The Guardian's morning briefing includes this paragraph today:
The chancellor's second mini-budget of the pandemic will lay bare the government's fears over the long-lasting impact of a looming winter surge in unemployment when he unveils a £4.3bn package of support to help the jobless find work. It includes a £2.9bn Restart scheme designed to aid a million workers with their job searches; and a further £1.4bn to increase the capacity of Jobcentre Plus — the government's support service for the unemployed.
In one paragraph all that will be wrong in today's report is summarised.
Realistically, once furlough and lockdowns through the spring are over, the mortality rate amongst British businesses that had clung on in the hope of Christmas tracing is going to be very high. Hundreds of thousands may fail.
With these failures millions of jobs will be lost. Even the government thinks unemployment might rise to 4 million people. This proposed funding will provide, in that case, £1,000 to each of them to help fund a job, most of which money will go to the advisers telling them what to do.
The trouble is that these people will not have jobs because there won't be any, and not because they need some help polishing their CVs.
But the government does not get this. It thinks it is for the private sector to create the jobs that will be required. They cannot comprehend that the real private sector - the job-creating but and not the hedge fund, chaos exploiting part - is going to knocked out for some time to come. Its sole aim will be survival. Taking risks, and creating new jobs is not what it is going to be doing.
What that means is that if we want new jobs - and we will want them by the million - then the state sector has to deliver, either by demanding the services required (all those needed to deliver a Green New Deal, for example) or by employing people directly in care, education, and so on.
And unless that happens there is only going to be one word to describe Rishi Sunak, and that's that he will be a failure.
I see that coming, unfortunately.
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My wife heard you on Radio Scotland this morning and was very impressed. Your sparring partner wasn’t as impressive and seemed somewhat discomfited. She said you didn’t pull any punches.
For those who missed it, listen here at about 1hr35: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000pp12
Thanks
Sticking it to Mark Littlewood is always time well spent.
🙂
Rather than paying out huge amounts in unemployment benefits and potentially creating a pool of long term unemployed of which it is well known what the consequences are he could encourage the older generation to give up jobs by reducing the pension age on the proviso that the person is willing to leave the workforce. It is possible that many of those nearing retirement age would be willing leave a few years earlier.
Why?
I intend to work until my 80s
Why should people give up?
And you realise that this will be irrelevant to most pensioners as they are already retired?
Road workers, manual labourers, teachers etc working until aged 80?
Simon Gray’s point is valid for many in essential jobs.
Many people want to work much longer now
Many have no choice
I am not saying they have to give up. I am saying there are those who given the choice may wish to. You may want to go on working until you are 80 but I most certainly do not at least not in an occupation I do not care for, commuting unnecessarily into an office etc etc. Because the official retirement age has been increased I now have no choice but to carry on working. Quite frankly it doesn’t seem the radical proposition you seem to think. I don’t understand the comment about most pensioners. It doesn’t apply to them only to those who are currently working but who if offered the choice are willing to swap their place in the workforce and give someone younger who may potentially become long term unemployed an opportunity.
………and so they will satiate people’s anger by destroying the public sector too to make things look ‘fair’ and privatise it to make it look as the economy is growing back.
What worries me is that too many will fall for it. We will become an economic desert or /and we’ll have the largest informal economy in Europe. It will be a free-market driven mess.
surely the time of a 4 day week is upon us? coupled with a rebalancing of the economy to rewarding labour as much as (if not more than capital), this could be transformative in many ways
That idea does need exploration
But without cutting pay – obligations remain fixed
Spain considering 4 day week: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/four-day-week-spain-valencia-autonomy-b1761163.html