Free Trade and Globalization failing the working (80%?) class

wotsthat

spadoosh wrote: »

Are you expecting bankers to pour their own coffee?

Bankers aren't relevant. You can't walk 100 metres in London without going past a coffee shop. They all seem quite busy with non-banker trade. IMO the consumer isn't really going to be up for paying someone £15/ hour to pour coffee.

spadoosh wrote: »

What is with the attack on the uneducated (riddiculous term, not university educated maybe, lets go old school and call em cannon fodder)? They are absolutely vital to the economy and have been mocked for too long. Standing up and voting brexit/trump. This is a government failing because theyve done nothing to stop it. Easily stopped by saying o yes you can sell your 10p thai clothes here theyll be charged at 400% vat. Little old brit sewer person can knock her jumpers out for about £40 fair competition. And absolutely no need to get a degree.

It's not an attack. It's a reality - the consumer doesn't want to pay.

You could put VAT AT 400% on imported woolly jumpers and force people to wear nice Arran sweaters but the consumer won't stand for it. They want cheaper prices and you'll be voted out of office if you stand in the way. They don't care about your 'little old brit sewer rat'.

spadoosh wrote: »

Do you really think everyone in the country can have a degree and use it productively? Theres a decent sized minority of university educated people who are the uneducated people you infer about ie the baristas, shope workers simply because there isnt the highly educated jobs available or they arent suitable (maybe personal failings maybe educational failings i dont know, different argument).

No I'm not naive enough to think we can all have a degree and earn £50k/ year. That's besides the point - I think the value of an uneducated/ unskilled person's labour has been falling for a while and will continue to do so.

What will happen if a coffee pourer/ shop worker etc. earns £15/ hour seems fairly easy to predict - there will be less of them.

spadoosh

wotsthat wrote: »

Bankers aren't relevant. You can't walk 100 metres in London without going past a coffee shop. They all seem quite busy with non-banker trade. IMO the consumer isn't really going to be up for paying someone £15/ hour to pour coffee.



It's not an attack. It's a reality - the consumer doesn't want to pay.

You could put VAT AT 400% on imported woolly jumpers and force people to wear nice Arran sweaters but the consumer won't stand for it. They want cheaper prices and you'll be voted out of office if you stand in the way. They don't care about your 'little old brit sewer rat'.



No I'm not naive enough to think we can all have a degree and earn £50k/ year. That's besides the point - I think the value of an uneducated/ unskilled person's labour has been falling for a while and will continue to do so.

What will happen if a coffee pourer/ shop worker etc. earns £15/ hour seems fairly easy to predict - there will be less of them.

Id imagine the consumers in said coffee shops arent the working class? Bearing in mind in london very few actually are of which id imagine the majority are immigrants?

The consumer doesnt want to pay because they have a choice a £2 jumper or a £40 jumper. Theres very few who refuse to pay their water bill for example or few who choose to not pay monopolised rail fares.

This is due to maintaining the status quo. It takes some one with principle to pay for something thats more expensive in order to secure local jobs than to selfishly protect their own wealth. People arent going to choose to make themselves worse off if no one else is. One of the prime examples is climate change we're still guzzling petrol even though every man and his dog are aware of the potential consequences. Why should i when china/india/vw/jetsetters (delete as approprite) dont. Its a never ending circle. This is why you have a government to make the harder decision for you.

Its exactly the same reason why millions of iphone users choose to overlook the fact that child labour is used in the mining of rare earth metals that is directly used in their phones. People abstain responsibility because they believe a government should be the responsible side but the governments only aim is to make sure they get voted in so just try to please the consumer/businesses.

My solution was to vote brexit to enforce more responsibility on myself and our government. Whats your solution? Keep buying things from the cheapest seller that doesnt have to adhere to the same rules we impose on our manufacturers? That a perpetual cycle that will leave the majority needing support from the minority. Thats very divisive and is exactly the reason we're seeing people vote for brexit and trump.

wotsthat

spadoosh wrote: »

Id imagine the consumers in said coffee shops arent the working class? Bearing in mind in london very few actually are of which id imagine the majority are immigrants?

The consumer doesnt want to pay because they have a choice a £2 jumper or a £40 jumper. Theres very few who refuse to pay their water bill for example or few who choose to not pay monopolised rail fares.

