.... it's about jobs stupid

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

what with perfect storms, crises and riots it is hard to be positive .... this is an interesting article that reflects several conversations i have had with business colleagues here but more especially in the USA

what nominations for public investment [no more PFI PLEASE] that will create jobs, the miracle ingredient, do you favour?

eg energy conservation
broadband upgrades
new schools

a chap in the Graun suggested a new round of quantitative easing, but instead of the money going straight to the bond markets [i.e. bankers] it should be invested in public production and used to pay off all the outstanding capital on PFI thereby saving some £250bn in interest charges ...

[teamsaint]

whatever the economic climate, the banks aLWAYS keep the cash flowing inwards.

i would invest in homes(partly by freeing up building land an putting a HUGE tax on land sale profits), in transport(rail, cycle, bus especially), and in food and clean water in the developing world.

[ahinton]

i would invest in homes(partly by freeing up building land an putting a HUGE tax on land sale profits)

But this would surely result either in paper cover-ups of actual monies being passed when such land is sold (in order to avoid that tax) or a major discouragement to owners of such land from selling it until such time as the tax got to be repealed, would it not? The latter is what happens when Capital Gains Tax rates are substantially increased; those with assets to sell just hold on to them and watch them incrase in value as a direct consequence of the dearth of such assets on the market place until such time as there is a more favourable CGT régime; the resulting position effectively becomes nothing more than a government-enforced speculative investment in future CGT rates and policies for those asset owners.

[Mahlerei]

Why not set up a Roosevelt-style WPA and give the young unemployed a chance to learn a skill while rebuilding public infrastructure.

[Lateralthinking1]

Erm..........yes I see the problem. I am great at arithmetic. Weak on economics. In view of the latter, I should be thriving. Actually, I've been putting together a little pamphlet this afternoon with fun exercises for school children to do that would cut completely across the greed non-ethic. It is a kind of benevolent, unapologetic, indoctrination. Parents would love it. Our political "parents" would hate it. You can guarantee that I won't find a publisher.

To try to address the question, I would like to turn this nation into the world's leading tourism curiosity. We are so damned peculiar we are halfway there already. Now that Prescott's £60,000 houses have turned out to cost quadruple that amount, even in Milton Keynes, I suggest instead the £60,000 folly. Loads of people working on the most outrageous architectural small buildings to be dotted about the country like martello towers. Perhaps 500 of them, maybe even a thousand, each weird, wonderful and interesting. This would help the hotel trade no end. Some of them might even be in some limited way functional.

Similarly, we need to invent hundreds of peculiar pastimes and promote them unashamedly. It is a very long time since someone has come up with an idea as good as morris dancing, rolling cheese down a tor or running around with flaming barrels covered in tar. We could also turn each day into a unique day - one day a year when you can drive on motorways at 106mph. Another when vehicles can only travel at a maximum of 4mph with a friend in front carrying a flag showing the pictures of Cameron, Clegg and Miliband. In cuisine, we should try everything that has previously been dismissed as inedible. And let's invent a few new religions. Change the culture. Change all the accepted ways of daily living. Make the country entirely unique. It is stale. Make it fun.

Actually, there is a lot I don't understand. I don't understand how industry is in trouble financially, the country is in a similar fix and the public are in the most incredible of difficulties, yet many families seem to have three cars and travel abroad at least twice a year. I don't understand how so many people are supposed to be completely out of their depth in consumer debt and yet no one speaks about it, most seem to survive and everyone seems to be spending.

I'd like the country to give a quarter of an acre of land to anyone who can show that they will produce vegetables on it for 25 years. This would offer jobs and be there purely to serve local communities. I would also like to see a massive drive towards a bicycle culture and wave power. On the latter, we need to be the ones who prove that there aren't insurmountable technological problems. Ever since the achievements of Armstrong and Aldrin, I've never accepted that "can't be done" argument on anything.

