[Misc] Will the Unions bring everyone to their knees?

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Thirteen pages. Are we on our knees, yet?

 

[rogersix]

I wouldn't want them to change the laws, but the unions have too much power, to reap havoc within our country.
I am sure you remember that between the unions and the rising fuel prices the country took some major collateral damage in the 70s.
We are heading that way.
Of course as predicted the teachers are piling in now.
If the union can't show some restraint then perhaps the laws should be changed, you can't bring the whole country down just because you have a few gobby power-driven union leaders trying to make a show.

you've contradicted yourself, right from the get go

proof read your posts, it makes you look good!

 

[Weststander]

what? everyone's lieing to make their side look better? shocking.

i've seen some details flying around, looks like linked above. harsh new conditions that no one would agree and a sus "fire and re-hire" which is usually ploy at the end of failed negotiations. the workforce would all go contracting instead, maybe thats the plan.

A striking frontline railway worker earning £40k, £50k, £60k, to me, is a totally different kettle of fish to a cleaner on crap pay working night shifts. With inflation at 9% (8.8% average in the EU btw) and rising, my sympathies are with low and lesser paid folk.

BBC R4, unrelated to this strike, have covered this. Inflation hits the poor hardest, as life’s essentials naturally comprise a larger chunk of their spending.

If we have a sustained spell of say 11% inflation, I’d like to see all employers and HMG specifically target those workers/households. Now.

Printing more money so that everyone gets inflation beating/equalling pay rises ad infinitum, as a matter of course, without improvements to productivity, will only exacerbate the inflationary cycle. Supply driven inflation will be augmented with 70’s style wages/prices inflation. People would’ve forgotten that anyone with savings (millions of pensioners) will see their real value plummet, anyone on a fixed income will become permanently poorer.

 

[rogersix]

This will cause an avalanche of wage demands at a time when we are so vulnerable.
We are coming off the back of the worst financial stress we have ever been in since the war because of the virus, couple that with the war in Ukraine, which of course we want to help with financially as well as importing goods from them and you have got a very serious problem.
I don't disagree, we all need a rise in wages, and businesses also need a boost but we can't have it all, inflation is a killer and the timing is just not right.
Ask anyone who lived through the 70s

the timing never seems quite right for the shareholders to share some of their dividends with the workers.

high inflation is obviously a factor in the timing of the strike

 

[Machiavelli]

Of course you are right mathematically. However if everyone gets an 11% pay rise then prices will go higher. That 11 % becomes devalued pretty quickly and the cycle continues. The short term gains of the pay award disappear. Far better to try to reduce demand and dampen inflation that way….or fix the supply side issues like Russia.

It's got little to do with maths. It's the difference between 'real' and 'nominal', the latter being 'in name only', the former how it impacts on the worker's finances.

Where I work, before this year, we've lost between 20 and 25% of our real wages since 2010. Now I'm being told that I need to swallow a further c8% in real terms pay so we can achieve the latest wheeze -- this time it's to dampen demand (whereas there's been supply-side problems), previously if was due to austerity, wondering what it will be next time.

 

[amexer]

After the billions spent on Covid now raging inflation I think it is completely irresponsible to go on strike now.

 

[Machiavelli]

A striking frontline railway worker earning £40k, £50k, £60k, to me, is a totally different kettle of fish to a cleaner on crap pay working night shifts. With inflation at 9% (8.8% average in the EU btw) and rising, my sympathies are with low and lesser paid folk.

BBC R4, unrelated to this strike, have covered this. Inflation hits the poor hardest, as life’s essentials naturally comprise a larger chunk of their spending.

If we have a sustained spell of say 11% inflation, I’d like to see all employers and HMG specifically target those workers/households. Now.

Printing more money so that everyone gets inflation beating/equalling pay rises ad infinitum, as a matter of course, without improvements to productivity, will only exacerbate the inflationary cycle. Supply driven inflation will be augmented with 70’s style wages/prices inflation. People would’ve forgotten that anyone with savings (millions of pensioners) will see their real value plummet, anyone on a fixed income will become permanently poorer.

The BoE has been printing money for over a decade, although they called it QE. They don't print money to pay salaries: it just means the government has to either raise more money through taxation to pay for it, cut spending elsewhere, or increase the deficit.

 

[rogersix]

Many on here genuinely think people at lower pay ranges should be earning a lot more. Obviously this would have to come from somewhere. Do you think it should come from higher earners earning less or paying more tax. Do you think corporation tax should be increased.

does the rail service need workers or shareholders most? half a billion goes a long way

 

[pb21]

The BoE has been printing money for over a decade, although they called it QE. They don't print money to pay salaries: it just means the government has to either raise more money through taxation to pay for it, cut spending elsewhere, or increase the deficit.

Quite. It's one of, arguably the main, cause of the current period of inflation, particularly as the 2020 pump didn't coincide with a period of increased output.

 

[Is it PotG?]

The BoE has been printing money for over a decade, although they called it QE. They don't print money to pay salaries: it just means the government has to either raise more money through taxation to pay for it, cut spending elsewhere, or increase the deficit.

A must, well respected read on such matters. Excellent book

 

[Weststander]

The BoE has been printing money for over a decade, although they called it QE. They don't print money to pay salaries: it just means the government has to either raise more money through taxation to pay for it, cut spending elsewhere, or increase the deficit.

Quantitive Easing isn’t the worst thing in the world, when all major economies partake, Gordon Brown started it in the modern era and is widely commended for it. Preventing all the West’s bank imploding, everyone would’ve lost their savings, smoothing economies through the Pandemic. At a time of next to no interest rates, the additional debt servicing was and is manageable.