This is due to maintaining the status quo. It takes some one with principle to pay for something thats more expensive in order to secure local jobs than to selfishly protect their own wealth. People arent going to choose to make themselves worse off if no one else is. One of the prime examples is climate change we're still guzzling petrol even though every man and his dog are aware of the potential consequences. Why should i when china/india/vw/jetsetters (delete as approprite) dont. Its a never ending circle. This is why you have a government to make the harder decision for you.

Its exactly the same reason why millions of iphone users choose to overlook the fact that child labour is used in the mining of rare earth metals that is directly used in their phones. People abstain responsibility because they believe a government should be the responsible side but the governments only aim is to make sure they get voted in so just try to please the consumer/businesses.

My solution was to vote brexit to enforce more responsibility on myself and our government. Whats your solution? Keep buying things from the cheapest seller that doesnt have to adhere to the same rules we impose on our manufacturers? That a perpetual cycle that will leave the majority needing support from the minority. Thats very divisive and is exactly the reason we're seeing people vote for brexit and trump.

Try a though experiment. You work in the care sector. What if tomorrow you gave everyone a pay rise to £15/ hour? Are you going to absorb that into your margin (no) so you put prices up - what happens (people move to cheaper providers).

Ahh... but you've got a bright idea of making everyone pay £15/ hour. In a years time do you think there will be more, less or the same people employed in the care sector?

There isn't an easy solution but mandating ourselves richer isn't going to work because it's the consumer that ultimately decides.

You can't legislate people to be nicer and more caring either.

spadoosh

wotsthat wrote: »

Try a though experiment. You work in the care sector. What if tomorrow you gave everyone a pay rise to £15/ hour? Are you going to absorb that into your margin (no) so you put prices up - what happens (people move to cheaper providers).

Ahh... but you've got a bright idea of making everyone pay £15/ hour. In a years time do you think there will be more, less or the same people employed in the care sector?

There isn't an easy solution but mandating ourselves richer isn't going to work because it's the consumer that ultimately decides.

You can't legislate people to be nicer and more caring either.

Lmao.

Weve had that very legislation. Its called the living wage. On top of compulsory pensions (ok not quite £15p/h). And put the prices up? Its predominately council work who dictate the price (ie you deliver for £xx or you dont get work). Theres been one small percentage price increase in 6 years, barely above inflation. You picked the wrong industry to do a thought experiment with.

So yeh the business i work for has absorbed a huge part of the costs but its what they have to do because they have to care. Not exactly a sector where you can try and screw people over.

Why are you wanting to pay everyone £15 per hour by the way?

And no you cant legislate for people to be nicer but you can legislate for imported products which are cheaper (because the same rules are not applied that our manufacturers have to adhere to the importing manufactures) being charged at a price comparable to locally sourced products.

Why do we import apples to the UK. Because its cheaper to make them abroad? Ok the consumer wins. Ecologically its a bad idea and economically its a bad idea why on earth would you do that?

GreatApe

spadoosh wrote: »

Not sure what your trying to ascertain.
Are you suggesting a country should aim to only have workers doing jobs like banking, doctors and IT?

I think I am stating the obvious, that humanity creates tools to make their lives easier its been going on for all of human history. The last amazing batch of tools were 'dumb' robots which pretty much killed 9/10 human tasks in making stuff. The next batch of amazing tools will be the narrow AI software (like self driving cars) that will also kill 9/10ths of the human tasks that they take over.

I am not sure it needs to be any more complicated than that, the new age digital tools are just an extension of the earlier tools like the wheel or knife or fire.

I understand some jobs have a higher 'prestige' but you do seem to undermine quite a few vital sectors. I work closely with the care industry. Care workers are paid close to minimum wage. Its hardly the most dignified job, quite a few workers do the job because it pays the bills, i would say the majority do so because it pays the bills and because there is dignity in caring for someone who needs it. Largely uneducated workforce (in that its rare to get someone whose been to uni). They could earn more working in a supermarket, yet they choose not to.

I don't think I made a judgement of how valuable a job is I was only taking in economic terms in the same way water is vital and critical and you would die without it in a few days yet it costs pennies per ton. Saying it costs pennies per ton does not mean its useless or needless

I also think youre wildly optimistic with the invention firstly of AI and secondly the roll out process of it all.

There is narrow AI and General AI. Narrow AI has existed for decades for instance your calculator from 30 years ago is artificial and it is intelligent it can do math for you. I dont expect general (or what you would call human intelegence) for quite some time but you do not need general human level AI to do things like drive a car or make a factory a lot more automated. That will be done by narrow AI which already exists and has existed for decades but is getting much more advanced

Also you seem to be above all (and this is where your true priviliged liberal colours shine through) deem that profit margin is the be all.

