Why Is There A Labour Shortage?

Discussion in 'Politics 2.0' started by Clive_ofthe_Kremlin, Oct 13, 2021.

  1. Clive_ofthe_Kremlin

    Clive_ofthe_Kremlin Squad Player

    We've had years and years of not enough jobs. Big unemployment. Degree and 10 years of previous experience required to be a junior clerk or a till worker. The bosses in their pomp, imposing tougher and tougher conditions and cuts, shouting and swearing and demanding. "Well if you don't like it, you can go somewhere else!' they used to cry - not so much anymore.

    Everywhere is short of staff. The shops are closed and so are the restaurants, the buses have no drivers, nor the lorries, nobody wants to pick the crops or kill the turkeys and pigs. The building sites are stopped. As for care, well it's destroyed. There's nobody.

    Partly this must be because some of the EU comrades have left, but there are still plenty around. There seems to be a general feeling amongst people that they don't want to go back and waste their lives getting sweated in really mind-numbing crrap jobs. The same thing seems to be happening in the USA, which has the same 'labour shortages'.

    I read an article today that said really it is a decent wages, sick pay and proper treatment shortage. People are very fed up of being exploited and abused.
     
    Davy Crockett likes this.
  2. Jumbolina

    Jumbolina First Team

    Are benefits too high comrade? Seems the obvious answer but I’m sure that isn’t the case, given my brief stay on JSA.
     
    iamofwfc likes this.
  3. hornmeister

    hornmeister Tired

    I wonder if recent events have made people re-evaluate their lives. Many have decided to stop working. My mate's wife worked pretty much to pay for childcare for instance after furlough realised it was senseless and she has quit.
    I'm on an enforced 3 days a week due to the downturn (although I seem to have as much work to do) and to be honest had enough. If the boss continues to pee me off I'm taking early retirement. The extra days a week free seem to be taken up with caring for my folks anyway.

    I wonder if there are figures for people not working but not unemployed. I bet this has gone up.
     
    sydney_horn likes this.
  4. sydney_horn

    sydney_horn Squad Player

    Yes, there are many many factors but I think this is definitely one of them.

    Also the elderly and vulnerable are probably still wary about working if they don't have too.

    I know two people personally who worked part time for "pin money" in retail. Both are in their late sixties and have said it's just not worth the risk while Covid is still widespread.
     
    hornmeister likes this.
  5. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    This is interesting. I had imagined you as being in your late 30s, perhaps early 40s at most.
     
  6. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    I don’t think benefits are too high. People are not getting more than a subsistence income.

    It’s more that for some the benefits of working are not high enough. With entry level jobs (and even above), after rent and maybe childcare, many would still be on supplementary benefits and no better off. You couldn’t cut benefits, because they were always set as low as possible and with price rises they won’t make ends meet.

    This is almost entirely the fault of market rates being applied to social (and ex) social housing. It’s a failed market philosophy. Shooting ourselves in the foot, making property owners rich on the back of other taxpayers.

    I think Clive’s point also holds. People have become more embourgeoised. Years of watching the Apprentice and Dragons Den doesn’t prepare you for carrying a hod or wiping backsides.

    It therefore has to be wages to rise or (to avoid inflation) be better distributed, rent control and have a revolution in automation that we can all benefit from.
     
  7. Moose likes this.
  8. hornmeister

    hornmeister Tired

    I'd agree with this in part, certainly in sentiment if not in solution.

    I think for many, especially those that are in desperate need, do not get enough support. There is however a minority that seems to be able to live very comfortable lives off the backs of others out of choice. The benefits system is not really fit for purpose, just chucking more money at it when it's not very efficient and everythign else is crying out for more funding, doesn't seem like a sensible long term solution.
    Personally I'd like to see a living wage calculated by area. Out of work benefits to be given to that amount (plus additions for disability etc accordign to need). In work salary to be set at that minimum and that level to which a single rate of income tax is payable over. Those in work need to be paid more than those out of work otherwise there is no incentive to work. Those reciving support shouldn't need to worry about tax, credcits claims topups, any stuff like that. Obviously at a high salary a higher tax rate comes in. A simplified system costs less to administer and is harder to evade/avoid.

    I'm not sure rent controls don't really work, certainly not in areas where demand is the overiding issue trials have not been great. If private landlords can not make ends meet they don't rent their property. The issue in the South East is supply and demand pushing prices up. Rent and property prices are much cheaper elsewhere in areas where people don't want to live and there are more empty homes. Really the focus needs to be on improving those areas and getting jobs there, to redistribute the population. Otherwise it's just a race to the bottom in respect of living standards in the south east which is under massive pressure for schools healthcare etc. In recent years there has been focus on penalising foreign ownership of investment properties and thsi needs to increas in my opinion.
     
  9. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    How is a system simple and less costly if it is geographically divided?

    Also, this hardly fits the 'levelling up' agenda, does it? In fact, surely it reinforces existing geographical differences.
     
  10. hornmeister

    hornmeister Tired


    It's easier to estimate cost of living over say 10 geographical areas based on key indicators including, but not limited to, house pricing, average salaries and average income levels, than manage multiple levels of income tax CGT reliefs for various investments credits for this and that that vary depending on age and marital status. Allowances that taper, maybe be carried forwards, backwards or moved out of taxation completely using trusts or other methods.
    I've worked in the personal taxation industry for the last 10 years and finance for 10 years before that. The current taxation system is a behemoth that creates it's own industry in avoidance and costs a fortune to operate, when a simple all encompassing tax system based on an individual’s total annual income balanced against a cost of living is fairer, simpler and will be less prone to avoidance. Everyone should file a simple annual tax return declaring the sum total of all income received.

