Disconnected from reality
No need to stress!
Something that I’ve found over and over again when considering the arguments of “the left” is their incredible disconnection from reality. One only needs to cast a brief eye on the utterances of any Labour politician to get a feel for what I mean, but it’s even more disturbing when it comes from a group of people who laughably describe themselves as a “think tank”.
Yet here we have the amusingly named new economics foundation (all in eye-catching lowercase, natch!) who feel that the answer to unemployment is that we should all work less, so that everyone can have a fair slice of the employment pie:
According to nef, there are several forces pushing us towards a shorter working week: lasting damage to the economy caused by the banking crisis, an increasingly divided society with too much over-work alongside too much unemployment, and an urgent need for deep cuts in environmentally damaging over-consumption. These combine with a growing interest in people spending more time producing and delivering a share of their own goods and services – from co-produced care and neighbourhood-based activities, to food, clothing and other necessities.
I hardly know where to start with this rubbish, but I’ll have a go anyway: the lasting damage to the economy was actually caused by the Labour government’s reprehensible corporatist response to the banking crisis; people are not overworking for fun, but are rather just struggling to make ends meet in a country where the pound has collapsed against all other currencies; and it’s clearly bypassed the mental giants at nef that in a recession, people aren’t indulging in “environmentally damaging over-consumption” any more. The idea that people want to revert to a subsistence agrarian economy again is clearly stupid and inevitably the product of woolly-minded Islington residents who have overindulged in Polly Toynbee columns.
“So many of us live to work, work to earn, and earn to consume. And our consumption habits are squandering the earth’s natural resources”, says Anna Coote, co-author of the report and Head of Social Policy at nef. “Spending less time in paid work could help us to break this pattern. We’d have more time to be better parents, better citizens, better carers and better neighbours. And we could even become better employees: less stressed, more in control, happier in our jobs and more productive. It is time to break the power of the old industrial clock, take back our lives and work for a sustainable future.”
Ahhh, Ms Coote, Ms Coote. Perhaps in your social circles, too many people “live to work, work to earn, and earn to consume” – after all, you do want to get those divine olives from the local deli before the proles head in, they never appreciate it anyway! As a parent myself, I’m not entirely clear how a 50% pay cut, which would lead to me losing my house and the ability to feed and clothe my child would somehow make me a “better” parent. As someone who’s major stress levels arise from my income levels, it’s also entirely unclear to me how being on the bones of my arse would make me less stressed, more in control, happier in my job and more productive.
The rest of the report is so fatuous, I can scarcely bring myself to read it. I suppose that when you’re stealing £250,000 a year of tax-payers’ hard-earned, it’s easy to argue for a 50% wage cut. I wonder how someone scraping by on the minimum wage would feel about some jumped-up condescending know-it-all, who, after a 50% pay cut, is still in the top 1% of earners in the country, telling them that it’s in their best interests to starve.
Or perhaps it’s only the “proles” who are supposed to job-share, while our lords and masters continue to selflessly work themselves to the bone on our behalf.
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February 15, 2010 at 08:12 -
Not to mention the ‘Lump of Labour’ fallacy – shortening the working week of those in work would not lead to the ‘spare’ hours going to the unemployed. I’m all in favour of downsizing where people want it – doing less, and making do with less – but these people are economically illiterate.
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February 15, 2010 at 08:26 -
Last days Nero’s empire. They bare all on the violin watching the house burn down.
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3
February 15, 2010 at 09:04 -
To think, if you blow them all up you could be arrested.
What a world.
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February 15, 2010 at 09:11 -
Last days of a Latter day’s Nero’s empire.
They are all on the violin as the civilisation burns down around them.
Bit early for first post
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February 15, 2010 at 09:11 -
latter day
bugger!
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February 15, 2010 at 09:24 -
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February 15, 2010 at 09:58 -
You don’t know what time zone I am in.
In reality it is my very own set in the 1960s, just because I liken it then.