I was born in a council house to two working class parents and went to a crap state school and worked in a steel works. on a level of 1 to 10 how far up the privileged liberal pole do you put me?

And this is ultimately where globalisation has failed. The companies that represent globalisation dont care for the countries or the people that work for them. Their goal set by shareholders is to make as much money as possible, ok theyll have a few sideshows of trying to look inclusive as to not completely destroy customer relations but for the most part their purpose is to benefit the people who put money in with the customers reliant on products, the staff reliant on wages, the suppliers reliant on income an after thought, a distant one at that.

What is globalization in your mind?

Going back to your original question is the working class worse off now, there are many factors to consider. They get better rights in terms of employment laws, arguably better pay (probably offset by increased costs for the most part) and a few other perks.

They dont just get a little bit better pay they get much better pay

The biggest thing that seems worse off to me is security. For the most part historically you got a job upon leaving school and was in that job till quite late on in life. I would willingly lose quite a lot of benefits to ensure my job was secure and i could provide for my family.

How much of your income would you give up for this security? 10%?

Well you can buy income protection paying out £1.75k a month for less than £40 a month. So about 1.5% of your monthly wage can buy you your security for a whole year. the unemployment stats show about 75% of people who become unemployed find with well before 1 year worth of unemployment.

I was made redundant from a shop earlier this year. Considering we're a nation of shopkeepers and store closures are more and more prevalent thats a huge workforce that is about to lose out. But a workforce that has been essential for development and growth serems a bit uncouth to suggest now they shouldve gone to university. Theyve been doing a job that was needed. Because some person who did go to university has decided their job is obsolete they are no longer needed and shouldve gone to university.

Retail productivity probably has been static for some time you cant use the idea of a shop closure as some sort of evidence for a shrinking retail sector or productivity needed fewer people.

However there will be a time when the robots take a lot of the retail jobs too from much better self service tills to robo shelf stackers etc. When that happens its just another tool created by man to make their lives easier.

Before i started university the job im doing now was paying £25k per year, 10 years later its paying £16k, i could earn a bit more in other areas of the country but the comparisons are like for like.

you cant expect the world to work at your pace you need to work at the worlds pace. The good news is the median full time wage is in the region of £35k a year in the uk so half the people earn more than that. also of course the tax system is such that things are leveled out a bit from the headline gross pay

A question to you if you dont mind? What jobs can we expect in the future if AI is going to take over most jobs. You are either an AI technician or a politician? I can imagine AI wont be a PM for quite a while. Where is the job market going?

We might not even exist when general intelligence is born I can make no predictions about that. What I was talking about was specific intelligence where machines are as good as or better than humans at a task. These AIs already exist I use my calculator as its better than me at doing long sums. The government uses websites and software to calculate the taxes of 40 million people rather than hiring half a million people with sheets of paper and abacuses.

So what will the future narrow AI do, it will be a continual process of the last 10 years where software takes over more jobs. The result will be that work shifts away to other sectors.

For instance the big one over the next 10 years will be self drive vehicles destroying in the region of 1 millions jobs. However transport costs for the uk will go down by about £50 billion a year. This means £50 billion more in the pockets of the 64 million that did not lose their jobs. This £50 billion they will spend on things and whatever they spend that money on will create jobs. Also I suspect the government is going to be quite greedy here and put a huge new tax on self drive industry maybe as much as £50 billion a year. This will mean that transport prices do not go down but the government now has £50 billion a year more than it did and it can use that to hire 1 million workers to do whatever it is the government deems worthwhile. So 1 million driving and related jobs lost, 1 million jobs created by the state or 1 million by the private sector or some mix of the two (depending on how much of this £50B a year the government takes and how much of it it leaves in the pockets of the citizens)

At least with isolationism you have to rely on the people you have to do jobs that are needed.

If you want trade isolation you will probably get very close to it within your lifetime as the AI makes local production the same price as production elsewhere.

The problem with a global economy is it would make the UK obsolete

why do you think this the globalisation of the world has made the uk a lot richer over the last 20-30 years

(hence why its often said about little englander etc). Italy grows better tomatoes, france grows better wine, china can produce thigns quicker and cheaper, korea can mine minerals we dont have, russia has a tonne of gas, middle east has the oil. So what are we good at banking and intellect? Hardly jobs you can stop other countries from doing.

why would we want to stop them doing those things?

