in a studio flat with 10 other eastern european immigrants, all working on the same site as him.»
That youth unemployment graph is striking, not least for how the UK position has deteriorated relative to Europe since 2022 - so it's not just Labour's recent measures, though they may account for the later spike. What's been behind the earlier change?
The British government let millions of migrants in, all on benefits, free housing, meals, etc.
Why wouldn’t Brits try and catch a free ride, when they see all these third worlders do exactly that?
«millions of migrants in, all on benefits, free housing, meals, etc.»
That is just believing some absurd propaganda as the figures are quite different because:
* Most immigrants are young healthy childless workers who have employment rates higher than those of british natives because they are desperate for jobs even at lower wages and also cost very little in terms of schools, NHS, pensions (at least for now and some decades), keeping government spending lower.
* By "moderating" UK labor cost inflation mass immigration saves a lot of money to the government and specifically to the NHS that has labour costs of £80 billion a year. They also save a lot of money to employers, keeping business incomes higher.
* Not only mass immigration "moderates" UK labor cost inflation but also substantially boosts UK housing incomes in the areas where they have a higher percentage of residents and of the work force.
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/buyout-boss-says-brexit-will-be-good-his-business-will-mean-30-cut-uk-wages-1602631
“One of the biggest names in European private equity said that Brexit will be good for his business, but will mean a 30% wage reduction for UK workers. [...] He added that EU immigration will be replaced with workers from the Indian subcontinent and Africa, willing to accept "substantially" lower pay.”
Consider the case of London where 40% of residents and 50-60% of workers have immigrant backgrounds: if those people had never arrived then housing and business incomes in London would be much lower and labor costs for both government and private employers would be much higher. London would still be like in the 1970s and 1980s a place blighted by stingy housing incomes and unaffordable labor costs.
The British Government prioritises unskilled and frankly illegal migration over skilled people.Third worlders in your words, want to spend triple and sometimes even quadruple of the fees that a British student would pay and come study there , spend there , work there and pay taxes are put through extensive screening but so called refugees and illegal immigration is coddled.
PPS(?) Take a look at local council spending, especially those spreadsheets showing all 3rd party expenditure over £500. The enormous cost of "care in the community". Lots of "need" for sure, but an enormous and growing cost - from young parents (the commitment to pay for early years childcare), through to kids in foster care, to 16-18 year olds in care plus young "asylum" seekers, to challenged young adults, to old people getting care at home or in care homes (some actually needy, some spendthrift, some have "given" away assets early).