[Lateralthinking1]

......I would like to see us leading on developing tests that would not involve the use of animals. Artists to develop new movements as big as those in the 60s/70s - Britain rather than the US in the lead. A new fashion with emphasis on warm clothing. An annual indoors winter tennis tournament in the north as significant as Wimbledon. More winter events generally. British white working class and West Indian communities to be encouraged with teaching to open and run local shops. A new "Britain is for the Young and the Old" initiative in which those two generations work together - the young providing practical assistance and the old paying them with a modest sum of money plus advice based on experience. The "Top Tax Bracket Initiative" in which a reduction of 5% is provided only to those who sign up to invest a specified amount of their personal finances in two unemployed people and mentor along the lines of a "godparent". The "Cross-Cultural Initiative" in which ordinary people are given tax incentives to do a similar thing with someone of a different creed or religion to themselves. Hard thinking on either/or questions as much is contradictory, ie

- aviation is one of the biggest industries but what would be the real economic impacts - profit and loss - of getting people through economic levers to take most holidays in the UK?

- to what extent are we actually going for growth and going for living within our means? - carbon trading might appear to be an example of making it financially beneficial to live modestly and yet we want people continuing to spend lots of money on flying/ditto cars/we want people to drink less alcohol but also want them to spend more money on it......loads more examples.

- to what extent are we going for longevity? - we want people to live longer and yet find it more difficult to support them.

- how was it that the welfare state was built from a position of bankruptcy : can we learn anything there?

- the issue of false economies - ie not repairing the roads and not maintaining parks and recreation grounds.

- a proper discussion on the jobs "the British don't want to do". Is it bogus? And "can't do". Is the only talent really elsewhere?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

neets up

Together with her husband Paul Lazarsfeld and Hans Zeisel, she wrote a now-classic study of the social impact of unemployment on a small community: Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal (1932; English ed. 1971 - Marienthal: the sociography of an unemployed community - paperback by Transaction Publishers in USA, 2002). Marienthal was an industrial district that suffered very high levels of unemployment in the 1920s , and the research team examined the (often devastating) psychological consequences. These went beyond the obvious hardships associated with financial deprivation, and Jahoda concluded that in modern industrial societies work provides important social benefits, including a sense of personal worth, connection with wider social objectives, and a time structure to their days and weeks.

In 1958 she developed the theory of Ideal Mental Health. Through her work Jahoda identified five categories which she said were vital to feelings of well-being (1982, 87). These were: time structure, social contact, collective effort or purpose, social identity or status, and regular activity. She maintained that the unemployed were deprived of all five, and that this accounted for much of the reported mental ill-health among unemployed people. In the 1980s, when unemployment levels were again high, this approach was rather influential, and her Marienthal studies attracted renewed interest: she made many presentations on this topic in Europe.

Prof Marie Jahoda

[Mr Pee]

a chap in the Graun suggested

[ahinton]

See the Updated House Rules thread (initiated, incidentally, by your colleague-at-arms Simon), message #26...

[Mr Pee]

Erm...yes....I have read that thread, thank you.

Your point being?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

nope the links is to the bbc news and Prof Jahoda was a very distinguished Austrian Social Psychologist, imprisoned for a year by the Austrian Nazis before she managed to get to Britain .... she once had tea with Freud in Vienna, she told me so ...... not a lady to let prejudice get in the way of understanding ...or evidence ... go to America and have a nice cup of tea Mr Pee, you will feel very at home there

unemployemnt and poverty are very bad for you .... this is fact not political opinion, this thread is about jobs for people because they do not then have mere life but more life ... both mere life and more life are not supplied by 'free markets' nor centrally planned economies nor public ownership of the means of production ... we need new ideas, you will find this cognitively challenging on the evidence of your posts this far ... [taken as genuine that is, else you are a troll]

[Mr Pee]

you will find this cognitively challenging on the evidence of your posts this far ...

You've lost me......

[Serial_Apologist]

You've lost me......

Good!

[Flosshilde]

You've lost me......

Easily done.


Calum, yes, it is about jobs, because without paid employment (not the 'Big Society' nonsense, where people are expected to wortk for nothing), people can't buy anything British manufacturers (a dwindling group) make. Given the attack on social security & benefits by the ConDem govt if you're unemployed you probably won't even be able to afford a place to live, or food. Unfortunately the ConDem govt are busy cutting spending & getting rid of jobs, so are unlikely to put money into any job creation scheme (except for the private companies who are taking on the work that used to be done by government agencies, & 'earning' fat profits)

[ahinton]

Erm...yes....I have read that thread, thank you.

Your point being?

...quite obviously (to most, I imagine, even if apparently not to you) the unhelpful and unconstructive deployment of the yawn emoticon when unaccompanied by supportive or indeed any comment, as already discussed in the thread that you seek to persuade me that you have read.