We're at a stage where we simply can not compete with other markets

trade is about trading comparative advantage, we dont need to compete with spain to grow tomatoes or brazil for bananas

. Ie UK people buy sweaters from taiwan that we where making 40years ago. We cant compete with the cheaper labour (that is forced by governments) we cant compete with different working practices (set by government). So someone is out of a job here and the people who where paying for that persons job are now paying for someones job in thailand,

then why does it not show up in unemployment? the uk has only 1-2% long term unemployment. If you dont trust the unemployment numbers we know the numbers who have a job its about 32 million do the sums by adding children and pensioners and you see we have very high employment levels and levels that were growing 500,000 jobs per year for the last few years

they might be paying a bit less for the product, but essnetially the staff arent getting paid more (considerably less) so where does the money go to those clever clever people that bought a certificate (get it doesnt work like that). Jack up the prices a bit of thai jumpers and suddnely uk jumper maker can compete. Uk jumper buyer can pay uk jumper maker for the product. The added benefit of this is theres no need to ship a jumper half way around the world with a pretty extreme ecological footprint it entails.

I am familiar with the textiles industry
Why do you want repetitive manual low pay low status and somewhat dirty work?
Would you rather not invent a machine that does it for you?
If you, or say trump, brings those jobs back by making importing textile illegal from the poor countries then the software masters will make a machine to do those jobs rather than hire and pay a woman $1.6 million through her lifetime to sit in front of a sewing machine. Once they build the software they will sell it not only in america but to the world at maybe 1/1000th of the cost of hiring said woman

wotsthat

spadoosh wrote: »

Lmao.

Weve had that very legislation. Its called the living wage. On top of compulsory pensions (ok not quite £15p/h). And put the prices up? Its predominately council work who dictate the price (ie you deliver for £xx or you dont get work). Theres been one small percentage price increase in 6 years, barely above inflation. You picked the wrong industry to do a thought experiment with.

So yeh the business i work for has absorbed a huge part of the costs but its what they have to do because they have to care. Not exactly a sector where you can try and screw people over.

Why are you wanting to pay everyone £15 per hour by the way?

And no you cant legislate for people to be nicer but you can legislate for imported products which are cheaper (because the same rules are not applied that our manufacturers have to adhere to the importing manufactures) being charged at a price comparable to locally sourced products.

Why do we import apples to the UK. Because its cheaper to make them abroad? Ok the consumer wins. Ecologically its a bad idea and economically its a bad idea why on earth would you do that?

No, I picked exactly the right industry. The reason there's only been one wage increase in 6 years is the consumer isn't interested in giving unskilled workers pay rises. That's why you had to absorb increased costs into your margin. Lucky you were making so much money to start with.

I plucked £15 out of thin air. If you can legislate people richer why stop at £8.45?

Maybe you've had to take on cheaper migrant labour to try and mitigate some of those costs? Brexit might reduce that pool but don't think Brexit means suddenly everyone sees the value in what you do and helps to expand your margin.

A more likely scenario is you'll face wage inflation but the consumer still won't care so your margin will keep getting smaller and you'll reduce headcount. You'll obviously pick the best people to keep on (those that can deliver more care per unit/ cost) and sack the least skilled in that respect.

I'm not suggesting you'll screw people over but when push comes to shove the least skilled are usually first in line for the shaft.

I'd hazard a guess that using migrant labour has increased the quality of care in the UK. When/ if that labour dries up costs will increase and quality of care will decline.

GreatApe

spadoosh wrote: »

The consumer doesnt want to pay because they have a choice

what is the alternative, north Korea type one type on color state clothing?

This is due to maintaining the status quo. It takes some one with principle to pay for something thats more expensive in order to secure local jobs than to selfishly protect their own wealth.

it takes someone with principle to buy local? Is it more principled to buy off an English man than a Scottish one, what about an Irish one?

People arent going to choose to make themselves worse off if no one else is.

Why do you want anyone to be worse off?

One of the prime examples is climate change we're still guzzling petrol even though every man and his dog are aware of the potential consequences. Why should i when china/india/vw/jetsetters (delete as approprite) dont. Its a never ending circle. This is why you have a government to make the harder decision for you.

