To think the govt are purposefully trying to keep the poor down?

[Alltheseboys]

Seems like with all these cuts the govt are deliberately trying to keep the working class down?

Grag i agree the gap is closing. Look at all these accounting resource centres popping up in Sri Lanka.

why pay someone in the UK 25k to do basic accounting (putting together month end packs etc) when you can pay someone 5k in Sri Lanka to do exactly the same?

I like this as a way of explaining why it is easy to convince ourselves that it's always the poor who get 'punished'.

In the example it is American but it could just as easily be in the UK.

I like that story, Hilly - it was a bar bill last time I saw it - but, then, I like stories full stop! The one you linked to is wrong, because they've forgotten the tenth man didn't have a meal. Doesn't alter the message, but irritated me

But ... It would make a better parable for what's happening now if the tenth man insisted HE should eat for free because he owns the cash'n'carry where the restaurateur buys his food. The other men pay for his meal and, as well as the free dinner, he makes a profit from the others.

I would pay another £150 for a British made ipad actually and i think if the option was available to them many others would.

The top 10% pay 40% of the income tax so I am not sure how you can say they pay less tax. Non doms are can avoid tax but that group is defined by parental ethnicity, not income.

Sorry nationality not ethnicity.

Then why didnt they when they all bought cheap Japanese cars instead of British made, or cheap Taiwanese TVs and whte goods instead of British made? Why do people buy clothes made in Bangladeshi sweatshops instead going to Jigsaw and buying the nice "made in England" stuff?

If people were prepared to pay more for a more expensive British version of basic consumer goods, then we'd still have a manufacturing industry. The problem was that our stuff was more expensive to make but not necessarily any better because someone getting paid 50p per hour can stick a component in the back of a fridge as well as someone on 10 quid per hour.

If we're going to compete on manufacturing we need low labour technology (i.e. machines make it, overseen by a few engineers), which kind of defeats the job creation argument. We cant compete in labour intensive manufacturing on a global basis.

Agreed we need to focus on educational excellence

We do, but the elephant in the room is still the falling number of non-exportable unskilled or semi-skilled jobs in the UK economy. However amazing schools are, people dont get more intelligent (although they may realise their potential). A large proportion of the population will need a job that does not require a huge amount of intellect.

Whilst in past decades we've seen a switch from manual to white collar jobs as a good thing, that's now biting us hard on the arse.

Some people will never achieve educational excellence no matter how long they stay at school. So what do we do with the bottom sets ? At my school the bottom set kids went and got a job at 15, bought a house at 18 and are probably better off than those who went to university with the way house prices went.

Children leaving school now who are only capable of manual labour what is happening to them, especially when the bright children are also prepared to stack shelves rather than do nothing.

Heswell Taking things to a logical conclusion, I would say that the Uk economy will get worse and worse, whilst that of the developing countries will massively improve as they get the investment, people get richer, stimulate demand for goods and services etc. For a while migrancy will reverse with people going from the UK overseas to work and send money home. Then eventually the UK will become a low wage economy by global standards and we'll start to attract investment. However, that's not something I'm wanting to happen, obviously.

I do often wonder what happens when everyone in the world gets to the developed stage- i.e. there are no low wage economies left, but not sure if that can even happen.

There will be a big war to kill off all the children that have been produced un necessarily before that happens.
Unfortunately we are mere animals and when times are good 1999 to 2007 I'd be interested to see the birth rate. I had 4 children, if I was just getting married now I'd have 2 at the absolute most.
And lets be honest it has paid to produce children over the past 10 years, not all of them will be useful members of society so since it will be expensive to keep them alive on the dole, in jail etc there will be a war, I bet you.

Heswell- are you trying to make me more depressed than I already am? Jeez woman! I was hoping you were going to say "No don't worry, because this will happen instead...." . However, you've come to the same conclusion I have.

Apparently if we follow the species population curve of most species we are due a 50% crash around 2150. Hmm.

Adverse I agree with you, although they werent always that good. If you went back to 1980 and told someone that a Toyota would become aspirational and that they'd make a 4x4 to rival RR, everyone would have laughed BUT they were cheap and so people could afford them, so they bought them. And now they are pretty reasonably priced and very well made.

recent research shows that intelligence is not fixed in the way we have previously thought of it as predetermined so i dont think we should write off any part of the population.

what the research shows is that confidence and effort determine effect intelligence more than any innate characteristic.

this is why although i think there are going to be hard times ahead, i do have some hope that it does not have to be that way always.

Heswell interesting what you say about numbers of children. One thing I notice on MN is the number of people with more than 2 DC. In my young day 2 was the norm, altho obv there were people with more. Two factors spring to mind: second partnerships, where one or both partners already have children, and they then have more in the second relnshp; and the ethos of returning to work when DC are small, plus much longer maternity leave - if you want to look after 1st LO as a toddler, then having another allows you to do this. Am not saying this is either conscious or wrong, but it seems to me to be another case of the unintended consequences of equality and the focus on work over SAHM (and I do know many need the money and/or need to keep their career up) Of course it may be deliberate from somewhere up high as there aren't enough of you young 'uns to support us aging Babyboomers...

I think you are tight about intelligence not being fixed throughout a life time, the brain is a muscle I believe therefore it's logical that it needs training, use it or lose it so to speak.

RIGHT not TIGHT

I don't believe in accidental policies. Immigration was supposed to be the plan to support the ageing baby boomers, they didn't bank on these people needing financial support themselves though did they, very odd. Or else the plan was never to keep them long term in which case the immigrants have done their bit now so we need them to go home hence the recession.
Somebody will have planned this all out though I am 110% certain.

If you tkhink the cuts are shocking, then ACT by using your voting power.

Cameron is sin of Thatcher. He watched and learned. stick to your guns; never, ever back down.

Sadly, Labour want these cuts too. But they don't want to be accused of being the architect. They are happy to wtch them happen, then continue to implement them if they return to govt.

Hassle you MPs, call for a GE.

RichManPoorMan you are absolutely right about what is in store for the UK. I started to type a post early this morning saying a very similar thing, but I deleted it as I did not have time to make sufficient sense of what I was trying to convey!

Rich & Hilly - i agree. i think there is a very cold wind coming.

highlander That's what I'm trying to say. The cuts are a complete irrelevance, a blip in a structural inevitability which is the decline of the British economy. The trap has sprung. we're a high wage economy with domestic demand saturation and nothing to export. Our advantage (education) is being eroded by the day. No government can sort it out.

Structural economic growth is no longer within our power. We're at the mercy of the cycle, driven by Asia

The govt could stimulate the economy by
1 not allowing people to transfer their money overseas.Would have to spend or invest it in the UK

2 Redistribution o0f income from rich (with lower propensity to spend additional income ) to the poor who have high propensity to spend it with Uk businesses.

Hilly how do you suggest we call for a GE? Only the queen can do that.