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February 15, 2010 at 09:59 -
I need some sugar (cane)
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February 15, 2010 at 10:00 -
The one thing they omit to mention, like all labour working practices, is that the shorter working hours does not mean less pay. You work for 21 hours and get paid for 40 – upshot, companies need twice the number of workers at 4 times the pay. Nice work if you can get it!
What they should be talking about is Negative Income Tax – every one gets a basic amount of money from the government which reduces as you earn. With that system there is no top up of housing benefit etc. You don’t work, you get enough to live on ( about the amount of the OAP) and that is it – over spend, tough, no more available. Teen age girls getting pregnant to get a house – tough, if you can’t afford it – no housing benefit.
I could go on but I think most people get the idea.
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February 15, 2010 at 10:31 -
‘sustainable’ frequently means subsistence to these people. It is one of the most disarmingly evil words lobby groups and politicians can utter.
They don’t want poor people in far flung places to trade their way to a better life they want third world people to be reliant on handouts and a circus show for travelling fundies. They don’t want developing nations to increase their wealth (and by cause and effect improve their environment, improve their health and decrease their population) they want them to remain the sweatshops of the world and not trouble the status of the developed world. Their idea of progress is entirely backwards with the concept as the rest of the world sees it. They want to arrest our development.
At times the State tries to muscle in on the role of parents – what parent would want their ‘children’ to have it as bad or worse than they had, to have fewer opportunities not more?
What they want is for everyone (but them) to be poorer. What they want is everyone to have a part time job so no one is unemployed. If we’re all living more sustainable lives politicians and fake charities will run out of money.
New Economics Foundation = New Puritans.
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February 15, 2010 at 11:43 -
Since when was The State Pension enough to live on? And I did work and pay for this as a single parent family.
However, it is sad to say that working mothers inside a traditional family are taking jobs away from some men who would like to work. The problem is that we all want more of the goodies, and no one seems to plan for the bad times anymore. Too many people run up massive Credit Card Debts and then wail when they can’t pay them. Britain has been encouraged to get into debt, which I find quite sinister.
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February 15, 2010 at 13:37 -
The nef foundation are a vacuous pressure group. and economically illiterate to boot
If you want a giggle read the “a bit rich” report they put out recently. Laugh at the huge statistical and methodology fails throughout the document.
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February 15, 2010 at 13:43 -
I’m afraid I have news for all of you….the Cameroonians are just as divorced from any commercial prespective – and totally separated from a social one.
Thadders on the money, as ever: unemployment ‘unexpectedly’ dropped last month by 7000 (funny how everything’s ‘unexpected’ when it comes to government these days) but on the other hand, part-time working shot up by 99,000.
The obvious reason (not enough jobs to go round and second partners going back to work) has eluded everyone in the Ministry for Meddlesome Matters.
Manglesum himself, meanwhile, is busy being ‘tough’ with Kraft – which, as you’ll all have noticed, is having an effect: Kraft have changed their mind about the Bristol Cadburys factory – they’re going to close it after all.
Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggg
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February 15, 2010 at 15:01 -
Lump of labour? I realize it’s hard to climb outside of your own assumptions but you guys dismiss the 21-hour report on the basis of your preconceptions, not the thinking behind the report. Fifty years ago the consensus among conventional economists was that we’d be working something like a 20-hour week by now. What happened? Somebody got the bright idea that spending on an arms build up would make the economy grow so much that we’d eliminate poverty. How did that work out? Well, the arms spending happened and the massive deficits. But you blokes are fine with that, right?
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February 15, 2010 at 17:19 -
It’s not just labour who are out of touch with reality, exactly how in touch with ‘my’ reality is Mr Cameron ?
And as for any of the other political parties, if only we knew, because reporting carries on as if the ‘two main’ parties were the only options. -
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February 15, 2010 at 19:34 -
A shorter working week is a great idea, I propose an immediate 50% reduction in tax so we can lower our working week without any loss in income.
Thats a proper Green tax initiative.
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