But if a lone country does it, a currency devalues fast. Input inflation would runaway. In addition, economists predict at least another 2% increase in base rates, we’re entering a time where it isn’t so cheap for anyone including governments to borrow.

 

[Springal]

Many on here genuinely think people at lower pay ranges should be earning a lot more. Obviously this would have to come from somewhere. Do you think it should come from higher earners earning less or paying more tax. Do you think corporation tax should be increased.

BT employees will be going on strike soon over pay and conditions.

Some BT locations operate food banks for employees. (Source https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/bt-food-bank-community-pantry-own-staff/ )

BT Group made £1.3Bn profits not that long ago
BT Group paid £700M in dividends to shareholders in the same year.

They are still due to pay out 2.9p per share in dividend this year

The CEO this year had a 32% pay rise taking his pay to £3.5M - but this week told workers there was nothing in the bank for employee pay increases.

These companies are not doing everything they can, they’re prioritising shareholders over employees

After the billions spent on Covid now raging inflation I think it is completely irresponsible to go on strike now.

This government wrote off £10Bn of covid fraud without any kind of effort to retrieve it. That’s not the poor peoples fault

 

[Weststander]

Quite. It's one of, arguably the main, cause of the current period of inflation, particularly as the 2020 pump didn't coincide with a period of increased output.

View attachment 149091

QE was started in massive way by Gordon Brown in 2008, but inflation only took off 14 years later in 2022.

QE was used to shore up bank capital and pay for furlough, not to finance a consumer boom.

 

[Bry Nylon]

This government wrote off £10Bn of covid fraud without any kind of effort to retrieve it. That’s not the poor peoples fault

And let’s not mention the £25bn pissed away on a useless Test & Trace programme. But they got all the Big Decisions right…

 

[beorhthelm]

QE was started in massive way by Gordon Brown in 2008, but inflation only took off 14 years later in 2022.

QE was used to shore up bank capital and pay for furlough, not to finance a consumer boom.

QE pumped up assets across the board and inflation exported to China and SE Asia.

 

[pb21]

QE was started in massive way by Gordon Brown in 2008, but inflation only took off 14 years later in 2022.

QE was used to shore up bank capital and pay for furlough, not to finance a consumer boom.

I'm really not an expert on this but isn't there a lag between QE and potential inflationary effects of that? Also, if you effectively print money you are 'debasing' it, is it not inevitable that inflation will result?

 

[Weststander]

I'm really not an expert on this but isn't there a lag between QE and potential inflationary effects of that? Also, if you effectively print money you are 'debasing' it, is it not inevitable that inflation will result?

Nor am I.

So just reading up on this as we’ve been typing, it didn’t lead to UK inflation because every other western economy was using the very same tool, and because the printed money was not placed into the hands of consumers in a boom.

2008 and beyond banks crash - it bought debt, bolstered the capital of private banks to save them.
Pandemic - it bankrolled furlough, grants and loans to companies.

 

[Swansman]

QE was started in massive way by Gordon Brown in 2008, but inflation only took off 14 years later in 2022.

QE was used to shore up bank capital and pay for furlough, not to finance a consumer boom.

This wave of global inflation was always going to come. Service economies and FIAT currencies. No intrinsic value in the money and no intrinsic value in the production (obviously with exceptions)... unsustainable from the get go and only upheld by growth, and since 2008 that growth has mainly been a result of foreign (Chinese in particular) investment. Just look at the increase in Chinese spending when the financial crisis began... which eventually bailed us out in Europe/US, but the underlying issues were never really dealt with and we were always just one cataclysmic event (like some pandemic or a war involving states with significant impact on our economies) from a very difficult situation.

I don't think anyone knows how we're going to deal with this because there is no end in sight. Never in the last few hundred years has there been fewer tools to deal with a situation like this - the interest rates are sensitive to touch in any direction, regulation of the financial markets has been thrown out the window, our countries are not anywhere near self-sustaining, there's no production to adjust because we're quickly approaching the point where fuel, food, heating etc. will be the real issues and no increase in cool IT services, tourism or other service shit is going to solve it.

People are desperate. That's why they are going on strikes - not because they are greedy or anything like that. Imo that should be fairly obvious to anyone, and it should be fairly obvious to anyone that this is not the time to moan about these desperate people not being able to provide them with their holidays or their train rides to football games. But from reading multiple threads here it seems that anti-unionism is almost as strong over there as in Yankeetown. Slightly disappointing. As someone raised in socialist Sweden, a large part of the anglophilia over here revolves around the culture, solidarity and fighting spirit of your working class. Turns out this may all be a myth, or the past.

 

[rogersix]

giving money directly... so we're on handouts now? bit leap.

what do you think the mid and higher earners do with their money? all those cars, building work, holidays, iphones etc just appear do they? they dont go to the supermarket, hairdressers, pubs or restaurants? where is this absurd notion that only one group of people spend their money coming from?

every transaction gets taxed; if a person hoards money, it's not being taxed; it's quite straightforward

as an aside, any ideas as to why economics isn't taught compulsorily to under 16s? it would be a good life skill to have, like reading, writing, counting and whatnot

 

[beorhthelm]

I'm really not an expert on this but isn't there a lag between QE and potential inflationary effects of that? Also, if you effectively print money you are 'debasing' it, is it not inevitable that inflation will result?

not inevitable, we avoided substantial inflation with years of QE going on, and Japan has been doing it since 2001. its done its job of keep away deflation. in theory you can unwind (quantiative tightening) selling the assets back to market, so avoiding the inflation as its not permenant increase of money supply. now its got away from control of central banks.