600, 000 jobs cut in the public sector = 700, 000 job cuts in the private sector

ninky_2

according to Mark Serwotka on the Politics show (referring to the governments own forecasts). Why isn't this guy running for leadership of the Labour party? He's speaking the most sense about why Osborne's cuts are wrong this side of the election.

tomterm8

Well, I was saying something very similar over a year ago... that public sector cuts would actually impact the private sector more deeply than most people imagined, and that it would not hit everyone equally. Is common sence.

PasturesNew

They can all get Avon rounds.

macaque_2

ninky wrote: »

according to Mark Serwotka on the Politics show (referring to the governments own forecasts). Why isn't this guy running for leadership of the Labour party? He's speaking the most sense about why Osborne's cuts are wrong this side of the election.

That part of the 'private sector' which is funded by tax payers money does not qualify as legitimate 'private sector'. Gordon Brown created a huge number of jobs this way. Whilst some of them provide a valuable service many are nothing more than a way of keeping the unemployment numbers down. There are hundreds of thousands of these useless jobs being paid for by us.

For example, what practical good does Business Link or the Carbon Trust serve? Why is every senior public servant shadowed by 3 private consultants? A whole industry has been created to find jobs for the unemployed. The way to get unemployed back to work is to have a healthy and legitimate private sector.

The UK's legitmate private sector is having the life squeezed out of it by high salaries in the public sector (and pseudo private sector) high taxes and red tape. I recently looked at a business premises where the council rates were higher than rent.

Stop kidding yourselves guys, those 700,000 'make busy' jobs funded by our taxes need to go. We have to live within our means.

grubby23

100% agreed macaque. Hopefully some Labour supporter will learn until the next election what "living within our means" means.

tomterm8

macaque wrote: »

Stop kidding yourselves guys, those 700,000 'make busy' jobs funded by our taxes need to go. We have to live within our means.

In the real world, losing 1.3 million jobs is a tragedy for the people involved. Telling these people that they are only doing 'make busy' jobs, and that they will lose their homes, and be unable to look after their families, but it is OK because the job they are doing is 'meaningless' is, frankly, likely to infuriate them.

Mr_Mumble

The estimate is 600,000 to 700,000 private sector 'losses' between now and 2015.

If the public sector is perverting the private sector this much it shows how Stalinist Brown had made the country. 6m in the public sector so (using faulty forum logic*) are 7m in the private sector, in total half the countries workforce, beholden to the state?

*There are all sorts of questions regarding whether private sector provides essential or non-essential public services. There are obvious examples at both ends of the spectrum: contracted bin collectors are doing an essential job while ad-men winning a government account are not. T'is why cutting government spending is such a good way to re-allocate resources. If we lived in a Libertarian utopia where all goods and services were provided by non-government organisations who would struggle to take a piece of the public's fruit of labour: bin collectors or ad-men?

Continuing with the idealistic theme: anyone who does a worthwhile job in the the public sector, or private sector who is part of the 'supply' chain or contractor for the public sector, shouldn't worry about these cuts long-term. If your job is worthwhile you'll get paid out of the private individual's pocket for doing that job. The usual retort is that individuals can't afford the 'essential' 'service'... well duh, now the government can't afford the 'service' either.

marklv

ninky wrote: »

according to Mark Serwotka on the Politics show (referring to the governments own forecasts). Why isn't this guy running for leadership of the Labour party? He's speaking the most sense about why Osborne's cuts are wrong this side of the election.

Of course it's true. Many private sector jobs depend directly on public sector funding. When that funding goes. so do the jobs. This is a direct consequence of the outsourcing mania starting back to early 00s, following the dotcom crash.

Mr_Mumble

marklv wrote: »

Of course it's true. Many private sector jobs depend directly on public sector funding. When that funding goes. so do the jobs. This is a direct consequence of the outsourcing mania starting back to early 00s, following the dotcom crash.

Yet despite this outsourcing mania the amount of people employed by the public sector continued to grow too. Was letting Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Ed Balls allocate so many jobs such a clever idea?

marklv

Mr_Mumble wrote: »

The estimate is 600,000 to 700,000 private sector 'losses' between now and 2015.

If the public sector is perverting the private sector this much it shows how Stalinist Brown had made the country. 6m in the public sector so (using faulty forum logic*) are 7m in the private sector, in total half the countries workforce, beholden to the state?

The outsourcing mania started under Blair, not Brown. Of course the alternative would have been 13m people working directly for the state, which would have resulted in all sorts of lurid headlines on the Mail and the Express!!

Mr_Mumble wrote: »

*There are all sorts of questions regarding whether private sector provides essential or non-essential public services. There are obvious examples at both ends of the spectrum: contracted bin collectors are doing an essential job while ad-men winning a government account are not. T'is why cutting government spending is such a good way to re-allocate resources. If we lived in a Libertarian utopia where all goods and services were provided by non-government organisations who would struggle to take a piece of the public's fruit of labour: bin collectors or ad-men?

Libertarian utopia? You need a psychiatrist if you believe this. If every service was privatised you would end up with huge costs for everything, as the incentive for the companies providing the services is profit. Yes, you would pay less tax but you would be paying enormously for rubbish collection, policing, street lighting, etc. At the end of the day the costs to the public would much, much higher.

Mr_Mumble wrote: »

Continuing with the idealistic theme: anyone who does a worthwhile job in the the public sector, or private sector who is part of the 'supply' chain or contractor for the public sector, shouldn't worry about these cuts long-term. If your job is worthwhile you'll get paid out of the private individual's pocket for doing that job. The usual retort is that individuals can't afford the 'essential' 'service'... well duh, now the government can't afford the 'service' either.

How do you define 'worthwhile'? Some accountants locked in ivory towers somewhere. Cuts are cuts and need to be made. Of course the government can clear the balance sheet by shifting things around and doing yet more outsourcing, but ultimately we will pay more for it, and jobs will still go.

marklv

Mr_Mumble wrote: »

Yet despite this outsourcing mania the amount of people employed by the public sector continued to grow too. Was letting Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Ed Balls allocate so many jobs such a clever idea?

Work needs to be done, so you recruit staff - do you get the logic? You can argue, work could have been not done, but that's another argument altogether. The NHS IT programme was a huge white elephant from the start and arguably this should never have got off the ground. They massively underestimated the costs and workload required to pull off such a massive undertaking.