Why are savings rates on the floor?

srcandas

brewerdave wrote: »

Mods -please move the last handful of posts to somewhere more appropriate?
No idea what they have got to do with p*ss poor savings rates at the mo'

brewerdave it is these fundamentals that create the economics that have led to the current global situation - and an extended period of low interest rates.

I would think any thread that after 200 posts had not started to explore underlying issues and broadened the arguments would be a pretty boring thread.

Having read the previous 200 posts what is it you feel we have missed with regard to commenting on low interest rates? :beer:

bowlhead99

doughnutmachine wrote: »

gadgetmind wrote: »

Our freedoms (no matter where born, no matter what skin colour) must keep on increasing. Countries that fight this will fail,

so if you were in charge of UK immigration you'd be happy letting everyone in? you honestly don't think keeping out terrorists etc is "good" for you?

Liberty, freedom of movement of goods, services and humans - is something positive to aim for, even if it needs some rules and regulations to make it workable and prevent abuse.

Doughnutmind are you saying that if we are rich and have a rule that only rich white guys can come into our house, and make our house as desirable a place to be as we can, with lots of luxuries and cool toys, and we choose to locate our house in a 'poor' neighbourhood - nobody would try to rob us or vandalise our house or burn it down?

I presume you are not saying that. So you recognise that in a world of 7 billion, our country of 60 million, which is richer than the vast majority of other countries, is not going to avoid the threat of terrorism from foreign militants whether or not it tries to lock its doors.

Continuing with the household analogy, if you watch some typical TV period drama set around a wealthy family, they do indeed open the door to non family members from the outside world.

- The dish-washer or cook or maid is a poorer person who comes in from outside the family because the kids don't want to do all the tedious manual labour for a pittance of pocket money, and the father doesn't want to convince them to do it by paying them a hundred pounds to do it, badly.

- There might be an odd-job man or carpenter because nobody in the family is any good at odd jobs and Father would rather carry on in his own lucrative profession than learn carpentry on the side. The odd-job guy and the 'staff' don't physically pay for their rooms but they take lower wages than if they were living out, so effectively they're contributing.

- Father might even have a trusted advisor who comes in for meetings to share his business nous because he's better at it than Father's brother who also lives on the same country estate but keeps himself busy with other tasks. Maybe over time, the advisor or business partner moves into one of the rooms on the estate, on a temporary or long term basis, and pays a bit of his fee for the room. Meanwhile, father sells his brain, his business acumen and networking skills, to people beyond the gates of the estate.

The wife is only working part time as manager of the household. The kids are unemployed and the father needs to make enough to support them all. The most productive members of the household, aside from the high earning father, are the unskilled cleaner, the low skilled maid, the skilled odd job man and the professional skilled advisor. All came in from the outside world and now live in the household contributing to it.

The analogy to modern day real world is that I am the high earning business man selling my professional services to Europe and the US from London. With me in London is a business partner who came in from another country and now earns here and along with me pays money into the tax system. The taxes support the unemployed 'kids' and the part time 'wife' and pay for the infrastructure improvements - analagous to a new driveway or roof on the country manor, a new motorway or hospital. The income of my company, and those like it, supports the employment of unskilled, low skilled, high skilled and professional level migrants.

There is no issue with allowing migrants to come here and be productive and in reality our business and economy doesn't just need professional level staff it needs people at all levels. The problem is with the household's unemployed kids and wife who are reliant on the 'family income' for support and would not dream of doing the washing up for a fiver an hour because they are used to luxury living - but they don't have any relevant life skills to get more than a fiver, and unlike the immigrant cleaners they don't have the drive and ambition to start low and work their way up.

They are in trouble if someone stops bringing home the bacon. But that is not the fault of the immigrant maids, odd job men, consultants or whatever.

Glen_Clark wrote: »

Local Toyota factory allegedly doesn't want guys over 25 on the production line, and won't take them over 30 - they can't run fast enough. Thats all very well for Toyota, but then the country has to pay benefits to the guys over 30.

The 31 year old local unemployed man should go an find an employer who will take him, moving to another part of the country if necessary, retraining if necessary.

Meanwhile he should be damn grateful that we don't have strict racist border controls, and have instead allowed a foreign owned business to set up shop here and employ his 29-year-old friends who will now not be competing with him for a job when he looks elsewhere.

If a 31 year old is out of work in a developed capitalist country, it is more likely a problem with his laziness than with being part of the EU or allowing immigration.

gadgetmind

doughnutmachine wrote: »

so if you were in charge of UK immigration you'd be happy letting everyone in? you honestly don't think keeping out terrorists etc is "good" for you?

Immigrants != terrorists in the vast majority of cases.

has problems with an immigrant "underclass" it suggests that every country will have a problem.

And the UK has problems with an underclass who've lived here for generations.

Most immigrants do not form an underclass *unless* racism (institutional or cultural) limits their opportunities.

bowlhead99

srcandas wrote: »

brewerdave it is these fundamentals that create the economics that have led to the current global situation - and an extended period of low interest rates.

I would think any thread that after 200 posts had not started to explore underlying issues and broadened the arguments would be a pretty boring thread.

Having read the previous 200 posts what is it you feel we have missed with regard to commenting on low interest rates? :beer:

Looking back, the question posed in post #1 was answered in post #2. The answer wasn't satisfactory because the questioner had not been keeping up with the news and/or didn't understand economics. The fact the party was joined by people who also didn't understand economics, exacerbated by the fact that no two economists will ever come up with fewer than three explanations for the state of the world, conspired against the delivery of a concise answer to the question.

Clearly the question has already been answered or debated in tens of other threads, but frankly allowing us to banter back and forth in unproductive debate on this one will at least keep us from polluting the rest of the board.

