Public sector pay freeze/Inflation calculation

GreatApe

Nick_C wrote: »

That's not what I'm saying at all.

Many public sector jobs are white collar. If those jobs can be replaced by AI then do can private sector office jobs.

I'm totally in favour of increased efficiency in both the public and private sector.

But usually technology replaces some jobs and creates others.

But of robots could do the work of people, then they could create and maintain more robots. People wouldn't be needed.

That is the end goal for the machines to do all the tasks humans wouldn't want to do for free.

Tromking

economic wrote: »

What is the right level of pay for public sector workers? How do we know we haven’t been overpaying them for many decades? Pay should include pensions as well. How do we know we need all these public sector workers?

Hasn’t that particular exercise been unwittingly carried out since 2010?
I guess it depends on your personal experience and expectations as to whether you think public service remuneration is pitched at the right level.
My personal take considering that the NHS is in near meltdown and recorded crime is up 14%, is that it isn’t.

Malthusian

ilovehouses wrote: »

Demand does need to be reduced but supply needs to be increased too. We have less doctors per capita in the UK compared to our international peers none of which, of course, run a 'free' service.

There can't possibly be any connection between treating healthcare as a valuable service vs treating it as a right that should be provided for free, and the number of people who want to become doctors (without moving to New Zealand at the earliest opportunity).

Pennywise

Tromking wrote: »

Hasn’t that particular exercise been unwittingly carried out since 2010?
I guess it depends on your personal experience and expectations as to whether you think public service remuneration is pitched at the right level.
My personal take considering that the NHS is in near meltdown and recorded crime is up 14%, is that it isn’t.

What's that got to do with public sector pay?

There's an argument that more staff and more resources would help the NHS and crime figures, but last I heard, there were plenty of people wanting to become police officers and medics - so that suggests that pay levels aren't too low to stop people wanting to enter those professions.

economic

westernpromise wrote: »

Although it's a monopsony this is of advantage only to the buyer of the "service", i.e. the state, not the user. That's the problem. When the NHS kills or endangers people they can't withdraw their custom - ditto the police, the FCA and the other examples I gave of total unaccountability.

Exactly. If i want to go for physio through the NHS, i have no choice but to use whatever they provide me (even though the physiotherapist maybe !!!!!!). If i go privately i have a choice, i can look at reviews etc and i can choose myself who i want to use. If the physiotherapist is !!!!!! i am free to chose another. In this way the !!!!!! physiotherapists will eventually go out of business as they should. The !!!!!! NHS physiotherapist will remain in their job as there are very little feedback mechanisms in place barring any severe kind of malpractice by the physiotherapist of course.

You can apply the above example of a physiotherapist to any other NHS specialist or any public sector worker.

There is a high chance of there being a miss allocation of capital in the public sector. Far too many people are paid more then what they are worth in the public sector and even worse there are far too many roles that need to be replaced by automation or gone altogether as they serve no purpose.

economic

GreatApe wrote: »

I'd rather take some instances of incompetence that goes unpunished than to see the healthcare bill rise from 10% to 15% of GDP through higher wages for doctors and nurses. In a free market system which will just become a rigged system by the doctors to limit supply to grossly drive their wages up. Median USA physician wages are over £200,000 compared to what 1/4th of that for NHS doctors?

The best outcome we can seek is to replace as much of healthcare as possible with machines software and self/pharmacy proscribed medicines.

Yet again you are missing the full picture. You need to look at pensions as well. What do NHS doctors get and what do US doctors get? NHS doctors receive huge pensions benefits, US doctors dont.

westernpromise

Tromking wrote: »

Hasn’t that particular exercise been unwittingly carried out since 2010?
I guess it depends on your personal experience and expectations as to whether you think public service remuneration is pitched at the right level.
My personal take considering that the NHS is in near meltdown and recorded crime is up 14%, is that it isn’t.

I did domestic work in NHS hospitals between 1980 and 1984 and the whining then, nearly 40 years ago, was that "the NHS is in near meltdown". Funny how it always is. "Near meltdown" in practice just means "gimme more pay".

westernpromise

economic wrote: »

Yet again you are missing the full picture. You need to look at pensions as well. What do NHS doctors get and what do US doctors get? NHS doctors receive huge pensions benefits, US doctors dont.

US doctors presumably have to fork out for PI insurance, their own healthcare, their own pension and of course they can be fired easily. Factor those in and they're probably much closer in overall comp.

Almost nobody in the NHS is ever fired for incompetence. The only time you ever hear of this is when a doctor or dentist is struck off for fiddling, either the books or with the patients. If he limits himself to just killing patients, he's usually pretty safe. Harold Shipman wasn't caught because the NHS spotted the high death rate among his patients - he was caught when he fraudulently altered the will of one of his victims in his own favour.

ukcarper

westernpromise wrote: »

US doctors presumably have to fork out for PI insurance, their own healthcare, their own pension and of course they can be fired easily. Factor those in and they're probably much closer in overall comp.

Almost nobody in the NHS is ever fired for incompetence. The only time you ever hear of this is when a doctor or dentist is struck off for fiddling, either the books or with the patients. If he limits himself to just killing patients, he's usually pretty safe. Harold Shipman wasn't caught because the NHS spotted the high death rate among his patients - he was caught when he fraudulently altered the will of one of his victims in his own favour.

USA spends over twice as much per capita on health as us so the money’s going somewhere.

Thrugelmir

Tromking wrote: »

recorded crime is up 14%, is that it isn’t.

Simply having more police officers isn't going to stop the gang culture that's prevailing. Too much money in drugs, prostitution, people trafficking. In part a downside of FOM and open borders.