Those thing are still used because contrary to some green BS we and the world is healthier using them

Its exactly the same reason why millions of iphone users choose to overlook the fact that child labour is used in the mining of rare earth metals that is directly used in their phones

I am not convinced this is true, if it is lets hope the machines get there quick to replace the humans doing this

my solution was to vote brexit to enforce more responsibility on myself and our government. Whats your solution? Keep buying things from the cheapest seller that doesnt have to adhere to the same rules we impose on our manufacturers? That a perpetual cycle that will leave the majority needing support from the minority. Thats very divisive and is exactly the reason we're seeing people vote for brexit and trump.

what about the $460 billion worth of uk exports?
your argument strongly suggests you dearly want all countries to maximize local trade by minimizing external trade.

So is the idea to lose the job exporting jet engines, medicines, software, film, accountancy, finance, music etc and replace them with textiles?

Nellybee

I am lost with this educated, uneducated argument i thought you had to have A levels to get to university or am i wrong .Do all these people nowadays who go to college have A levels. Someone who was educated went to Oxford or Cambridge or other university's .Or are these educated people the ones that go to these colleges to study
horse whispering or other useless courses with no jobs at the end .Maybe im wrong but im uneducated but at least i can think on my own and come to my own conclusion on matters , not like the brainwashed bairns of today who if they dont get there own way cant take it . I really fear for the future when you see whats going on in the USA and UK with the demonstrations because certain people didn't get what they wanted. So sad and embarrasing:mad:

GreatApe

wotsthat wrote: »

Bankers aren't relevant. You can't walk 100 metres in London without going past a coffee shop. They all seem quite busy with non-banker trade. IMO the consumer isn't really going to be up for paying someone £15/ hour to pour coffee.

It's not an attack. It's a reality - the consumer doesn't want to pay.

You could put VAT AT 400% on imported woolly jumpers and force people to wear nice Arran sweaters but the consumer won't stand for it. They want cheaper prices and you'll be voted out of office if you stand in the way. They don't care about your 'little old brit sewer rat'.

No I'm not naive enough to think we can all have a degree and earn £50k/ year. That's besides the point - I think the value of an uneducated/ unskilled person's labour has been falling for a while and will continue to do so.

What will happen if a coffee pourer/ shop worker etc. earns £15/ hour seems fairly easy to predict - there will be less of them.

well said

The only point I disagree with is that the part about the value of an unskilled persons labor falling. Certainly over the long term this is definitely wrong. An unskilled person in real terms definitely earns more now than yesteryear. We can see this by measuring the value of a persons labor in different countries. So for instance take an unskilled person from say India who does not know English, their value and quality of life in india might be x-units, put them in a middle income country like say turkey and their value and quality of life might be 2x-units and put them in a country like say Germany and their value and quality of life might be 4x-units. The value of their labor improved as the economy improved.

maybe the argument can be made that over the last 10 years their value in developed countries has been flat but that might be down to effectively cherry picking dates due to the recent recession rather than a fundamental change where unskilled peoples labor value is not going up in real terms.

GreatApe

Nellybee wrote: »

I am lost with this educated, uneducated argument i thought you had to have A levels to get to university or am i wrong .Do all these people nowadays who go to college have A levels. Someone who was educated went to Oxford or Cambridge or other university's .Or are these educated people the ones that go to these colleges to study
horse whispering or other useless courses with no jobs at the end .Maybe im wrong but im uneducated but at least i can think on my own and come to my own conclusion on matters , not like the brainwashed bairns of today who if they dont get there own way cant take it . I really fear for the future when you see whats going on in the USA and UK with the demonstrations because certain people didn't get what they wanted. So sad and embarrasing:mad:

you can pretty much get into university having failed college. I know one kid who failed two of his a-levels and got an E on the third and went to uni and I doubt he was the worst.

all humans have a high degree of capacity for intelligence. The problem is maybe that we spend 10 years between the ages of 11-21 investing a lot into peoples intelligence yet after that point many people seem to give up the idea that they can learn anything else. Its a shame because in this digital age you can literally learn to do anything for free over the net now that many of the worlds top universities like MIT have put all their courses on line including lectures. Its even better than that they put the lectures of their best professors online not their mediocre ones. you can also go onto a forum like this and say hi guys I dont quite understand x and you will have lots of people help and explain it

people in low pay jobs who want higher paying work simply need to aim for it and the opportunity exists in the uk to attain it. of course if you work at a low pay job (nothing wrong with that) no one is going to walk upto you with a £50k pa work contract and say sign here please.