Glen_Clark

bowlhead99 wrote: »

The 31 year old local unemployed man should go an find an employer who will take him, moving to another part of the country if necessary, retraining if necessary.

Todays inflated housing costs usually make moving impossible for the unemployed.

doughnutmachine

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Liberty, freedom of movement of goods, services and humans - is something positive to aim for, even if it needs some rules and regulations to make it workable and prevent abuse.

If a 31 year old is out of work in a developed capitalist country, it is more likely a problem with his laziness than with being part of the EU or allowing immigration.

a bit of sense at last we do need rules and regulations to control immigration. it just seems that at the moment immigration is a bit high.....

you must only speak to a very small group of people, there are plenty 31 year olds that would love a job....

doughnutmachine

gadgetmind wrote: »

Most immigrants do not form an underclass *unless* racism (institutional or cultural) limits their opportunities.

so in sweden it's the fault of the "white" swedish that the immigrants have spent a week burning down schools and libraries?

doughnutmachine

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Looking back, the question posed in post #1 was answered in post #2. The answer wasn't satisfactory because the questioner had not been keeping up with the news and/or didn't understand economics. The fact the party was joined by people who also didn't understand economics, exacerbated by the fact that no two economists will ever come up with fewer than three explanations for the state of the world, conspired against the delivery of a concise answer to the question.

perhaps you could use your superior grasp of economics to explain why the UK economy benefits by having all those romanian "big issue" salesmen in the UK?

you could perhaps argue that they increase GDP, but surely they reduce economic output by capita....

also why do countries like china and japan etc not allow more immigration? if it was such a good thing every country should be doing it?

bowlhead99

doughnutmachine wrote: »

a bit of sense at last we do need rules and regulations to control immigration. it just seems that at the moment immigration is a bit high.....

My comment was that we need rules and regulations for various things because complete unfettered freedom can be detrimental to organised society as a whole. For example we prefer not to have unregulated monopolies, or murderers.

We don't however prohibit privately owned businesses existing with the goal of profit, and neither do we prohibit someone buying a knife or being able to shout at someone. We'd prohibit National Grid charging a hundred billion pounds per unit for carrying electricity to your house, and we'd seek to discourage you thrusting your knife into the chest of the person at which you were shouting.

We also make it difficult for people to come into the country without identification and to carry on legitimate employment without certain documents, and we pick and choose who is allowed to have those documents. The fact that we allow someone from Warszawa or Napoli to come and work in London, just as we allow someone from Grimsby to come and work in London, is a product of historic agreements on the movement of physical and human capital which allow me to work or holiday in Warsaw or Naples and buy or sell to Poles or Italians, broadly without restriction.

I generally prefer lighter touch regulation rather than heavy handed regulation. For example, I don't like the congestion charge in London - previously traffic was self regulating because it took forever to drive through London and you would only do it if you needed to, and now it still takes forever to drive through London but you can only do it if you have a certain level of wealth. Works fine for me, as I have the tenner needed, but disproportionately unfair on those who don't. I can see why they've done it, just not a fan. Anyway as with everything there are a range of views, so back to topic...

If I was a Pole or an American or an African who wanted the chance to work in the UK, light touch immigration rules would suit me fine, though I'd prefer none. If I was an employer who wanted the chance to employ any of those people and make them productive and give them some of my revenues to spend on the streets of England, I might feel the same. If I was a BNP member who didn't want to work as hard as the dirty foreigner, I would feel the opposite. The credible parties recognise the need for globalisation and general freedoms supported by some regulation to make it work, whether or not they support continued EU membership.

Immigration "seems a bit high at the moment" to you, but you are only one of a range of views. It is not unregulated and it can bring many benefits. If our ancestors had been beaten back by border controls for thousands of years, our Viking or Roman or Norman great-[n]-great grandparents might never have met and settled where they did and given us the life we have in the society we have experienced.

you must only speak to a very small group of people, there are plenty 31 year olds that would love a job....

Most of my friends are employed, yes. I can see the unemployment statistics, which per ONS are around 2.5m for people age 16+. The people on jobseekers allowance (18+) is lower at 1.5m. Either way, these numbers are not small. Whether we are technically in a recession or not and whether it was double- or triple-dip or not, we know the world economy is in a generally rocky place so it's somewhat expected.

If I look at other ONS figures, there are some positives - vacancies at their highest level since 2008, for example. And when your 31 year olds were in their last year of primary school, unemployment was 3m. That was over a decade before Poles and Lithuanians and Croatians had joined the EU and could be blamed by UKIP for the competitive job market.

I take Glen Clark's point that an unemployed 31-year-old can't easily relocate to find his dream job. But I'd suggest that if your stack of 31-year-olds would love to be in work as you suggest, they will find something, even if they feel the job or the wages is beneath their usual standards.

doughnutmachine

bowlhead99 wrote: »

We don't however prohibit privately owned businesses existing with the goal of profit, and neither do we prohibit someone buying a knife or being able to shout at someone. We'd prohibit National Grid charging a hundred billion pounds per unit for carrying electricity to your house, and we'd seek to discourage you thrusting your knife into the chest of the person at which you were shouting.

ehhhh? i'd expect an economics genius such as yourself to make your point without a couple of thousand words of tripe

i asked you how a romanian big issue seller boosted the UK economy, i also asked why other countries never had a policy of mass immigration? surely someone that makes slightly more than the london average salary would know such things?

Why are a lot of Middle East countries trying to reduce expat workers? are they wrong by wanting to employ local workers instead of foreigners?

as a matter of interest where did you study economics? something tells me it wasn't at the LSE....

in all honesty perhaps you should go to a pub and just chat with people, just see how people feel about their job security, maybe even ask how their children are getting on looking for jobs after school/ uni..... maybe best not to chat about sticking knives into chests .....