    Levelling up? The idea to make it geographical is to give everyone the same standard of living regardless of where they live. As investment into poorer areas raises the standard (and hence cost) of living the taxation & benefit levels (living wage) are reviewed and balanced accordingly across those areas. If rent in London is double Bolton, there's no point giving people the same amount of money for rent in both places, you give them what is needed and invest to reduce rental in London and improve demand in Bolton.
    Actually that's levelling up to the next level. Levelling up squared.
     
    Last edited: Oct 14, 2021
  11. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    OK, I see the second point, I guess. I'm really not convinced about the first, though. I think it's inevitable that a geographically divided system will cost more to administer than a national one. I'm not talking so much about avoidance etc, I'm talking about the infrastructure needed to set it up and run it.
     
    hornmeister likes this.
  12. Lloyd

    Lloyd Squad Player

    Who wants to drive a 5hitty lorry or spend all day cutting the throats of little piggies when you can be an 'influencer'?
     
    Clive_ofthe_Kremlin likes this.
  13. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    You are right that scarcity is a problem. However, applying the market to supply makes that worse. Previously in high demand areas you could live in that Council stock if you were eligible. Now it’s sold off there is competition for it drawing more people into those areas.

    The state still needs to provide for people from that area so has to pay through the nose in the private market. The one way of controlling the cost to the state, through the housing it already owned, is gone.
     
  14. hornmeister

    hornmeister Tired

    Agreed the sale of council stock was a mistake without replacing it or offering a viable alternative for the need.
     
    Clive_ofthe_Kremlin likes this.
  15. Clive_ofthe_Kremlin

    Clive_ofthe_Kremlin Squad Player

    As someone who lives in ex-council housing now rented out privately by the descendants of the original right to buy purchaser, I agree completely.
     
  16. miked2006

    miked2006 Premiership Prediction League Proprietor

    Away from the obvious Brexit and Covid points, support schemes and low interest rates have meant that there has been no creative destruction recently. Therefore, there are lots of companies that have survived that are inefficient/ expanded quickly on cheap money, but haven't being killed off i.e. there are jobs everywhere you look.
     
    iamofwfc likes this.
  17. HenryHooter

    HenryHooter Reservist

    Why is there s Labour shortage?

    Because they didn't get as many seats as the Conservatives.

    :)
     
  18. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    He didn't say how early that retirement would be!
     
    hornmeister likes this.
  19. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    Absolutely...can you imagine how many homes a local authority could have built with the funds engendered even by the discounted sale of a council house to its tenant? With the purchasing power of a guaranteed open-ended building programme they could have negotiated real 'value-for-money' for the public, which is often the propaganda spouted in support of privatising so many things that used to glue our society together.
    But of course, the whole point of the council house sell-off was to make the majority of people 'homeowners' and so the dogma dictated that the funds should not be used to build more homes; homes that could have started off allowing ordinary people to live where they need to to get to work easily for an affordable rent and then be sold to them when they could afford to buy, or rent to another ordinary family if the original tenants moved, scaled up or whatever. And if that house was sold to the grateful tenants at a discounted price, then the funds could have been used to build more than one house to replace it.

    It really was a case of (mortgaged) 'homeowner' good, renter from local authority (ie, not from a 'go-getting' entrepreneur) = bad.

    But that wasn't how Heseltine, the architect of Thatcher's 'right to buy' legislation, had envisaged it. He had allowed for the local authorities to retain enough of the proceeds to enable them to replenish the houses sold; that's not what was expected, of course, and so less and less of the proceeds were given to local authorities to use, especially after Heseltine was moved to defence in 1983. And guess what? By the early 1990s council house rents had increased by 55% in real terms compared to 1979....surprise. Effectively, the wealthier council house tenants were allowed to buy their houses at a discount subsequently paid for by their poorer neighbours as councils needed to extract more income in rent from an ever-decreasing housing stock.

    Mind you, what would you expect from someone who is quoted as saying 'there is no such thing as society'.
     
  20. hornmeister

    hornmeister Tired

    Sale of council houses didn't reduce the stock of housing available it just changed the ownership and took the management of them out of the government's hands (which is a good thing as long as private management is regulated effectively). What they didn't do is adequately plan utilising the funds the policy generated for an increase in population and the resulting rental and property prices this caused. Any retrospective action obviously becomes more and more expensive as it is further delayed. The lack of affordable housing is a serious shortfall in government policy and has been for decades.
     
  21. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    Well he's earning damn well if he can afford to retire at 40! Makes you wonder what his irritating boss earns!
     
    Last edited: Oct 15, 2021
  22. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    Initially, no, but that situation changed by the middle of the 1980s & that trend has continued.

    Your comment re: effective regulation is breathtakingly disingenuous; there was clearly never any intention to implement adequate regulation.
    Far from using the funds generated to respond to the impact of an increasing population, the funds being made available for housebuilding were consistently & increasingly reduced. Yet another example of how this omnipotent 'market' has totally failed to deliver anything other than chaos.

    The comment on failures of government policy is obviously true; could you possibly hazard a guess as to the point at which this trend reached a level of runaway momentum from which there is no apparent hope of recovery?
     
  23. Davy Crockett

    Davy Crockett Reservist

    Late reply but good post
     

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