This might have been made in Canada four months ago, but it could just as easily have been made here:
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This is tagged wrong, it’s a blank square in Firefox and Opera both. I dug into the source and found this which I assume is what you intend us to view https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sbo9cAyhFMA
No
And it is live in mine
This seems to be a WordPress problem now
Not a live link for me, I’m afraid. But could be my fault.
Sorry
Blank for me too – on Mac with both Firefox & Safari
I have now added the link into the text. I can’t explain why this happens sometimes right now.
worked for me. Just clicked on the link.
The unemployment rate in Canada is, I understand over 5%. The UK rate is 3.8% (ONS). Britain has very little unemployment. In October 2021 Sunak told the BBC Today programme: “we want a high-productivity economy, to lead to higher wages, and we’re doing things to enable that.” (The Independent, 4th October, 2021).
The things they were doing were Brexit, combined with a tough regime on immigration. At the same time the effects of Covid led to significant numbers of people leaving the UK labour force. In addition, the total fertility rate (TFR) for England and Wales in 2021 is 1.61 children per woman (1.37 in Scotland). The TFR has been below replacement level since 1973 (ONS). The replacement TFR is 2.1 per woman. Such factors, combined compound the significant shortages of labour in the economy, and lead to increases in wage costs. It simply follows, as night follows day. Falls in TFR and factors like Brexit and Covid will inevitably strengthen the power of labour. Fall in population always have done. This consequence was first seen in Britain, with the Black Death (1348), and the effects can be observed in the record. There was drastic, negative short term damage to the economy and society from the huge loss to population; but longer term the Black Death also fundamentally changed social liberty, and the economy in ways that could not be reversed (and could never have happened as a matter of conscious policy).
50% of the English population lived under serfdom in 1300. By 1350, after the Black Death the figure was down to 35%. The structure of society was changed. In the economy: “the Black Death had a significant impact on relative factor prices. Prior to the Black Death, the European economy was land and capital scarce whereas labor was relatively abundant. As such, wages were low, whereas the rental value of land and interest rates were high. The fall in population resulting from the Black Death thus had positive effects on real wages and incomes. Land prices, interest rates, and inequality fell.” (Mark Koyama, Noel Johnson and Remi Jedwab, ‘The Economic Impact of the Black Death’; CEPR, DP15132 (v. 4), (August, 2020); pp.1-51, quotation, p.40).
Notice that I have not made reference to the fact that the current inflation crisis is not a wage-spiral effect; but a price and profit spiral effect. Add this to the toxic brew of Brexit, Covid, Immigration and Demography and the outcome cannot end well; especially if Government choose to interpret the critical issue as essentially due to wage-spiral inflation.
The Government and BoE are currently peddling a pedalo against a rip-tide. They are beyond help. They require rescue.
Retirement, not rescue, I think
Sacking is richly deserved, but neither quite fits the metaphor……
A crisis of capitalism. Profits have to increase year on year. If a company makes £1 billion in profit one year it has to increase that the next…£999 million is a disaster! Just extrapolate that and it only leads to a wider, unequal distribution of wealth……it’s the system we are locked into.
This is not a crisis for capitalism – its a bonanza.
For society at large it is a social disaster for which the answer is the same old same old.
Capital just does not want to know about how the supply/demand seesaw has re-balanced the labour supply in its favour because this does not fit with their ordo-narrative. Facts have never got in the way of greed and blind faith in poor economics
To John’s list we must also add the impact of interest hikes to an already over indebted business sector and in the end it is the BoE’s private brethren who are benefitting.
“…if they’re fighting a class war, it’s about time we do.” Fully agree with the last sentence in the video.